Demons, Oil, & Atonement

Brad Sullivan

Proper 7, Year C
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Emmanuel, Houston
1 Kings 19:1-15a
Psalm 43
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

In both the old testament reading and the Gospel reading today, we have stories of spiritual warfare. In the reading from Kings, Elijah had just won a major victory for God against Jezebel and the prophets of Baal. Baal was a Canaanite deity, and Jezebel, wife of Ahab, king of Israel, Jezebel was uncompromising in her devotion to Baal. The fire and zeal she had for Baal dwarfed the devotion that the people of Israel at the time had for God.

Jezebel was killing off the prophets of the Lord, and finally, Elijah had a contest with the prophets of Ball to see whose God would win. Elijah called the people of Israel to watch the contest between God and Baal, represented by Elijah for God and 450 prophets of Baal. Baal’s prophets called repeatedly for him to come down and consume an offering by fire to absolutely no effect.

Then, Elijah called on God who immediately consumed with fire the offering, the wood, the stones and all of the water Elijah had pored on it. The people turned back to God and had the prophets of Baal killed. As a result, we get the story we heard today. Jezebel was going to have Elijah killed so Elijah fled and met God on the mountain.

The contest between God and Baal was spiritual warfare lived out physically through Elijah and the prophets of Baal. The spiritual and the physical were united in the conflict.

In the Gospel too, we have today a story of spiritual warfare. Jesus casts demons out of a man of Gerasa. This was not the first healing done by Jesus nor was it the first time he had cast out demons, but in today’s story, Jesus cast out not one demon, but many, and those many demons were called ‘Legion’. Well, a legion was a Roman military unit of several thousand soldiers. This military unit of demons had possessed a poor man from Gerasa. As far as he knew, when Jesus cast out the demons, he’d been healed. Hearing the story as told by Luke, however, we know there was more going on than a man being healed. Jesus was engaged in spiritual warfare with these demons, and like Elijah called on God in his battle with the prophets of Baal, there was no contest. The demons, even a legion of demons, had no power against Jesus.

Spiritual warfare was lived out in a very concrete and physical way in the contest between God and Baal and in the contest between Jesus and the legion of demons, and that spiritual warfare is still being lived out today. We talk about people fighting their inner demons, and we tend to mean people simply have struggles within themselves, and the stories of our faith tell us there truly are forces of darkness that assault us. An example of where I see the assaults of demons attacking humans is in the reaction of so many people to the oil leak in the Gulf.

I realize this is a touchy subject, and the fact that people are very upset is perfectly understandable. Folks are worried about jobs, worried about plant and animal life, worried about the economy. These are all justifiable concerns and worries. People’s anger and fear is totally understandable, and yet amidst all these worries and fears, there have been calls for murder. Folks have said that people from BP should kill themselves or that various politicians should kills themselves. Anger and frustration is one thing, but calls for murder and suicide, that’s something else entirely, perhaps even the influence of demons.

Demons have at times been personified as the darker aspects of humanity. That we become angry when tragedy strikes is understandable. That our anger can become so all consuming that we are blinded by it is perhaps us suffering from the attacks of demons. Perhaps at times we too, like the man from Gerasa whom Jesus healed, are assaulted by demons.

That’s part of why Jesus is our savior to drive away “Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God.” You may have noticed I was quoting from one of the renunciations in the baptismal covenant. The other two things we renounce are “the evil powers of this world” and “all sinful desires.” I would include vengeance, hatred, self-righteousness as sinful desires and evil powers.

So much of what I hear in the response to the oil leak in the Gulf is calls for vengeance. There are calls for restorative justice, for the making whole of those harmed by the oil leak, and those calls should be met, of course, but in the way so many of our calls for restoration are being made, it sounds an awful lot like we’re calling for retribution.

In the statements I’ve heard and in the way so many statements are made, it sounds as though some folks want BP to be destroyed as a company in retribution for the oil leak. Never mind the thousands of workers who would lose their jobs. Never mind everyone’s culpability in using oil. Anger, self-righteousness, hatred, vengeance seem to have blinded folks at times. These spiritual forces of wickedness seem to be taking full advantage of oil leak in the gulf so that once again, we find ourselves treating each other really terribly. Of course we need people to be accountable for their actions and to restore to wholeness when possible those harmed by their actions.

We also need forgiveness. We also need humility. We need healing from the assaults of the adversary that turn us against one another. We need to ask Jesus to fight the spiritual battle for us, to drive away Satan and the spiritual forces of wickedness so we can deal with the oil leak in the Gulf in a humane and way.

We’re not there yet. The oil leak in the Gulf is a tragic accident. Eventually, maybe, we’ll find out exactly what went wrong. In the meantime, however, it seems like as a society, we keep looking someone to blame, someone on whom to pin all of our anger. BP should have done this or the CEO should have done that. President Obama should do this or congress should have done that. People are looking for a scapegoat.

The concept of a scapegoat actually comes from Leviticus, chapter 16. According to Levitical law, every year, the people of Israel were to observe the Day of Atonement. On the day of Atonement the high priest would lay his hands on the head of a goat and lay all of the sins of the people onto that goat. Then they would release the goat into the wild, carrying away the sins of all the people. The scapegoat was the one let go to atone for the sins of the people.

So, the fact that we’re looking for a scapegoat actually makes a little bit of sense. It seems like we’re simply looking for someone to blame, but perhaps we’re looking for someone to atone for our sins. Lest any of us forget, all of us use oil. If we’ve ever been in a car, or used anything with plastic, or purchased just about anything that was shipped from one place to another, we’ve used oil.

When we first started used oil, we didn’t know it had any negative consequence for the earth. We just knew it was a great source of energy. Now, we are aware of the negative impact of petrochemicals on our environment, and yet our entire way of life is built around the use of oil. So, can we say our use of oil is sinful? Sure. Using it causes some harm to the planet. It’s unintentional sin. Again, we didn’t know the use of oil was harmful when we started using it, and now that we are aware of the harms, it’s going to take a long time to wean ourselves off or to change our way of life.

In the mean time, we’d be well served by stopping our search for a scapegoat. Whether we’re trying to lay all the blame and sins on BP, or the government, or anyone else, we need not look for a scapegoat to atone for our sins, because he already died for our sins a couple thousand years ago. Jesus is our scapegoat. He atoned for our sins in his death on the cross.

He was also raised from the dead to keep atoning for our sins, and he sent the Holy Spirit to be our advocate in the continued war against Satan, the Adversary. It’s interesting that in Jesus’ death and resurrection on the cross, the spiritual war was done. God won. Satan and the spiritual forces of wickedness lost. That doesn’t mean they don’t keep fighting. Futile as it is, the forces of darkness continue to assault us. Eventually, all will be made right. God will restore all things. God wins out over death, over sin. In the mean time, we do still see spiritual warfare going on. Whether through our reactions and the vitriol over the oil leak in the Gulf, or anything else over which we find ourselves in conflict, spiritual warfare continues to be fought in the way we treat one another.

Jesus fights the battles for us. He can drive out a legion of demons with one command. Jesus won the victory. Our response, our responsibility is to uphold the promises we make in baptism and to continue to renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God. Our joy is to continue to ask Jesus for help, to cast out the demons that assault us. Our gratitude and hope come in the atonement he made for our sins so that we can love one another, forgive one another, and stand together against the forces of darkness with him as our savior. Amen.