We’re in the middle of a bitter winter and a global pandemic, and here we are gathered with a limit on our numbers wearing facemasks.
So it seems to me there’s no better time to talk about demons.
I thought I’d begin by sharing with you some of my experiences with demons over the years.
When I was in my final year of theological college, a first-year student joined the program. Over lunch on retreat, he shared about his experiences driving out demons with a ‘prayer team’. One story stands out in my memory. The team were in a room, praying actively for a person they understood to be possessed by a demon. As they prayed, crockery began falling off shelves in the room. They attributed this to the demon leaving the person. For the record, this bloke was a white, middle class, educated, suburbanite professional. At the time I found the person weird and the story spurious – but that was his narrative.
On two occasions over the last twenty years of ministry, I’ve been asked to intervene in situations where people sensed a malevolent presence in their homes. This is less dramatic than it sounds. In both cases, I had long pastoral conversations with the people involved, concluding with a short liturgy of blessing for the home. To be fair, no one ever used the term ‘demons’ but that was the unspoken suspicion of the householders involved.
I remember being at a public lecture, offered by a capable New Testament Scholar. You know, one of those things where someone is shipped out from overseas and does a speaking tour. ‘Of course’ he said ‘when the gospel writers say demons we know they are referring to what we today would call mental illness’. Do we actually know that, I wondered?
I can think of occasions where I’ve had one or more conversations with someone who is bound or constrained in some way. Perhaps it is a toxic set of beliefs, or some blockage in their worldview or the impact of some negative experiences. Now, let me be clear, I’m neither a mystic healer nor a therapist. Pastoral care is what priests do – and sometimes, not every time, people report that active listening and gentle companionship helps them get a bit closer to liberation. No one’s head has ever spun around spraying green vomit, but perhaps stripping away noxious religious beliefs or self-beliefs is a bit like driving out demons?
Walter Wink wrote a trio of books called Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers and Engaging the Powers which have had a fair bit of influence on me. Winky (as I like to call him) was a biblical scholar who saw the concept of Satan and demons through a socio-political lens. When the lust for power and dominance override compassion and justice – this is demonic possession, and both Jesus’ ministry and ours is about revealing these demons, and casting them out. It’s not that this person or that person is possessed by a demon, it’s that the whole damned system is possessed and needs to be exorcised.
As I share these pieces of my own story, I wonder what it’s bringing up for you? Perhaps you’ve had a negative experience in a religious setting – where non-compliance or questioning was labelled as demonic (even if that actual word was not used). Or perhaps you’ve had experiences that you’ve found hard to understand, and which seemed insurmountable, and which might be more than just bad or wrong – but actually spiritually malignant. Or perhaps you just brush over references to demons in the scriptures and literature and popular culture, dismissing them as quirky superstitions, rather than something to take too seriously.
Today’s appointed scripture from Mark chapter 6 tells us that, when Jesus chose a team of twelve and sent them out, he gave them authority over unclean spirits, pneuma akathartos. This is a very literal translation – pneuma is the same word we use for Holy Spirit, and akathartos just means ‘not clean’. Later in the same section, the Twelve are said to cast out many demons, but this is just a transliteration from the Greek daimonion – we don’t translate the word into English because there is no equivalent word. So we just borrow the Greek word.
This leaves the concepts of unclean spirits or demons in need of interpretation or, at least, explanation. Over the centuries since Mark’s gospel was written, countless scholars and teachers have tried to do just that.
So what are these demons or unclean spirits, really? What does it mean for someone to be possessed by them, or for someone else to cast them out? The short answer is, I don’t actually know. I suspect there are elements of truth in all of my experiences and discoveries, but none of them are the final word.
What I can tell you, with absolute assurance, is this. Where the Living Christ is present, forces of evil and malice, presences malignant and malevolent, systems which demean and destroy, powers which exploit and dominate, do not stand a chance. Perhaps the point is not to be able to articulate, with forensic accuracy, what demons actually are, but to know, with intense confidence that they have no power over us.
The Lord Be With You