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6/24/07

We Live in an Advanced Society?

Luke 8:26-39

Luke 8:26-39 (NRSV)
²⁶ Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. ²⁷ As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. ²⁸ When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— ²⁹ for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) ³⁰ Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. ³¹ They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. ³² Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. ³³ Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. ³⁴ When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. ³⁵ Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. ³⁶ Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. ³⁷ Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesusto leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. ³⁸ The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ³⁹ “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

            I want to take a moment with you this morning to try to envision the scene which I have just read.  Jesus and his disciples have just gotten out of a terrible storm, which Jesus was kind enough to calm, when they find themselves in Gerasenes, the other side of the lake from Galilee.  (And from the Disciples perspective, the other side of the tracks.)  You see, Galilee was predominantly a Jewish town, but that wasn’t true of the other side.  The other side was Gentile. 

            I don’t know about you, but when I feel like a certain group thinks or behaves a certain way, it’s easy to find the people in that group who do, but it’s also easy to miss the people in the group who don’t.  That’s exactly why we shouldn’t stereotype everyone in a certain group as being the same, but I know that at least I catch myself doing it on occasion.  Perhaps you do to.

            Well, if the disciples struggled with stereotyping, they certainly would have had gentiles stereotyped.  Gentiles were dirty.  They were unrefined.  And worst of all, they were pagans.  That obviously wasn’t true of all Gentiles, but it probably would have been an easy stereotype to have, and every Gentile who was dirty, unrefined, and pagan would only increase the stereotype.

            And no sooner do they step out of the boat and set foot on Gentile soil, than they se their first typical Gentile.  He’s possessed by demons, naked, and living in the graveyard.  I can only imagine what the disciples must have been thinking.  I bet they thought something like, “Why did Jesus take us all the way over here?  Doesn’t he know that this is Gentile territory?  And doesn’t he know this is just the type of thing you’re going to find in Gentile territory?  He shouldn’t have been surprised.”

            But I think Jesus knew exactly what he was getting himself into, and that was the very reason why he went to that side of the lake in the first place.  He looks at the man and I can only imagine he must have had pitty on the man.  Jesus knew that the man was possessed by demons.  Jesus also knew that this man was his Father’s creation.  He may not have resembled the image of God much anymore, but Jesus could look beyond the façade to see the man inside.  But before Jesus can speak to the man he has to speak to the demons. 

            Do you remember how people said of Jesus that spoke as one with authority?  I wonder if this was an example of one of those times.  Had I been Jesus, I would have been scared to death to speak to a demon, let alone a legion of demons.  But Jesus speaks as one with authority.  Not only is he not afraid to address the demons, but he even asked them their name.  In that culture, to know someone’s name was to have a certain amount of power over that person. 

            It becomes immediate apparent that not only does Jesus assume authority, but the demons submit to his authority.  They immediately give their name and follow it up with a plea.  Knowing that Jesus had the power to do so, they beg him not to send them back to hell.  The demons knew what a terrible place hell is, and they longed for anything other than being sent back there.  But only after Jesus’ permission is granted are they allowed to enter the nearby pigs, after which the pigs immediately run into the sea.  The rest of the passage goes on to explain what happened as a result of these actions, but I want to focus on this first section this morning.

            This passage is a passage recalling the story of the fight between good and evil… between Jesus and the demons.  But I have a question for you.  Did you have a difficult time picturing this sequence of events?  I know I did.  I had a hard time picturing it because picturing immediately invokes the idea of seeing something.  But the story is not only about what is seen.  It’s also about what is unseen.  What is seen is relatively easy to imagine.  There’s Jesus and the disciples coming on shore from a small, wooden boat.  There’s a graveyard near the shore as well as a pasture for grazing pigs.  And there’s a disgruntled, dirty, naked, mad man jumping about from here to there. 

But what I almost can’t picture is what taking place here in the spiritual realm.  The Son of God, the second person of the trinity, pure holiness, is confronting the minions of Satan himself.  Light and dark are coming face to face, and from a spiritual standpoint, it’s immediately obvious that light will win.  Can you try to imagine that taking place in this passage?

            But another reason, I believe, that this passage is hard to picture is because it doesn’t happen any more, does it?  I mean, when the last time you’ve looked at someone and honestly thought they were possessed by a demon.  We may joke about it sometimes, but do we really believe.  I think, for most of us most of the time, probably not.  Our culture has progressed beyond believing that someone can be forced to do what they do by a demon.  We now understand the chemical imbalances that can take place within the human brain.  We understand that so much of how a person behaves is based on their upbringing.  There are also many mental disorders that run in families, so they’re clearly genetic.  We’ve used science to explain away the existence of demons.  Demons were simply a way for early humankind to explain behavior they didn’t fully understand.

You can probably sense my sarcasm.  But what I don’t want you to hear is me discrediting science.  Throughout history, science and religion have seldom been best of friends.  Religion has often fought against the facts that science has proven.  But religion has often drawn a line in the sand on the wrong beach.  After all, how many people do you know that still fear falling of the edge of a flat world when they board a trans-ocean flight?

I love science.  I love to discover… to experiment… to explore.  But I also love my faith.  It guides me… protects me… sustains me.  How can I possibly hold the two in tension?  The truth is, I don’t.  I see them as complimenting one another.  When science discovers something new, I marvel at how God works.

So what about demons.  Are they still around today?  I would say, most certainly.  Let’s start with something easy.  Let’s go to another culture.  Not all cultures are as “advanced” as our own, so let’s consider a third world country… also sometimes called a developing country (whether they’re developing or regressing, you be the judge).  I can speak from personal experience of the culture in Southern Mexico.  But the same is scenario is true in many developing nations. 

Ask most any person in rural Southern Mexico if demons are real, and you’ll get a resounding yes.  Early missionaries would set up clinics in these areas.  They recognized that treatable diseases were rampant, and figured that treating the people’s medical needs would be a beneficial way to have an opportunity to bring the gospel.  There was one problem though, the clinics, in the eyes of Southern Mexicans, didn’t treat the whole person.  The clinics would give medicine, but they did nothing to relieve the person of the evil spirit which was causing the person the disease.  Not only did this cause a syncretism between Christianity and the native religions as people would go first to the clinic for their physical ailments, and then to the shaman for their spiritual ailments, but it also gave the impression that the Christian God was a weak God.  If Christians didn’t call on their God to relieve a person of an evil spirit, they must not have believed their God was strong enough to cast out the evil spirit.

Also, while in Southern Mexico, Heather and I saw two villages not more than a couple miles apart who were night and day different.  Christianity… true Christianity… had taken hold in the first village.  In that village people smiled, women were respected, men worked, and children were educated.  But in the second village, a village which was known for killing missionaries, people looked at the ground as they passed you, women were treated as property, women worked while men got drunk, and children were left to fend for themselves.  There was a darkness that hung over the place.  It was evident that there were evil spirits all around.

So maybe demons do still exist in our day and age, but that’s in developing countries.  It’s sort of a self fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it?  They believe there are evil spirits, so they have evil spirits.  But I would suggest that evil spirits are alive and well here in the United States as well, but our senses have been dulled to realizing they are there.  And that’s why, I believe, God led me to preach this message this morning.  When you know evil spirits are all around, you’re constantly on the lookout for them, but if your senses have been dulled, they can more easily slip into our way of life.

As American have become more and more advanced, statistics which help take the moral pulse of our nation have also been on the rise.  I don’t have to give you a list of vices.  You know what they are.  And while they may rise and fall from year to year and from governmental administration to administration, it’s hard to deny that the general trend is on the increase.  I don’t think that this is just coincidence.  I truly believe that evil and demons are around us every day if we only have our eyes open to them.  The problem is that we’ve made a demon out to be almost comical.  They have pointed tails and horns and a pitch fork.  But I doubt that demons seldom, if ever, look like that.  Demons, or rather people influenced by demons, (remember, Jesus looked beyond the facade of a dirty, naked man to see the evil that lived within him) more likely wear business suits, or jeans, or t-shirts.  I’m not suggesting that we should interact with everyone as if they demon possessed, but everyone, including you and me, I believe, are coerced to do this or that from time to time.  This isn’t a case of “the devil made me do it.”  We’re all responsible for our own actions, and with the strength of the Holy Spirit we can flee temptation, but demons are alive and well.

One of the most apparent influences of demons in our society, as I see it, hits especially close to home for me.  I believe that the steady increase of depression in our society is a sign of demonic influence.  Jesus came to bring us life abundant.  The joy of the Lord is my strength.  That doesn’t seem to be compatible with increased suicide and depression rates.

But demonic influences can, I believe, also affect institutions.  This past week I attended are regularly scheduled classis meeting, and we prayed in the name of Jesus that any demonic influence would be cast out of our classis.  There is a great deal of hurt and pain in our classis.  Brothers and sisters in Christ are at odds with one another.  The verses that were read that evening were I Corinthians 11:17-18.  1 Corinthians 11:17-18 “Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it.”

So far we’ve talked about Southern Mexico, and American Society, and our classis, but I think we also have to look at our own church and our own lives.  Could Paul have written that passage from I Corinthians to us?  None of us wants to admit that we’ve given in to a demon.  None of us wants to admit that a demon may reside in our church.  But that’s exactly what a demon wants.  So long as we pretend they’re not there, we don’t have to address their presence.  But as soon as we admit that we have allowed demons to come into our midst, we as Christians have the power and authority of the Holy Spirit to cast them out.  It takes some serious self reflection and prayer, but it’s certainly better than pretending that nothing’s wrong.

Earlier I said that I didn’t have to hold science and religion in tension.  That’s true in every field of science, but in medicine especially.  Sure chemical imbalances and other medical problems can be explained medically, but that doesn’t mean that a demon isn’t behind those outward symptoms.  Likewise, medicines and medical procedures can help cure us of our ailments, but that doesn’t mean that God isn’t behind the outward healing.  God gives us Doctors, Surgeons, and Nurses as gifts.  The knowledge and understanding they posses are a gift from God

This isn’t a sermon about how technology is evil.  I’m not suggesting we all become Amish.  Technology improves all of our lives every day.  But what I am suggesting is that we can’t let science stand in the way of know the truth of the spiritual realm.  There is good, and there is evil, and if we are daily relying on the Holy Spirit as our source of knowledge and strength, the tempter’s snare can easily entangle us.