What are our Demons? How do we
slay them?
Let us pray.
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be
acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”[1] Amen.
My connection to CS Lewis
Ever since I was a boy, I have been a fan of Clive Staples
Lewis and his writings. Better known as
CS Lewis, a contemporary of JRR Tolkien and the other Inklings of the 20th
century British literature juggernaut, he looms large for Christianity to this
day. This devout atheist, turned
Christian apologist, has become among the foremost authors, for many to turn to,
in order to understand our shared faith.
My first encounter with Lewis, was through a pantomime play
that was a part of a supported arts program for the schools in the Syracuse
area as a boy. The group put on an
adaption of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which, thanks to some great teachers,
encouraged us to read the tale ourselves in Lewis’ original prose. And so, asking my parents, they got me the
first of the Chronicles of Narnia, and I devoured it. Not long after followed a reading of Prince
Caspian, the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Horse and His Boy, The Prince and
the Silver Chair, The Magician’s Nephew, and, of course, The Last Battle. The 7 Chronicles, were perfect for a boy who
was intrigued with history including knights and archers, still mystified by
magic, and loved the possibility of a make-believe place that one needed only
find the right apple tree to be whisked away to. While made explicit at the end of the Dawn
Treader, little did I put together that this was a long analogy for the story
of Christ, God, and his power to transform and perpetuate grace through and
with the world around us.
So it wasn’t until later in life, late in my high school
years, that I realized that Lewis was not first and foremost a children’s tale
author or a fantasy writer, but instead was a professor of medieval literature
and a thorough going Christian writer. The
first book I pulled in of what most call his apologetic works, was Mere
Christianity. This rather effective and
powerful work helps to provide a pathway from unbelief to belief in a way that
continues to echo for many people to this day.
Certainly, it must be said of Lewis, that he was a man of his Edwardian
context, fully complete with its rather masculine chauvinism and its heady
assumptions about the order of society.
But if you understand that, and appreciate the occasional foibles in the
context from which he wrote, his works just leap off the page and remain very
relevant to us. They are, perhaps, among
the best books to explain many of the core theologies we embrace as Christians
generally, but even more for those of an Anglican, Lutheran, and even Roman
Catholic persuasion.
“So what does Lewis have to do with today’s lessons?” you
are probably asking yourselves. And that
is certainly a valid question. There are
two of his works that are exceptionally helpful touchstones to help understand
the thrust of the lessons today. The
first, is “The Problem of Pain.” The
Second is “The Screwtape Letters.” If
you are familiar with one or both of these works, I hope to do them justice as
we proceed. If not, well, I hope to do
as my teachers in elementary school once did and encourage you to read them for
yourself (you will not be sorry you did).
The Problem of Pain
All powerful God? Why not end the
pain?
Let’s first start with our lesson from Isaiah and address
the proverbial elephant in the room. The
prophet lays out in no uncertain terms, a vision of God that is all knowing,
all seeing, and all powerful. Isaiah
states, “It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, …”[2] He goes on, “To whom, then, will you compare
me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these? He who brings
out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great
in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.”[3] Concluding with “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator
of the ends of the earth. He does not
faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”[4] Our God is indeed an awesome God!
But if this is true, if God is omnipotent, if God is
omniscient, if God is omnipresent, if God is omnibenevolent, and “God is love”[5],
how is there pain? How are there
demons? How can there be suffering in
this world? This is the conundrum that
inevitably has to be addressed in our faith.
It is the often insurmountable elephant that make people of all ages,
genders, nationalities, cultures, and more “loose faith” and call into question
everything. Yes, Isaiah, we hear you,
God is everything and anything. God is the
great “I AM who I AM”[6]. But if that is true, then how unconscionable
it must be to believe in a God that continues to allow pain and suffering and
disease and demons of all varieties to exist in creation. It’s downright unethical, false, and untrue
to say this is a God of love, if this God is all that Isaiah says he is, and this
God has not stopped evil and pain and all the ills of the world, that this God
so clearly, as Isaiah tells us, has the power to solve it all in a flash.
And this question, this accusation, is at the center of CS
Lewis’ book, the Problem of Pain[7]. Lewis knew well this question and all of the
arguments made to tear down God in this way, because he made them himself in
his years as a strident atheist. So, in
his text, Lewis takes this question head on and with vigor. To do so, he returns to the story we find in
Genesis chapter 3, and the fall of humanity.
Just to remind us all, this is the story of when our first parents ate
from “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”[8]
and fulfilled the prophesy that the serpent uttered to them that “God knows
that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil.”[9] Lewis explains that this story is a metaphor,
an allegory, that persists for all times and all places. He borrows heavily from St. Augustine’s
discussion of the doctrine of original sin[10],
in that we, thanks to this act, have an inward turning, a selfishness, or “concupiscence” [11],
that we have a hard time breaking free from and ultimately is the cause of the
suffering, pain, and evil in creation.
And Lewis goes on to highlight that all of this is because, even though
God is indeed the God Isaiah describes, he did not step in, he has not quelled
every pain, disease, and demon, because he also is the God that gave us “free
will”.
Free will is the blessing and curse
As Lewis, again borrowing from Augustine, explains it, God
created us in his image, we are, and fundamentally supposed to be, good. And we were created with perfect free will,
the ability to choose, because God loved us and still loves us, and wants us
not as slaves or servants but as friends[12]. Before the fall, we only knew this perfect
relationship, even as we had the power to choose otherwise. But by now knowing good from evil, the choice
is not so easy and we are rife with making bad choices. Paul, in his letter that we read from today’s
lectionary, helps make this clear. He
states that “[f]or if I do this of my own will, I have a wage, but if not of my
own will, I am entrusted with a commission.”[13] What Paul is getting at is that when we use
our “freedom of the will” the results are merely earthly. But if we submit to the will of God, we are
pulled into not only the earthly benefits, but the heavenly ones. Luther, for his part, rightly called out the
reality of our situation in his text “The Bondage of the Will”. Luther, in contrast with his interlocutor
Erasmus, acknowledged that this side of the Fall, any expression of “our will”
really is to be in rebellion to God and his perfect will. “Free will” is, in reality, anything but
freeing. The “gift” of the knowledge of
good and evil, is to fall into sin, over and over again. And while we are indeed baptized into the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are in constant need to
refresh that baptism through confession and forgiveness, the very thing we open
our weekly worship with. Free will is a
curse, in reality, when it comes to the things that matter most, us and our
relationship with God.
But why did God give us this not so “free will”? Again, he did so that we could love him as he
loves us, not as a demand, not as servants, but as friends, as requited
lovers. So, we live in a world of pain
and suffering, and evil and demons, not because God is impotent, or uncaring,
or immoral, or anything we might blame Him for.
No, the problem of pain is a creation of ours, because God empowered us
to love as he loves, to be free as he is free, but instead of giving up and
giving in to Him and his grace, we want control, we are selfish, we want our
will to pervade. God can and, when
asked, intervenes in the creation and with us, but he seeks not to impose his
will on us. So when we are choosing “not
God” and “not God’s way”, we are choosing other than the path of love and peace
and all the good that his power and might and knowledge and wisdom give
us. And that then brings us to the very
subject of demons, the very real demons we have in our midst, and the gospel
lesson for today.
Modern Demons
Demons, what are they?
Our gospel lesson from this week and last week speak about
Jesus and his casting out demons. Last
week, it was that “… there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,
and he cried out, ‘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.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be quiet and
come out of him!’ And the unclean
spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.”[14] This week we hear “[t]hat evening, at sunset,
they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons. And the whole city was gathered around the
door. And he cured many who were sick
with various diseases and cast out many demons, and he would not permit the
demons to speak, because they knew him.”[15]
We, living in an era of much advanced medical science, might
question the very existence of demons, but I am here to tell you they are very
much among us.
It is here that I now turn to the other work of CS Lewis
that I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, “The Screwtape Letters”. This work of allegorical fiction, if you are
not familiar, is a collection of letters between a senior demon named Screwtape
and his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter[16]. Terming the human subject of Wormwood’s
endeavors his “patient”, Screwtape advises Wormwood in all of the many ways he
can “inhabit” the patient in a devilish effort to corrupt and ultimately have
the patient turn from God entirely. And
what are the “demons” that Wormwood uses?
Ahh yes, sex, love, pride, envy, gluttony, war, religion, and much, much
more. In essence, as Lewis relays
through Uncle Screwtape, it’s all the vices we fall into over and over again as
humanity. And Screwtape makes it clear
that knowing better and being intelligent doesn’t prevent us from letting these
little demons in. As Screwtape offers, “...
the safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot,
without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."[17] And I think a simple perusal of our own
lives, never mind the news or what we see in our neighbors, bears truth to the
realities that these demons are no less present today than they were in Lewis’
time or any time in human history.
How do we slay them?
So the question then begs, how do we slay our demons? How to we solve the problem of pain we have
brought on ourselves? Paul, in our
second lesson starts to get at that answer.
He writes that “[f]or though I am free with respect to all, I have made
myself a slave to all, so that I might gain all the more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to
gain Jews. To those under the law I
became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I
might gain those under the law. To those
outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not outside God’s
law but am within Christ’s law) so that I might gain those outside the
law. To the weak I became weak, so that
I might gain the weak. I have become all
things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”[18] To expel the demons that inhabit us all too
often, we need to “put on Christ”[19]
in all his manifestations as the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord of our
devotion. We need to be weak for the
weak, we need to be bound for those that are bound, and we need to be “slave to
all” so that we are not slaves to sin.
This is precisely why the demons in our gospel stories are so petrified
by Jesus and his disciples. Because they
cannot inhabit them any longer with any foothold. If Christ is in us, we are no longer
ourselves, we are “… put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”[20] And that Spirit is the one that resides in
our very hearts, and writes the law of Christ there for eternity.
Conclusion, Eustace and his baptism
To conclude, I have one last thing to offer that helps me
think about our lessons today and how we deal with demons and suffering in our
lives. In CS Lewis’ chronicle, “The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, there is memorable scene that helps us bring
together baptism, pain, and becoming renewed after we have been inhabited by our
demons.
Eustace, one of the child characters in the story, is a
disagreeable sod of a child, who is only happy when he is causing others misery
through the first parts of the tale. And
the tale is one of sailing on a grand ship to far off lands, visiting islands
and mystical places along the way. On
one of the mystical islands they stop at, Eustace through his greed and spite,
starts to steal from a dragon’s treasure trove, only to be turned into a dragon
himself. Having slipped on a gold
bracelet in human form, when turned into a dragon, it pinched and chaffed at
his arm with great pain, such that he sought relief any way he could. After many attempts to solve this through his
own force or through other human means, he was visited by Aslan the Lion, who
is the God character in the Narnian universe.
Eustace resorted to trying to rip his very skin off, but it wasn’t until
Aslan told him that Aslan himself had to tear off the dragon skin, that he
finally would get relief, and be turned again into a boy. To describe this, Eustace recalled that,
“[t]he very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right to
my heart. And when he [Aslan] began
pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I had ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it
was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked a scab of a
sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but
it is such fun to see it coming away.”
“Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was tender
underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me in the water. It smarted like anything but only for a
moment. After that it became perfectly
delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the
pain had gone away from my arm.”[21]
To defeat our demons, we need to be willing to shed our
dragon skins, to give up our “free will” and give in to God’s will. When we do, life can become “perfectly
delicious” and the pain can recede from our lives and those around us.
Amen.
[1]
Psalm 19:14
[2]
Isaiah 40:22
[3]
Isaiah 40:25-26
[4]
Isaiah 40:28
[5]
1 John 4:8b or 1 John 4:16a
[6]
Exodus 3:14
[7]
Summary at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Pain
[8]
Genesis 2:17
[9]
Genesis 3:5
[10]
Cf. Confessions
[12]
Cf John 15:5
[13]
1 Cor. 9:17
[14]
Mark 1:23-26
[15]
Mark 1:32-34
[17]
Letter XII, The Screwtape Letters
[18]
1 Corinthians 9:19-23
[19]
Cf. Romans 13:14
[20]
1 Peter 3:18
[21]
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, pp 90-91
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