Way back…in 2005 I was living and working in Toronto with the United Church, I led a youth group then. I took the youth to a conference hosted by the Scarboro Missions, specifically to talk about this poster they had created, The Golden Rule. Paul McKenna talked about the colourful poster with sacred writings from 13 faith traditions, representing the overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples and cultures. The Scarboro Missions is a Canadian Catholic missionary community, whose Interfaith Desk produced this visually striking and profound multi-faith statement.
Many of the over 100 people involved in the creation of the poster were at the youth conference. Representatives from many faith groups recited the sacred writings from the poster. In an additional demonstration of unity, they recited one another’s sacred texts. Paul McKenna, a life-long committed Catholic, with varied work experience in social service and social justice organizations, a full-time freelance writer, educator, organizer, and workshop leader on topics such as interfaith dialogue, bringing many people together from varied backgrounds. Paul pointed out that many mistakenly think of the Golden Rule (a name first applied to it only at the end of the 17th Century) as uniquely Christian: ‘In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets’ (Matthew 7:12). In this statement by Jesus, we see the contribution of the Old Testament. The Golden Rule is thus a short-hand summary of the teachings of the Bible.
What the great teachers across all the traditions say to us is that we are looking for happiness in all the wrong places. The Buddhists are clearest on this. To paraphrase them: ‘My search for freedom and meaning and happiness has everything to do with my commitment to your freedom and your happiness and your meaning’. “We’ve got to move beyond ourselves as individuals and act generously out of our oneness, our interconnectedness.”
I share all of this as background to a conversation I recently had with someone I met at a funeral. This family member hung back from the crowd at the reception, after the funeral service. I noted his isolation, I asked him how he knew the deceased. “He was a friend. We got along real well, but we never agreed on religion.” I let the silence hang in the air. Then I asked, “what was it about religion that you two did not agree on?” “Everything”, he replied. “I think the devil is everywhere, he thought there was no such thing. I thought we needed to be saved from the devil, he thought the world needed to be saved from religion.” Then he looked me in the eye and asked, “do you think there are demons at work in the world?” I think I shocked him. “Yes”, I said. “God made us for relationship, God made us for each other, neighbours, to love one another. Any spirit in the world that seeks to divide us, separate us, create a feeling of us and them, that is demonic, it is contrary to the will of God.”
I share this conversation and the history of the Golden Rule poster to help us find wisdom and new life in the Gospel story we receive from the lectionary. “They brought to Jesus all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered together about the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.” Mark 1:32-34 Our eyes are blinded here. We think of medicine as “bio-mechanical healing of malfunctioning biological systems”. We think of demons as individual entities after the manner of Hollywood movies. Paul Tillich says in Theology of Culture (1959) that, being created by God, all matter can be revealing of God. But that it can also become demonic. Anything that takes the place of the one, true God, is demonic. Anything that keeps us from being the individuals or the community that God wants us to be, is demonic. Such an understanding makes it clear that society is still replete with demons, and that people are badly afflicted, even possessed. It should open our eyes to a new reality! The healers in that ancient world thus focused on restoring a person to a valued state of being rather than an ability to function.
Anthropologists carefully distinguish between disease – “a biomedical malfunction afflicting an organism” - and illness - a disvalued state of being in which social networks have been disrupted and meaning lost. Illness is not so much a biomedical matter as it is a social one. It is attributed to social, not physical, causes. Thus sin and sickness go together. Jesus' healing restores Peter's mother-in-law to her social position within the household.
When we sit at church events and eat and with that person who no one knows, who is sitting alone, including them as equal to ourselves, what we are doing is "restoring [them] to a valued state of being rather than an ability to function" bio-medically. And that may also restore bio-medicinal function! This "old" understanding of illness is not irrelevant because of its age. “The other” is part of “us”, part of God. Many who afflict the other in this demonic way are quiet and pious. Those who feel lost and left out often seek out Jesus as their “Saviour”. This can make some of us in the liberal mainline progressive church uncomfortable, we see Jesus as liberator, teacher, comforter. But to those whom we have excluded, to those we have aided this demonic spirit of separation, finding Jesus, being found by Jesus, is salvation, is being saved. For them, Jesus is Saviour, and he does “cast out their demons”. Sadly, we might find ourselves sometimes as part of that demonic realm, sometimes as part of that saving realm. Are we healers? Are we casting out the illness of separation or as we are casting out those who are different, those we see as “other”?
Jesus would not permit the demons to speak. The healings and exorcisms reveal the effects of Jesus identity and divine power. Jesus comes and takes us by the hand and lifts us up! [Just like Peter's mother in law.] But resurrection requires dying. Jesus is praying about dying. The kin-dom of God, with its healing and casting out of demons is life lived in the presence of death, and death dealing illness. Ultimately Jesus' healing and casting out demons brings him head on into conflict with the Empire. Empire is demonic. So to pray, even about "small things," is to be entering into issues that bear on what is Ultimate. Whose are we− the Empire's, or God's?
Werner Kelber wrote that Jesus in the gospel of Mark has a clear mission: “he came to announce the Kingdom of God and to initiate its arrival in opposition to the forces which threaten to destroy human life.” Jesus’ healings and exorcisms, his defiance to Roman pomp, his challenge to religious elites, his temper in the temple, and even his execution all drove towards a single purpose: to oppose that which impedes the flourishing of human life. Mark’s narrative wastes no time getting to the heart of the action. Before the first chapter is up, Jesus has taught with authority, exorcized an unclean spirit, and healed a woman who was near death. It is no wonder then that everyone is searching for him. Life under Roman occupation is not conditioned to encourage the fullness of human life. News is spreading of the one who can help them catch their breath, who can reacquaint them with their humanity, one whom even the demons obey. And by way of offering a coda to this first stint of feverishly paced ministry, Jesus says simply: “this is what I came to do.”
Jesus’ program of healing and exorcism cannot be understood apart from the context that necessitated it. Roman rule was emotionally as well as practically destructive to people in Judea. Despite Rome’s earlier tolerance of Jewish religious life, in the years before the Jewish Wars, subjection to Roman rule began to require a deeper psychic break with the promises of the tradition. Jesus project was to overcome these realities. His healings are not just random acts of charity on the way to the cross but are integral to the very point that his death and resurrection make: that God’s intention in this world is human well-being and life, even in the face of death. The Roman Empire did not execute Jesus because for heresy against a Jewish orthodoxy: they executed him for disturbing the perverse peace of an imperial status quo.
This is what Jesus came to do. He came to heal the world, not only of its illness, but of its unhealthy subjugation to empires. He came to exorcize the demonic lies that uphold oppressive systems. And this is a challenge to those of us who “proclaim the message” today. Does the teaching, healing, and spiritual care that we offer the world succeed in challenging the corrupt foundation of the evils that prevail in our midst? Does it say not only what the kingdom is, but also show what it is opposed to? That is what Jesus came to do.
I know the version of the poster on the bulletin cover is too small to read. But when you have the opportunity, I invite you to search for it online and read each of the 13 statements, from 13 of the world’s great religions, about the most sacred rule of life. These statements constitute for me a healing prayer, an exorcism of sorts, that cast of the demons of hate, exclusion, separation, that deny the incarnation of our living God in all of God’s beautiful Creation. When you see, affirm, and acknowledge what God is doing in and through others, you find it harder to see the other as Other. To cast out demons is to cast out the forces of “us and them”.
I pray you will hold me accountable in this mission, I will attempt to do likewise with you. We do this for each other. That is what a faith community does, we make each other, we make ourselves collectively, better, safer, richer, more loving. Jesus calls us to this ministry. And we say, “Here I am Lord, send me…” Amen.