Sermon

Deliverance from Demonic Oppression

Isaiah 40: 21-31, Mark 1: 29-39

Here are some words that I once spoke and believed. They were spoken as a pre-teen and then teenager growing up in the South. It took me a number of years to realize the racism and the absurdity of my way of thinking and speaking back then.

“Colored people don’t want our schools mixed anymore than white people.” “Coloreds and whites got along just fine together until these outside agitators started causing problems.” “They don’t want integration either.” “If we start integrating, soon we will have intermarriage and we’ll have a mixed race.”

That is just the tip of the racist iceberg. It is a way of thinking so that it demonizes someone who is not like me or like us. But another reality is that it also demonizes me or us. However, as the benefactor of being born white with the accompanying privilege and power that came with that birth, it was almost impossible to know that I was possessed by the demonic power of racism.

In the ancient middle-east there was a wide-spread dread of demons. People came to Jesus to have demons cast out. In some instances the person recognized his or her own demon possession. In other instances someone close to the person recognized the demon possession. But in any event there seemed to be a sense of helplessness against this possession.

Footnotes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible point out that the demons in Jesus’ time were of a non-material existence and of a personal sort. Demons were hostile to human welfare and they were rebellious against God. I believe it is a short step from that understanding of demons in the ancient world to realize that racism is just such a demon. Racism is demonic and it infects both the racist and the victim of racism.

The Church of South Africa saw that very clearly during the years of apartheid. In the “Kairos Document” the authors point out how easily we have come to accommodate the demonic presence of racism. They commented that the church had found a way to allow both the oppressed and the oppressor to sit together in church and the oppressor was not uncomfortable. But hear Isaiah’s promise from God: “God gives power to faint and strengthens the powerless.”

Former Senator Eugene McCarthy spoke to a group of church folk one year at a national legislative gathering. He said that he had introduced legislation to end discrimination in Congress for twelve years before the churches took up the cause. We do find it hard to speak truth to ourselves. We speak to our legislators. We spoke to South Africa. But we are silent in our own houses and with our own families.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke that harsh truth to white ministers and rabbis in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” when he wrote:

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice … Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” (Quoted from Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement by John Lewis, page 196,Copyright © 1998 by John Lewis.)

It is difficult, at least for me, to recognize the demons that possess me. Perhaps it is because they generally are comfortable demons and seduce me into believing there is nothing wrong with me. After all, I don’t go out and blatantly do wrong things. No, I just don’t do anything. It took me a long time to understand that not doing anything was, in fact, making a statement of its own about my commitment or lack of commitment to speak out about racism.

When we look back in time at our lives, all of us will realize there have been events or moments that were of such import that they were, in fact, defining moments. We were changed in some way by those moments. Maybe we even recognized one of our demons and took actions to rid ourselves of it. And the impact was great enough that even years later we realize those moments changed who we are and where we are today.

The Bible is, of course, filled with defining moments in which God interacts with humanity to make a difference in our human condition. Israel believed itself to be a nation selected by God to be a chosen people carrying both the special protection of God and also the special responsibilities required of a chosen people. They could recite many defining moments where God was powerfully present to the nation.

It was God who fed them in the wilderness and did not allow them to go hungry or their clothes to wear out. It was God who parted the waters and let them safely cross and escape the Egyptians. It was God who allowed this small nation to become great and mighty through the warnings of prophets and the leadership of kings.

History is composed of defining moments. Indeed, it is the historical defining moments that shape nations and people. Reading the history of our own country we see time after time when certain events changed the course of our history.

Defying taxation on tea, the Boston Tea Party threw down the gauntlet. That specific event in history – captured for us like a snapshot – gave courage to a struggling colony to pull together and eventually to unite in a nation of individual states.

However, one of our most vivid failures as a nation and gravest sins as Christians was allowing the enslavement of people, the destruction of families, and the cruelties that continued years after the abolishment of slavery. Legalizing slavery was one of those defining moments that made all of our lofty words of freedom hypocritical.

However, like Israel, there has always been a remnant within the Christian community that called out to us to be the people God would have us be. Over the years it took standing up to principalities and powers; it meant calling out to the best within us when the temptation was to give in to the meanness that too often controls us.

The church, recognizing Jesus the Christ as our sole head, is an institution that can help us look at defining moments in our lives and bring some word of hope or encouragement, or some word of correction and refocusing. As an institution, with all of our human fallibilities, we are still the place and the people trying to bring some “word from the Lord” (as the Old Testament prophets would say) to a hurting world.

A defining moment in this nation happened January 20. Even just a year ago I did not believe this country was at a point where an African-American could be elected to the most powerful office in the world. It will be both exciting and challenging to see how this defining moment will change us as a nation. For me, to come from a time and place where whites and blacks used separate water fountains, where schools were segregated, where blacks were assigned to the balconies in movie theaters, where blacks were not allowed to sit and eat in a restaurant but had to take food as carry out, where blacks were never addressed as Mr. or Mrs. to a day when not only is a black man addressed as Mr., but is addressed as Mr. President – that is a journey of unbelievable change.

One thing I have come to understand and even appreciate over the years is the fact that, for the most part, the world is not changed much. But it is changed a little by the addition of the faith of one person, or by a defining moment in the life of someone. I have also learned that the place lives are changed and the place where people make the most difference in terms of Christian faith is right here in the local church.

We have no way to know what difference we may make in many lives because we have been present in a community. And we certainly do not know what difference we might make in the future. But we can be sure that a community is different because we were there and if we were willing to witness to God’s love in that place and throughout the world.

God will continue to offer us defining moments. God also calls us to create defining moments in such a way that the community and the world will know a God of great love. “In the beginning when God created …” until this very moment as God continues to create, defining moments will sway the scaffold of history. I pray we will be able to face our demons and be a part of swaying that scaffold in such a way that the whole family of God can gather in peace and joy. May the shalom of God bless our work here and out in the world.

Amen.

Jim Bell

02-06-09