Encounters with the Dark Side

Mark 1:21-28

Jesus’s kingdom campaign begins with baptism (as does ours). With the four fishermen called to be disciples, Jesus crossed all kinds of boundaries, encountering as he went the sick, the outcasts, and those disenfranchised by the kingdoms of this world. Those considered unclean by the religious authorities, such as the leper, the paralyzed man and the publican were individuals in need of healing to Jesus. Without so much as a blink, he invited them to partake of his healing presence, the gift of grace that is God’s to bestow and ours to receive.

Illness then was blamed on demons. As I reflected on the outcasts labeled as demon possessed in the Markan account, I thought about the dark side of the force in George Lucas fictional series, Star Wars. The dark side of the Force is a fictional moral, philosophical, metaphorical and psychic universe. The force is a mystical energy permeating the Star Wars galaxy. The dark side depicts the general concept of evil. Through the characters in the series, we get the impression that all strong emotions (positive and negative) but especially the negative emotions of anger, anxiety, jealousy, and greed cause a person to seek power by dishonorable means. Lust for power leads them to self-aggrandizing schemes which must be countered by the force of good, represented by the Jedi, those who know temptation, who recognize the dark side as evil. With characteristics of restraint, patience, resilience, tolerance, compassion the Jedi overcome evil with good. 

The first mention of the dark side is from Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi when he explains the Force to Luke Skywalker. He describes a former pupil, Darth Vader as talented but seduced by the dark side of the Force. In The Empire Strikes Back, the power of the dark side is evident. Yoda tells Luke that fear and anger will pull him to the dark side and there is no turning back from the dark path.

In Return of the Jedi, Luke gets perilously close to crossing over to the dark side in a duel with Vader. Losing his temper, Luke uses hate and rage which are dark side traits in an attempt to kill Vader. At the last moment, Luke regains self-control and resists the temptation, drawing back from evil.

When we read that Jesus cast out demons are we so far removed from the ancient world in which he lived and healed that we can’t relate?  Mark’s account of healing is ancient history and quite different from our contemporary account of illness. We know about bacteria, fungi, viruses and genetics! We have diagnostic tests, clinical therapy, sophisticated functional MNR machines, genetic sequences that identify the mutations that make us sick. Certainly it is true that our ideas about causes and cures of illness today are vastly different from those in the Markan community.  EXCEPT for the fear and isolation illness causes us even in our sophisticated technological generation.

Here is the common ground if we are open to seeing it: our experience of illness and that of those we love feels demonic at times. When we are sick, we feel isolated, cut off from family and friends, surrounded by strangers at the bedside. When we are standing helplessly beside the bedside of a loved one who is fighting his or her way through chemotherapy, surgery, psychotherapy, seeking healing and a return to wholeness and we are powerless to reverse the effects of disease or therapy we feel the dark side of nature. In the battle with sickness, physical and mental, we become marginalized from family, community, work and we may from time to time feel cut off from God. What more could evil, the dark side or the idea of a demon mean than to reduce us to our elemental natures, alone, suffering, in pain, waiting for someone to heal us.

This is the good news in Mark: the healing power of Jesus is present for those marginalized by their illness. Mark’s gospel emphasizes Jesus’s healing ministry more than any of the other gospel writers. There are 18 miracle accounts in mark and 13 of them deal with healing (and 4 of the 13 are exorcisms). There is for Mark a connection between religion and health. In our reading today, Jesus goes to the synagogue to teach and encounters a man with an unclean spirit. The spirit says untrue things about Jesus, but Jesus takes the authority and calls the spirit out of the man (exorcism).  Did Jesus really say “SHUT UP”? I think so: what else can “BE SILENT” sound like in our time?

The forces of evil know the authority of Jesus’s presence and word. Many if not all of us know or can remember a time when we said, “Get the monkey off my back”.  Pressure to do a job perfectly because someone is always criticizing can cripple us with fear, and if we let that experience dominate our mind for too long it will make our bodies ill.  Taking in the hatred of others is harmful and when we find ourselves resenting some comment or action by another, we need to prayerfully transfer the item to Jesus who knows what to say to demons. When we are afraid of making a mistake we become ineffective in what we are doing. When we are afraid of other’s opinions we cannot hear the direction of God’s voice calling us to new life and new ministries. When we are crippled by worry about finances we can’t stand up straight enough to see the distant horizon with joy nor do we have the freedom necessary to respond in love.

The truth is there are demonic, dark, harmful forces in our world that we individually let creep into our hearts and minds that do damage to our bodies and our communities. We shy away from a sick person, pretending they don’t feel like company. We find it hard to sit in a room with a person seriously ill, in pain, and be asked, why did this happen to such a nice person? We find it heart wrenching to be fully present and feel the pain of another, the desperation and fear of their family members, the awareness of how limited all our sophisticated tests and medicines can be at times. We hope for new life – we pray for healing – we call on God as desperately as the man haunted by the demon.

The unnamed man is sick. Unclean spirits have no moral significance in Mark’s gospel or in any book of the New Testament. The man is ill and in need of help.  Brian Blount, a Markan scholar, says: “In Mark’s world, Jesus walks around possessed by the power of the HOLY SPIRIT of GOD. In such a world, you either go with the man and help him create the holy chaos he’s creating or you find a way to do everything you can to stop him so you can get your people back in line.”

Here in the beginning of the gospel of Mark: the good news is no person is beyond the reach of the healing master, Jesus. He will cross every boundary, imaginary or real, to reach out and bring the healing grace of the transcendent into our lives, dashing all the demons that haunt and harm us.  As then so now, Jesus comes to us, one by one, reaching out to touch us, to overpower whatever harms our bodies, minds, and spirits with healing grace.

In the language of Star Wars: the Force is with you.