From Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein” to The Nightmare on Elm Street’s “Freddy;” from Friday the Thirteenth’s “Jason” to Stephanie Meier’s vampire “Voltaire”, we are always creating new monsters. Why are we constantly on the lookout for bigger, scarier “bumps in the night?” Why do we keep making up monsters that are so elaborate and extraordinary, so super-powered and immortal?
Maybe we need our monsters to be as unlike ourselves as possible so that we can ignore the presence of the real monsters that possess us . . . from the inside out.
Demonology isn’t something we talk about much less study anymore. But we can’t escape talking about demon possession after reading a text like today’s gospel lesson.
The “Geresene demoniac” is a classic “monster.” He is nothing like the “normal” people in his community. He runs around naked. He is “out of his mind.” He is strong enough to break out of any chains and shackles. He can escape from any prison that his neighbors build to contain him. He lives in the graveyard. He spends his life ranting and raving among the tombs, living with the dead.
Yet he is NOT a monster. He is just a man. A man possessed by a “legion” of demons, but a human being nonetheless. Once Jesus calls out the unclean spirits from him, the man is restored physically and spiritually to his full humanity. Having been healed by Jesus the man joyfully proclaims “how much Jesus had done for him” to all his neighbors, even “throughout the city.”
This is someone who was never “a monster.” But he had been a man possessed.
Think “demon possession” is a relic of a pre-scientific age when mental and physical illnesses were attributed to evil spirits? The fact is we live in a culture that suffers from a “legion” of possessing spirits, as toxic and traumatic as those that came raging forth from the Geresene demoniac.
The spew from one of our most destructive demons is even now washing up in greasy globs all along the coastlines in the Gulf of Mexico.
We are possessed by a life style lubricated by more and more oil. We will do anything to keep the grease coming.
We are possessed by a greed that puts profits before protecting people and the planet.
We are possessed by an insatiable desire for “more stuff” — and the cost of that “stuff” is increasingly deadly.
When Jesus banished the evil spirits from the Gerasene demoniac, he filled the man with a new identity and a new mission. Long before Saul became Paul on the Damascus Road, Jesus had sent a missionary to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles. Because the healed man felt God’s power and presence so fully in the person of Jesus, he became a new person in Christ.
We are no different from that Gerasene demoniac. We are all possessed by demons. Maybe your demon comes in a bottle. Maybe your demon comes on a card table or a food table or a one-armed bandit. Maybe your demon comes in a shopping mall or a porn site. This is a culture haunted by demon possession.
Paul Johnson is an English Catholic historian and journalist. He is famous for taking subjects like “The Papacy” or “Ireland” or “The Renaissance” or “Christianity” or “The Holocaust” and writing big books on them. Recently he wrote a biography of Jesus in which he professes to have found a new set of “Ten Commandments.” In his book Jesus, A Biography from a Believer (London: Viking Penguin, 2010), Johnson outlines these new commandments and suggests they are the means by which we can live transformed lives and transform our communities.
In fact, Johnson portrays following Jesus as following Jesus’ new Ten Commandments, which enables his spirit and power to banish all the demonic possessions that seek to torment and terrorize us.
So here they are: not the Mosaic “Ten Commandments” that came from a mountain, but the Messiah’s “Ten Commandments” that came from a cross.
1) Be Yourself
Johnson says that Jesus released into the bloodstream of human history the notion that “each of us must develop a true personality.” Being “yourself” means becoming aware of your unrepeatable, irreplaceable existence as an intimate and precious part of God’s creation.
None of us are the product of some genetic Cuisinart. Each one of us is a child of God, unique and uniquely gifted.
And incomplete. Only when we return to our Creator, when we reconnect our soul to its source, that we can be whole.
2) Love the World by Loving Your Neighbor
The only way to the universal is through the particular.
Jesus preached almost exclusively to the small Jewish community in Galilee. Yet he preached to the whole world. His message is universal because it is particular. Jesus radically redefined one very common word: “neighbor.” It is our challenge to see that we are all neighbors, that we have a neighbor connection to every other human being on earth.
3) Learn From Everyone:
We are all equal in God’s eyes. We are all created equal, but we are not all equally created.
Jesus liked to shake up his disciples by preaching what seemed like downward mobility, “The first shall be last, the last shall be first” (Matthew 19:30). But what Jesus was trying to shake loose was a sense of superiority, of “special giftedness,” that would make some believe they were “better” than others. We are “specially gifted,” each and every one of us. Our “gifts” are not equal — some are musicians, some poets, some physicians, some nurturers, some adventurers, some managers, some bridge builders, some bridge burners. But we are all specially gifted by God’s spirit. Recognizing and celebrating the equality of our inequalities is the third commandment.
4) Love Always and in Every Circumstance
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection demonstrated perfectly that love is always a verb. The only way to show love is in action.
If “love” is the motivating energy behind every action you take, whether it is cooking a meal, working two jobs to make ends meet, spending time in prayer, or spending time at play, then your actions will nurture more love.
The more love you pour out, the more love you will have to pour forth. Love is the greatest and most perfectly renewable resource we have access to in our lives.
5) Be Merciful
“Mercy” is one of the most original and revolutionary notions ever introduced into the course of human history. And mercy comes from the Hebrew prophets and Jesus.
We must show mercy, because of the miraculous mercy God has shown us. The other name for “mercy” is “grace.” God’s grace brought Jesus into the world; God’s grace raised Jesus from the grave. Like Love, mercy defies all laws of supply and demand. It is another unmeasurable entity. There can never be an excess of mercy, and yet the smallest amount is supremely enough.
6) Live Surround Sound:
Paul Johnson calls this “balance,” based on the metaphor not of scales but of someone walking without falling over. Jesus did not just teeter on some mid-line between extremes. He lived a life that engaged multiple experiences at the same time and brought extremes together.
In Jesus’ public ministry he preached to thousands and was crushed by crowds. Yet he also wandered off to mountaintops and sought silence and solitude in prayer. He offered a rich spread of spiritual nourishment to those who listened to his words, but he didn’t forget to feed hungry stomachs. He spoke the most enduring words, painted new worlds of possibility with his images and metaphors. Yet he also spoke in and through silence.
We follow Jesus’ example when we listen to life in stereo, receive multiple messages and process multiple lines of communication. There is never just one voice we need to hear. You cannot hear the voice of Christ without heeding the voice of the Scripture and being open to receive the voice of the Spirit. There is never just one side to a story. It takes four gospels to tell the Jesus story.
7) Learn A Living:
The word “disciple” can also be translated as “learner.” We are called to be lifetime-learners. It was those with closed minds, who had nothing more to learn, who found Jesus to be an enemy and who ultimately condemned him.
Jesus embodied “light” and when doors and minds are closed there is no light. The work of God is ongoing, ever unfolding, and disciples are “learners” or those who can recognize and celebrate the most recent presence of the divine spirit in our midst.
Every person you meet has something to teach you.
8) Truth is Black and Green
Jesus celebrated “truth” as the essence of God’s presence in humanity. But when Jesus preached he found some of the most accessible examples of “truth” to be in nature.
Creation is God’s physical expression of truth. Again and again Jesus reached into the fields and forests, into the nests of birds and the sprouting of seeds, to bring examples of the “truth” to his disciples.
Truth is “black,” it is found in the inked words of scripture which we treasure and learn. But truth is also “green.” Truth is found in the relationship between creation and the Creator, the smallest sparrow, the tiny mustard seed, the wheat and weeds. Disciples must honor the “truth” as it is found in scripture, in the “black,” but also as “truth” is found in nature, in the “green.” To disdain and disrespect nature is to disdain and disrespect the truth of God.
9) Trust the Spirit: The Power of Force is Farce
In Jesus the ultimate in power and the ultimate expression of powerlessness came together. God Incarnate put to death on a cross. “It is not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord (Zechariah 4:6).
10. Show Courage:
The courage Jesus showed was not just the courage of resistance. It was the courage of endurance.
There will be some of us who may be called upon to show the courage of resistance, taking definitive, costly action, in order to stand up for justice, mercy, truth, and love. But every single one of us will find it necessary to offer the courage of endurance throughout our lives. The easiest way for evil to win is not through bombs or bullets, but through the slow erosion of commitment and courage to stand against the current.
Want to exorcize demons? Need to be dispossessed of your possessions? Here are Jesus’ Ten Commandments that have revolutionized how humans live, and have exorcized the demons that threaten to destroy us.
1) Be Yourself
2) Love the World by Loving Your Neighbor
3) Learn from Everyone
4) Love Always
5) Be Merciful
6) Live Surround Sound
7) Learn a Living
8) Trust is Black and Green
9) Trust the Spirit: Force is a Farce
10) Show Courage