By Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Markets, Fears, Demons and Sickness: Now for the Good News

Mark 1:21-28

Let me begin with some direct commentary on the text. In Mark 1 we read of Jesus driving an 'unclean spirit' out of a man. The demon confronts Jesus, trying to gain the upper hand by naming Jesus and forcing him to answer a question. Jesus rebukes the spirit, silencing it, demonstrating power over it and casting him out of the man possessed. There are a number of such stories in the Gospels, and when we liberal, progressive, post-Enlightenment, graduate-degree-possessing preachers make reference to them, we have a tendency to do so while holding our noses. We say something like this: 'Today we would describe the suffering man as being mentally ill'; or 'In Jesus' time people did not have the benefit of Western medicine, and not understanding chemical imbalances in the brain they explained away illness like schizophrenia in terms of the demon possession.'

Such comments have some truth in them, even if they are condescending to the world of the text. I have preached no small number of sermons like that myself. But I was wrong to. That kind of preaching, that kind of interpretation of Jesus' healing stories has served to dry out the Gospel, to remove much of its profound healing power. Today this preacher, despite having been well trained in historical criticism, in literary criticism, in demythologization, and in structuralist, functionalist, phenomenological and semiotic theories for interpreting stories like this one, is going to argue that there is indeed such a thing as spiritual healing and that our society (and our mainline churches) are greatly impoverished for having abandoned it. To work our way into this topic, allow me to tell you a story.

Some years ago, some friends and I were staying in a rustic cabin in the backwoods of Québec. In the heat of the afternoon, I took a canoe out onto the lake to practice solo paddling. At one point I leaned out to do a big sweep and felt a pop and a rip in my shoulder. By that night my shoulder was seized up and throbbing painfully. One friend offered to rub it out for me. Soon after he started the massage, he began to mumble to himself. With shock, I realized he was speaking in tongues - something with which I was definitely not comfortable. It was with even more astonishment that I felt an intense warmth pass through my shoulder and all the way down my arm. After a few minutes I was able to move my shoulder freely, and when I awoke the next morning it was as though it had never been injured.

Not knowing how to understand this episode, I tried my best to forget about it. Later, having studied about early Christianity, charismatic churches, shamanism, and spirit healing in tribal societies, and having had some encounters with both Pentecostal churches and the healing practices of indigenous people, I realized that many generations of Christians and most of the people who have lived in most of the societies in the history of humankind would have thought that my little experience in that cabin was rather mundane. Healings of this kind, in some instances much more dramatic, have happened over and over and over and over again.

Jesus' healing of the man in the synagogue was not the healing of a physical ailment, like my shoulder, however; it was the casting out of an 'unclean spirit'. How do we come to terms with that? Is it not better to just say that this is mental illness and leave it to the psychiatrists?

Allow me to make the following reflection. Anyone who has worked for a long time in one of the professions that offer psychological help will know that there are unseen forces and influences that lodge themselves in our people's minds and bodies and that make them sick. The voice of a parent or a teacher who has told a child over and over and over again, 'you are stupid, you are worthless, you are bad', gets lodged in the psyche and even the body of that child. As she grows, that lingering voice can easily become in her a 'demon' that works its evil, poisoning her soul and eventually her body. How much worse if that injurious adult is physically or sexually abusive? How much more powerful will be that demon?

And what happens when a multitude of voices combine to create a demon that possesses the minds and bodies of, not one person, but whole communities or whole societies? Last week in worship we celebrated the homiletics of hope coming from Barak Obama. But we also were warned about the multitude of voices that howl in fear, ever more intense since the economy went south in September. These voices of fear have risen in concert and have planted themselves in no small number of people making them tight and tense. If this tension remains imbedded, it will make those people sick. For some that chorus of voices will chant its gospel of fear for years, shaping their lives.

For others of us it's not the fear but the cynicism that gets us. It is easy to become cynical when we learn that at the end of 2008, even as the bailout packages are being designed, even as hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs, Wall St. workers are given $18.4 billion in annual bonuses. It is easy to become cynical when a finance minister can move from predicting no deficit to announcing a $32 billion deficit in such short order.

Ok, I've probably made you feel bad enough so that we'd better go back to Mark 1 for some medicine:

They were astounded with Jesus' teaching, for he taught as one having authority… Just then there was in the 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.

When does the unclean spirit inside the man announce its presence? When Jesus is teaching 'with authority' in a synagogue. Why would it do this? Why would the spirit speak out and make itself known? Because it can't stand Jesus teaching. It can't stand Jesus' truth-telling. Jesus' truth-telling is already driving out the demon. It makes a last-ditched effort to regain power over Jesus and fails.

What do we do with a story like this? I'd suggest that we get beyond the constraints of scientific materialism and admit to ourselves what so many societies have known: There is spiritual healing. There is spiritual power, which can be deployed against the influences that imbed themselves in us and make us sick.

Alright, we'd better get clear here about what I am saying, and what I am not saying. Am I advocating that we take up talking in tongues and make St. Andrew's a charismatic style church? No, but I am saying that we would benefit - and our health would benefit - by taking up some of the spiritual practices of the early Christians: joint prayer and meditation in small groups, for example.

Am I saying that western medicine is not that best way to respond to physical illness and that psychiatry should be replaced as the way to address mental illness? Absolutely not, but I am saying that our culture, like all cultures, misses a significant part of the picture and that the medical model needs to be supplemented with other models. When toxic ('unclean') voices become imbedded in a person, leading to depression, dysfunction, and anxiety, we may be able to help that person with prayer, yoga, tai chi or, if that person is an adolescent, some kind of structured mentorship and initiation.

Am I saying that calling upon the name of Jesus or repeating his teachings will automatically drive out all the voices of fear and cynicism that have imbedded themselves in our culture and our bodies? Am I saying that there is some magic in Jesus' sayings that can be evoked by reading them? Am I saying that, when you get sick it is because of a lack of faith? No, but I am saying that there is deep wisdom in his Gospel that can be drawn out by deep study of the gospels which applies them to our challenges today - political challenges, economic challenges, health challenges, and mental health challenges. I am saying that those who will benefit most from this study are those who undertake it themselves and don't rely entirely upon the Sunday morning teaching of the clergy. I am saying that those who undertake such study can make themselves healthier and make their communities healthier.

Now take a moment. Sit in the presence of a community that has gathered in Christ's name, to hear Christ's truth .... Breathe in the the solidarity, the Spirit that arises within a community so gathered .... Allow that Spirit to find the voices in you that need to be calmed. Allow that Spirit to find the places in you that need to be eased. Allow that Spirit to reassure the parts of you that have been touched with fear.