A sermon based on Matthew 12: 22-37
Preached by Charles J. Tomlin, DMin.
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership,
February 7th, 2021.
There is an old joke about Albert Einstein.
He was going around the country from university to university on the lecture circuit, giving lectures on his theory of relativity. He traveled by chauffeur-driven limousines.
One day, after they had been on the road for a while, Einstein’s chauffeur said to him, “Dr. Einstein, I’ve heard you deliver that lecture on relativity so many times that I’ll bet that I could deliver it myself.”
“Very well,” the good Doctor responded, “I’ll give you that opportunity tonight. The people at the university where I am to lecture have never seen me. Before we get there, I’ll put on your cap and uniform and you will introduce me as your chauffeur, and yourself as me. Then you can give the lecture.”
For a while that evening, everything went according to plan. The chauffeur delivered the lecture flawlessly. But as the lecture concluded, a professor in the audience rose and asked a complex question involving mathematical equations and formulas. The quick-thinking chauffeur replied, “Sir, the solution to that problem is so simple, I’m really surprised you’ve asked me to give it to you. Indeed, to prove to you just how simple it is, I’m going to ask my chauffeur to step forward and answer your question.”
Well, perhaps the theory of relativity is that simple. But even if it is, it sure took humanity a long time to come to explain and understand it. I’m certainly not going to try, whether it’s that simple or not.
No, today we’re going to learn about something that Jesus tried to make simple concerning the kingdom of God. However, in order to understand it, you must first learn something about demons. Yes, you heard me right. To appreciate the full message about the reality of God’s kingdom you must also learn something about casting out demons.
A DEMONIAC...BLIND AND MUTE
In our ‘kingdom’ passage from Matthew we read how Jesus cured a young man who was blind and mute. Many modern people read this story and reject it outright. Miracles of healing are difficult for some to appreciate with our current scientific perspective of how the world works. When you add demons to this story, we’ll that certainly ’takes the cake’.
So, how can a story about Jesus ’casting out demons’ fit into our modern worldview? And why would it be relevant for understanding the kingdom of God today?
The first thing we need to clarify is that works of physical healing are very essential to God’s kingdom. The kingdom isn’t simply a spiritual, religious, or emotional reality. The very first way Jesus introduced himself wasn’t as a preacher or teacher of spiritual wisdom, but he came as a healer, doing wondrous works of healing among the people.
Largely embarrassed by Jesus’ healing ministry, much modern Christianity of the last century tried to reinvent Jesus as only a teacher of great of wisdom. It was reasoned that was a better way to communicate Jesus’ way to modern people.
In more recent years, however, there has be a renewed appreciation of the biblical Jesus who cared as much about people’s physical needs of wellness as he did about people’s spiritual needs. And since this is how the gospels represent Jesus, it is now understood by most scholars that we aren’t preaching the whole gospel if we leave out this healing concern of God’s kingdom.
So, since God’s kingdom came near as much through miracles of healing as through preaching and teaching, how does this work of the kingdom relate to us, in a world where faith healings are rare or suspect, and most certainly not at our own command? And to complicate this, add to the question about healing the casting out of demons.
As most of us know, in the ancient world deformities and illnesses, like the disorder of this young man, were often understood to be demonic. Jewish religion in Jesus’ day had developed an extensive practice of exorcisms. It wasn’t considered sorcery, since that was strictly forbidden in God’s law. This practice went back to when young David played music to send away evil spirits that were pursuing King Saul.
The exorcism practice of ancient Judaism fit the worldview of that time and had both a medicinal and spiritual approach, as one ancient Jewish rabbi explained: ”Has an evil spirit never entered into you? Have you never seen a person into whom an evil spirit had entered? What should be done with one so affected? Take roots of herbs, burn them under him, and surround him with water, whereupon the spirit will flee" (Pesik., ed. Buber, 40a). R. Akiba (d. 132). (This reminds me of those old Dracula movies, where hanging cloves of garlic was supposed to kept away evil spirits and vampires too).
In an even more dramatic example from the ancient Jewish historian Josephus who died about 100 AD, we have this account of an actual exorcism: "I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal, in the presence of General Vespasian, his sons and his captains and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this: He put a ring that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down, immediately he abjured him to return into him no more, still making mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazar would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby let the spectators know that he had left the man; and when this was done the skill and wisdom of Solomon were shown very manifestly." Non biblical Jewish sources contend that in his latter years, King Solomon began to practice exorcisms, which was passed down to Rabbis and Pharisees in Jesus’ day.
These examples of exorcisms reminds us that the ancient way of understanding the world was very different than our own, but they were trying to solve real human problems; problems that presented challenges beyond their understanding. This led them to personalize these forces of derangement and destruction, in hope that they could spiritually and cleverly over power them and bring healing and hope.
What we must keep in mind, especially about the healings and exorcisms of of Jesus, is that Jesus worked within the common beliefs and familiar ways of his own world. Using these excepted and expected forms of exorcisms Jesus liberated, freed, and healed people from the both the fear and the destructive powers themselves.
Whether these Demons were real or imagined, they were instantly subdued by Jesus. Today, we still often personalize negative powers, but the truth is that God’s power has rendered them nonexistent. In short, because of Jesus, demons aren’t what they used to be.
In fact, in Jesus only one power rules; the hopeful, healing power of God. Also, in Jesus we see that when God works through humans to renew and redeem this disrupted and deranged world, the sick should be healed and the demonic like germs of illness should disappear. ’It is a matter of course,’ wrote theologian Jurgen Moltmann. Healing and Hope is what we should expect when Faith, Hope and Love are present. Like Jesus’ healings, all healings can be understood as ’miracles’ of the kingdom, whether they are ’miracles of science’ or ’miracles’ that even science can’t explain.
When I was a youth, I contemplated pursuing a career in the medical field, and during high school worked a couple of years as a hospital orderly and nursing assistant. I recall several instances where it was dramatically revealed to me that medicine and compassionate care had to work together to bring healing.
One day I was heard the head nurse call my name because a man who nearly lost his hand got out of his bed and was leaving the hospital because he’d just learned his mobile home was damaged in a fire. I ran out the door, caught up with him, and spent an our setting with him, calming him, and convincing him that he needed to stay in the hospital or he could lose his hand. He listened, and was calmed enough to return. That wholistic approach to medicine is why we called it ‘medical CARE.
So, even though our understanding of reality continues to change, and our healing approaches constantly change as well,, the priority of Jesus, being revealed in the kingdom he announced was the physical healing of human hurts which combines good faith, compassion and the medicine we know in any moment. Even before any spiritual message of repentance and forgiveness can be preach, the groundwork of the kingdom is to heal and to meet basic human physical needs. This healing, helpful work was, and still is, for the church today, the an important ‘key’ to the work and way of the kingdom.
WHEN THE PHARISEES HEARD THIS...
From God’s concern about physical healing, we now come to the heart of this story, displaying how it isn’t demons, but people who are the real threat to God’s healing and saving work.
By calling Jesus demonic the religious leaders were showing that they did not care about the healing. They are are more concerned about their own status and their treasured traditions than the young man’s need.
This is exactly where even true, good religious traditions can go wrong and Jesus had to address this because they were missing how Jesus is the ‘doorway’ into God’s kingdom.
In response to linking Jesus with the ‘prince of demons’, Jesus argued against their false spiritual logic. It was absurd to call Jesus demonic because this would mean that Satan is working against himself. If this were true, he reasoned, Satan’s kingdom would implode, but of course Satan isn’t in the healing business, God is.
Besides this, after Jesus reminds them how some of the Pharisees practice exorcisms too, the important point Jesus makes is about God’s kingdom. He tells them ‘If this ability to cast out demons and heal is ‘by the Spirit of God’, then they must acknowledge that ‘the kingdom ‘has come upon (them)’ (v.28). And if the kingdom has come, this implies, without saying it, that Jesus is who some say he is, ‘The son of David’ meaning, the Christ, the Messiah.
Thus, now the real problem is fully exposed. It’s unwillingness to acknowledge God’s Spirit at work in the person of Jesus Christ. This also means that not only is Jesus the one preaching the kingdom, Jesus is the one bringing the Kingdom, and Jesus is the King of this Kingdom.
To get this message across, Jesus speaks a brief parable about ‘plundering or stealing something from a strong man’s house. You don’t steal something from a big, strong guy, unless you’ve already over powered him and tied him up first. This Jesus implies, is exactly what he is doing when he heals and brings God’s kingdom, In a spiritual way, as he did in the wilderness, Jesus has tied up the ‘strong’ and dominating enemy of Israel, and humanity so God’s healing and saving work could be accomplished..
This is still a very important lesson in how the kingdom comes through Jesus Christ. Only when Satan is ‘tied up’ does Jesus bring the kingdom through both healing bodies and saving souls. If Satan is allowed to be strong and have free reign, the kingdom work slows, suffers, and as Jesus says here, the people ‘scatter’ rather rather than ‘gather’ together against the strong man on side of Jesus.
We see this to be true in life, don’t we. So much good can be done, if people ‘have a mind to work’, as Nehemiah put it. But ‘All it takes for evil to flourish, is that good people do nothing, said Edmund Burke.
That’s what Jesus is also lamenting here, when he says that people ‘scatter’ rather than ‘gather’ together with him, around a necessary concern for others.
This sad truth was expressed tragically by German pastor Martin Niemöller, after the rise of the very demonic Nazi, without much German opposition:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
What Niemöller understood, after the fact, not nefore, was that we are all in this life together, even when we have differences. We must not allow be strong and dictate how we treat each other. We must allow Jesus to guide us in everything we do. For only by tying up Satan’s strength can Jesus’ healing and saving power be released and God’s kingdom be present to us.
BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE SPIRIT
This brings us to conclude with the most sobering truth about human resistance to God’s kingdom. The kingdom can’t fully come for people who work or ‘speak against the Holy Spirit’.
Most fascinating is that Jesus isn’t at all concerned about being spoken against, but He clearly says that speaking or working against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin. This sin is unforgivable not because of God’s refusal, but because a person refuses to the connect with the spiritual power that brings them into God’s kingdom of forgiveness, opening the way for healing and saving.
Since the forgiving work of God can only be attested through the actions of the Spirit, if these aren’t recognized, then there is no means for God to forgive. God is Spirit, and so is His kingdom and his forgiveness. The one who does not accept His Spirit at work has made it impossible for themselves to recognize the forgiving word or work of God. One can only be forgiven when one confesses something that needs be forgiven and that is what the blasphemer will not do.’
Stanley Hauerwas has the final explanation Jesus’ warning::‘To be forgiven is to be gathered to Jesus. Not to be forgiven is to be scattered and lost in a world of the lost.’ Blasphemy against the Spirit is the denial, the refusal, to participate in the new world begun by the repentance made possible by the power bestowed by the Spirit on this man, Jesus.”
If we refuse him, the one on whom God’s Spirit rests, and through whom God’s Spirit speaks , there remains no other means to forgive or to save.
As a youth, one of my closest friends was my boss on a construction crew. He gave me the job. He picked me up and drove me to work everyday. He looked after me. He taught me the value of physical work. In many ways he was like a Father to me, but he wasn’t a Christian. He sometimes came to church with his wife. He respected my father greatly. He listened respectfully as we both tried time and time again to convince him to give his heart to Jesus. He never did. He would say nothing. He did nothing. It meant nothing. I never knew why.
One day, I got a call that he suffered a terrible stroke. He was in ICU at Baptist Hospital, and alert, but they did not expect him to live. I went to him and shared God’s Love once more, but even though he couldn’t move, his eyes said spoke to me refusal. There was nothing there, so I prayed for him and left him as if he was ‘lost in the land of the lost’.
I’ve never forgotten that moment. I will never understand how anyone can refuse pure love like that. I can’t understand why someone would reject the Spirits invitation to enter the kingdom. But Satan is still a strong man when we won’t tie him up. We tie him up by an openness to God’s voice.
Now, it’s too late for him, but I pray that the Spirit can get through to you. Amen.
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