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A Radio 4 item this week talked about a ghost in Derby Hospital –
a black-cloaked scary figure upsetting hardened workmen: they had a sensationalist
RC priest stoking it up by talking about evil spirits and the unquiet
dead, when it was much more likely to be a place memory, a sort of impersonal
re-run of an old video: ask me afterwards if you want to know more! The
whole radio item pandered to a sensationalist view of evil, as with The
Exorcist and other horror films. Some Christians too are unhealthily interested
in evil and the demonic, when evil is actually not at all glamorous, but
both boring and repulsive.
I want today to touch on the issue of evil, by starting with the truth
that God is so much greater than anything evil can be or do : that love
and grace will always win in end; even though it may feel a struggle
much of the time, hope is always there. Why can we be hopeful, confident
of God’s victory over evil in the end? Because of Jesus Christ; and
today’s readings point us to God’s victory over evil in him.
Start with Revelation 12.1-5a – obscure or what? It uses picture
language, like a frog and a bulldog in a cartoon stand for France and
England, but still expresses the gospel that Paul taught and the gospel
writers point to. What does this language mean?
The woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet: compare
the dream of Joseph in Genesis 37, of his father and mother as the sun
and moon, and (twelve) stars = the twelve brothers/tribes/apostles. The woman
isn't Mary here as such, but the people of God of whom she is a part,
the old Israel and the Church/ the new Israel together, giving birth
to the Messiah.
The Dragon represents evil: it's a reference to Old Testament descriptions
of Egypt and its crocodiles; red? the Egyptian god Seth was portrayed
as a red dragon. seven heads: seven = the completeness number, or perfection or
totality – so seven heads = complete power and authority, with diadems,
royal crowns on too. ten horns: a horn in the Old Testament = personal power and victory,
often compared to the horns of wild oxen – so ten horns = very powerful
indeed. The tail sweeping a third of the stars to the earth: drawn from Daniel
ch. 8 – pagan powers opposed to God are set loose in the world. The
dragon wants to devour the child and kill the woman: this is evil wanting
to destroy the work of God. The birth of the child isn't directly the
nativity, but the event of cross/resurrection: Christ is by these revealed
as Child of God, to rule with a rod of iron = a quotation of Psalm 2 about
the Messiah. And the chapter goes on to describe how the child and mother
are taken to God, there is war in heaven, and the dragon = Satan is thrown
down to earth.
So what? These are symbols of evil coming into the life of the world,
especially its structures of power (horns and crowns). The Book of Revelation
was written for early Christians who were being persecuted by the State;
but it's about more than that - it concerns the whole way that structures
of society enable basically nice and good people like us to do thoroughly
awful things.
We’re used to hearing of people who ran awful concentration camps
who had exemplary caring family lives. But what about us and our society
that forces asylum seekers into destitution and carries out dawn raids
on families with small children? Or sends bailiffs in who force very sick
people to go to a cash machine to pay a court summons? Or the nice rational
people in the Israeli government who deliberately targeted churches' medical
facilities and mosques in Gaza, killing over 400 children in the process,
which is described as regrettable or collateral damage or taking people
out: as a Palestinian said, if Britain had dropped bombs on Londonderry
and killed a thousand people in order to attack the IRA, people would
have been outraged – and if we aren’t outraged at the evil
done in Gaza – why not? And what about the nice decent bankers who
helped to build a financial system based on greed not prudence and who
even now are taking enormous bonuses and pensions at the taxpayers’
expense? Or the human wreckage of Zimbabwe, or Congo, or Somalia, or Sri
Lanka? It’s not evil people who do these things on the whole –
it’s people like you and me; because evil is part of the whole
fabric of our human society.
We can turn with relief to Mark1.21-28 the Gospel reading: here is Jesus
acting with authority in word and deed, sorting out the world and
relating us to God; authority so profound that he casts out evil spirits
and delivers the man oppressed by them. No wonder he was an instant
celebrity: unlike Barack Obama, who has good ideas and a hopeful approach,
Jesus is delivering straight away, setting people free from the power
of evil.
The problem is that evil is generally too slippery and cunning to come
out into open unless cornered. At times it's been fashionable for some
people in churches to look for the demonic on which to blame their own
problems with alcohol, sex, anger, greed or anything else. All very convenient
because they could then have their demon cast out and be free. Only it
didn’t work for long: because being delivered from evil, as we pray
for in the Lord’s Prayer, doesn’t happen until we take responsibility
for the evil we have which belongs to us, our weaknesses and vulnerabilities,
our own complicity in evil which the demonic latches onto; but if we do,
then by prayer, hard work and openness to the power of Jesus Christ
we may in the end be set free.
Contrary to Radio 4 and popular views, explicit demonic activity isn’t
that common, because the power of the name of Jesus Christ can cast out
such spiritual evil. But if the demonic gets into our humanity, into our
structures and society, then, as the Book of Revelation makes the point,
you can’t just cast it out as Jesus did in Mk 1. How do you cast
racism out of British society? or exorcise violence out of the Middle
East? or change social attitudes in Africa that oppress women and encourage
the spread of AIDS?
Yet – yet – there is hope in power of name of Christ. Why? Because,
as Revelation says, the dragon has been defeated, because Jesus has authority
over all powers of evil: as the voice from heaven says later in Revelation
12, the devil has come down to earth in great anger because he knows his
time is short. Evil may oppress us now, but it won’t last for ever.
Early Christians were persecuted by Rome: but they took over Roman Empire
within 300 years. The powers of the world put Jesus on the cross, but
couldn’t stop the resurrection. With faith, hope and love –
the end of oppression in society and in ourselves is all too possible:
the Berlin Wall has fallen, in N Ireland and S Africa men of violence
sit in government together.
In our own lives, we can call on God in Jesus to reveal to us our own
complicity in evil, and pray for deliverance - and act on those prayers
by for example working with others to change the situation in Israel/Palestine,
and working on behalf of asylum seekers. Evil only wins when we are too
comfortable to call on Christ; but with the authority of Jesus over all,
all things are possible. Desmond Tutu wrote these words in the middle
of the darkness of apartheid in South Africa:
Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death,
victory is ours through him who loved us.
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