Dark Spirits

Propers: The Fourth Sunday After Epiphany, AD 2021 B

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

Well, this is awkward. There’s a demon in our Gospel. What are we to do with that?

Surely this is to be taken metaphorically, yes? Surely by now we know enough of biological and psychological disorders to relegate talk of demons to the forgotten realms of the embarrassingly anachronistic. I mean, it’s 2021, right? We don’t believe in evil spirits—right?

Don’t be so sure. The world has always been a weird place, weirder than we’d often care to confess. And even amidst our technological and medical mastery, no less miraculous for the failures of our response to covid-19, there are still more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Exorcisms are at all all-time high. Did you know that? Demand has risen so precipitously that the Vatican has opened special courses to train up and churn out exorcists. Every diocese has one. A reporter who famously tagged along with one of the class’s graduates ended up converting to Catholicism based on what he witnessed.

The Church in Île-de-France averages 50 exorcisms per year. A decade ago it was 15. Fr Vincenzo Taraborelli reported that half a million Italians requested an exorcism in 2015 alone. And those are relatively small countries. You should see the numbers for Latin America.

I used to think that exorcisms were an urban phenomenon. Charismatic churches in Philadelphia would hold exorcisms that honestly struck me as kind of cheesy—until something no-one could see fled, scattering folding chairs in its wake. In Boston, gigantic ships would refuse to leave port until a priest blessed every single bulkhead and cabin with an entire water cooler jug full of holy water. And when I served for several months as chaplain in a level-one trauma center, I learned the truth behind that saying, “Every nurse has a ghost story.”

But then I came out here, out to the country, and heard just the darndest stories. A young pastor reluctantly confessed that whenever he visited a certain parishioner’s house, something he couldn’t see threw plates at him. I had an unchurched fellow come in to talk with me because—following an incident with a Ouija board—he found himself tormented by devils in the night. And every few years a spate of hagging attacks seems to pass through town. If you don’t know what it is to be hagged in the night, go ahead and count yourselves lucky.

These aren’t stories from fringe lunatics or the tinfoil hat brigade. These were all healthy, happy, sane human beings legitimately anxious to admit their experiences with things inexplicable and bizarre. Judging from the popularity of paranormal television shows, they’re far from alone. I’m convinced that the world is every bit as weird today as it’s ever been. We’re just far more reluctant to speak of it, lest people think us foolish or mad.

It took me years of talking about strange things before people began to believe that they could come to me with their weird. And that’s a pity, really. This is the Church. This is the one place we should feel free to open up about our fears, our doubts, our worries, and our terrors. Not all of our experiences fit within a nice, neat, little rational or religious box. There are still things that go bump in the night.

But then there are also those of us, perhaps most of us, who have never seen an angel, demon, ghost or fairy, werewolf, bigfoot, or UFO. I can’t help but wonder how many who haven’t, would love to see something supernatural—and how many who have, wish now that they hadn’t?

Belief in spirits appears to be a human universal. I know of no culture or religion that doesn’t have unseen spirits of some kind. In fact, experiences of invisible powers appear oddly consistent across time and space, which might imply veracity. There are always spirits about us; some who used to be human, others who were never anything of the sort. We are surrounded, traditionally speaking, by an enchanted universe, a vast ocean of consciousness, of minds and thoughts and powers far beyond our own, just behind the veil of what we can merely see and touch.

Maybe you don’t believe in such things. Maybe you don’t want to believe in such things. But they don’t appear to be going away. And sooner or later, we’re all going to have to square with that.

Now if this all sounds to you like mental illness—taking metaphors far too literally—take heart. Such an understanding is not so far removed from traditional Church teaching on such matters as we might otherwise think. Yes, from early on the Church distinguished between physical, mental, and spiritual illnesses. They didn’t just blame things on demons when there were perfectly logical explanations available.

But neither were demons and devils understood to be little men with goat horns and pitchforks. Angels, fallen angels included, are beings of pure mind, pure spirit, without any physical form or body. They operate in the realm of thought. Spirits can dwell within us, within our minds, or within communities greater than ourselves, passing from person to person, dwelling in the collective unconscious.

The way I see it, it doesn’t much matter whether we take such images literally or metaphorically. When it comes to realms of mind and spirit, the division between literalism and metaphor breaks down and dissolves into truth. Psychology, mind you, literally means the study of psuche, the soul. Of course it’s all happening in your mind. Why shouldn't that mean that it’s real?

Think of all the people across the globe reeling from this last year’s pandemic. Think of those in mourning for lost loved ones, lost jobs, and lost security. Think of the spiritual oppressions of loneliness, anxiety, and uncertainty. They hang about us like a shroud, like a creature, like something with a mind of its own. And such thoughts, such spirits, can drive us to despair—or even to violence.

Yet the message of the Gospel is clear: whatever the opponent, whatever the oppression, whatever the spirits of air and darkness, Christ conquers them all. He Himself has felt their temptations, their accusations, their wrath. Christ Himself has descended into the deepest pits of hell—and there has He triumphed! “What is this?” the people cried. “A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him!”

The demon in our Gospel reading this morning isn’t lurking in some haunted house or old abandoned asylum. He appears in the synagogue on the sabbath: in a holy place, on a holy day, in a holy man. Even in our sanctuaries lurk spirits of despair. But no matter how much greater their power may loom than our own paltry puissance, none of them, not one—no dark thought, no demon, no fallen angel terrible in power and might—can ever hope to overcome the simple Word of God.

At the Name of Jesus, they tremble. At the presence of Jesus they bow. At the command of Jesus they flee to the outer darkness, there to cower until Judgment Day, when there shall be no more hell, no more death, no more place in which to hide. Jesus is alive, and powerful to save. Nothing can overcome His love, His forgiveness, His promise. No disease of body, mind, or spirit can ever separate us from His grace.

I’m not saying that miraculous cures come on demand for those with emotional, mental, or spiritual trauma—though I’ve seen dark things flee at the Name of Jesus Christ. I’m saying that no matter where we are, or what we’ve done, or who we think we’d be, Jesus saves. He is with us, He is for us, and His Spirit dwells within us. And when we are possessed by the Holy Spirit of God, no-one and nothing can claim us, possess us, or ever snatch us away from Christ’s loving and crucified hands.

At the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow, whether in heaven or on earth or in whatever lies beneath. There is no thought, no power, no spirit that can steal you from Him.

Gods. Demons. Monsters. Pfft. They haven’t got a prayer. We should go out into the world from the Eucharist like lions breathing fire! For Christ is our Liberator, our Savior, our King and our God. And nothing—not Satan, not death, not all the powers of hell—nothing can ever take from us the Word and Son of God.

Yes, the world is weird. And fallen. And broken. Yet the final End is never in doubt, and our salvation is assured; for we know who He is, the Holy One of God. And with triumph and relief and joy in His presence, we watch every spirit tremble.

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