by CCW | 7 March 2010 17:04
It is, to my mind, the darkest moment in the journey of Lent, at least before the dark intensities of Holy Week. Not only are we still in the company of demons and devils but that sense of struggle against the spiritual forces of evil has become intensified in the strongest way possible. Jesus, who in the gospel performs a double healing, at once exorcising a devil and making one who was dumb to speak, is accused of being in cahoots with Beelzebul, the prince of the devils. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems. Doing good he is accused of being evil. He is accused, actually, of being demonically possessed.
What is good is called evil. It is the perfect picture of sin and evil really. Nothing in themselves, sin and evil are privations of what is good and true. The interchange between Jesus and his detractors here is most instructive. He reminds them about Beelzebul, an ancient name for the devil, a name which literally means “the Lord of the Dwelling” but which can also mean, “Lord of the Flies”, suggesting death and decay. Lord of the Flies, of course, is the title of a famous novel by William Golding, a novel written in the period of the cold war which examines “the darkness of man’s heart.”
Some accuse him; others want more signs and wonders from him, “tempting him,” as the gospel so tellingly puts it. Jesus’ “knowing their thoughts,” Luke tells us, points out the obvious contradiction. He plays upon the name of Beelzebul, with its suggested cognates of kingdom and house, to show the folly of their accusation and the consequences of their rejection. A kingdom, Baal or Beel, “divided against itself is brought to desolation”. A house, Zebul or Zebulon, “divided against itself falleth”. If Satan who is Beelzebul, the Lord of the house of rebellion, is divided against himself, how can he stand?
How can he stand, let alone, how can he cast out demons? He stands but only as upon that which he denies. He is a standing contradiction. Satan is the spirit of contradiction and rebellion, the spirit of the refusal to acknowledge the truth and goodness of God, the refusal to honour his own derivation. He defines himself in antagonism towards the known truth of God. But the fact of his denial of God cannot negate the fact of his creation. He simply exists in the contradiction of depending upon the God whom he denies. Such is utter futility. Such is the devil. Such, too, is the darkness of our own hearts.
We are no strangers to darkness and despair. At issue is how we face them. T.S. Eliot in his famous poem Ash Wednesday captures what has been the recurring motif of the dark side of modernity. “Because I do not hope to turn again.” A kind of mantra, it expresses a profound sense of unease, a sense of hopelessness and uncertainty.
The poem opens with this sense of hopelessness – despair – a denial of espoir, hope. But it also signals another aspect to despair, namely, the death of desire, the dying of love in us. And yet, by the last section of the poem, the line has shifted ever so slightly and yet, ever so significantly: “Although I do not hope to turn again”. The poem actually ends with a prayer, “And let my cry come unto thee”. Hope, over and against even the denials of hope, ultimately cries out in prayer.
There is, finally, at the very least, a sense of the possibilities of turning, of a metanoia, the repentance which signals transformation. The Scriptures are much more emphatic about such possibilities of transformation. “Ye were once darkness but now ye are light” Paul tells the Ephesians, but light only “in the Lord”, light only in the one who is the very “light of light”, the very light of God, who gives his life to be our life. The light is Christ. He is the one who casts out the demons of our souls and fills us with the light of his truth. He is the cause of the casting out of demons and of making the dumb to speak.
In a lovely image we grasp the wonderful sense of the power of God over and against the vain pretensions of our humanity. The mere “finger of God” is enough to overturn the wicked follies of man. By it you know that “the kingdom of God hath come upon you,” Jesus says. “The right hand of the Lord hath the preeminence,” sings the Psalmist. “Stretch forth thy right hand,” pleads the Collect. “The finger of God” shall suffice, says Jesus. That finger is stronger than any strong man armed.
The Holy Spirit is the indwelling Spirit of the love of the Father and the Son. Where that Spirit dwells, there can be no place for demons. They are cast out by the finger grace of God. Yet Jesus is not content to leave things at this pass. There is more at stake in this business of Lent than simply cleansing the soul. There is more involved than just chasing out the demons of the soul’s disorder and disarray. What’s the point if our souls only remain barren and desolate, if our souls only become some sort of empty space, a kind of vacuum land, as it were, totally devoid of purpose? There is no point at all, surely, if we simply become a desert within. For then we are in danger of a greater possession, a sevenfold possession, having despaired altogether, it seems, of the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of wisdom and understanding, the gifts of counsel and might, the gifts of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the gift of reverence.
Christ knows the greater dangers of our disillusionment, how our sense of the seeming endlessness of one thing after another leads us to deny that there is anything absolute, that there is any purpose or any purpose that can be known. To the contrary, he would make that purpose known even in the midst of the experience of desolation and despair. Ultimately it belongs to the darkest moment of the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me.” But the point of the finger grace of God here is not to leave us empty and desolate, but to fill us with the grace of God.
It would place us in the company of Christ, hearing the Word of God and keeping it. He who cast out the demons of sin would fill us with his grace. He is the absolute goodness of God, the antidote to despair. All purpose is to be found in him.
For centuries this gospel story was extended to include what immediately follows, namely, a voice crying from the crowd, a voice of a woman calling out to Jesus in praise. She says, “blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck”. Jesus’ response, too, is most intriguing. It has often been misunderstood, I think, as a kind of rebuke. He says, “Yea, blessed rather are they that hear the word of God and keep it.” He isn’t denying her insight and her honouring of his maternal and human origins, his mother, Mary, as it were. Rather he is pointing out the purpose of his Incarnation. Rather than being in the company of demons who deny the goodness of God, we are to be in the company of those who “hear the word of God and keep it”. That means, of course, attending to the word which overcomes our rejections and refusals of that word.
It is in this sense that the gospel complements the epistle. Paul, in Ephesians, is reminding us of the radical uniqueness of Christ who has given himself for us, “an offering and a sacrifice for God,” as he says. In Christ, we need not keep fellowship with the forces of darkness but rather with the company of the faithful who are those who seek the word and the truth of God, hearing and keeping his Word. That is the project of our lives, concentrated for us in Lent but certainly the real meaning and struggle of our world and day. Ours is the culture of empty souls and empty churches, and, yet, here is the counter to our emptiness, if we will “hear the word of God and keep it”, which is to say, honour and strive to live it.
Darkness and light. We are reminded of the darkness of our hearts but we are reminded of the one who overcomes the darkness of sin and ignorance. In Christ we are “light in the Lord” and therefore must “walk as children of light.” In the contemplation of the darkest moments of human despair, we just may discover the light of Christ.
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church in the Hall
Lent 3, March 7th, 2010
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