Scripture Lesson: Luke 11:14, 24-26 DEMONS LOVE A VACUUM! (01/30/11) When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, I will return to my house from which I came. When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. (Luke 11:24-26) I wish I could say that this is one of my favorite passages of scripture and that I have found it to be inspirational. The truth is that until recently I have had absolutely no idea what Jesus had in mind when he said this. This past week, as I was thinking about our mission recipient for this month, Straight Ahead Ministries, I had an epiphany concerning what Jesus might have meant by this teaching. The scripture passage then helped me make sense of the recent shooting in Tucson. The passage also speaks to the matter of infant baptism and the importance of the vows that we as a church and the child s parents take. Jesus has just performed an exorcism; he has cast out a demon that is described as mute. Actually, it appears that it was the person possessed by the demon who was mute. The passage tells us the one who had been mute spoke. Possession by this particular demon apparently made it impossible for the person to communicate. Jesus tells us that when an unclean spirit has been driven out of a person it does not simply disappear. It wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place. If it cannot find one, it will return to its original house in the person who was possessed. Apparently demons tend to inhabit deserted or empty places. How can we understand demons and demon possession in our present-day understanding of the psyche? The demon may refer to mental illness or an addiction. It could be descriptive of what Jung called a complex, e.g., an inferiority complex that can possess a person and shape his/her life in a dramatic way. It may describe an attitude of selfishness, self-centeredness, of sin. It may refer to the power of evil, the 1
power of an anger that spins out of control. When we are under the influence of a demon, our life and relationships are controlled by the demon; they are not guided and directed by God. We are pulled off center. We are far from the kingdom of God. When the exorcised demon cannot find a suitable habitation, it not only returns to its original home, it comes back with a vengeance. It seems to me that this is an apt description of the power of sin, if we can use that term generically to refer to all of the conditions we just mentioned. When we say that the house has been swept and put in order it may mean that the person has cleaned up his/her act. An alcoholic might have detoxed and participated in a rehab program. A person possessed by anxiety or depression may now be on medication. The person may have taken an anger management class or learned some techniques of constructive conflict resolution. Whatever has happened, the person appears to be in a pretty good state. However, this does not prevent the demon from returning. In fact, the demon goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. This can happen because although the person s house is swept and in order, it is essentially empty. I think this is the problem. The problem is that the house, even though it has been cleaned up, is still empty. This is what enables the demon to move back in. We know that nature abhors a vacuum. Empty houses never remain empty for too long. Demons delight in the sight of an empty house. In fact, it may have been the emptiness of the house that provided a space for the demon to originally take up residence. There is a state of emptiness, an existential vacuum in many people s lives. The existential psychologist Viktor Frankl believed that what was missing from many people s lives was a meaningful philosophy of life. In Man s Search For Meaning, which was published in 1950, Frankl claimed that the existential vacuum is a wide spread phenomenon of the 20th century and lamented the fact that 60% of his American students felt that they felt an inner emptiness -- a void within themselves. 2
If Frankl is correct in his diagnosis of the kind of existential emptiness that leaves room for demonic possession, the problem is not is not getting better. In a 1968 study that asked college freshmen about their personal goals, 41% wanted to make a lot of money, and 83% wanted to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. In 1998 75% of freshmen said their goal was to make a lot of money, while only 41% wanted to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. If Frankl is correct, the lack of a meaningful philosophy of life, of a religious belief system, would make people susceptible to a way of thinking or acting that could very well be described as demonic. I m sure you have been as disturbed as I about the six people who were killed and the thirteen people, including Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who were wounded in the January 8 shooting in Tucson. Some of the stories were inspiring. When Doran Stoddard heard the first shots, he immediately told his wife Mavy to take cover under some folding chairs; then he threw himself on top of her. His body absorbed the fatal shots. George Morris, a retired Marine, tried to do the same for his wife Dorothy. He took two bullets, but not the one that killed her. Other stories are simply tragic. John Roll, the chief judge of the U. S. District Court in Arizona; Gabe Zimmerman, the Congresswoman s director of community outreach; and Phyllis Schneck, a lifelong Republican who wanted to say a few admiring words to her Democratic Representative all dead. And then there is Christina Green, nine years old, a newly elected member of her school s student council, who came to the shopping center that morning to meet her representative. She entered the world on September 11, 2001 as a ray of hope on a very dark day. Her short life was radiant with possibility and promise. Her death was both tragic and senseless. I m sure you have heard the debates concerning the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner. Professional and nonprofessional psychological analyses describe a mentally ill young man. Was his rampage precipitated by some of the vitriolic attacks, the so-called targeting of political enemies, by political extremists? I have no doubt 3
that this was a factor. If we had any doubts that the spoken word can give rise to demonic action in people who are apparently normal as well as those who are mentally unstable, all we have to do is reflect on how many young Muslim men and women have become suicide bombers through listening to sermons by their imam or through a call to martyrdom on the internet. They are not all mentally ill. A little closer to home, we should remember the rage, often accompanied by death threats to Senators and Representatives, that broke out at so many town hall meetings last year around the issue of the proposed health care legislation. I assume these were normal, not mentally ill people, who were enraged at a proposal to provide health insurance for everyone in America, to prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for the 65% of us that have a pre-existing condition, and to allow young people who could not find jobs to stay on their parents health insurance a little longer. I have no doubt that the tone of our national discourse both fuels and justifies the kind of acting out behavior that would include an assassination. Loughner s alleged mental illness admittedly might have made him more susceptible to the belief that he was on some kind of divine mission in the service of a political philosophy that was poorly constructed and articulated. In this sense, is he really that different from our children? Our children and young people are vulnerable, impressionable, and susceptible to a distorted view of reality or a twisted morality. This is why I am not a big fan of the violent, even sadistic videos that our children and adolescents spend so much time playing. It has an impact on them. We can t blame all the crime that is perpetrated by our young people on violent video games, but I know it is a factor in shaping the way they see other people and the world. I doubt that we can fully protect our young people from twisted and deranged ways of thinking. I would certainly do everything I could to shield them from an exposure to pornographic, sick material and the kind of vicarious video experiences that I consider demonic. However, I would rather focus on the importance on giving our 4
young people something positive inside them, something that will enable them to identify certain thoughts and urges as evil as they grow up and enter into the great maelstrom of life, something that will give them the power to resist these demonic forces when they rise up within them. This brings me back to Viktor Frankl s observations. We don t know what was missing in Jared Loughner s life, but we suspect something was. What is the cause of the existential vacuum that leaves some people vulnerable to demonic possession? The answer, my friends, is simple. It is a lack of faith. It is the absence of a deep and meaningful relationship with God through Christ. It is the absence of even the slightest consciousness of God. It is essentially a spiritual vacuum. And a spiritual vacuum opens us up to demon possession. This brings us to our mission of the month: Straight Ahead Ministries. The mission of Straight Ahead Ministries is to empower Jesus Christ to transform the lives of juvenile offenders. Many of the young people who are in the juvenile prison system could be described as demon possessed. They are addicted to alcohol, drugs, and violence. They have no empathy for their victims and little or no sense of connection to society as a whole. Each of them is a Jared Loughner in the making. The vacuum inside these young people is often the result of a lack of solid, caring, supportive, and loving parenting. Another factor that is often missing is a church affiliation. Because there is nothing healthy in their core, their mind becomes filled with garbage. They take in the values of their materialistic and narcissistic society; they both want and feel they deserve anything they see. There is no conscience, no little voice inside them that would dissuade them from robbing a store, killing a member of another gang, or abusing someone sexually. This is why they are dangerous. This brings us to the point of our prison system. There are three purposes of our various institutions of incarceration. First, we need to be safe from people who are unwilling or unable to live within the code of laws and social norms of our society. 5
Second, we want offenders to be punished for what they have done. Third, we want to rehabilitate them. We want to send them back into society better human beings than when they entered the prison system. Something needs to happen to the offender when he/she is in our custody. This is particularly true of juvenile offenders, who are usually more amenable to rehabilitation than hardened criminals. We may need to teach them how to read and write. We may need to help them get a high school and hopefully even a college education. We need to give them job skills. We need to teach them how to resolve interpersonal conflict in a constructive manner. We need to give them counseling to help them heal from some of the painful experiences of their past. We need to help them learn empathy and compassion for others. We need to give them hope for the future. With regard to young people who are on drugs, even though we can wean them off the drugs while they are in lock-up, we are not filling the vacuum. We can t just try to drive out the demons that have possessed the juvenile or adult offender; we need to put something in its place. If we simply leave the house a little cleaner but basically empty, the demon will move back in. In fact, even more demons will move in and the state of the person will be worse than it was before. This is the genius of Straight Ahead Ministries. Straight Ahead Ministries knows that without something healthy inhabiting the center, something like a strong and healthy religious faith, something like a relationship with God through Christ, we are leaving a vacuum. As soon as these kids are released, the demons move back in. In the scripture lesson this morning, Jesus gives us a model for the treatment of both juvenile and adult offenders. He is also saying something about us. Too many of us have a vacuum in the center of our life. Even if this vacuum is filled by pleasure or material possessions, it is still an existential vacuum. If we are honest, we can see some of its symptoms in our lives and in our relationships. 6
When an infant is born, he/she is essentially empty. The infant does not have a moral code, a healthy moral compass that will guide him/her through complex life situations. The infant is not born with a healthy belief system, a belief in God and a belief that all people are children of God, the awareness that all people are our brothers and sisters. The infant does not know what it would mean to take on the mind and the heart of Jesus as a guide to behavior, as a guide to the living of his/her life. How is the child supposed to learn this? I don t think it will come from society, especially not from a society that is addicted to violence and materialism at the expense of any sort of moral code. It is asking a lot to place this burden on the child s parents. Be honest: how many parents read the Bible to their children, pray with their children, and teach their children the lessons of their faith? I think with most families this needs to come from the church. The church is where a child learns about the Bible, learns about God and Jesus. It is where the child begins to feel accepted and loved by God. The church is where a child becomes aware of what a Christian community looks like. The church is a place where the child can discover those beautiful feelings that arise during the experience of worship. It is where the child encounters mystery, and hopefully where the child learns that thinking and questioning, even doubting, is an essential part of growth. The church is a place where the child develops a sense of empathy for other people. It is where the child begins to reach out to little children in Africa or Haiti who have so little. All of these beautiful lessons may happen in some families, but I suspect they do not in most. This is why we have so many young people who are entering into adult life with a spiritual vacuum. During a baptism service, the parents of the child who is being baptized take vows. They vow to bring up their child in the faith. They promise to grow with the child in the faith. They promise to become an integral part of some church, supporting it with 7
their time, talent, and treasure, so that not only their child but also other children might benefit from being exposed to the saving message of the Christian gospel. This is also why we take vows as a church. We promise to support our church with our time, talent, and treasure so that a message, a belief system, a moral code, and a faith that is very important to us will be passed on to our children. We promise to provide a Sunday school and a confirmation class to guide the child s spiritual formation. But this can only work if the parents bring their child to the church. If they don t, the whole process breaks down. Matt and Kelly, you should try to protect Mason from the kind of garbage that can twist the soul of an impressionable and vulnerable young child. I am skeptical that you will be able to do this as fully as you would like. I think you need to make sure that Mason has within him what he needs to do battle with these demonic forces when he encounters them within his society or when they arise within himself. If you can do this, if we can do this together, then it won t matter what kind of garbage Mason is exposed to. There will be something very strong and healthy inside him to meet it, to do battle with these demons. I think this is what Jesus meant when he gave us this teaching. He warns us of the danger of a spiritual or existential vacuum. He tells us we need something strong enough inside us to do battle with the demons that threaten to possess us as individuals and as a society. He has not only warned us, however, he has given us something special to fill this vacuum. He has given us himself. If we place him in the center of our life, the demons will have no place to take up residence. In fact, we might even be able to heal them and also our society through the power of the Holy Spirit. A sermon preached by the Reverend Paul D. Sanderson The First Community Church of Southborough January 30, 2011 8