Second Sunday after Pentecost: June 22, 2025 | The Rev. Nat Johnson

Readings: 1 Kings 19:1-15a | Psalm 42 and 43 | Galatians 3:23-29 | Luke 8:26-39

Four chapters prior to our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus went to synagogue and read from the scroll of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” After sitting back down under the watchful eyes of all who were gathered there, he told them “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

From this point forward in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is on the move: He exorcises unclean spirits; he heals the sick and the paralyzed and restores a man’s withered hand. He teaches the crowds about the kingdom of God and about the true nature of love. He raises the dead and forgives the sins of a woman. He tells parables about a sower who sowed seed, about a lamp and its light. He calms a raging storm, rebuking the wind and the waves. At multiple points in Luke’s story, various characters ask the question: who is this? Who is this that speaks with such authority? Who is this that commands unclean spirits? Who is this who dares to forgive the sins of the people? Who is this that even the winds and the water obey his command? Who is this, who now steps onto the shore of Gentile territory?

I suspect that for many of us, the story Luke tells us today hits us as simply bizarre. If you’re like me, this is a difficult story to step into, to find myself in, because its details seem so far removed from my own experiences. We are not accustomed to speaking about demons or possession. We are often uncomfortable speaking about the supernatural. We exist in a culture that prizes the empirical, the “real,” the tangible, the observable. Belief is a product of experience and fact, and so when something doesn’t align with our sense of the true, with our experience of reality, we tend to brush it off or explain it away. And, when it comes to things like demons, we Episcopalians like to explain it away suggesting that characters in the gospel stories we hear like the one we encounter today was really just suffering from mental illness, from paranoia or schizophrenia.

But, like many other gospel terms and experiences we encounter in these stories, I believe we need to reclaim these words and the realities to which they point. Perhaps “demons” and the “demonic” are not really about critters from hell, but that doesn’t mean they have no place in our worldview or the language of our faith. In our baptismal vows, we promise to renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God. We renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. We renounce the sinful desires that draw us away from the love of God. These are not just ancient platitudes we offer when we commit our lives to God – they are vows, promises we make and actions we commit to take to turn away from all that is death-dealing in this world and to turn instead to embrace all that is life-giving.

In the early 70’s, William Stringfellow wrote a commentary on the book of Revelation called An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Stringfellow distanced himself from both fellow Christians who understood biblical accounts of demons as metaphors of mental illness and social problems, and from those who understood them to be literal portraits of hellish monsters. Instead, he read the gospel’s accounts of demons as “sophisticated social critique, [a critique] that gives the key to understanding the dehumanizing systems that run our world and the moral bankruptcy of the supposed leaders who serve them.” He defined “demons” as “entities that are real but do not exist materially (such as abstractions, institutions, social phenomena).” He suggests that these entities operate “as if they had a life and will of their own…[giving] to those who serve them the titles and trappings of power while in reality subordinating those people to their own end,” which is death. Stringfellow writes, “for a man to be ‘possessed of a demon’ means concretely that he is a captive of the power of death in one or another of the manifestations which death assumes in history.” Writing at the height of the Viet Nam war, Stringfellow boldly and blatantly named the U.S. as a demonic principality.[i]

Many of us here today stand in the crosshairs of the demonic assault being unleashed in our country. Christian Nationalism and White Supremacy are spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God. Xenophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and racism feed sinful desires that draw us away from the love of God. The farce of political and military might that wages war threaten to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. The powers and principalities of this world work toward a single end – death. I will admit that as a self-proclaimed pacifist, I have resisted the language of war when speaking about my faith and the call of Christians. But I wonder if these times in which we live call for a reclamation of terminology. I’m not sure how else to describe what is happening across our society and our world apart from the language of spiritual warfare and demonic forces.

So perhaps now is the time for us to prepare for battle, to ready our weapons of war to fight against the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God, the evil power that threatens to corrupt and destroy creatures of God, and the sinful desires that isolate God’s people from the love of God. Yes, perhaps now is the time! But this is no call to engage in the world’s version of warfare. We cannot renounce the powers and principalities of the world by taking up the same arms that they wield. Our weapons of war are formed in the forges of hope and love. We are called in this moment to return home, like the demoniac in our gospel reading, to tell out the story of our own healing and liberation. We are called to create new patterns of community that offer restoration and wholeness. We are called to intentional practices of healing that liberate us and others from life among the tombs.

To reclaim the language of the “demonic” is not an invitation to demonize those with whom we disagree or even those who seek us harm. If we follow Stringfellow’s example and explanation of the demonic, we must recognize as he did that the greatest victims of the demonic forces in our world are the very leaders who seem to wield its power. And this is perhaps the most difficult part of our gospel lesson today – that we are called to see the wounds inflicted upon even those we categorize as the most horrid, the most treacherous, the most vile among us. We must learn to see even in the worst of us the possibility of redemption, the promise of resurrection. We must learn the practice of compassion, develop our sense of empathy, discover understanding through deep listening. We must learn to see that even the oppressors of this world carry a wound from which they suffer.

Friends, today we are called into a deeper commitment and practice of what we renounce in our baptism. Let these vows not be empty words but embodied words. Let us stand fast against the powers and principalities of this world and become a people of hope, of love, of life. And let us wield the weapons of war that draw others into that hope, love, and life. May God give us the will and the power to do so. Amen.

[i] Mac Loftin, “Political Demons,” in The Christian Century, February 5, 2025. https://www.christiancentury.org/features/political-demons