The Exorcist
Episodes, prt. 3
Wildwind Community Church
October 3, 2010
Mark 5:1-15 (NIV)
1 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.
2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him.
3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain.
4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him.
5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him.
7 He shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!"
8 For Jesus had said to him, "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"
9 Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many."
10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside.
12 The demons begged Jesus, "Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them."
13 He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
14 Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.
15 When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.
This is the first time in the history of Wildwind Church that I have preached about one of the episodes where we see Jesus in action as an exorcist – as one who casts demons out of people who are possessed. These scenes read strangely to modern people, to say the least. After all, we think, people who were considered demon-possessed at that time weren’t really demon-possessed at all. They must have been schizophrenic, or in some other way psychotic. They weren’t possessed, they were sick.
This shows how our modern vision of the world has blinded us. We do not see the world in spiritual terms. We think certain things are spiritual and certain things are secular. We think the battle in this world is between spiritual things and unspiritual things. But that’s not a Christian view at all. The Christian view shows us that everything is spiritual. There is actually no such thing as non-spiritual. We’re not trying to make sure that sacred things win and secular things lose. We’re trying to make sure that word gets out that everything is spiritual – that the material world – from your flesh and blood right down to the rocks and the trees – that it’s all spiritual – that it’s all being redeemed. See, that’s the mystery, that’s the gospel, that’s the message we have to proclaim. Jesus message was, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” It is here. It lives in you. That, my friends, is precisely what the world does not know. And unfortunately it is also what most of the church doesn’t know either. The world believes some things are spiritual and some things are sacred, and most of the church believes that too. That is the wrong message!
We have completely bought into this falsehood and our churches now help perpetuate this idea that there are spiritual things and unspiritual things in our world. The reality is that everything in the world is spiritual – the only question is in which direction. Everything is spiritual, but is it getting closer to God who created it, or is it hardening, and moving farther away. In the Bible, Satan is the being who is as far away from God as you can possibly get – actually referred to as antichrist. But guess what – Satan is still spiritual. If being far from God keeps you from being spiritual, there’s no way Satan could be portrayed as a spiritual being. So being unChristian does not in any way make someone unspiritual. Believing that you are unspiritual does not make you unspiritual either, just like believing you are a butterfly does not make you a butterfly. The gospel message is this: you are part of a spiritual universe, and you yourself are a spiritual being. Evangelism is about letting people who don’t know they are spiritual in on that secret – letting people know that they too are part of this vast creation God is redeeming and that they can live secure in the knowledge that they are immortal – that they will never die. Are you with me? Do you understand what I’m saying? The whole world is spiritual. The only question is whether or not we come to know this and live as if it is true, with all the amazing life and blessings that flow from living according to reality.
So with this in mind, let us return to our episode for today, with Jesus facing the demon-possessed man.
Mark 5:9 (NIV)
9 Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many."
Now that we realize that the whole world is spiritual and that this is as true today as it was in Jesus’ time, we can understand this passage better. This man is not at the mercy of one spirit, but of many. There were many powers without bodies that were oppressing this man. Let us list now the powers that many people today are at the mercy of:
Materialism; Addiction; Nationalism; Religious superiority; institutionalized greed (called Capitalism); institutionalized control (called Socialism); Self-righteousness; Judgmentalism; Fundamentalism; Exhaustion; Hatred; Bigotry; Jealousy; Terror; Inferiority; Depression; Regret; Rage; Anxiety/Fear/Worry; Loneliness; Pain; Insecurity; Shame; Insignificance;...fill in the blank. The list could go on.
These, my friends, are spirits. Do you understand? They are very real forces – each of you have experienced at least one of these – with very real affects on our lives. Yet they are not physical. How were the spirits that were possessing this man affecting his life?
Mark 5:3-5 (NIV)
3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain.
4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him.
5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
He lived on the outskirts of society. Alone and out of control. You have felt the oppression of some of these spirits – does it ever make you feel misunderstood, like you are alone? Have you ever felt your life was out of control?
Chains could not hold him. He was in a rage. He somehow drew immense strength from the very things that were destroying him. Sounds kinda like you and me, doesn’t it? Don’t we also draw our strength from things that are destroying us? Fundamentalism, racism, and nationalism are three excellent examples. People get fired up about being right. People get fired up about being from a superior race or ethnic group. People get fired up about being from a superior country. We draw our strength from many of the things that are destroying us. The apostle Paul called them principalities and powers.
Ephesians 6:12 (NKJV)
12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Paul is clear. Make no mistake, folks, we might think we are struggling only with physical things, but nothing is only physical. There are powers behind things. The world is a spiritual place. We modern people have lost that sense. We’re so smart and scientific.
Back to this poor guy.
5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
This guy has lost his senses. He is tormented and screaming and cutting himself. But cutting yourself isn’t just an ancient phenomenon is it? How often have you heard of teenagers who cry out, who are in deep pain, and who seek to release their pain through cutting themselves? How often, women, have you seen an angry man fly into a rage and put his hand or his head through a wall and hurt himself? How often, guys, have you seen a woman scream at you to love her, and then prevent you from coming close, keeping herself in the very place she demands to be released from? Clearly we have lost our minds. Clearly we too are sometimes tormented by something that is not physical but that holds power over us and makes us do what will bring us harm.
We dare not suspect that we are wholly different than this man. Just because we may wear suits and ties to the office does not mean we are not tormented. Just because we do not live alone in a physical wilderness does not mean that we have not banished ourselves into an emotional one, where we constantly lick our wounds, ruminate on the injustices done to us, and maybe even plot revenge – drawing power from the very thing which will destroy us. Just because we are religious and believe in God does not mean that like this observant religious man in scripture – we have not perhaps sold our souls to things that are driving us to despair.
We do not know what the demons were that were tormenting this man, but it doesn’t make any difference. All we need to find is the thread of commonality, the place where we can see ourselves clearly in his experience. Perhaps all that is required for us to do this is to stop associating this scene with mental pictures from The Exorcist. I believe movies like that are portraying something that does actually exist, but that’s not what these accounts in scripture are trying to point to. As you read the gospels, you might notice that demon possession isn’t treated as a separate, especially drastic problem. We don’t see Jesus sprinkling holy water over these people and holding a crucifix over them, or chanting some strange ritual at them. Possessed people are often portrayed as out of control, but we do not read about their heads spinning all the way around, or green vomit coming out of their mouths, or them levitating five feet above their beds.
So that’s not what demon possession, Biblically speaking, is about. In scripture, accounts of demon-possessed people are showing us a person who has simply lost control of his faculties and can no longer do what everyone else in society does. In other words, he can no longer pretend to be okay, to have it together, to be on top of everything, and to be the ideal husband, father, son, employee, or whatever. His demons have driven him to the fringes of society, to the edge of life, and when Jesus casts out the demons, and they go into the pigs, they drive the pigs to the edge as well – they run over a cliff edge where they are drowned, much like those same demons were drowning this man a moment earlier. That’s what demons do. Eventually they overwhelm us, overtake us, and drown us. The people of Jesus time knew they lived in a spiritual world and because of this, they knew how to correctly name this condition – demon possession. You have your demons and I have mine. The question isn’t whether we have them, it’s to what extent they are overwhelming us, overtaking us, and driving us to the edge.
One last observation here on this episode:
Mark 5:9 (NIV)
9 Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" "My name is Legion," he replied, "for we are many."
Jesus addresses the man. “What is your name.” But it is not really the man who speaks back. The man answers with the voice of his demons. He is no longer Joshua, or Jeremiah, or Daniel, or whoever he had been. He now IS his demons. He has lost himself completely. That is another thing that demons do. If your demon is depression, you may find it hard to even remember what life was like when you weren’t depressed. Depression has colored your entire world. It has come to define you to yourself so that you ARE your depression. If you are anxious and filled with fear, you start to think of yourself almost exclusively in those terms. If you are an angry person, it may well be the case that nearly everything makes you angry, even when you don’t know why. You now speak almost constantly with the voice of anger. If you are greedy, you speak almost constantly about money, about material possessions, so you speak with the voice of greed. If you are lustful, you speak with the voice of lust and sex. If you are insecure, you speak in that voice – timidly and quietly. If you are a workaholic, guess whose voice you speak in – not yours, but your company’s – your boss’ – your manager’s. If you are a nationalist, you speak not with your own voice, but with the voice of your country – right or wrong. You don’t know where your country ends and you begin. To me this is one of the most important messages in this account. There is a point where you are so overrun with your demons that you begin to speak with their voice – or voices. These spirits, which have no bodies and clearly are not physical, are exercising power over you and speaking through your voice.
That’s what has happened to this man. He speaks with the voice of his demons. “My name is Legion, for we are many.” This guy is in a chokehold, dominated by whatever these demons were in his life. He couldn’t see himself or the world clearly. He couldn’t function in normal society. He couldn’t care for himself and meet his own basic needs. And of course Jesus performs an exorcism right on the spot. Not the movie kind. Much less dramatic than that. Simply, “Come out of this man you evil spirit.” Jesus addressed the spirit in the singular. But the spirit responds by saying, “There are a ton of us.” So even Jesus here doesn’t know the full story at first, but he knows a screwed-up guy when he sees one, and with a word, he is able to heal.
And Jesus is still able to heal. Starting next week we will be working through the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality series. My friends, if you are patient, willing to do your few minutes of homework each week, and will take seriously what you are learning, you are going to come face to face with some of your own demons over the next few weeks, and you’ll see how God wants to get rid of them. Right now nearly all of us are speaking with voices that are not our own – voices of fear, of suspicion, of lust, of addiction, of hurt, of inauthenticity. Like this man, we are carrying around our demons. In the gospel, when Jesus met a demon-possessed person, he ordered the demons to come out, and they did, and there was healing. Jesus was, and is, an exorcist in the true sense of the word. Not the movie kind, but the kind I need in my life. And the kind you need in yours. But for some reason, many of us have just accepted that we’ll have to live with our demons forever – that we’ll never know our true names as sons and daughters of God. Unlike the man in our story, many of us are able to hide our demons from the rest of the world, but still they are cutting us up, wounding us, and keeping us from being who we really are – who God made us to be. It’s time to end that – time to see ourselves without our demons – time to find and face the truth about them, and follow that truth to the place where God will bring healing. Do you want to know who you are? Do you want to speak with your own voice? Do you want to encounter God’s love for you even as you confront your demons? Most of all, do you want the assurance that you can be free of them? That is our journey in the coming weeks. I hope you will join us.
