Legions of Demons

 

The Third Sunday after Pentecost    June 25, 2006

 

(Job 38:1-11, 16-18; 2 Corinthians 5:14-21; Mark 4:35-5:20)

 

              I’ve always felt sorry for those Gerasene pigs, let alone their owner and the herdsmen who were supposed to take care of them. And what were herds of pigs doing in Israel in the first place?

 

              I’ve told some of you the story about the time Father Stu Schlegel went to the Southern Philippines as a high school head-master and parish priest. He had a assistant named Ramon who asked to take the day off because his daughter had a bad spirit and it had made her sick. Stu asked Ramon what "bad Spirits" were and Ramon said; "well, Father, they're these things you can't see, but they get inside you and make you sick". With in a caring, but condescending colonial way Stu replied; "Ramon, this is the modern, scientific age. We know now that 'spirits' don't make you sick. Germs make you sick". Ramon replied "Really Father, what are germs?"  Stu answered; "well Ramon, they're these things you can't see, but they get inside you and make you sick".

 

              Growing up reading about demons and spirits in the Bible, I pretty much had the same approach that Stu exhibited in Mindanao. This was a primitive way of thinking…until I went to work for Interim.

 

              Interim Incorporated is a private non-profit organization that provides housing and rehabilitation services in Monterey County for people with severe mental illness.

 

              I think what Jesus encountered in the country of the Gerasenes, the man who lived among the tombs and on the mountains, was someone with a sever mental illness. Nowadays we don't use germs as an alternate explanation for unclean spirits when it comes to mental illness. We use "imbalanced brain chemistry." But such a cause and effect explanation in any case has little to do with the person who is suffering. In fact, the idea of a demon or an unclean spirit is closer to the true existential experience of someone with this condition.

 

              When you hear a disembodied, very scary voice telling you that you're ugly and evil, that no one will ever love you and that you should just die, your first thought isn't "OK, OK, too much dopamine and not enough serotonin". I wasn't really sure how I'd do in the job since I hadn't been exposed to mental illness very much in my 20 years of ministry until then. (Or, at least, I didn't know that I had.) But I remember, like the second week I was working as a counselor, I had an overnight on Friday nights at the transitional house on Pajaro Street in Salinas, and I heard a commotion upstairs. I went up and into a room and encountered this guy. He was big, 6' 2" naked and yelling and hitting himself ferociously. I was able to reach him and get him calmed down. I realized then I could do the job. But the image of his pain has stayed with me, and it was that image which came back to me when I read from today's lesson. "Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out, and bruising himself with stones".

 

              I remember the clients who cut on themselves just in order to feel something. I remember the woman who  was doing so well, until she took all her medications one night and never woke up. Mood swings, voices, delusions, paranoia…the spirits are legion indeed.

 

              When I came back to work in the Church with my eyes and mind and pastoral heart more sensitized, I made the discovery that a lot of the problems that people had, that I'd been working with throughout my ministry, were not all that different from what I'd encountered in the mental health system. The classifications of "psychosis" and "neurosis" and "sin" seemed kind of arbitrary. All of them involved maladaptive ways of coping with life. All of them involved acting in ways that seemed contrary to self interest.

 

              People with addictions or depression may function just well enough to stay out of the hospital, but that may not mean they really are any healthier. In fact, the less recognized a problem is, the more dangerous it can become. Unrecognized inner conflict gets projected out in road rage or domestic violence, or it can turn into a bitter resentment that slowly poisons the heart and soul.

 

              We all have a legion of spirits within us, clean and unclean.  And the first step in discerning just what we want to about that, what we can integrate, what we can transform, what we need to exorcise, is to begin to know their names.

 

              This inner knowledge, this inner separation and personification is as much at the heart of the Christian penitential system and spiritual direction as diagnosis is for medicine. What's going on in your soul?  Who's there?  What do they want?  It's essential for us to go behind the main roles we play, the person we present, and see what's in the shadows, listen to the minority reports of our lives.

 

              While ultimate wholeness is the ultimate goal, this breaking down naming the legion is a necessary step on the road to that wholeness. We need to fall apart in order to get it together.

 

              And notice that it was the "unclean" spirit who knew who Jesus was.

 

              Sometimes it's those parts of our lives that trouble us the most, those parts that are in the dark, that we run away from or deny that are the most open to seeing and receiving spiritual truth. That makes sense I think, because the parts of ourselves we're most comfortable with, the places we're skilled, the "I" we present, are the parts where we're in control, where we don't turn to God, because we think we don't need Him.  (But probably we just don't want God's intervention, because we like it as it is.) That's why St. Paul said that when he was weak that's when he was strong, that God's power was made strong in human weakness.

 

              It's all about control, or mostly about control. We think we have it all together. We think we can order and tame the demons within and events without, but the Book of Job was written precisely to dispel that illusion.

 

              Most of our symptoms and many of our illnesses are really a result of the attempt at control. The man in the Gospel, among the tombs and on the mountains, was trying to control the legion within before Jesus set him free. We narrow our lives and limit our relationships to avoid our fears and discount our loneliness. But God speaks from the whirlwind saying, "you don't understand."

 

              I've pointed out before that I think the life of Jesus is a response to this very episode from the Book of Job. Where, in Job, God tells us we can't possibly understand, on the cross God says "Oh, now I understand"

 

              While we're not in control of our lives (and, sooner or later we'll have to realize that), God is. And in the life of Christ we come to see that God's control is based in love.

 

              The translation we have of the epistle today is from the New Revised Standard Version. It says "The love of Christ urges us on". I looked it up in the King James version and it says "The love of Christ constrains us". But the Revised Standard version comes down in the middle. It says "The love of Christ controls us"

 

              If we can trust in that control, trust in that love, we can let go into it. We can trust that Christ will rebuke the storm and bring us safely to the other side.

 

              Come away from the tombs. Come out of the mountains.

 

              Peace, be still

 

              Thanks be to God