A sermon preached for the 175th Anniversary of St. Stephen’s Church, Rochester Row, London, the link parish of Holy Trinity, Manhattan. The scripture readings are 1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a, Psalm 42 and 43, Galatians 3:23-29, and Luke 8:26-39.
It’s very good to be with you again at St. Stephen’s, especially for this anniversary celebration. I bring prayers and greetings from Holy Trinity where, last year, Father Graham was with us to celebrate our 125th Anniversary. The similarities in our parishes are striking. Both were founded through the vision of a strong socially minded woman, both were built to serve communities in need, both have formed faithful laypersons, religious, community organizations, charities, priests and bishops. And today, both are diverse and welcoming communities who seek to live out the love of Christ in a complicated world.
I have checked several times with Graham and Jessie, your Parish Administrator, to make sure I had the scripture readings right for today. I wondered if we might focus on the Eucharist and celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. That would have given us an easy sermon on partaking in the Body of Christ as we are transformed into the Body of Christ to feed the world. I thought you might also have been using readings for a Dedication Festival, as we could have given special thanks for Christ’s Body the Church, and recommitted ourselves to our ongoing fallible but faithful intentions.
But no. We have demons to discuss.
As I’ve been trying to deal with the demons, I’ve thought of a wonderful line from G. K. Chesterton’s “Father Brown.” We still get the Father Brown episodes and I’ve seen some of the new ones and most of the old ones several times over. Most of you know that Father Brown is a parish priest who is good at solving murders. Sometimes he seems to see into people’s souls so deeply that they wonder, (like people wondered about Jesus) how Father Brown can possibly know such dark thoughts and impulses. In one very revealing situation, the priest sees into the soul of a man so clearly that the man blurts out, “How do you know all this? … Are you a devil?” Father Brown responds, “I am a man,” … “and therefore have all devils in my heart.” (G.K. Chesterton, “The Hammer of God” in The Innocence of Father Brown.)
It’s tempting to think that the “devils,” the demonic, the evil forces of the world are outside, over there, consuming that person.
When there’s some horrible act of violence or terrorism, there’s a temptation to label it as “evil,” and explain it away as the work of the devil. When a parent neglects or abuses a child, the language of “evil” comes easily. Leaders who have no respect for humanity, show no mercy, and seem to be driven by nothing but profit and vainglory, seem to be possessed.
But Father Brown’s character reminds us of the deeper truth. That we, too, have devils in our heart, because we are human. But when we attribute people and events too quickly to “evil” or the “demonic,” we ignore aspects of our own community and culture that are complicit. And we can misunderstand the work of demons.
In today’s Gospel we have a sad story. A man is not in his right mind. He can’t keep his clothes on. He can’t keep up a household. He’s homeless, living near the tombs, probably in caves. People must have passed him by whenever they went that way, but they didn’t dare go close. He was scary, dangerous, and possessed by demons, after all.
Though we don’t know his name. We sort of know him. This man must have seemed to the Gerasenes like so many people appear to us today—those who live not in natural caves, but the caves made by overpasses, abandoned buildings, and alleys. Their problems seem overwhelming. Often, we do what we can. We say a prayer. We give an occasional dollar or two. We might buy a sandwich, but we wonder, “What’s to be done?” Is it a matter of public funding? Is it a matter of physical or mental healthcare? Is it a family problem? A demon would have us assume it’s the work only of that demon, and either blame the person, or blame the demon and go on our way. But the reality is much larger and more complex.
A little more than 175 years ago, Angela Burdett-Coutts and her friend Charles Dickens refused to accept what the society of their day relegated as “evil.” People spoke of Devil’s Acre, around Pye Street near the Abbey, and avoided it. Frederick Farrar, a canon at Westminster wrote about the poverty:
I think it would have been difficult to have found a spot more full of crime. The whole street drank hard while such plunder lasted. I received a message one day to administer Holy Communion to a dying girl in Pye Street. She was in the last stages of consumption, and her story was to the effect that her husband lived on her wages, which he forced her to obtain by a life of sin… She summed up her repentance in one sentence: “I have worked very hard, and I am very tired.”
And so, Dickens and Burdett-Coutts created Urania Cottage to give prostitutes a way forward, and in 1846 plans were made for a new church to be built that could honor Sir Francis Burdett, Angela’s father, and could serve as a center of faith, renewal, and new life to this area. Burdett-Coutts and Dickens, from different perspectives, understood that demons are usually not individual, but are fed by social and societal forces.
Walter Wink was an American theologian who wrote a lot about the way demons enter not only individuals, but also institutions and structures. Wink’s writing points out that one way the demonic works is by rigidly classifying those who are “in” and those who are “out.”
A reader and commentator on Wink, Jeffery John (retired dean of St. Albans) reflects on this idea as he points out, “The profundity of this miracle story [of the man with the demon] is shown in the fact that Jesus goes out to heal the very one…who is the symbol of the alien oppression…Jesus steps outside the territory of Israel into ‘unclean’ territory, heals the most untouchable of the untouchables, and makes him in effect his first apostle to the other Gentiles.” [The Meaning in the Miracles, Canterbury Press, 2001, p. 84-97]
A part of the healing is Jesus’s daring to go where others say it’s useless. Jesus is unwilling to be captive to the demons of prejudice, rumor, gossip, assumptions, or conventions. Jesus heals people throughout scripture by transgressing societal, cultural, or gender norms in order to bring a human touch, which is also the touch of God.
As the Letter to the Galatians reminds us, “In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
Demons are not always what they seem. Reading the scriptures closely, in some places it is clear to a modern health profession that a person in the Bible who was thought to be “demon possessed,” was epileptic. Leprosy was not caused by demons, but is what we now call Hansen’s disease, an infection caused by bacteria and curable through medication. Melancholia was thought to be from a demon. Homosexuality was (and sadly is still thought by some) thought to be caused by demons.
The real demonic is, and always has been, in the way that people are separated, kept in ignorance, and never allowed to question received information.
Demons make us overlook the details and only see the broad strokes.
Demons thrive on prejudice, ignorance, and scapegoating.
Demons love a fictional view of the past and refuse to take into consideration the reality of the present.
Demons lead us follow a dead god, while the way of Christ leads us to a Living God who continues to reveal.
Demons (perceived or real) can get us down.
We heard in our first reading how the demonic energy of Jezebel drove Elijah into a cave. He questions his calling, his purpose, his faith, and even his life. But God shows up in a new way, a different way, a quieter way.
Like Chesterton’s Father Brown, if we’re honest with ourselves we can begin to see the demons that are living within us and ask God to free us. We can ask God to exercise the demons that still live in our churches and institutions. Together, we can expose the demons that want us to live in fear and helplessness. We can face down the demons that blame particular ethnicities, or groups of people. And we can call out the demons that get lodged in our laws and our lawmakers.
On this day, we given thanks for the blessings of St. Stephen’s Parish, for all the many who have given of themselves faithfully and sacrificially through this place. And I invite you to recommit yourself to Christ at a deeper level.
Be clear about the demons within and ask Christ to tame them or take them away.
Be slow to dismiss others as demon-possessed and beyond hope.
And let us go again into the Devil’s Acres of our world to show and share the love of Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.