Sermon Cloud

THE EXORCIST

             The thing about seminary is that most people think it is the place people go who want to get their questions about God and religion answered - but that is almost never the case.  It is a common frustration and complaint among seminarians that none of their questions ever get answered – they only get three or six or ten different opinions from dead or radical theologians – and a few people who 500 years ago would have been burned at the stake for heresy.  It took me almost the whole three years to even begin to appreciate that the Truth is bigger than my brain – which gives you a better idea of the size of my ego than the size of my brain, doesn’t it?  And so we read and read and think and think and write and write and then we read some more and start over again – but the questions don’t stop. 

             One area where we had lots of questions that never got answered, was, “So what’s the deal with the Devil and demons?”  When the students got together for dinner and the conversation wandered to what it was going to be like after we graduated and began to serve a church, the closer we got to graduation, the more we wondered things like, “How will we know if someone is possessed by a demon?” or “What do we do if somebody asks for an exorcism?”  Not only did we want to appear competent as ministers, there were some who were actually afraid of engaging the Enemy on behalf of a parishioner.

             The professors were really good at avoiding this particular question so some of us decided we were going to make a real effort to find out at least how the Presbyterian church dealt with it or not.  One of our required classes was World Religions.  The final exam was a group project where the group took one aspect of religion and compared it between three different traditions, so my group picked exorcism – as a serious topic – and compared it between Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism.

             What ended up being most interesting to us was comparing the different ways that different flavors of Christians approach exorcism:  almost all denominations insist on a mental health evaluation before seriously considering exorcism.  The difference is that if a Catholic exorcist learns that a person suspected of being demon-possessed is mentally ill, the priest would refuse to perform an exorcism and refer to the person to a psychiatrist.  But if a Pentecostal minister learns that such a person is mentally ill, that minister will perform the exorcism..  The rationale is that if a person is mentally ill, that is taken as evidence that he or she is possessed by a demon that induces mental illness, and so is in need of healing through the casting out of the demon.  Conversely, if the person is not found to be mentally ill, the person therefore does not need an exorcism, but rather, is in need of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and so the Pentecostal minister would then explain the gospel to the patient.

             Both the Church of Scotland and the PCUS discourage exorcism, but neither denomination has banned it outright. In 1976, the Presbyterian General Assembly split the baby in typical Presbyterian fashion:  The advice to ministers from the collective wisdom of the PCUS is this:

       “The Constitution of the PCUS describes the duties of the Minister of the Word without including exorcism, and does not authorize the practice of exorcism, as a function of Ministers of the Word.  Nevertheless, any Presbyterian or Reformed minister including exorcism in his or her ministry should take great care not to let exorcism become a central or spectacular part of his or her ministry and thereby call attention more to the powers of evil than to God.”

   So do it or don’t do it, but if you do it, do it decently and in order!

             This is the kind of confusion that John is discussing with Jesus.  The disciples had been out and about in the countryside and had come across someone they didn’t know, who was using the name of Jesus to successfully cast out demons, and John and the other disciples had told the unknown exorcist to knock it off!  It’s a startling lack of compassion, or at least an exhibition of territorialism, isn’t it?  Out of some misplaced need to defend Jesus, they stop someone who is doing an obviously good work, because he doesn’t have the right credentials! 

             That sort of thing didn’t end in the first century, either.  The Roman Catholic Church prevented the Welshman we know today as St. Patrick, from being ordained to the priesthood for years, because they thought his education was insufficient.  More recently, in the 19^th century, the Presbyterian Church split because the Cumberland Presbytery in Kentucky began ordaining ministers without the educational background required by the denomination.

              In 1973, the Presbyterian Church in America (the PCA) was formed out of another split of the PCUSA over the ordination of women, and in recent years, a number of churches have left the PCUSA for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, (the EPC) out of concern over the ongoing debate about removing the expectation of sexual purity from the ordination standards.    

             Lest you think that such church splits are any kind of answer, the PCA is and the EPC are also divided over their interpretation of the Westminster Confession of Faith: the PCA holds to the 1789 revision (although they do permit an exception with regard to the section that identifies the Pope as the antichrist), and the EPC holds to the Westminster Confession as revised in 1647! 

             Is your head spinning?  Perhaps you need an exorcism of the demon of denominationalism!

             Or maybe John and his pals were just trying to distract attention away from the fact that they - the disciples – the insiders – had not been able earlier to heal the boy having seizures; and apparently were unable to do any healing after they’d shut down this new exorcist.[1]  It doesn’t look good for the first string to be shown up by the rookie.

             We’d never do that would we?  But we sure hear a lot of people in the power structures of the mainline denominations saying disrespectful things about successful mega-churches, or about Charismatics and Pentecostals and Catholics; or between the mainliners about whether or not to baptize as infants or only on profession of faith.  We talk about others in terms of “them” and “they” and “us” and “we.”

             When we read and teach about being the body of Christ from Romans 12, we talk about how we are all gifted to be part of Christ’s body in the world, some of us are feet, and others are hands; some are ears and some are eyes, and together, with Christ as our head we are Jesus with skin on for the world.  Most of the time we narrow the body of Christ to our individual congregations, about how First Presbyterian, Guymon is the body of Christ, our own little Christian “Mr. Potato Head,” full of 130 or so colorful little parts of the body, stored  in our own little box at the corner of 7^th and Roosevelt.  When we are feeling expansive and loyal, or when we are at a Presbytery meeting, we talk about how the PCUSA – the larger denomination - is the body of Christ, with all our congregations are connected together – maybe First, Guymon is a foot, and First, Enid is an ear, and Trinity in The Colony is an eye – as we work in the world.  That’s a nice picture, too, and it makes us feel important, like the body of Christ is somehow taller when we talk in terms of our denominational tradition.

             But what if it’s different?  What if the body of Christ is as big as all the Christians in the whole world, including the ones we think are oddballs or only marginally orthodox?  What if the Roman Catholics are a foot, and the Methodists are a hand, and the Coptics in Egypt are ears and all those little house churches scattered all over the world, are eyes and all those individual Christians in cyberspace who sit and blog about God on their Macs and Blackberries and iPhones are vital organs? 

             If that’s how it is, then we need to pay a lot more attention to our other parts, because our body is  starting to look a little scraggly and out of shape.

             Paul wrote:    ²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" ²²On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, ²⁴while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.[2]

             Wow.  Listen to verse 23 again:  “…those parts that seem to be weaker are indispensible…”  Try having a good day without one of your weaker parts – maybe without your tongue.  He goes on, “…the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty…”  I wonder which part of Christianity we consider “unpresentable.”  The tattooed guys with the piercings and the shaved heads?  Those crazy street preachers with the big homemade signs that say, “The End Is Near”?  The people on TV who hit the floor when they’re slain in the Spirit? 

             Jesus is telling John that none of this stuff bothers him at all – none of it.  He says, “Whoever is not against us is for us…”  Why it’s almost like the PCUSA saying that if we do an exorcism, we should just take care not to “call attention more to the powers of evil than to God.”  Apparently Jesus thinks that since none of us have a lock on “the right way to do church,” he’s good with us doing whatever it is we do in his name.

             But surely he doesn’t mean we can do anything in his name and he’s okay with it – certainly we can’t lie or steal or murder in Jesus’ name, although we read almost every day the news and see on television that someone new is telling the police that he has committed some terrible act because he believed “Jesus told me to.” 

             And it’s easy to see that our community at First, Guymon is a strong church with a rich history and shared identity where people feel like they belong and have a sense of protection and support.  But strong communities have expectations and demands of social order.  Strong communities can sometimes restrict freedom and creativity.  Strong communities are sometimes so rock-solid that they have trouble moving forward and being flexible.[3]

            These are important questions for all communities of faith – how far do we go in isolating ourselves in order to preserve important standards and values and customs?  How far should a community of faith go to include others who are different, and where do we draw the line?  Is there a line at all?  How does a community keep its identity, and fellowship with those who are different, without losing its distinctiveness?

             When Jesus told John, “Do not stop him – don’t stop the exorcist - for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon to afterward speak evil of me,” it is clear that preserving the power of his own group is not a priority for Jesus,[4] and so it follows that preserving the institutional power of the Presbyterian Church or the Baptist Church or the Roman Catholic Church or any other religious institution is not a priority for Jesus.

             But when I said that Jesus doesn’t care at all about how we “do church,” I didn’t mean that he doesn’t care about the consequences of how we “do church.”  There is a real tension between keeping the integrity of the ways of Christ and being inclusive. 

             If the church keeps someone out because of who they are, or where they came from, or how they got here, or what their particular sin is when they come to find out what it means to follow Christ – and these are the ones Jesus is referring to when he calls them “little ones” – he isn’t speaking of children, but of new believers, babes in Christ, new disciples with incomplete understanding - then we put ourselves in the place of the ones Jesus calls “anyone” – the ones for whom it would be better to be thrown into the sea with rocks tied around our necks. 

            What Jesus cares about is how we treat other people – and he affirms the good works of everyone who does them in his name no matter who they are, whether they are liberal or conservative, young or old, male or female, Catholic or Protestant, Charismatic or Reformed, whether they like contemporary or traditional worship, and yes, whether they are gay or straight.  In this passage this morning Jesus is not teaching about right doctrine, he is teaching about right behavior and acts of righteousness toward others, and Jesus is very severe in his warning about the fire that awaits those who think they are better judges than the God of the universe; and that they serve a puny God who needs defending.

            There is almost nothing easy to hear in today’s text – the goo of it gets on all of us, but the good news is that Jesus says that the only thing that will get the gunk off is salt:  the salt that purifies and cleanses; the salt that makes us clean and holy.

            When we did our exorcism project, we found a recipe for making holy water, a common element in most exorcisms.  Protestants don’t use “holy water” – the water in our font is the ordinary water of daily life, given to us by God, so we know it is good.  And even in traditions that do use holy water, there are no exact words to pray over it, because it isn’t some kind of magic spell - nothing happens to the water, and it has no special power – it is symbol. 

            What some call “holy water’ is made by taking some salt and saying a prayer over it of repentance from sin and renouncing evil; and then saying a prayer of blessing over some water.  The cleansing salt of repentance is then mixed with the living water of blessing and it becomes “holy.” 

            This recipe, then, is a picture of salvation – a picture of what happens when the salty sting of conviction by the Holy Spirit pierces our hard hearts, prompting us to renounce evil and repent of our sins; and the living water of Christ comes and washes away the sting of death and hell – the fire that was our penalty before the blessing of salvation. 

            It is a good thing, then, to be “salted with fire” – to feel the heat of hell enough to want living water.  And the salt of the Holy Spirit that casts evil out of us, remains in us to keep us clean, pure and holy, even when we find ourselves in the presence of the power of Evil. 

            That salt gives us the security to be at peace with one another – and with everyone who names the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.   It is that salt of the Holy Spirit of God that validates the good works of the whole body of Christ, no matter what kind of “little ones” we are. 

            Welcome your brothers and sisters in Christ, no matter who they are - teach one another, learn from one another and be at peace with one another.  When we are tempted to put people to our personal litmus test, whether it’s political, pro-life, anti-war, patriotic or some other closely held standard, value or tradition, we must step back and ask ourselves – who can say to his hand, "I don't need you?"   How can our heads say to our feet, "I don't need you?"

[1] Mark 9:18

[2] I Corinthians 12:21-26

[3]Harry B. Adams,  Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. IV, 116.

[4] Ibid 118.