The Man with the Unclean Spirit
Mark 1:21-28
I'm always being hard on priests or speakers who come to a tricky reading in the gospel and side-step it. So I'm going to try and practice what I preach and talk about the big fat elephant in this gospel: the man who was possessed by a demon.
The idea that spirits can enter and control a person is as old as civilization, and historical, biblical, and archeological evidence indicates its presence in diverse forms and in almost all cultures.
Belief in spirit possession and exorcism has been documented in Babylonia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Greece, India, Ceylon, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Tibet, Korea, New Guinea, Brazil, Columbia, Haiti, the United States, and throughout Europe. Although it’s not completely universal, with certain tribes in Philippines and Australia having no evidence of that sort of belief.*
‘Spiritus immundus’ (unclean or evil spirit), appears 21 times in the New Testament in the context of demonic possession. Exorcisms make up about a quarter of all of Jesus’s healings.
There was no language around mental health 2000 years ago; there's no account of Jesus healing someone's depression or anxiety. Therefore, someone with epilepsy, emotional trauma, schizophrenia or other psychosomatic (mind-body) ailments were sure to have been seen as symptoms of being oppressed by demons. We know now that trauma often imprints itself in the body, beyond where any words can reach. We see animals convulse and shake themselves after life threatening events, human beings also sometimes need to do that, to tremble, shake and shout. Some scientists view it as our nervous system’s signal to us that danger has passed. A certain amount of these possessions can surely be put down to a lack of insight at the time. However, I’m not sure about the reading today.
Certainly in the story in Matt. 8:28-34, the demons cast out by Jesus enter a herd of pigs, who then cast themselves off a cliff and die. It is hard to see how metaphorical demons could drive a herd of pigs to suicide; the reader is clearly meant to understand that the demons were objectively real and powerful. If the former were true, and there was a correlation between expressing bodily trauma and the animals in the local vicinity committing suicide, I think we'd know about it. I can't imagine having an emotional breakthrough in therapy and a flock of birds kamikaze dive-bombing the office window.
J.K. Rowling nailed it when she wrote that Voldemort’s greatest strength was that many people didn’t believe he existed. A good Irish priest, Fr. Pat Collins, who has a real grounding in psychology and is the authority on spiritual warfare in Ireland, says the devil is active in circulating the news of his own death. He’s only delighted to hide and be explained away in psychological terms.
Probably the most half-quoted scripture on record is John 10:10. Jesus didn’t say, ‘I have come so that you may have life and have it to the full and the shadow side of the human mind comes to kill, steal and destroy’. He distinctly says 'the thief'.
I'll finish us with Donal Neary, SJ's short reflection on the gospel:
“Jesus was very aware of the power of evil that can be around us. Jesus named the spirit, whatever that meant. This gave him power over the spirit. He knew evil when he met it and he overcame it, with love, power and with kindness for this man. In Jesus the good and the evil of the world met.”
One big evil in us is the ‘it’s mine’. We learn it from childhood. We take the plate of cakes or a packet of sweets and say "all mine". We normally get over this but not always. We need the conversion from ‘it’s mine’ to ‘it’s ours’. That’s the Christian way. The environment is not ours, but for us. We have no right to kill off livelihood all over the world for our paper, our oil and our greed. Any abuse of people is the ‘you are mine’ syndrome. Nobody owns anyone in this earth and we belong only to God in a free way.
Evil will never win out to the end. It has been conquered on the Cross, with love.
Somehow this man was possessed. Evil came into him and maybe it was not his fault. He left clean and whole, with a kindness in his heart he would never forget. The people were amazed not just at Jesus but at the change in the man after he met Him.
