Deliver Us From Evil (Mark 1:29-39)

[The reading from Mark is next Sunday's Gospel lesson.]

In reflecting on this Gospel just heard, it is tempting to take the easy way out and jump on a couple of sermonic tidbits. For example, we might focus on the great love Simon shows when he takes Jesus home with him to heal, of all people, his mother-in-law! Now that’s love at work in spades if you ask me! Or on a more serious note, we might look at what she did when she was healed. She immediately set about serving others, setting an example for our own ministry. Or we could look at how even Jesus needed time for solitary prayer, showing us the importance of collecting our thoughts and focusing our spirits before we begin a new day.

Without question, these are important things to consider and to integrate into our spiritual lives. Which of us couldn’t improve our service to others? Which of us wouldn’t find our lives more under control and more centered on Christ if we got up, “a great while before day” as the Gospel puts it, and prayed for direction? These would have been easy and important topics. Yet as important as they are, this is not really what this lesson seems about.

I think the core of the lesson is to be found in two cries of human longing. One is implicit in the numbers who came for physical healing or to be set free from demons—“Deliver us from evil!” The other is explicit—“Everyone is searching for you!” These two cries emphasize our profound need to be in relationship with God. And for a simple reason—only God has power to deliver us from evil, to overcome sin and death.

The plea “deliver us from evil,” needs to be seen as a heart-felt plea from those who saw evil everyday, everywhere. We can understand this better if we remember in biblical days physical ailments were seen as proof that the sick one was somehow out of favor with God. He or she had sinned and was being punished. Remember Job? His comforters encouraged him to confess his sin and the sores would heal, the pain would end. This was a common understanding of the time. And to tell the truth, I’m not so sure we modern day folk don’t still think that at some level. But, that’s another sermon.

At the same time, the emotionally or mentally disturbed were understood as possessed by demons, the Greek view, or unclean spirits, the Jewish view, who controlled their behavior. Asking to be healed was clearly asking to be delivered from evil. And in the case of demon possession, it was asking to be delivered from more than the personal torture of not being in control of yourself. A demon possessed person was a threat to the community, so great a threat, they were often kicked out of the community to wander aimlessly outside the city. To have a demon cast out not only restored your personal spirit, but it restored your place in the nurturing community. Wholeness returned on two critical levels—the personal and the interpersonal.

In our enlightened scientific time, we are not very likely to blame mental illness or weird behavior on demon possession. We’ve gotten too sophisticated for that. Maybe in the process, just maybe we have gotten too sophisticated to believe in the evil the demons represented as well. Too bad, because there are certainly powers that can possess us and ruin our lives individually and collectively. Call them demons, call them social ills, call them what you will, but they are real whatever they are called. Greed, immorality, self-serving ambition, revenge, racism, selfishness, materialism, hatred, arrogance, to name a few—haven’t we seen these take over otherwise normal people and control their behavior? I think a case can be made that at some level these behaviors are evil embodied? What other explanation is there for corporate greed? Crummy government? Poor parenting? Poor schooling? Too much TV? Sick video games? You really think that explains it all?

I’m not trying to eliminate a sense of personal responsibility for our actions. Yet, what do we make of those situations when these or behaviors like these seize you and me, normal folk. We know should break free, we even want to break free, but we can’t. We want to stop the destructive behavior, but still, it grips us. I can’t really explain why. I think believing it is evil living in us is one way to understand it. Is there a day that goes by that the effects of evil don’t affect me? Is there a day that goes by that I am not at war with the presence of evil in my mind and heart? Is it my inherent weakness, is it a demon—I don’t know and I don’t care—I just want to be freed from the effects in my life. As I believe you do. We’re vulnerable, we’re mortal and we rightly pray, “deliver us from evil.” We want it. We’re even eager for the deliverance aren’t we? Aren't we?

Peace,

Jerry+