"DEMONIC FORCES"

“DEMONIC FORCES”

I’ve been preaching lately, using the lectionary gospel readings from the first chapter of Mark.  Mark doesn’t waste any words on the birth of Jesus – he gets right to the point with a short intro of John the Baptizer and then launches into the preaching and healing tour of Jesus.  In his healing work, he encounters many people captured by demonic powers.  I have always been puzzled by this idea of “demonic forces.”  In many cases in the New Testament, the stories seem to imply that these people are mentally ill, but their captivity is seen as being possessed by a harmful, destructive spirit.  Later in Mark 5 (and in Luke 8), Jesus encounters a man possessed by a demonic spirit so powerful that he gives up his identity to the spirit.  

The definition of “demon” is a force that seems to be a malevolent supernatural entity.  I do think that there is something to the mental illness angle of someone’s being possessed by demonic forces, but I also want to consider that there is a deeper and more powerful type of demonic possession.  This kind of possession is communal and difficult to root out, because it is seen as normal, as the way life is, or perhaps the way should be.  I have been possessed by demons, and their power in my life is so strong that there are still moments of such possession.  My first encounter with such a demonic force was in engaging my captivity to racism.  In many ways and for many years, I did not know that I was possessed by the demon of race and white supremacy.  I did not think that I was possessed because I thought that white supremacy was normal, and indeed had been ordained by God.  This connecting of racism to being a demonic power has helped me to understand the reality that is described when the Bible uses concepts like “demons.”

I thought that racism was normal because it had been taught to me by good white people like my family and my church and my segregated school.  It took me a long time to understand that I was captured by a demonic force, a force that told me that people classified as white were superior and that all other racial classifications were inferior.  I have struggled with this demonic force of racism and white supremacy all of my adult life – it took me reaching adulthood before I even realized that I was a captive to this demonic power.  I have written in other places about my journey on this {“While We Run This Race” and “Passionate for Justice,” to name a couple of books), and I will expand on that story in a forthcoming memoir on my mother and me, that I hope will be published this year.  

As I think about this coming year of 2024 and the upcoming presidential election, I’m returning to this elemental way of thinking, that many of us in the USA are captive to demonic powers.  Trump’s hold on the Republicans seems to be a prime example of a demonic force.  I’m not saying that Trump is a demonic force (though one could make a case for it) – rather, I am saying that he has called out some primeval demonic forces that have always flowed through our veins as American people.  He understands the deep captivity to race that lives in the hearts many of us who are classified as white, and he seems to be a master at developing the fears that reside in our collective white hearts.  So, this looks to be a crucial year and crucial election for all of us.

Yet, I don’t want to remain in captivity, and I’m hoping that you don’t either. There are plenty of demonic forces that hold us in captivity: racial classification, gender identity, economic status, materialism – the list is endless.  Jesus comes on the scene in Mark’s gospel, proclaiming an opportunity for beginning to gain liberation from our captivity, to see ourselves and others as children of God, not as children of one of the many categories of the world.  In this scary and crazy year, let us remember that Jesus burst onto the scene with a radical message:  the world belongs to God; we belong to God; we belong to one another.  As we fret about this year, let us remember this message from a Jewish peasant who was given the death penalty by the state of Rome.  Jesus means freedom, as Paul put it in Galatians, and that is what we are offered in this time of captivity.  Let that be a source of hope for us.

It will take a lot of work to begin to find this freedom.  It has taken me a lot of work to begin to find some liberation from my captivities.  In regard to race, I listened to new and different narratives.  I put myself in the presence of people whom I had been taught to fear, and I learned (and continue to learn) so much from them.  I worked for justice and peace and equity, and I continue to do so.  I say this not to praise myself but to seek to be realistic about the kind of work that it takes to seek to find liberation in the midst of our captivities.  And, yes, this could be a grim year, but it could also be a time of beginning to find a new definition and a new way of seeing ourselves and seeing the world around us.  In these days ahead, let us choose the way to life and liberation.