Chains, Demons, & Urban Exorcists: A Gospel Story for Sociologists - Mark 5:1-20

The following sermon was written for the Westmont College Sociology and Anthropology Retreat (2012) which included both students and faculty.

I love sociologists and anthropologists. Much of my work as a historian has been influenced and benefited from social and anthropological theory.  Basically, I’m a wanna be.  But I am not here to talk to you as a historian but as a pastor.

This is a sermon laboratory where I hope to encourage you and ask tough questions that require your input, your learning, your skills, and your voice.  My goal is straightforward – to claim you in the name of Jesus for the church. We need you to be whole as a church. We need you in order to follow Jesus faithfully, to love our neighbors creatively, and to be salt and light. And so today I hope to ordain you to help us go forth into a world where apathy and half-heartedness, delusion and anxiety are dominant. Here is the text for your ordination.

Read Mark 5:1-20. The Word of the LORD.

Our story begins “when he stepped out of the boat”

It never ceases to amaze me how Jesus steps out of boats.  Boats are very important to Jesus – he calls a number of fisherman who use them, boats help transport him from place to place, they provide food for his group through fishing, and even serve as a floating platform from which to speak –they are helpful, familiar and maybe even fun. I wonder if in their many cruises around the Sea of Galilee if conversations didn’t arise that went something like this. Peter “You know guys. We’re in this boat a lot. I wonder if we couldn’t make it a bit more comfortable. The Master was a carpenter – maybe we could put in some benches, or maybe even some bunks. Yea, John, jumps in. We could make it bigger so that it’s easier to sleep. Andrew pipes up, “Hey, how about a kitchen with a coffee maker. I mean we could make a sandwich and have the master multiply it – that’d be cool.” And Jesus wept.

Okay – that didn’t happen. But hey I’m a preacher at heart and we always wonder about things like that! Furthermore, we experience it in our own ministries with our own people. One of the most destructive things to happen to the church is when we sacralize our boats. When we turn the church – the body of Christ – into a thing. Do you realize on a daily basis that we speak of the church in a way that the NT never does! We say, “What time is church? Are you going to church? I’ll see you at church.”  Now, I’m not trying to say that church buildings are bad. In the same way that Jesus used boats for the work of the kingdom they can be invaluable. These are places where we meet other believers, can worship, find refreshment, and learn helpful things for the Christian life. But the Christian life is NOT a life at sea but on the land.  We need people in the church to remind us what our mission is – we are not to be sailors but landlubbers.  Our understanding of the boat matters – our church buildings are to be ferries and not cruise ships - to be transports and platforms for ministry because Jesus will always step out of them – always! He’s interested in the cities, the wild places, the tombs.  We need sociologists and anthropologists to remind us where ministry happens, where we need to go.

I was hired in my church to be a tour guide of the city and its tombs.  And who did I go to in order to learn – social workers. We need people who know the city, are familiar with the landscape, know where people hangout, are comfortable in the tombs.  We need people who can remind the church that while it might be cool to call yourself the First Boat of Santa Barbara, and have the best boat band that the boat is not it.  This became real for me when I started my work as Pastor for Gospel Action – our boat was way up here and while we wanted to serve the poor, befriend the marginal, witness to God’s kingdom – we were stuck at the dock. We were reminded that our greatest resource was the cargo – the people not the place and so my job was to go into the city and find out its needs, where its tombs were, those places where Jesus would go.  This meant that we could partner with people in exciting ways rather than duplicating many ministries or social service agencies that were far more successful. 

When Jesus steps out of the boat – is when ministry begins.

He encounters a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit.

But before Mark goes on he wants to recount how society dealt with him. How the man had been handled with chains and shackles used to restrain and subdue him “among the tombs.” But Mark does more than describe these chains. He also wants to highlight their inability to work, to heal and to transform this wounded individual who howls at night and bruises himself with stones.  One almost gets the idea that Mark is saying that the chains are part of the problem.

What do we make of these failed “chains” and “shackles”?

1. Chains are those structures which seek to remove and separate people. They are the impersonal, punitive ways we seek to control those in society who don’t measure up.  They are solutions without relationships, without names.  We must have people within the church who affirm that human beings are not fundamental problems to be solved with chains but enslaved people in need of liberation and compassion. We need the kingdom affirmation that everyone should be able to receive basic material goods (food, clothes, shelter) necessary to stay alive in a society that has an abundance of goods.  What do such chains look like? A woman recently took a cucumber from a Santa Barbara market, because, as she said in her own words, “I was hungry.” She was arrested with a $20,000 bail.  Chains occur when we cut funding for mental health services and seek to enlarge our budget for jails. Why? Because this is the place we now send our mentally ill. The Common Ground survey, itself an awesome sociological tool, reveals that the most common connection among the many who are homeless is mental illness – 75% of those interviewed documented some form of mental difficulties, trauma, etc.

2.  Chains can be well-meaning bureaucracies or aid that keep people where they are – Addiction vs. Mental Health Services.  Bureaucracy is described by Weber as the “iron cage.” We had thirty empty beds at the Salvation Army during Christmas. Why wouldn’t they open the doors? – the system kept women out.  We need to challenge the irrationality of rationality. In my work with those who are homeless there is an increasing belief that what will work would be to get rid of them. One of the first encounters I found myself in was when the city’s CUP forced Casa to remove 100 people from the winter beds (many who were sick) and then began to ticket them for sleeping on the street. Both conservative and liberal policies can orient toward chains. The desire is more cops on State Street, more pressure on Casa to cut certain services, and to make it more difficult to find help.  In this way, chains orient us away from the constructive element of liberating people and suggests that the fundamental problem IS people..

3.  Chains are fundamentally products of our fear. I don’t want to be glib about this. Fear is powerful and sometimes even warranted. This guy certainly sounds scary. We need you in the church to help educate us so that we are not afraid.

We now have to address the topic that we cannot avoid. Demons. What are we to make of the legion of demons? Why did I pick this story? Am I looking to you as sort of a squad of urban, social exorcists? Well, yes. I am.

Let’s take a step back and discuss what the NT might mean by speaking of “powers and principalities.” Here I am indebted to the work of Walter Wink and his Powers trilogy. Like Wink, I am coming to believe that principalities and powers in the NT are not fundamentally disembodied spirits inhabiting the air but complex, entangled, distorted spiritualities and ideologies within institutions, structures, and systems, even persons. This does not mean that powers are only physical. The Bible insists that they are spiritual. In the biblical view the Powers are at one and the same time visible and invisible, earthly and heavenly, spiritual and institutional (Col. 1:15-20). They are simultaneously an outer, visible structure and an inner, spiritual reality - actual spirituality at the center of the political, economic, and cultural institutions of their day. This is what is happening, for example, when Rome is spoken of as Satanic (Rev. 12-13).  This demonic spirituality was encountered in the actual institutional forms of Roman life: legions, governors, crucifixions, payment of tribute and burdensome taxes.  This is also why it is interesting that in the Gospel of Mark we have a demon-fest but in the Gospel of John we have no demons but goes into great detail about Jesus’ engagement with the Pharisees whose religious traditions – the embodied attitudes and practices - keep people out, or imprison them beyond their own control – not that Jews are demonic but that the spirituality of the Pharisees was.

Furthermore, the NT insists that demons can have no impact on us unless they are able to embody themselves in people or political systems (Rev. 12-13).  So I am coming to understand that demons, as far as the NT is concerned, are not about spiritual beings up there but over there – in the socio-spiritual structures that make up the one and only real world.

I am not sure, in other words, that demons are autonomous entities but am not sure how to settle the issue. We naturally tend to personalize anything that seems to act intentionally. For example, a computer virus which systematically is self-replicating and “contagious” appears to behave almost willfully even personally. We can speak about storms similarly, the tornado that devoured the home, for example. In this way, I wonder if the demons that are “legion” aren’t simply the spirituality of systems and structures that do not align with God’s intent for his Creation.

They are the embodied destructive spirituality in this one poor soul who howls at night and hurts himself. They are an enfleshed “poverty of being” – a destruction of self, the embodied reality of worthlessness, that etches itself on his mind and body – violence (notice that his name is “Legion”), possibly psycho-somatic trauma, alienation and worthlessness (in the tombs), economic and personal value (they care more about the pigs than the person),– whatever they are, they are numerous. Greg Boyle talks about systems in which people are made to feel worthless – talks about doing an intake with a gang member – the toxicity of worthlessness obliterates the “me”

An ideology that people must be chained, or that people are worthless, for example, is invisible, but it does not float in the air; it is always the justification for the practices instituted by a particular group. The issue then is whether we can learn to identify them in our actual everyday encounters, unmask their negative ability to reshape our lives away from what God intends.  The point is not that your female friend might have an eating disorder demon or that your male friend might have the demon of lust for pornography – why are demons sex specific, anyway? What I am trying to argue that these physical manifestations are rooted in an embodied logic– an inner social and cultural reality related to unhealthy understandings of food, body image, gender relationships, consumerism, and self worth that are embodied.  We might think of demons then as the actual spirituality of systems and structures that have betrayed their divine vocations.

The apostle Paul called the task of recognizing these spiritualities the gift of discerning spirits. Jesus illustrated it by naming the powers at work in people’s lives – addiction, alienation, disgust, mental illness, consumerism, violence. How might this help us as we think about our world?

1.  This understanding of demons challenges any simple construction of agency – “We are legion for we are many.” Mark is trying to document the complexity, I believe. Notice that in vss. 7-9 we have this utterly bizarre movement between personal pronouns – “I” and “He” which are the demon(s) and another time which is the man. There is “them” and “they” which of course “beg” Jesus to leave.  Who’s speaking? We need to define the brokenness and sinfulness of our world in ways that acknowledge that all people are at the mercy of Powers far larger than our individual decisions. We need to rethink our over reliance upon sin as simply rebellion.  We also need to think critically, theologically, socially and carefully about mental illness. Why don’t these people just get a job? Why do they waste money on booze? E.g. mental illness, no access to medication or mental health services, alcohol is cheap and close by, etc.

Mental illness? The Talmud enumerates as symptoms of a person's mental incompetence: going out alone at night; remaining overnight in a cemetery; tearing one's garment (provided there is no rational explanation for such acts; Ḥag. 3b). Maimondies adds: "A shoteh is not only one who walks about naked or breaks vessels or throws stones, but also one whose mind is deranged and is always confused about matters; even though he speaks and asks pertinent questions, he is included among the mentally incompetent" (Hilkhot Edut 9:9).

2.  By acknowledging the role of the demonic (naming demons), we are freed from the temptation to demonize those who are marginal or even do evil.  To demonize, of course, is essentially a reverse exorcism. It doesn’t free people from demons but turns them into demons.  This temptation is particularly strong among those of us who are well off because we have god-complexes – the subtle and often unconscious sense of superiority that we have achieved wealth on our own.  When we problematize agency we often continue to demonize because it questions our own wealth.

How does Jesus respond? Jesus always begins with a name – To be honest, I think he is asking the man’s name. What’s your real name? Story by Greg Boyle and the system of gangs in which people change their name. Page 53-54  Jeff Shaffer seeks to rename “those who are homeless” to our “friends on the streets.” That renaming implies an entirely different orientation. 

Sometimes demons are exorcized simply by naming them. You guys are namers – that’s what sociologists and anthropologists do.  But when you do so – don’t forget the real name, the real name of the people who suffer under the conditions that you name.

This man was broken in every way possible: from God, self, others, and the rest of creation. He is dominated by spiritual forces other than God, he harms himself, he is alienated and demonized by others, and cut off from the basis needs of creation – clothes, food, etc. We need to name the Powers that contribute to this.

What does salvation look like in this text? “clothed and in his right mind”

The gospel message is that Jesus reconciles us with God and one another that we should have all that we need  - don’t worry about clothes, Jesus tells us in his own ministry manifesto, the Sermon on the Mount.  And Heaven, that reality that we pray for on the earth, is a place where people have all they need.  It involves restoring all that is broken.  No clothes, in other words, are part of the same spiritual crisis.

Now, it use to be that people taught that Jesus got rid of the demons but would leave him naked – evangelism as personal proclamation. Others have said that Jesus wouldn’t worry about the demons only the man’s nakedness – social gospel without proclamation.  Here again, my understanding of demons clues us into the solution. Evil in this story is not just personal but structural and spiritual. It is not simply the result of human actions or choices but the consequences of enormous systems over which no individual has full control. Only by confronting the spirituality of an institution and its physical manifestations can the total structure be transformed. Any attempt to transform a social system without addressing both its spirituality and its outer forms is doomed to failure. Materialism knows nothing of an inner dimension, while non-corporeal spirituality knows nothing of lived reality – both are blind to evil’s full effect and to God’s full salvation.

So for Christians the move that is faithful is not from the material to the spiritual but rather from materialism to incarnation. Incarnation is the Church’s way of speaking about Spirit dwelling in matter . . . the inner secret of creation to be the indwelling of God within it. Salvation, true liberation, is always incarnational not just about spirit but the spirit of our stuff, not just about our soul but the soul of our entire self which includes a body.

That’s why personal redemption cannot take place from the redemption of our social structures or vice versa. The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transformed, right down to our clothes. So, our individual is made spiritually whole by being in his right mind and being clothed. Now the exorcism happens with much fanfare – into the pigs who go plop into the lake.  Jesus does this and this work is rightly his. He is the savior and he always knows what to do with demons.  You are not the saviors of the world – your own spirituality is important; being a part of Jesus’ body, being in your right mind.

But how did the man get clothed? Collaboration

Okay, let’s test your discernment of spirits, your ability to name the destructive spirituality at work.  Where did the demons go?  What happens to the spiritual system of oppression after this guy gets healed?  Later the people who chained the man are also the “they” who are afraid, “what have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth” and beg Jesus to leave! The demons are the spirituality of the people who do not wish for the alienated and the poor, the deviant, to be healed. It’s too costly – financially and because they now have no scapegoat. They beg Jesus to leave – his healing is too costly, his kingdom too disruptive.  They were not Isaiah people, “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like noonday.” (Isaiah 58:10) Spending yourselves means more than just a handout but bringing your entire self to bear upon the problem.

How do you bring your entire self to bear upon the problem?

Jesus’ advice is a helpful ending – “Go home to your friends” Friendship is the solution to the evangelical divide of proclamation and social justice, of agency, the discernment of spirits, the battling of sin. Because friends don’t let friends sleep outside, friends don’t let friends walk among tombs alone or place them in chains, friends value what you have to say and know your name, and see you as more than a rebellious sinner but also one enslaved by forces outside your control.  Befriending those who walk alone, cry at night, maybe even hurt themselves is not about being nice because if it’s about being nice I can assure you it won’t last. Niceness won’t sustain you as you seek people out among the wreckage of society.  When we offer our lives to Jesus and seek to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are not declaring that we like people but because of what God has done that we truly love them.

Would you stand – now I will finish your ordination. Do you know what ordination is?  It is your life animated by God’s Spirit in service of Christ, His Church, and His Creation. It may not be easily recognized in your job but it is your rightful vocation.

Go forth now into the world where apathy and half-heartedness, delusion and anxiety, are dominant. Move the world a little, letting the world know that Christ lives and breathes in the lives of us – the Church. In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. God be with you. Amen.