How weird and strange Jesus is! How distinctive from everything that came before Him! Sometimes we hear
the Gospels so often, they start to sound plain and ordinary to us. Jesus can start to be very tame to us.
But let’s try to place ourselves in the perspective of a 1st century
Jew. Here comes Jesus into the
synagogue one day on the Sabbath, and he does what any Jewish male could do –
he got up to comment on the Torah readings. Except there’s something about the
way he taught that astonishes you. “They were astonished because he taught as one having authority, and not as the other scribes” (Mark 1:21). Scribes would claim
authority from their teacher, who in
turned claimed authority from their
teacher, and so forth, back to Moses, who got it from God – what greater
authority could there be?
Jesus, though, didn't teach
like that. He claimed his own authority. Remember
him teaching this way? “You have heard
it said, ‘You shall not murder,’ but I
say to you, ‘Anyone angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.’” Or, “You've heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, ‘Love
your enemies, and pray for those who hate you.’”
Well, where they've heard it said is in the Torah,
in the Law of Moses. Who could possibly claim
an authority greater than the Torah,
but a prophet greater than
Moses? Who
could claim an authority greater than the Torah except someone who himself is
the author of the Torah?
So you see why the scribes and Pharisees are so perturbed with Jesus. How strange, how scandalous Jesus is! How presumptuous! For a 1st
century Jew, there are certain moments that if you’re there listening to Jesus,
you would either have to get up and leave, because he’s claiming an authority which no
Jewish man would claim, OR you would have to start seriously pondering whether just maybe, just maybe this man really is God. Could it be,
that this Jesus really is greater than
Moses and the Torah? Could it be that he really does come from the Father, from
“face to face” dialogue with Him?
Right then there comes this man with an unclean spirit, crying out, “What do
you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth, have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God.” Everyone’s astonished, trying to figure out who Jesus is, but the demons know!
Notice
this single person, speaking in the plural, "us." The word diablo in Greek means “to scatter, or throw apart.” The demonic
power is a scattering power, a divisive power … God is a unifying power.
When we've lost contact with Christ, when we start running away from the Lord, we become scattered within ourselves. Our reason
struggles against our will, one passion wages war against other passions, what
we know with our mind to be good and true and right fights against other
desires and passions pulling us apart – we come into the grip of the diabolic,
at the level of our interior spirit,
and it affects everything about us. Jesus
comes to rebuke the dark power, “come out of him” …
“And with
a loud cry, the unclean spirit came out of him.” How does darkness, how does interior division, come out of us? Attachments, disordered desires, fallen passions, addictions,
the power of cruelty and hatred, the impulses of anger and laziness and lust,
how do they come out? Convulsively, with
a loud cry, as we struggle with Christ’s power in us against them …
In
the Eucharist, as well as in Baptism, in
Confession, in all the Sacraments, we come into contact with the power of Jesus
Christ unleashed into the world through his Church addressing evil at all
levels – that’s the power of the
Gospel. It's something revolutionary! "He commands even the unclean
spirits, and they obey him."
Jesus' power is the power to bring together what is scattered and
unify our spirits in obedience to God and love of neighbor, casting out all
that tears us apart! When you go to Mass this weekend, listen to that voice of Jesus, and
surrender to its power. Open your heart to receive His power through the Eucharist – open to Him the evil that’s in your heart, the dark power
that scatters and separates you from God, and ask Him to cast it out and give
you strength to fight against evil!
