Mark 1:21-28
“Exorcism”
January 31, 2021 – Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Beth and I recently watched a fantasy movie that began with a nanny caring for children who were afraid of monsters under their beds. So the nanny would take a fireplace poker, go to the frightened child’s bedroom and take a few good swipes beneath the mattress, giving the assurance that any monsters were all properly dispatched. The joke of that part of the story was that the monsters were, in fact, real.
As you and I turn to this first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, we as 21st century Christians may be inclined to regard evil spirits or demons as pretty much along the lines of monsters under the bed for children. If we think about them too much or see a scary movie like 1973’s blockbuster “The Exorcist,” then we may experience a few cold shivers, but we’re not too worried about bumping into someone truly possessed or having to take a poker to a real spiritual monster.
Our reading today forces us to enter into the sometimes very foreign and different perspective of the Bible. The taken-for-granted reality of an unseen realm of spirits is part of that difference. And Jesus was certainly not the only one in His time who aimed to cast out demons. We catch a glimpse of others outside of Jesus and His circle of disciples both right here in Mark, in chapter 9, as well as in Acts 19 as Jewish exorcists show up there.
Even in the Old Testament we find David playing the harp to temporarily subdue an evil spirit that plagued Saul. And in the apocryphal book of Tobit, written at least a couple hundred years before Jesus, we find the first careful description of an exorcism by a Jewish young man named Tobias. The historian Josephus reports various Jewish procedures for exorcising demons. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain several formulas for casting out evil spirits.
Jews were not like people with more animist religious ideas, seeing spirits in and under every rock and leaf on a tree. But they accepted it as given that at least some of the maladies which troubled people had a spiritual source, a living demonic force which could cause disease, convulsions and what we would call insanity.
Along with that belief in evil spirits, there was among Jewish people the overriding conviction that their God was in full control of that realm as well as of the ordinary world. That was how and why Jewish exorcists attempted to do what they did. They sought to make use of the Lord’s own authority and power to command those spirits and drive them from those who were afflicted.
We should not, then, give into our inclination to skip over the first couple verses of our text, 21 and 22, in order to get on with the more thrilling account of the exorcism. Mark wants us to see that what those in the Capernaum synagogue felt when they heard Jesus teach is the key to His driving out the demon. It says, “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” Jesus exercised that same authority to exorcise that demon.
Jesus’ authority was “astounding” because scribes, Pharisees, and other rabbis, taught like… well, like I do. If you’ve heard me preach, you know I start by reading a text from Scripture. As I try to explain it, I’ll quote other passages of Scripture. I’ll often quote or refer to C. S. Lewis or a church father or some commentary I’ve read. That’s where I’m getting my authority, from the Bible, and from others who represent the long tradition of Christian understanding and interpretation of the Bible. Jewish teachers back then did the same. They’d refer to Scripture and to some great rabbi, “This is what Hillel said… or Gamaliel said… or some other rabbi or teacher taught about this.” Jesus quoted the Old Testament Scriptures, but when it came to making a point, to applying those Scripture passages, He only referred to Himself. Think about how often in the Sermon on the Mount we hear Him tell us, “But I say to you…”
The congregation gathered there in that synagogue saw and heard something that astounded them, an authority like no other they had ever encountered. But someone else, something else, also heard and saw that authority and grasped it better than the others there. That creature also reacted more than the others. So we read in verse 23, “Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.”
Honestly, I don’t like talking about “evil spirits” or demons for a variety of reasons. First, I’m just naturally squeamish and a scaredy-cat. I’ve never seen the movie “The Exorcist” and I don’t like horror films in general. Next, I really, really don’t know much about the subject, partly because the Bible does not tell us all that much and partly because I lack any of the direct experience some pastors or missionaries might have with these matters. Finally, as Walter Wink said (here I am quoting an authority) as he concluded a chapter on demons in one of his books, “I do not relish the misuse that a revival of demon-talk will predictably breed.”[1] In other words, I fear that talking about demons will make you or others too afraid of them, too worried about their power. I’ll come back to that later.
For right now, I encourage you to note that while the Bible definitely does mention evil spirits and demons and obviously takes them as real, it does not provide much at all in the way of information about their nature or history. The traditional Christian view is that they are fallen angels, caught up in Satan’s rebellion against God. But even the account of Satan’s revolt is mostly guess work based on a handful of passages, some of which we read in the prophets last year, where they refer first to human kings, not to spirit foes of God.
Then there is the fact, often pointed out in modern times, that the behavior of demon-possessed people in the New Testament often looks like what you or I would class as mental illness today. That prompts yet another worry on my part, either, on one hand, that we will ignore spiritual reality behind some of the problems that plague us or, on the other hand, that we will stigmatize and “demonize” people suffering from neurological or other conditions which can and should be treated with appropriate medicines and therapy. I can’t imagine anything much worse than some well-meaning Christian believer trying an exorcism over some of the poor, gentle, tormented souls I’ve known who suffer from schizophrenia. May the Lord save us from such foolishness.
Yet here we are right at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus as He is confronted with the very real presence of a spiritual power which is not a figment of mental illness. As I said, the demon recognized the unique authority of Jesus… and its source. Speaking with the possessed man’s voice, it cries “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”
The first two demonic utterances are in the first-person plural. The evil spirit speaks for itself and the man together, fearing their mutual destruction. But the final word begins with “I,” a sign that what it then says belongs to it alone. It is only the spiritual power, the demon, not the man, who knows who Jesus really is and His true authority.
As Walter Wink also explains,[2] that is one of the signs which cautious, wise modern-day exorcists look for in discerning true demon possession in contrast to purely natural mental illness. The possessed victim displays knowledge or power unexplainable for a human being or for that particular human being. In Capernaum it meant that something from outside the man, something alien to him, had hold of him.
That sense of evil spirits, the demonic, as something alien, teaches us a truth about evil in general. Some theology suggests that human nature was completely ruined by sin in the Garden of Eden, that sin is now our natural condition. But the fact that evil powers like demons feel so foreign to us, so frightful, is proof in itself that evil was never our nature. It is always something foreign and alien to what God created us to be and to what in many ways we still are.
A sense of how alien evil is in this world might make us pause to be more compassionate like Jesus was here, as He faced evil incarnate in a poor, helpless human being. As bad as we might think someone is, as possessed by evil as they appear to be, that evil has come into them from the outside. It is not the rational nature God placed in them to seek His own self as the source of all goodness and truth. But why is it there then?
Go back to the fact that the demon knew who Jesus was. He displayed the knowledge referred to in James 2:19, where we are told that simple knowledge, simple “belief” in God is not enough, because “even the demons believe and tremble.” That evil being knew who Jesus was, but that knowledge only made it afraid.
The fear of that demon is perhaps a clue to the whole way in which the demonic operated and still operates in our world and in our lives today. In a preface to a later edition of The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote (see, there I go again) that he had pictured hell, the realm of devils, as ordered along the lines of a thoroughly nasty human bureaucracy or business.[3] And the primary motivations of those in that realm are fear and greed, fear of punishment and a kind of gnawing hunger to feed off and devour each other.
Lewis had a deep insight there. Part of what evil spirits do is to pass their own fear and greed on to human beings. The demon made that man cry out in fear of its own destruction. We see the same fear expressed by demons who possessed a Gerasene man in Mark 5. Forces of evil would like us to be afraid because they themselves are afraid, afraid of each other and afraid of God.
That is why I am troubled by social and political rhetoric which trades in fear, whether it is fear of those who are different, fear of economic hardship, fear of foreign powers, or fear of a pandemic. Generating fear, even for the sake of some supposedly good end, can open the door to evil. Caution is one thing, but fear, particularly fear that calls for saving oneself at the expense of others, only invites the devil home for dinner.
So what are you and I in 2021 to do with all this? As I mentioned in our adult class last Sunday morning, theologian Rudolf Bultmann is a bit infamous for saying almost a century ago that,
It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.[4]
Bultmann was of course quite wrong about what it’s possible to believe, but we can and often do exercise a kind of practical unbelief toward both spirits and miracles. We just don’t expect to encounter them very often, if at all. And that’s one way we can go wrong about demons. As C. S. Lewis also wrote, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”[5]
So I hope that hearing this account from Scripture today will preserve us from the first mistake of taking too little account of the spiritual forces of evil. Yet I would like it to also help guard us from the second error Lewis named, in the form, perhaps, of giving too much significance, too much credit to the power of evil spirits. As Paul wrote in our reading from I Corinthians 8 about the spirits who may have been identified as gods in ancient times, we know that none of them really has any power over us.
There in Capernaum, when the demon named Jesus for who He truly is, the Lord’s first response is there in verse 25. He silenced it. That silencing is part of a larger literary motif in Mark’s Gospel in which we find Jesus, especially in the first few chapters, being a bit guarded about His identity as the Son of God, but it also suggests something else. Jesus is not interested in being endorsed by a demon. He does not want His mission to save the world to be announced by or from the point of view of that which is evil, of that which mostly speaks only lies. It’s an endorsement no one should want. Jesus never wants, as the old saying goes, to “give the devil his due.” He refuses to owe anything to evil.
I suggest, then, that you and I follow our Lord by refusing to give the evil powers of the world too much credit. No matter how much they frighten us, no matter how much they anger us, they do not deserve much of our attention. Our Lord wants them to be silent. He also wants us to know, as He demonstrated first here, then over and over and over, they are powerless before Him. Jesus followed the command to be silent with the simple direction, “and come out of him!” Verse 26 tells us that is exactly what happened. There was a loud cry, but nothing intelligible, and the demon was gone. So much for all the powers of hell.
That’s exactly where you and I stand now in the 21st century after Jesus. Our Lord has come into the world and, as we sing so often, especially around Easter, the forces of evil are vanquished, defeated. Yes, they are still there, like infernal domestic terrorists hiding in basements and still plotting insurgency, but they have lost the war. Their day is over. When we take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ, we need not fear them, at least not fear them in any ultimate or final way.
Occasionally I’ve had people come to me worrying about being oppressed by evil spirits, frightened that an evil being had some awful power over them. I believe and I’ve tried to share the truth we read here in this text. Jesus has overcome all those spirits, all that evil. It can still hurt us sometimes. It can frighten and frustrate us. But, unlike that pour soul in Capernaum before he was set free, evil can no longer possess those who know and trust in Jesus Christ. It just does not have that sort of power anymore. No Christian who calls out to Jesus need fear the devil or his minions.
We need, then, to walk the line between Lewis’s two mistakes about the devils. We cannot so discount their power or the pain and damage they cause that we act as if they don’t exist. All you have to do to realize that there is demonic evil among us still is to listen to or read the blasphemous, racist prayer offered up by a leader of the rioters in our nation’s Capitol building this past January 6th.
Yet even as we acknowledge its power and even its pervasiveness, let us not give such evil too much credit. Let us remember that even those possessed by and engaged in it, are driven as the devils are, by a fear and a hunger which they may not even realize or understand. They fear their own helplessness and they hunger for a sense of their own importance, their own significance. As do we all.
So Jesus comes, walking into the room as He walked into the synagogue of a little town in a rustic part of Palestine. He walks in to drive out what we fear, the evil fear of what we cannot control. He walks in to give us what we hunger for, to give us the love of God which values each and every one of us.
Jesus could command the evil spirits. Just jump on down in Mark 1 to verses 32 and then 34 and we read how He cast out demons from all who had them, how He cast out “many demons.” Yet the story goes on in the Gospel to tell us how Jesus finally and completely defeated the power of evil, not by commanding, but by dying, by sacrificing Himself in the love that those controlled by demons were actually seeking. It’s that great love which continues to silence lying spirits, to drive out the fear they bring, and to quiet the souls which turn to Jesus.
Yes, I have to say that there really are monsters under the bed. But we need not fear them. We have a God who loves His children. He sent His own Son to drive them all out by the grace and love of His Cross. So we don’t have to keep peeking beneath the mattress or hiding under the covers in fear. We can rest easy with Jesus in the house.
No wonder the text closes by saying how amazed they all were there that day, and how Jesus’ fame spread throughout the surrounding region. May that be how it is now for you and me. May Jesus quiet our fear and our turmoil and, yes, drive out the evil in you and me. May Jesus’ authority and love amaze us, may His love go out from us to everyone we know.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2021 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] Unmasking the Powers (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), p. 68.
[2] Ibid., pp. 60, 61.
[3] The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (New York: Macmillan, 1969), pp. x, xi.
[4] “New Testament and Mythology” in Kerygma and Myth, Hans Werner Bartsch, ed. (New York: 1961), p. 5.
[5] The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast, p. 3.