5th Sunday after Pentecost / Fathers of the Sixth Council; Holy Great Prince Vladimir / Romans 10.1-10; Matthew 8.28-9.1
F/S/HS. Brothers and sisters, one of the powerful story lines of this morning’s Gospel is the presence of the demonic in a person’s life, and how this presence can wreck such havoc. Accordingly, I want to reflect on our attitude, our disposition towards things demonic, whether you call these things the demons, or evil spirits, or Satan and his multitude of minions.
Our attitude or disposition towards this evil should be two-fold. First, is the need to acknowledge that the demonic does indeed exist, and to take this existence seriously. And second, is the need to give only so much credence to the demons. That Christ trampled down death by His death is to say that even though demonic powers do indeed have tremendous power, they are no match for the power and authority of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
So let’s parse out both of these realities: to not ignore the existence of evil, nor to grant it more power or authority than we should.
The origin of demonic reality is that it was once a part of the created order known as the angels. In other words, the demonic is not its own created order; the demons do not have their own separate ontology, the way other created things do. They came into being because one of these angels, a very powerful one, Lucifer, fell from paradise. The very nature of God’s divine love is that all created beings are given the choice to love and worship their Creator, or reject Him and go their own prideful way.
Lucifer chose this path—the path of pride and ego, the path of going his own way. Compellingly, the term heresy means exactly that—to actively choose to go your own way. And so God banished Lucifer and his fellow heretical angels from the heavenly realm; banished them to a dark and sinister underworld know as hell, hades, or gehenna.
That term gehenna refers to a fiery place of eternal punishment or destruction. It comes from the Hebrew word Ge Hinnom, which means “valley of Hinnom.” Gehenna was originally a valley west and south of Jerusalem where the Israelites sacrificed children to the Ammonite god Moloch during the reigns of King Solomon and King Manasseh. After the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC, the valley was turned into a garbage dump to discourage the practice of child sacrifices. What a stunningly appropriate image—the demons and evil associated with a garbage dump!
In the Garden of Paradise, Eden, evil makes its appearance to the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. In that Paradise dear ones, Adam and Eve were in beautiful communion with all of the flora and fauna of this earthly creation, and in communion with our Creator. Complete and loving communion.
The evil one then slithered into this beautiful paradise and seduced Adam and Eve, who bought into this snake’s alluring scheme. And you know the rest of the story. Paradise and all of creation fell. And though humanity has been redeemed by the life, death, and Resurrection of our Lord, this earth is the playground of the demons, until our Lord comes again in all of His glory to render a final judgement upon the world.
Hence all of our earthly life, dear sisters and brothers, becomes a battle with the demonic; a battle to discern good from evil, and to choose good over evil; a battle for the virtues when the demons want us to choose the vices; a battle for love when the demons would tempt us to choose hate; a battle for belief in God when the demons want to sew doubt and disbelief; a battle to remain humble when the demons would have us embrace pride; a battle to choose Christ when the demons would have us choose the devil and evil.
I shared last Sunday that one of my summer reads this summer is Wounded By Love, by Saint Porphyrios. I’ve loved returning to that book, which I first read nearly twenty five years ago.
A contemporary saint of our time, Elder Porphyrios is concerned that many in our contemporary times no longer believe in the presence of evil; no longer believe that demonic activity is real and active. As one young Whitman College student recently said to me: I don’t believe that God exists any more than I believe that evil exists, or that demons exist. Both are constructions of the human imagination.
Contrast this young man’s words with the words of Elder Porphyrios from Wounded By Love. Doctors and psychologists often say when someone is tormented, ‘Ah, this person has a neurosis or is suffering from anxiety.’ They don’t accept that the devil is inciting and arousing [that] person. But yet the devil exists and is the spirit of evil. If we say he doesn’t exist, it is as if we are rejecting the Gospel that speaks of him. He is our enemy, our adversary in life, the contrary to Christ, which is why he is called the Anti-Christ (p. 211).
What a line from Saint Porphyrios: If we say [that the devil] doesn’t exist, it is as if we are rejecting the Gospel that speaks of him. In other words, if you believe the Bible, then listen to what it says about the very real presence of evil in this world. Sometimes that evil is located in a single person who then perpetuates evil, as in the Old Testament figures of Queen Jezebel, Balaam, King Ahab, and other Kings that worshiped the idols of Baal and Molech.
Other times evil is like a pathogen that infects entire communities, as happened when the demon of lust and fornication infected Sodom. And still other times evil presents itself as more hidden in powers and idolatrous systems, as when the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians says, For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places (6.12).
And sometimes evil is manifest as entering into a seemingly innocent person and taking over them in the form of demonic possession. Such was the case in our Gospel reading this morning, about two demon-possessed men who live amongst the tombs.
But notice something in our Gospel, sisters and brothers. On the one hand this demonic presence is indeed real; it is exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass the way of these two men (v. 28). Everyone is afraid to draw anywhere near to them, lest they too get infected. No one questions the existence of their demonic possession.
Yet, on the other hand, when Jesus draws near to them and meets these demons face to face, they are utterly and entirely submissive to our Lord, utterly and entirely powerless. And suddenly they cried out, saying ‘What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?’ (v. 29). Notice something else dear ones. Notice that even the demons believe in God; even the demons acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God!
And yes, Jesus is indeed here to torment these demons; in this case kill them by sending them out of the two men and into a herd of pigs, who then rush downhill into the nearby sea and drown. The bottom line: The demons are no match for Jesus.
Why, I ask myself, am I underscoring something that seems so obvious: That the demons are no match for Christ? The reason I am naming this bottom line is that there are quite a number of Christians who in their belief and their speech grant immense power and authority to the demons, as if this power and authority is close to, or on par, with the power and authority of our Lord.
It is not. Absolutely not. Yes, evil and the demonic are powerful. They are real. We must acknowledge their reality, lest we delude ourselves. But nothing whatsoever compared to the reality and the might and power of our Lord … if we believe in God’s might and power. In the stunningly simple and beautiful words of the Apostle Paul from this morning’s Epistle reading, that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10.9). Evil will have no power over us!
Last Sunday I closed with words from Wounded By Love. I want to do so again this morning. I just quoted Saint Porphyrios on the necessity to acknowledge that evil and the demonic do exist, are very real and very much alive. But now hear St. Porphyrios on what he calls the gentle method of how we ought to respond to the presence of evil all around us, and sometimes maybe in us.
Employ this gentle method. Don’t struggle to expel darkness and evil. You achieve nothing by flailing at darkness. Are you in darkness and do you want to escape? Then what do you do? You assault darkness with all your might, but it doesn’t’ go away. Do you wish light? Open a little hole and a ray of sunlight will enter and light will come. Instead of expelling darkness and instead of fighting the enemy to prevent him entering into you, open your arms to Christ’s embrace. This is the most perfect way. That is, don’t wage war on evil directly, but love Christ and His light, and evil will then retreat (p. 149).
What wise and beautiful words from St. Porphyrios, dear ones: Love Christ and His light, and evil will then retreat, just as it retreated from the lives of those two men in our Gospel this morning, when Jesus came into their presence. F/S/HS
