dentists + demons
Happy Monday! It’s scripture text reflection day, and this week, the lectionary serves us up some DEMONS. But first, a question for you: I’m considering hosting a Lenten study over Zoom. It would be six weeks of small group study and conversation on Thursday evenings, from February 22 through March 28. I’m curious, though, is that something you’d be interested in joining ? Or, would you be interested but maybe another day would be better? Let me know - you can reply by email or leave a comment.
I hate going to the dentist. Like, bone-deep aversion kind of hate. My blood pressure spikes, my hands get sweaty and I start talking WAY too much, because I kind of assume that connecting with the dental technicians and the dentists will help them understand that I am a scared, vulnerable human being who needs their protection. (This usually works for me, btw, which I am almost certain is a function of my white lady medical privilege.)
I hate going to the dentist, but I straight up LOVE my actual, specific dentist. She saw me twelve times over the course of 2022, and every time she was calm, kind, competent and soothing. She healed me. I am seriously considering foregoing dental insurance altogether (because it is the health insurance version of Kohl’s Cash, anyway) so that I can keep seeing her even when I move to a new state later this year.
I realized when I went to the dentist last week that this dynamic - HATING going to the dentist but LOVING my actual, specific dentist - is sort of how I feel about humanity in general. I cannot stand humanity en masse, but I can, for the most part, find a way to really, genuinely love most humans in particular.
Separating the beautiful, beloved goodness of particular people from the horrendous, death-dealing systems that we get caught up in is the most difficult spiritual work I have ever had to do.
This week’s gospel passage - Mark 1:21-28 - helps me work out that knotty problem. It’s about demons. Well, there’s only one demon character in this scene, but that demon refers to itself as “US,” first-person plural, so, you know, maybe there ARE more?
Mark tells his gospel like he’s running out of time, hurtling toward his final breath. Everything happens “immediately,” and there is very little transition from one scene to the next. He can’t even be bothered with a nativity scene, just jumps right in with John the Baptist and Jesus’ adult baptism.
Jesus gets thrown into the wilderness and tested for 40 days, then calls his first disciples in the very next paragraph - “come, follow me,” and then they head to the synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus starts teaching. We’re barely 20 verses in, here, just five paragraphs and we’re already in the thick of it with Jesus and the disciples he’s just called to join him.
And there, in the synagogue, a man with an unclean spirit shows up and starts shouting at Jesus. “What are you gonna do with US, Jesus?! We know who you are, but what are you gonna do to us?!” Jesus says one single sentence (remember, Mark is invested in what literary critics call “propulsive plot”): “Be still and come out of there.” And the demon(s) scream(s), shake(s), and exits the man. Everyone is astounded, and Jesus’ fame starts to grow.
And, scene.
Nobody really knows how to talk about the demons in scripture today. In Jesus’ day, “unclean spirits” was kind of a catch-all for all sorts of things that, today, we’d categorize as mental illness, eccentricity, or, you know, syphilis (no, really). We have a lot more scientific and medical understanding of the things that cause people to act differently or unexpectedly, now. But even if we don’t always give credence to the existence of demons, the demonic is still alive and well.
Abuse, genocide, gun violence, systemic racism, economic structures built on exploitation, nations bent on power and greed: demonic forces are at work around the world. You don’t have to look very far to see the headlines about the unthinkable happening.
My own conviction is that every human being - every one - is created, beloved, and worthy of care, mercy and respect. I’m not fantastic at actually offering all of those to every person, but that is a bedrock conviction of what it means for me to follow Jesus. People are not evil. There is always the possibility of redemption and transformation. Yeah, even for that guy. Really, even him.
But if this is true, that every person is created, beloved and worthy of care, mercy and respect, then how do we explain all the horrendous, unimaginable violence and tragedy filling our feeds and ending the world as we know it day in and day out? I suspect that it is because we tiny humans get caught up in these webs of demonic forces, and struggle to find our way out.
That is not to absolve anybody of responsibility for their actions or remove accountability for what we choose to do and how we choose to live. But untangling ourselves from death-dealing systems can be very, very hard.
In my own life, I think about all the ways that I am tangled up in the demonic force of white supremacy, how hard it is to even begin to see it and how much harder it is to untangle myself (see: how I still leverage my white lady privilege to get taken care of at the dentist). It’s like when a necklace chain is knotted up and just when you think you’ve pulled the right snag to undo the whole mess, it knots right back up again - even worse, this time.
Matthew Myer-Boulton says that these demonic forces “move through the world as though possessed of a kind of cunning. They resist our best attempts to overcome them. And as we make those attempts, the experience can be less like figuring out an equation and more like wrestling with a beast.”
Which makes it all the more astounding that Jesus, upon encountering a person possessed, tangled up, totally captured by one of these demonic forces, simply says “be still,” and the demon DOES. Jesus just says, “get outta there!” And the demon exits, stage right.
That line, by the way, is the exact same thing Jesus says to the wind and sea when he’s out in the boat in the storm. “Be still.” And they do.
Jesus exorcising demons is a helpful image for me because it reminds me that the MAN, the PERSON that accosted Jesus, shouting and hissing and challenging him right there in the synagogue, in the middle of Jesus’ lecture, is still standing there after the demon gets cast out. The person - the created, beloved man who is worthy of care and mercy and respect - is left standing in the synagogue.
I bet he was dazed. I bet other folks had to help him out the door and to his house. I bet his family was weirded out, didn’t know what to do with him. I bet that guy’s life got turned upside down. Because he got healed.
Just like the dentist clearing out the rot from my teeth, squirting antibiotic into the roots and fixing the crown on over the gaping hole: healed.
I am not the rot in my teeth. The man with the unclean spirit was not a demoniac. We humans, caught up in systems of death and destruction and demonic forces are never completely co-opted. We can be healed. We can be exorcised. We can wrestle with the beasts and listen for Jesus’ simple command: be still. Come out.
And look: I’m not saying that I am good at remembering this truth. I have regularly had to chant silently to myself while on a call with someone I am very annoyed or angry with, “this is a child of god. this is a child of god. this is a child of god.” And it doesn’t always work. I’m caught up in plenty of demonic systems, myself.
But the reminder that Jesus doesn’t just heal broken bones and broken hearts but also exorcises demons from people’s very spirits…well, that’s helpful. It’s hopeful. It reminds me of the verse from that hymn: “and though the wrong seem oft so strong; God is the ruler, yet.”
I am interested in a lenten study. Will miss the 28th.
I’m down for a Lenten study!