Scripture: Mark 1:21-28; 1 Corinthians 13:12
Preached on Mission Sunday from Mark 1:21-28, this sermon tackles the unfashionable topic of the devil and unclean spirits. After three careful prefaces—rejecting dualism (the devil is not God’s equal), affirming that evil does not exist in itself but is a corruption or absence of the good, and admitting Scripture gives no systematic metaphysics of evil—the preacher insists the unclean spirits are real, destructive, and to be prayed against, not explained away as myth. Drawing on William Temple and Milton’s Paradise Lost, he argues self-empowerment (‘better to reign in hell than serve in heaven’) leads to self-destruction, while the cross and resurrection have evacuated the devil’s power. The freedom Christ gives is freedom for service and mission, which is itself the most powerful cure for the devil’s temptations because it draws us beyond narcissism into the needs of neighbor and creation.
Illustrations: early-methodist-boldness, superhero-supervillain, darkness-absence-of-light, ordination-interview-evil, william-temple-original-sin, milton-paradise-lost
January 28
”They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.“ Mark 1:21-28 NRSV
I would like to talk about the devil. Many of you haven’t heard those words often in Methodist churches. Many Methodists like to be moderates in our teachings. Not too little, not too much. Just right. This is not how the early Methodists. The early Methodists bucked the system. They let people who hadn’t been to college preach. John Wesley ordained women to preach. It was nearly a meritocracy. Credentials didn’t matter. They preached the scriptures plain. When you preach the scriptures plain, you can’t avoid unclean spirits. There are, for sure, a lot of ways to talk about the devil. Part of the challenge, at least for me, and why I don’t bring it up all the time, is that we need to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. There’s a temptation to talk about the devil as this kind of equivalent power to God. This is a dualist heresy: that there’s good and evil in this world. That these twin powers are battling each other and we don’t know who is going to win. That’s one of the temptations in this discourse. It is like a how you can’t have a superhero without a supervillain. Narratively, we like conflicts of commiserate power and this narrative trick ends up making the devil far more powerful than he really is.
Another temptation is to make evil into something that exists in itself. This is a little more philosophical, but I think it’s really important for us to take a moment to jump into the philosophical pit. From the early church on it was declared as doctrine that evil did not exist. Stay with me for a moment. This goes back to the doctrine of creation because if evil existed in itself, it would have been to be created by God, and God is good. Therefore, God did not create evil. It’s an answer that may sound good in Ivory Towers, but how does it connect to the real world?
Well, there’s evil in this world. We see this. The early church acknowledged it. They saw a lot of evils, but the understanding was never that evil existed in itself, but that evil is a corruption of the good. An absence of the good. Just like darkness is not something that exists. There are no darkness particles floating out in space. Darkness is simply an absence of light. Evil and wickedness are corruptions of the good, distortions of the good. They don’t exist in themselves. God did not create them.
When I was going through my ordination interviews, this was the one point where I was pressed on in the interview chamber, surrounded by 15 other pastors. I was very confused because I was trying to like cite Genesis and cite Saint Augustine and Wesley and the preacher who was questioning me was pretty angry that day. I think he might have had some other things going on in his life. His point was that it felt to him pastorally insufficient to say that evil was not a thing when someone was suffering a tragedy. On first glance, that may feel right, but it is pastorally wrong to think that evil is a thing. Because then we turn God into this creator of evil. To make evil something apart from what is been corrupted is to make God an agent of evil and that is not the God I worship or the God the Bible describes.
With those two caveats, I think there’s a third that needs to be brought up, which is that there’s not this clear, scriptural understanding of what it means to be a devil. In our passage for today, Mark writes: Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. What does that mean? Are there clean spirits, as well? Where did it come from?
Jesus talks about Satan. Jesus talks about the devil and wicked spirits of this world. Jesus’ sermons are given in an ad hoc way. They’re not systematic arguments articulating the metaphysics of the cosmos. Jesus doesn’t answer every question that is begged by his teaching and remarks. How we understand the evil one should not be an issue of certainty because we have no space to be certain about the evil one. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, we look through a glass darkly.
Okay, all my prefaces stopped. Let’s talk about the devil. Let’s talk about Unclean spirits. The devil is the prince of this world, the ruler of this world. Over the last 300 years since the Enlightenment, some Christians have lowered their emphasis on the devil because it seems a little too supernatural. It’s not empirical in the ways they would like it to be. It’s not empirical to talk about the devil in those ways. They try to take devil language and make it seem like misunderstandings or like mythic language, outdated language, misunderstandings. But to take the Bible seriously, we have to deal with this, that there are powers in this world beyond our control that we do not see, powers that wish for our ill. And honestly, I think that’s enough. When we start building up a structure more than that, we get into dangerous territory, the dangerous territory of dualism, of seeing in the devil an equivalent power to God, which the devil does not possess.
So let us stay there on this plane. There is a devil. There are evil spirits There is an accuser. What that looks like, I don’t know beyond what Jesus says, and I don’t think investigating it is super helpful beyond what Jesus says. Jesus answers the questions we need to understand, but I don’t think we should take the words of Mark here as a metaphor. These unclean spirits are unclean spirits that need to be cast out, they are destructive, they are destructive to the souls of the people in which they are a part, and they need to be cast out. We see here that the unclean spirits are not atheists, right? The unclean spirits know who Jesus is. They know who God is. They listen to him. They respond to him. They’re silenced by him. They’re cast out by him.
I don’t think I’d ever be confident in diagnosing an unclean spirit, but I would be confident in praying against one. And ultimately, I think that’s what Jesus is calling us to do, to pray against the wicked powers of this world that corrupt our hearts and corrupt the hearts of those around us. Corrupt the will so that people desire what is destructive for them, corrupt the mind so that people rationalize actions of destruction, corrupt the body so that people are weakened.
William Temple once said that Original sin is the only empirical Christian doctrine. We see evidence of it. There is evidence of the brokenness of the world and that good intentions cannot solve it.
John Milton’s, great poem. Paradise Lost is much more famous as a title than it is ever actually been read. The language is incredibly complex. I think it’s lovely and beautiful, but I’ve grown to appreciate it.
Paradise Lost is filled with this irony that Milton writes Lucifer as the main character. Some people have read Lucifer as this epic hero that we should all emulate. Lucifer is offering intellectual freedom for you to do what you want and to live how you want. “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” As Milton famously wrote out of the devil’s mouth. What Milton though is doing with the character of Lucifer is showing the inadequacy of self-empowerment next to the grace of God and how we can follow our own will to the point of destroying ourselves and everything we want and love. We are ultimately the ones who plant the seeds of our own destruction.
Milton’s famous line again cuts to the chase. “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” If you agree with this, Jesus has nothing for you. You have become your own god. When you realize it is better to serve in heaven than reign in hell, the doors of grace are opened. The brokenness of this world no longer defines us. We are no longer trapped by our desires.
In a world where the devil is made to be a hero, we need grace to see that that is false, that that is an unclean spirit towards destruction, and ultimately the devil has no power next to the grace of God. The power of wickedness has been evacuated because of the power of the cross.
We see this especially in the crucifixion, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the powers of the prince of this world have been shattered and gone. We have been freed. For what?
Mission Sunday is not the most obvious opportunity to talk about the devil. Usually, churches that serve and churches that talk about the devil are few and far between. What I think we need to hold onto is that by admitting the brokenness of this world and the powers that lead towards destruction the response of the freedom that Christ gives us must be to work towards healing that destruction, we can never be satisfied with where we are in a world on fire. We shouldn’t extend ourselves to the point of desperation, but we must move beyond complacency. We have been given power through Christ, who saves us power to cheer at the devil, to not be afraid of his ways. Power to love our enemies, our neighbors, whoever is in need. Power to love God’s creation, and the animals and pets that we so often find friendship with service, and mission is not simply away to feel good about ourselves, service, and mission is the most powerful cure for the Temptations of the devil. When we serve, we cannot be left with our own narcissism. When we serve, we see beyond ourselves. When we are the hands and feet of Jesus Christ God moves with us in the power beyond our control and understanding my brothers and sisters, your loved your forgiven, you were given power, use it it don’t hide it under a basket. Don’t be afraid of what will happen have faith God is with you as you serve your neighbor boldly.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the power that you have given us through Jesus Christ. Help us not to squander it but receive your freedom to serve wherever we are. In the name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit.