Today’s Gospel
contains one of my favorite Gospel injunctions, or at least one of the few
commandments of the Lord I have observed scrupulously: “Whatever town you
enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you.” I have no trouble keeping this commandment,
unfortunately.
Anyway, today in
the Gospel Jesus tells us “Behold, I have given you the power to tread upon
serpents and scorpions...”
Hmmmmm. Well, we certainly have
serpents and scorpions here in Texas. Usually
we try to NOT tread on them. Sometimes
they walk on two legs. Fortunately we
mostly have ants and crickets.
However, let me
assure you that Jesus is not playing the divine Orkin Man here. This is not about controlling varmints and
pests. Obviously Jesus is using this
language in a poetic way to talk about evils, about “demons”. Two sentences before this reference to
serpents and scorpions, the 72 returning missionaries declare, “Lord, even
the demons are subject to us because of your name.” Jesus is talking about power over
demons.
The word “demon”
has the connotation of something spooky and weird, something dramatic and
fantastic, like the movie “The Exorcist”.
Evil can be dramatic and unusual, but most of the demons we
confront are all too common, very ordinary, indeed boringly banal.
But they are still
demons: like that inability to keep my mouth shut when I want to speak a cutting,
hurtful, put-down word. Or the envy that
seeps into our hearts and spoils the enjoyment of our blessings by continually
comparing ourselves with others. Or
the demon of holding on to past hurts and grudges, continually chewing on them
over and over again so that our life gets blocked in some unresolved spot that
we can’t get passed. Or the demon of
lust that keeps tricking us into viewing pornography on the internet, thinking
we are somehow going to find satisfaction and pleasure, when over and over
again it just leaves us feeling empty and dirty. Or the demon that tells us we are no good, that
we don’t deserve anything good, and keeps fooling us into acting in
self-destructive ways. Or the
demons of pride, or alcoholism, or gambling addiction, or hatred, or racial
prejudice, or arrogance, or greed and selfishness, or the coldness of heart
that prevents us from feeling compassion and acting in solidarity with those in
need. And there are many, many other such
mundane and common demons that we discover - not far away - but deep inside
us.
The Gospel today
is a message of great hope: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because
of your name.” This means that these
demons that haunt us and degrade us, and which we are so often too weak to
control and stop; these demons are no match for the power of the name of Jesus
Christ.
This is Good
News, for we long to be our better selves: to exorcize the bitterness and
lies, the carping and the caustic comment, the impatience and the lust, the
self-pity and the self-righteousness, the greed and selfishness, and all the
other demons that beset us. When we
admit our need, and turn to the Lord, and call upon Him to liberate us and set
us free, He responds as in today’s Gospel: “Behold, I have given you the
power to tread upon serpents and scorpions...” The Lord gives us the power to crush
the demons that inhabit our hearts, so as to live freely as the beloved
children of God.
And Jesus goes
further. For there are bigger demons
that live, not in us as individuals, but in us as a community: demons like war,
pollution, systems of abuse and exploitation, class conflict and racial
hatreds, all forms of discrimination and injustice. Even these are subject to the power of Jesus. He assures us, “Behold, I have given you
the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of
the enemy And nothing will harm
you.”
The “full force of
the enemy” is indeed very powerful: we’re talking Aushwitz, or Gulags, or
slavery, or genocide, or the 9/11 terrorism attacks, or Abu Graib, or abortion
or the destruction of the environment.
Even these horrors are ultimately subject to the power of Jesus’
name.
All the old power
of evil is conquered by the power of Jesus Christ. We are set free to live a new way: of solidarity,
of concern and compassion, of service, of love. We are still hurt, no doubt about it, just
as Jesus hurt on the cross. But
ultimately we can live as the children of God, in integrity and in love, and
nothing will be able to keep us from our destiny.
We see this
conquering power of Christ in today’s second reading. St. Paul says: “For neither does
circumcision mean anything, nor does uncircumcision, but only a new creation.” In the power of
Christ’s death and resurrection, the old barrier of circumcision, the mark of
the Covenant given by God to Abraham, that separated God’s chosen people the
Jews from all other peoples, the Gentiles, even that ancient barrier is broken
down and conquered. That division is
removed in Christ.
Further,
circumcision, which in the Bible always means male circumcision, that is, the
cutting off of the flap of skin at the end of the penis, was also a division
between men and women. Because,
obviously, only men could be circumcised.
Only men could participate in the sign of the old covenant. Women could only enter into the covenant
through a man, either as some circumcised man’s daughter or as some circumcised
man’s wife.
But now that does
not matter. The only thing that matters
is being a new creation in Christ. And
that is why Paul earlier in this same letter to the Galatians proclaimed: “There
is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (3:28). Those ancient differences – so important still
in the secular world - no longer matter in Christ. They are overcome.
In this week when
we as a nation celebrate our political independence and liberty, the Scriptures
speak to us about a much deeper and greater liberation - not from foreign
monarchy - but from something far more sinister and evil and much closer to us:
from the demons that dwell inside our hearts.
“Behold,”
Jesus exclaims. “I have given you the
power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the
enemy, and nothing will harm you.”
In this deeper and more profound sense, every Sunday is Independence Day,
a celebration of freedom from sin!
Happy Independence
Day! AMEN.
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