How Will We Be Known?

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, February 7, 2020, fifth Sunday after the Epiphany. “Tired Feet, Rested Souls” series.

      Texts: Isaiah 40:27-31, Mark 1:32-39

Let’s talk about demons. What comes up in you when you hear the word? Perhaps it’s an image from a story or movie. Perhaps it’s a feeling of fear or anxiety. Maybe it’s a particular person or group. Perhaps the word “demon” raises curiosity or maybe a description or explanation of what a demon is from previous study. I imagine that many will understand that things we now explain through medical science may very well have been called the work of demons in the 1st century. 

In verse 32 of our Gospel text, people bring to Jesus “those possessed with demons.” To be possessed is to be influenced or controlled by something. Demons—or fallen angels—are generally understood as spiritual beings who are against God, literally “anti-Christ.” The Greek word in verse 32 is daimonizomenous, meaning to fall under the power of a demon. So one way to think of demon possession is a person who willingly or unwillingly has a malevolent spirit in their lives in a way that controls or influences them. As a result, these persons do harm to themselves and others. I wonder what comes to mind as potential current examples or experiences of this… 

The same word daimonizomenous, can be translated “demonized.” Consider: to “fall under the power of a demon or fallen angel” may also be understood as a life owned, curtailed, damaged by anti-God beings outside the self (beings acting upon you, not within you). Hear the story with this way of translating the word: “That evening, at sundown, they brought to Jesus all who were sick or demonized…” Those who are “demonized” may have been named as evil, or worthy of contempt or blame. Why? Well, why are people demonized today? Because of who they are, what they look like, what they have, what they’ve done, what they’ve said. Scapegoating, blaming, tribal hatreds, prejudice, all of this is both ancient and ever new. Right now there’s a lot of demonization going on. I wager many if not most of us will have a person we could slap the word “demon” on right now. 

In any and all the ways we think about demon possession, make no mistake that it affects the whole of a person’s life. In the culture of Jesus’ time, both illness and daimonizomenous meant separation from community, exclusion, isolation, and often harsh treatment. 

For those who find the whole idea of “demons” hocus-pocusy or simply distasteful, let me suggest that you don’t have to buy in to the notion that there are angelic beings who serve Sauron or Voldemort or Satan in order to acknowledge that evil is real and a powerful force that affects human lives and relationships. Wherever it comes from, there are powers that take hold of humans and lead us to do terrible things. This is not to say that we have no culpability for the harms we commit—in “a devil made me do it,” get-out-of-jail-free-card kind of way. But it is to simply be honest about the forces that tempt us and that bind us.

Here’s a personal example. Over the years, I have grown increasingly aware of and angry about the way that as a white person I’ve been soaked in ways of perceiving, thinking, assuming, acting from the moment I was born—ways informed by white supremacy. 

And let’s pause a minute for some definition of what I’m talking about when I speak of “white supremacy.” (with thanks to Dr. Izetta Mobley for sharing her expertise and resources) “While most people associate white supremacy with extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, white supremacy is ever-present in our institutional and cultural assumptions that assign value, morality, goodness, and humanity to the white group while casting people and communities of color as worthless, immoral, bad, inhuman and ‘undeserving.’” Legendary scholar Barbara Smith writes, “Toxic as such belief