How many of us remember Flip Wilson, the comedian who used to sub for Johnny Carson when Johnny took vacations, and also had his own variety show for a while in the 1960s and 70s?

 

How many of us remember Geraldine?

 

Geraldine was a character he created who often got herself into sticky situations and every time someone called her to explain herself she answered the same way: “The Devil made me do it!” And we would laugh, but as is so often the case, I think it struck us as particularly funny, because we could see ourselves in her.

 

There are four words that can help us understand today’s Gospel – authority, accountability, blame and freedom.

 

To see how these terms are related to the meaning of our texts for today we need to start with a premise from today’s Gospel lesson. Jesus has authority to deliver us from all that is dark, and demonic, and deadly in the world. But what does this really mean?

 

Does it mean, as some people believe, that because Jesus has this authority, all believers should be healed of every illness all the time? And what does that mean? What if someone isn’t healed?

 

Does that mean there’s something wrong with that person?

 

Is it that maybe they have some unconfessed sin in their lives? Maybe some ancestral curse passed down through the generations that’s affecting them in a physical way?

 

And if it means these things, does it mean further that they haven’t believed well enough? That if they just confessed their sin, or the sins of their ancestors, or if they had a deep enough trust in the power of God to heal, or enough faith in the love of God and God’s desire to heal, that they’d be healed?

 

And if that’s the case, does that mean that no-one should ever die? I mean, that’s where we end up if we follow that course of logic, isn’t it?

 

I’ve got to tell you, I’ve have come up against it time and time again in deep and inane ways, this idea that since God in Christ both can and desires to heal those God loves, then, if you’re sick, and you don’t get healed, it must be your own fault – you must be the one to blame, for we certainly can’t, or at least don’t want to, blame God.

 

So you can see, then, how authority leads to accountability, and how this particular understanding of accountability leads to blame, especially if one tries to deal with the rich and deep truths of God as if they were simple formulas – do this, or don’t do that, and everything will always be good, and you’ll never have to struggle in life. But look, there are plenty of things that are dark, and demonic, and deadly in our world, like alcoholism, drug addiction, prejudice and hatred, fear, depression, jealousy and envy, loneliness and isolation,

materialism, the drive for and misuse of power, abuse of the weak and lowly, boredom, meaninglessness, cancer, crippling diseases, obesity, laziness, fear and doubt, and all manner of other illnesses in mind, body and spirit. You each know the demons you face in your own life.

 

But what God desires for us in Christ is that we’ll get beyond the human tendency to dwell on sin, beyond the simple making of excuses, like: “The Devil made me do it!” or any of the other ways in which we act as if we’re powerless over our own behavior, and that, instead, we’ll dwell on whatever is right, and good, and Godly. Perhaps we, as the people of God, are called to another way of living, to another way of dealing with the demons in our lives and in the lives of our sisters and brothers in Christ and in the life of the world.

 

 

Notice, in the Gospel today, that Jesus doesn’t condemn the man with the unclean spirit, he doesn’t rebuke the man, he doesn’t say: if you only had enough faith, or if you confessed the right sins, or if you believed the right stuff in the right way, then you wouldn’t have gotten yourself into this mess in the first place. In other words, Jesus doesn’t play the blame game that so many people play in his name. Jesus simply speaks to the situation, he addresses the unclean spirit itself and rebukes it and drives it out with authority. Jesus comes to the place of communal religious experience, and he brings a whole new kind of experience with him, and the people notice. They say: “What is this? A new teaching with authority!” Jesus doesn’t just stand over the man as he’s convulsing on the synagogue floor and tell him to stop convulsing. Jesus gets to the root of the issue. The screaming and convulsing are symptoms. The presence of the demon is the cause. So Jesus deals with the cause…

 

Now, I’ve come to believe that much of what we call evil in our world today, especially in terms of personal sins, or what we’d call sinful behavior, can really be traced to a sense of scarcity. What we’ve traditionally called the seven “cardinal” or seven “deadly” sins – pride, lust, sloth, envy, gluttony, anger and covetousness – can all be traced to a sense of scarcity in some area of life. Consider the person who is sad over being overweight who tries to find solace, to feed and fill that sense of scarcity by eating more. Or a person lacking in love, real or imagined, who tries to fill the void with meaningless physical encounters.

 

What we call evil, what we spend so much time judging others over can really come down to a sense of living in scarcity, when what God desires for each of us is that we would live in the fullness of God’s loving grace.

 

Consider the fruits of the Spirit – love, hope, faith, prudence, temperance, courage and justice – which are all about being abundantly full of God’s grace!

 

What God desires for each of us is that we would live in the kind of fullness that God’s people call “shalom” which means wholeness, in the fullness of what we call holiness.

 

But, then, we know that we can’t do this alone. We know that living apart from scarcity and above condemnation – we know that a life marked by this sort of real deliverance and deep healing only happens in community, as we experience union with God in Christ, and with one another, as we freely share God’s loving grace with one another. It’s only then that we move from the authority of Christ over all that is dark, and demonic, and deadly, not to a hurtful sense of accountability and blame anymore, but to the life-giving grace, and healing, and freedom that only comes through Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

May God make us to always be that kind of community for one another.

 

Amen.