“He that is not with me is against me: and he that
gathereth not with me scattereth”
It is an intriguing and, to my mind, a terrifying Gospel. It signals the moment of the most intense kind of darkness in the Lenten journey, at least before the heart-rending darkness of Holy Week. And yet, there is a great good for us in the discovery of the “dark wood” of the soul, as it were, a light in the darkness. It is about awakening to the light of Christ without which we are simply in darkness and despair. It may be, like Dante, that we shall discover there “a great good” precisely through the darkness of the “dark wood” of the soul.
The Gospel shows us the picture, the terrifying picture, of the despairing soul. And what is at the center of that darkness and despair? Simply ourselves as divided against ourselves. Simply ourselves as presuming upon ourselves to fix ourselves and everything else around us. Simply ourselves, too, when we are buried in our own griefs and sorrows for that, too, is really all about us. The devil is in us when we forget about who we truly and fundamentally are in the sight of God. We become the enemies of God, our souls divided against ourselves because we are separated from God.
This is the great truth and insight of the great religions. Our humanity is radically incomplete without God. That basic insight is intensified in the Christian understanding; we are more than merely incomplete, we are destructive and dangerous to ourselves and to others. This is where Jesus’ stark words come fully into play. “He that is not with me is against me.” There is, we might say, no neutral ground, no place for indifference. It is a matter of being with God or being against God. Without God there is simply a great emptiness within the human soul, a God-shaped hole, we might say, in our very being.
In the Gospel, Jesus is accused of being in the company of Beelzebul, the prince of the devils. His good is called evil – he has just cast out a demon and the dumb has been made to speak. He points out the logical contradiction of the accusation: “every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against itself falleth.” Satan is the archetype of contradiction, the creature who denies his creatureliness; Lucifer (to use one of the names for Satan) means light bearer but Lucifer denies the Light and the vocation of his very being. In turning away from the light he is in darkness. Such is the contradiction of all evil. It depends entirely upon what it rejects and denies. It exists in contradiction to God and to the goodness of his truth and light. Satan is in contradiction with himself precisely in his opposition to God; he is the creature who denies the Creator.
And so, too, are we like that. The struggles of life are the struggles of good and evil where the power of the good outweighs the evil. We may know this or we may not but the issue is about bringing that truth and insight to bear upon our lives; “walk[ing] in love,” as St. Paul puts it, means “walk[ing] as children of light,” the fruit of which light is found “in all goodness, and righteousness and truth,” the very qualities that the darkness of evil denies. To be with Christ is to be gathered into the fellowship of “all goodness, and righteousness and truth” but if we are not with him, our souls are scattered and lost. Lost in ourselves, because we are not with Christ.
The Collect picks up on a theme drawn from the Psalms and the Gospel. “The right hand of the Lord is exalted:/ the right hand of the Lord bringeth mighty things to pass” as the Psalmist puts it (Ps.18.16). The Gospel heightens the sense of divine power. Jesus speaks about casting out devils “by the finger of God.” What a wonderful image! Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome depicts the extended finger of God reaching across the abyss of time to Adam. Did he get that idea from this Gospel story where Jesus speaks about the finger grace of God, as it were? The point is that the great creative act is not a labour exactly but a grace, the grace of God which calls the world into being and our humanity into existence. Michelangelo’s seemingly casual, almost effortless gesture of the divine finger reaching out to Adam, to our humanity, reminds us of the deep connection between creation and redemption and of the power of the grace of God. In Jesus we see the power of the seeming effortless finger grace of God that casts out demons.
Including the demons of our own souls in the presumption of ourselves or in the despair about ourselves. They come to pretty much the same thing. In either case we are not with God and thus the clear sense in which we are against God.
We are scattered in the imagination of our hearts and souls. Christ would gather us to himself. He is the only one who can bring good out of evil, even out of the evil of ourselves, but we have to want to be with him. That is the very idea that informs the Lenten pilgrimage of our lives. It matters that we are with him and he with us. Without him we are lost, lost in the darkness of ourselves. This Gospel shows us the darkness to call us to the Light.
“He that is not with me is against me: and he that
gathereth not with me scattereth”
Fr. David Curry
Lent III, HC, 2013