Casting Out Demons

Community member Katie Aikins is currently taking a wonderful maternal leave from her post as pastor of Tabernacle Church in West Philadelphia. But before her leave, she preached this sermon, edited here.

“Jesus healed many who were sick and cast out many demons …” The gospels portray Jesus frequently “casting out demons.” And often it is connected to his healing ministry.

Most of us are uncomfortable with the language of “unclean spirits” and “casting out demons.” One hurdle to understanding such stories in the Gospels is the western religious tradition and European culture, with our legacy of separating politics from religion when it comes to interpreting the Bible.

Another hurdle is that often in our culture, when people use the language of “unclean spirits” it is misused as a judgment against someone. Many Christians have accused me and countless queer people of being possessed by an unclean spirit of homosexuality.

People in biblical times understood that there was a kind of cosmic battle going on between God and Satan; between the force of good, and the force of evil. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Ephesians: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Paul is attempting to describe this evil power at work in the world that has a superhuman quality to it, working against God’s good purposes. It is a powerful force that is beyond any one person’s control. God and God’s agents are in constant struggle against these forces.

The words “spiritual forces of evil” make sense to me with an example such as racism. Racism is a kind of evil spiritual force. It is demonic, it is beyond our individual power to control or overcome on our own. This spiritual evil force can occupy our institutions, our churches, our systems and yes, it is also a force that is at work in our individual hearts.

For people living in Galilee during the time of Jesus’ ministry, there was a firm belief that these evil powers could take over institutions and become and occupying force, invading people’s lives with devastating effect.

In the account of Jesus’ exorcism in Mark 5:1-20, this occupying evil force is given a name. It is not abstract. And that makes people nervous, because when you start to get specific about what really needs to be “cast out” of our lives, what really needs to change, when you give it a name, it makes us nervous because now something is demanded of us. Jesus asks the unclean spirit, “What is your name?”

“My name is Legion, for we are many.” Jesus’ audience would’ve known exactly what this term meant. “Legion” was a reference to a Roman regimen of approximately 6,000 soldiers. For them, it made sense to identify the political and military occupation by Rome as an evil force. They would be reminded of all that they had suffered under the Roman army. How towns and villages had been burned to the ground, how their relatives had been tortured, killed or enslaved, their belongings plundered, how their crippling poverty under the oppressive tax system was making them ill and hindering them from getting access to healthcare and all they needed for survival. All of these horrors were experienced through the violent conquests of the Roman military. The man in the story who is possessed by “legion” embodies the truth that the real cause of the people’s sickness and distress was Roman occupation.

As if it were not explicit enough, Legion begs Jesus not to send “them out of the country. But Jesus “dismisses” (a military term) the spirits into the pigs. The drowning of the herd of swine evokes the exodus when Pharoah’s imperial army was cast into the sea as the Israelites were liberated. We begin to see how, just as demon possession is linked with oppressive imperial violence, healing is connected with liberation.

As I was reflecting on this story, I learned that President Trump is calling for a full-scale military parade this year in Washington D.C. People have been critiquing this from the left and the right: it would waste taxpayer dollars and shatter our national image as a democracy, not an authoritarian regime.

All true, and yet it got me thinking about how a military parade would actually reveal some truth about our nation: It would reveal the truth about our nation’s objects of worship and our trust, namely weapons, military, violence. It would unveil our true idols, and bear witness to our history as an occupying force both globally and domestically. As one commentator put it, “No other nation comes close to the record of American war-making around the planet. Currently, US forces are bombing seven countries simultaneously. Over the past quarter decade over a million people have been killed in American wars.” And we continue to occupy and destroy certain bodies over others: darker skinned bodies.

Jesus asks us, just like he asked his disciples in the gospels, to join him in the work of healing – and throwing out demons. And it begins when we can name the demons, to recognize that we need to be liberated from the power of the demons of violence and war-making, the demons of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and islamophobia, the demons that keep us stuck in our many addictions. All of us struggle against the powers, just as Jesus did.

Jesus is at work in us and around us inviting us into freedom from these powers, and inviting us to take part in resisting them. And all of this is healing work.