On Satan

Dead Angel

Propers: The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 14), A.D. 2018 B

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The devil’s afoot in New York Mills. And I mean that rather literally.

Scripture, particularly the New Testament, is alive with spirits, with dark forces that stand opposed to God and to the Good News that He brings to this world. And we find this at times embarrassing. We suppose that devils and demons, spirits and spooks, are things best relegated to the ancient past or perhaps to Halloween night. Never mind that every human culture throughout all of history has seen them waiting in the dark.

We prefer instead to speak of metaphorical devils, as systems of oppression and institutionalized inhumanity. And certainly the devil is active in such things. But sometimes evil jumps right out of the page and into our homes. Sometimes things really do go bump in the night. And this town is full of stories of exactly that sort.

In my ten years here I have heard tell of hauntings at the Cultural Center, the Country Market, and the local library. I could point out houses just down the street that are held by half the populace to harbor ghosts. People have told me of demons in Ouija boards, footsteps walking up and down their bed, werewolves in the woods.

Every few years a spate of hagging seems to pass on through: those are the spiritual attacks of black creatures what press on your chest in the night. I often get three or four reports of that from different people before it moves itself along. And yes, it could be sleep paralysis, whatever that may be. But that doesn’t explain why other people besides the victim can see it in the room.

One fellow pastor asked if I wouldn’t come driving three or four hours out to speak with him because every time he visited a particular parishioner’s house, something that he couldn’t see started throwing dishes at him. Not quite sure what he expected me to do about that, other than, I suppose, believe him.

I used to hear stories like this in the big cities, in Philadelphia or Boston, where exorcisms and poltergeists sometimes seem dime-a-dozen. I knew of container ships that wouldn’t leave port until the pastor had blessed every single cabin with a water-cooler jug full of holy water—and for good reason. When I came out here to the country, there was a lull of sorts, two years or so during which people didn’t yet know me well enough to tell the stories they barely dared to tell anyone else. But once that wore off, the whispered tales came pouring in.

People thought they were crazy, or cursed, or really just all alone. You should see their surprise when I tell them that whatever they’ve seen, whatever they’ve experienced, it’s not unique. Why, in some ways it’s all been quite textbook. The stories of the saints and even the life of Luther are replete with demonic attacks. And if that weren’t enough, I assure them, then one need only look to one’s immediate neighbors, who all have stories all their own, and likewise fear that they’re the only ones.

The world, in other words, has not gotten any less weird since the time of Christ. It’s just that nowadays we don’t speak of it as openly as once we might have done, for fear of coming across as gullible or foolish or insane. But these stories don’t come from tinfoil hats. They come from our neighbors, our families, our loved ones; rational people, reasonable people. They come from you and from me.

I confess I do not often speak openly of such things. My apologies if you’re starting to shift uncomfortably in your pews. But then the demons like to keep such things in the dark, for to reveal themselves openly is rather to give the game away. If we all saw demons, we might all run to Christ. And Lord knows the lowerarchy wouldn’t want that. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist—for without a belief in the devil, belief in Christ becomes belief in an idea about Christ. And then he’s got you.

In our Gospel reading today, Christ’s authority is questioned by people who cannot fathom that someone from their own hometown might work the wonders of God. We know whence He comes, after all. We know His Mother and His brothers and His sisters—though poignantly they leave His father out of it. And Jesus responds to this questioning of His authority, of God’s authority, by passing it along, pouring it out into His Apostles.

And then off they go throughout the land, casting out demons left and right. For even the legions of hell quail in fear at the sight of God on earth! And now His very Word, His very command, is sufficient to put the powers of darkness to flight. The Apostles do not operate of their own authority. They do not preach the Gospel and heal the sick and forgive us our sins, and light within us the fire of the Holy Spirit, of their own authority. No, for they are the Body of Christ! They are the hands and feet of God! Normal men, sinners—claimed by Christ as His own.

And so when they encounter the worst hell can offer, there is truly no contest at all. For yes, a human being, a sinner, in and of himself, can be no match for an angel, even a fallen one. But with God fighting for us, claiming us, burning within and around and above and about us—well, then, the devil doesn’t have a prayer! And all the powers of hell run shrieking back to the pit. “I know who You are!” the devils all cry. “You are the Holy One of God!” And they tremble.

This reality permeates our faith. Think of St Michael, a relatively minor angel in the great Choirs, who nonetheless cast Lucifer like lightning from Heaven, because Michael relied not on his own powers but on his faith in the promise of God. Think of St Anthony, a saintly man often plagued by visions of devils, who one day looked up to see his hermit’s cave filled to busting with monsters and beasts and hellions of every size and shape, to which all Anthony laughed and said, “If you had any power over me, you only would’ve had to have sent one!”

This, moreover, writes Paul, is why God sent to him a thorn in the flesh: so that Paul would remain humble, remain holy, trusting not in his own powers but on the God who had redeemed and forgiven him while he was yet a sinner. When Paul relies on his own powers, he is but a mortal man; yet when he relies on the grace of God, he is nothing less than the very voice of Christ on earth. “For whenever I am weak,” he confesses, “then I am strong.”

This question of authority is why we are bold to proclaim the forgiveness of our sins. For indeed, it is not your pastor who absolves you. It is not your pastor who blesses you, buries you, ministers and marries you. It is not your pastor who baptizes, who anoints, who confirms. Rather, it is Christ Himself! Christ drowns you in your sins and raises you as His own. Christ makes real His holy promise that simple, humble bread and wine becomes in truth His own Body and Blood, the Bread of Life, the Cup of Salvation. I do not defend you from the devil, but Christ in me, in all of us, sends him shrieking back to hell!

Maybe you are fortunate. Maybe you have never experienced a hagging or a haunting or some other sort of horror. Maybe you’ve never seen the horns of the devil or smelt the stink of his false flesh. If so, God bless you. May it ever be so. But if you ever have, or if you ever will—or even if the devil remains an abstraction in your life—the solution is always the same. They hate the name of Christ. They cannot endure the blessing of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They try to frighten you, try to break you, try to claim you as their own. But they cannot!

You belong to Christ, in whom you have been baptized. You have been bought with a price—which means that nothing and no one on this earth or below it can ever claim you as his own. Not cancer, not depression, not alcoholism, and certainly nothing so debased as a broken and banished angel who fears above all else to be dragged kicking and screaming into God’s own Light of Truth, because he knows he will burn in that fire.

Cling to Christ above all else, before all else, within all else. Cling to Christ, and this world can scare you, it can harm you, it might even manage to make you feel crazy or useless or alone. But never can it claim you! Never. The unholy trinity of the devil, the world, and the flesh—you will outlive them all.

Cling to Christ, and laugh at the devil. For he knows his days are short.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.