2-24-23 - Devils Flee

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

“Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.”

There’s nothing like getting to the finish line, is there? Whether we’re running a race or finishing chemo or turning in a final paper – to suddenly have the pressure lifted, know we’ve survived, be able to let down our guard, rest, recharge – it’s a wonderful feeling. So Jesus comes to the end of his trial period, knowing he’s prevailed. Matthew says angels came and waited upon him.

The presence of angels reminds us of the level of cosmic entity we’re dealing with when we talk about the devil. The New Testament is unequivocal about his existence, as was the early church, as are our Episcopal baptismal rites. But the Christian tradition has never considered the devil as God’s equal – he is among a sub-order of angelic beings. The devil is described in the Bible as a fallen angel, who turned against God in pride and rebellion; a tempter always seeking to draw humans away from God; the Accuser; the Father of Lies. The label I like best is "The Enemy of Human Nature."

Early Christian thinkers held that evil is the absence of good – evil is what you get where God is not. And the source of evil, in the Christian worldview, is the devil, or Satan. C.S. Lewis once said, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”

Martin Luther likewise had a strategy, “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” (He also said, “The best thing you can do is rap the Devil on the nose at the very start. Act like that man who, whenever his wife began to nag and snap at him, drew out his flute from under his belt and played merrily until she was exhausted and let him alone.” Must have been interesting in the Luther home.)

Because we assert that Christ has overcome the devil, we don’t have to be afraid. Alert and wary, yes, about one who seeks to corrupt and harm us, but not so much that we give him attention we might better direct to God. As with a poisonous snake, you want to avoid its bite, yet also know how to deal with its venom. We have been given the antidote – the love and forgiveness of the Father; the comfort and advocacy of the Holy Spirit; the power of Christ in us.

In prayer today, we might simply thank God for providing us protection from this ancient enemy. If you ever feel threatened, pray your way through Ephesians 6, putting on the full armor of God. It was always God’s fight, not ours, and Jesus has won it. As Luther also wrote, in the great hymn A Mighty Fortress:

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us.

We will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us.

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; 

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; One little Word shall fell him.

That Word is Jesus, the name that frightened demons back to hell. It is the only defense we need, whenever we feel ourselves under spiritual attack. The name of Jesus, who lives in us. He's still winning.

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3-4-22 - Round One

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

In Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the devil is depicted as a grey, slithery, humanoid creature with malevolent eyes, lurking at the edges of the scenes of Christ’s passion and death. He is there in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus confronts the agony he is about to endure and even dares to wish he might be spared before once more laying down his will before his heavenly Father. He is there as Jesus is paraded down the streets of Jerusalem, and on the hillside where Judas commits suicide. Was Jesus constantly having to do battle with him?

At the end of his trial in the wilderness, Jesus seems to have bested his foe. But Luke writes these fateful words, “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” You can just about hear the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

We don’t know if the devil was constantly seeking to trip up Jesus – we do know that Jesus saw much of his work of healing, forgiveness and deliverance as setting people free from the power of Satan. So one can imagine his enemy would have been riled up.

But what about us? Do we need to worry about the devil – in whom many modern Christians profess not even to believe? I am ever challenged by the disjuncture between our doctrinal assertion that Jesus has vanquished the devil, and evil’s seemingly unfettered destructive power so widespread in the world. The devil may not be behind our temptation to eat more ice cream than is good for us, but wherever evil is done, violence perpetrated, terror wrought and destruction unleashed, we can be quite sure that some person has lost a battle with temptation. (Another reason to pray for our enemies!) If God has given human beings the free will to choose, that must mean that God will not protect us from making choices. And much of the pain we suffer and inflict comes from choosing the wrong instead of the right.

So yes, the enemy of human nature continues to snap at the heels of God’s beloved, and often to dominate those who say they believe in nothing. We should be aware of the choices beneath the choices of our actions. But we need not fear. As Martin Luther wrote so memorably in his hymn, A Mighty Fortress, “His craft and power are great…” but “One little word shall fell him.”

That word is simply the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only protection we need. When we feel tempted to despair or to try to control a situation or to impose our will upon another, or find ourselves beset by negative emotions, or up against evil in a more clear and threatening way, we need only remember whose we are and say, “Thank you, Jesus, for being my shield and protector.” As St. Peter wrote, “Rebuke the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Jesus did win the war. And the more people know and believe that, the less foothold the devil has in this world. There’s another reason to share our faith.

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