Pentecost 2005

Series: "… until Christ be formed in us ".

Jesus and Faith.

8. The Holy Spirit and liberation

Exodus 3:1-12; Mark 5:1-20

The challenge

The story is told about the Christian minister from an African country who went to Germany for post-graduate studies. There he learned all the achievements of the enlightenment. The triumph of reason over the claims of faith. Miracles did not really happen, he was told. Demons do not really exist, he heard in a Seminar room. The Scriptures had to be interpreted “demythologised” was the new word he learned so that they satisfied the demands of reason. Our friend learned it all, finished his studies, wrote his dissertations, received his degree. He went back to Africa with his PhD in his bag.

His home church put on a welcome celebration. Suddenly, in the middle of the party, a person falls over, screams, frothing at the mouth. The traditional African diagnosis was clear. He was possessed by a demon. Everyone stared at the new Doctor of Theology from a German university where, though they did not know that, demons and miracles had been “demythologised”, blown away by the storms of reason.

What was he to do? Demons were not supposed to exist, he had learned in New Testament Theology. In Pastoral Care, he had learned, you were not supposed to detect and exorcise demons. You were supposed to listen empathetically and talk softly to people – but here the patient was frothing at the mouth and screaming. Our African friend with a German University degree was helpless.

A traditional medicine man stepped forward, exorcised the demon, and the party continued.

Today, on this day of Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming, the life giving power of the Holy Spirit, we want to become aware that the Holy Spirit is not only active in the creation of faith, in conversion, in sanctification, but is active in the world, in the market places of life, where God in the power of the Spirit heals and liberates.

The story

The biblical story that we heard this morning is awesome, frightening, powerful.

They had brought Jesus by boat across the lake. As he entered the shore this massive man meets him. His name was "Legion". He dwelt in tombs and caves – places of isolation and death. There was no community. He was alone. Dark and evil powers had ceased him. People tried to bind him in chains, but he broke the chains with his extra-ordinary strength. He even turned his strength against himself; he had no control over himself and hurt himself badly.

Meeting Jesus meant the encounter with life and light. It was part of Jesus’ ministry to drive out demons in the power of the Spirit: “... if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons,” he had said, “then the kingdom of God has come to you.” (Matt 12:28)

Tombs and caves were bad enough as places of death and estrangement. Now a herd of swine enters the scene. Pigs stand for unclearness. To the present day Jews do not eat pork. The unclean spirits, having been driven out of the strong man, whose name was "Legion", enter the swine. They in turn hurtle down the hill and drown in the sea.

The cave man is healed from the torment of an unclean spirit. He wants to join Jesus’ band of friends, but Jesus had other things for him to do. He became part of the people of God "and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed."

Relevance

Does this story have a message for us on this Pentecost Day? Can we get some help here to understand and analyse and interpret our life and our world? To learn something about the activity of God's Spirit in the world?

1. The first thing that we have to notice is that when we speak of the Holy Spirit we not only speak of faith and discipleship, of justification and sanctification, of personal experience, but of God's liberating activity in the world!

2. Jesus drove out demons. I am not inviting you to believe in demons. Indeed, if demons play no role in your life and if you don’t believe in demons, relax and be grateful. I also know that reference to demons has been used to escape human responsibility. “The demons made me do it” implying, that I am not responsible. That is not the way to go! Hands off speculating with demons and with exorcising demons as it is practiced in a number of Christian sects and churches.

But think for a moment. Leave your comfortable armchair in far away Australia and in our protected Canberra, and come with me to the “tombs” and “caves” in the Balkans, to Rwanda, to Kashmir, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Ethiopia and Eritrea, to the areas in Asia and Latin America where Drug barons dominate life. Pay back; blood revenge; ethnic hatred; irreconcilable divisions; irrational brutalities, hatred that goes back for centuries and for generations. Irrational and deep seated hatred that no longer allows people to relate to the "other" as humans. One hesitates to mention the screams of fear and torture that reach us. The media has been advised not to show the atrocities of cruelty and hatred; performed by human beings, by human beings like you and me. What is there in the deep recesses of ourselves that makes us think and say and do such terrible things?

Is this our world damned – left without the Spirit of Pentecost?

Can we explain the evil that stares us in our face and sometimes dwells up within us, by a lack of education or culture? Some bad people are very educated, and following their evil deeds, they sit down in a lounge chair and listen to Beethoven and Tschaikowsky. Or is it enough to say that if we improve the economic circumstances of people then evil will disappear? Yet, sinister things happen in the richest countries of the world! Perhaps there is more to the explosion of mistrust, hatred and evil? We may need words like “demons” and the “demonic” to name the human mix that energises us to do terrible things to each other?

3. The story that we heard this morning does not ask us to believe in demons! It asks us to discover and name the demons in our life and in our world! The demonic meets us in particular situations. Our story makes that quite clear.

Jesus asks the cave man, the dweller among tombs, for his name: “Legion!” “Legion” has only one meaning: a division of Roman Soldiers. Having realised that, suddenly the language in the story becomes very suggestive.

A “herd” of “pigs” pigs do not live in herds, soldiers do! So the heard of pigs becomes a picture for the Gentile, in Jewish eyes “unclean”, occupation forces. That is where the unclean spirits belong, so the Jews thought, in the Roman occupation forces! And then the hostile forces are being driven into the sea and they are swallowed up by the waves. Would one not remember how the pursuant armies of Pharao were swallowed up by the sea to make Israel’s liberation possible (Exod 14f.)?

Driving out the demonic had a very concrete thrust. It meant the promise of liberation in times of bondage. Israel was occupied by Roman forces. Israel was longing to be free. By telling the story as to how Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, drove out the unclean spirit, encouraged people in their own hope for liberation from the occupation of the enemy. Their situation seemed hopeless. There was the powerful Roman Empire and here the little Palestine. But the tomb man, the cave man, the man whom no social customs could restrain he now sits besides Jesus “clothed and in his right mind” (v. 15).

4. What are the elements of the demonic, so that we may locate these strong and irrational forces in our life and in our world? A hopeless fatedness; people feel that they have no control over their lives; their free will has nothing to operate on; self-hatred leads to self hurt; people feel paralysed and helpless; their life powers are drained and they feel lonely; no one understands, they think and their thinking is true; their perception of life becomes distorted and they become suspicious of every one; they feel powerless; anxiety spreads and finally they can only scream, refusing help; and people who would like to help, don’t know what to do.

5. Have you spoken with parents of drug dependant children? Have you been allowed to look into the soul of some one who lost her job and has no chance to get a new one? Has a disabled person shared with you the many disadvantages and misunderstandings that they meet every day? Do you have an intimation why people who have been tortured and people who have come home from combat can’t talk about their experiences? Have you ever really talked with an indigenous person who was forcibly removed from his or her parents, and have you allowed yourself to feel the anger and emptiness and betrayal that they carry around?

My friends, there are many situations today where people feel fated, lonely, angry, empty, and forgotten. This explodes into irrational group fears, where the only hope is an invasion of life and light to drive out the demonic.

6. We are glad to hear that Jesus did not keep the authority to drive out demons to himself – he shared it with his friends:

“... he appointed twelve ... to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons.” (Mark 3:14f.)

“He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.” (Mark 6:7)

“They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” (Mark 6:13; further: Matt 10:1, 7f. Lk 9:1f.)

So, by being friends to the lonely; by bringing hope to those who are in despair; by doing our part to create room for people to determine their own destiny, we are driving away the fog of the demonic and let the sunshine of God’s salvation come through.

7. There are demonic, evil, unclean realities that explode within us. They control us, rather than us being in charge of them. We feel powerless in dealing with the demonic. But hear the glorious affirmation of the Gospel.

The strong man, who makes us do things that we don’t want to do, who even makes us hurt ourselves, has been bound. In Christ, God has dealt with the powers that bind us and estrange us from God and from each other. That is what the author of the letter to the church in Colossae means:

In Christ “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. ... when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses ... God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.” (Colossians 2:9-15)

What is our part in all this? What can we do? Our task, our privilege is, to make visible what God has done.

8. And remember, Jesus did not drive out all the unclean spirits at once. When he met a situation, he acted. We can’t save the world. But we can do our little bit, here and there, to drive out the demonic and make room for the Spirit who wants to lead people into freedom.

TL: Canberra, May 13, 2005