Thursday, March 15, 2012

Thursday, Week of 3 Lent

“But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20).

We spend a lot of time in Lent thinking about Jesus’ Passion, obviously, and also about the things he said – his instructions, the clues he gave about who he is and what was coming, the Sermon on the Mount and various other directives to his followers, parables illustrating how to live our lives. What has been less talked about so far are the acts Jesus did during his ministry.

While we tend to think of Jesus primarily as a teacher, and see him through the lens of Incarnation-Crucifixion-Resurrection-Ascension, it’s important to remember that the people who lived during his lifetime knew him very differently. While some undoubtedly thought of him as an important teacher, I have a hunch that he was primarily known as a powerful miracle worker.

The most well-known and important of his miracles are not his healings – though those are ubiquitous. They are his exorcisms.

Though exorcism and demonology have fallen out of favour in modern times, they are immensely important in Jesus’ ministry. Many times in the gospels, possessing demons are the first (and sometimes lone) voices speaking up about Jesus’ identity as Messiah. The demons recognize and proclaim him for who he is. We are presented with a picture of the world in which two ‘principalities’ are at war: heaven and hell, God and the devil, are battling it out for control. Jesus has immense power over the demonic and casts out demons using varied techniques which were familiar in the ancient world. (If anyone actually wants to read my insane paper on ritual exorcism in the gospel of Mark, give me a shout.)

Jesus pushes back the demonic and limits its power, and is thus recognized as an agent of God – his exorcisms are an important part of his ministry both because they establish his identity and because they reveal his nature. So it isn’t surprising that his sceptics would take aim at them. In this passage, Jesus is responding to claims that he casts out demons not by the power of God, but by the power of the devil (Lk 11:14-23). He answers these charges by saying that a house divided cannot stand: metaphysically, it is impossible for the forces of evil to be arrayed against themselves because only one set of battle lines can be drawn (11:17-19). Since only God’s power can be against the devil’s, Jesus obviously gets his power from God.

Here, we see the heart of Jesus’ ministry: the kingdom of God has come among us because Jesus manifests the power of God. There is no ministry of words or healings or exorcisms without this power. There is no birth or death or resurrection. Everything springs from the power and is enfolded in it. When we try to recognize Jesus, we know him by his acts of power, and we see the kingdom.

In our lives as Christians today we cannot forget that acts are important. We must have the courage and conviction to do acts of power through the power of God as Jesus has taught us. I’m not saying that we’re all called to cast out demons or heal the blind – though undoubtedly some of us are. But we are called to believe the manifest presence of the kingdom. We are called to live our lives in the power of God.  

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