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The Rev. Mark H. Byers
January 28, 2006- Year B, 4 Epiphany
St. Ives’ Episcopal Church, Arlington, Va.

Remember the first two commandments? They run something like this:

1. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Here’s an ugly truth for you. The problem with idolatry, and Paul knew this, is not that the thing signified by the idol doesn’t exist. It’s that it isn’t what we think it is. Often, we speak of the “dumb idols” of pagans, or of the “false gods” that modern folks bow down to, of money and power and nationalism. And in saying these things, we seem to be saying that there is no reality beyond the image, that the power of these things is illusory, and that’s not true.

It’s certainly not, according to many scholars, what Paul is suggesting in our reading from 1 Corinthians. Paul knows the power and reality of these things. The “gods” of the pagans may actually exist, he explains, but they are not sovereign deities. He says, “Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth- as in fact there are many gods and many lords- yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist…

The commandments, too, don’t say that the things represented by idols aren’t real, or even things of actual power. They say that God is sovereign, and that God commands that we not worship other things than God.

The danger of denying the reality and power of idols and idolatry, and also of the things that are signified through them, is that we ourselves can become possessed by these things. Jesus walks into a synagogue, a place devoted to worship and teaching in the name of the very God who gave the commandments, and finds a man with an “unclean spirit.” It’s not fashionable to believe in such things now, but for people who believe in God, and who believe in angels, and who believe in eternal life, is it such a stretch to imagine there are beings that might exist beyond the ability of our normally operating five senses to detect? Personally, I do think that it is true that an actual spirit, whatever that might be, inhabited this person, and had power over him.

Jesus finds this man, possessed by an unclean spirit, in the power of that spirit. And the spirit recognizes who he is: “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.” Us. What have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us? There are two possibilities, as far as I can see. The first is that there is more than one spirit. The second is that the spirit refers also to the man it has taken over. I tend to lean toward this second explanation.

The spirit, in taking possession of the man, requires him, it appears, for continued existence and continued power. There is nothing left for such a being without someone to hold captive. The spirit even imagines that it has become essential to the continued life of the man himself. In other words, not only is the man necessary for the unclean spirit, but the unclean spirit is necessary for the man. Perhaps both of them think so. Certainly Jesus isn’t caught up in this delusion. “Be silent, and come out of him!” Speak no more lies about what it is that I’m about to do, not even to yourself, says Jesus.

So Jesus believed in and demonstrated the reality of powers that we can’t see. You may choose not to believe this story as it is written. Many suggest that it describes an instance of healing from a mental illness, or even epilepsy: That the man was not possessed at all, but rather, that he was infirm. It’s possible. That’s not what I think, but it’s possible.

One danger for us modern folks is that we think we’re smarter than or at least more knowledgeable than those who were our ancestors in faith. That is the trap of secular rationalism. Another danger for us is that we can still remain dangerously attached to rationalism, but use only scripture as its underpinning. That is the trap of biblical literalism or fundamentalism. Secular rationalism might go so far as to deny the existence of an entity inside this man, or deny the reality of what is signified by an idol. Fundamentalism would deny the very real threat of what lies beyond the idol, even if it acknowledges the reality of what was living within the man. It might suggest that the problem of idolatry is primarily that it is contrary to God’s commandment, rather than that God’s commandment reflects the truth that powers other than God subvert what God wants for his people, even among religious people.

Either place is a dangerous place to be. If I imagine that there is no real power other than human will or God, or that the only forces that oppose God are those of misguided humanity, then I allow those forces continued ability to inhabit their hosts and spread their lies unchecked by the full power of Jesus Christ. If I imagine that idolatry is a simple problem solved by strict adherence to religion, then I allow what lies beyond the idols simply to change form without changing their own reality.

Do you see what I mean by this last thing? The “idol” of National Socialism may have been the swastika. The temple of that idol may have been Nazi Germany and its high priest Adolf Hitler. But to deny that the evil reality that underlies all of that part of history transcends that period is to fall prey to the very thing that God’s commandment is trying to protect us from. Genocide, after all, was not invented by the Germans: it simply took on a new and chillingly industrial appearance. The lesson of the Holocaust and of National Socialism is not, as many of us have come to believe, that Germans were peculiarly susceptible to the wiles of totalitarianism and nationalism. The lesson is that every people and every time run the risk of falling into the possession of an unclean spirit if they do not cling first to the living God. And the lesson extends far beyond the easy, relatively black and white example I’ve given. Don’t believe me? Think that we’re immune because we live in this country? Ask most Native Americans what they think about someone of your great-great-grandfather’s generation in the U.S. cavalry. I’ll bet they have a bit different take on him than we might.

Life is, in the end, a choice between possessors: do we wish to be under the control of an unclean spirit, or of rampant nationalism, or of the half truths and distortions of unscrupulous leaders or an out of control, exploitative consumer culture? Or do we want to be the possessions of the only being we can trust to live within us with only our freedom and best interests in mind?

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