world is demon possessed. Just spend one hour watching the news and you will see these same things happening in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, all over the world. And yet, there is hope. There is a saving grace.
Just like Christ crossed the sea to step on the land where the demon-possessed man lived, there are Christians all over the world who believe in and live out the command of Christ to love your neighbor as yourself, to love your enemies and those who persecute you. There are Christians, like Christ, who confront the demons of the world and command them to leave. But there are many of us who like the townspeople are afraid. We are afraid of what goes for right; what goes for being Christ-like. We don’t want our lives disturbed by Jesus. We don’t want to live the way Jesus calls us to live. It is difficult to put the love of Jesus first over our own self-interests.
Recently I saw the documentary Emanuel, about the killing of nine members of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Many of the family members of those killed forgave Dylan Roof because of their faith. The public and some of their family members and friends were amazed at their ability to forgive. But that is what Jesus calls us to do. In the face of evil, the demons of the world, we are still called to forgive, while also confronting that evil, those demons.
This is uncomfortable. Yet Jesus calls us out of our comfortable lives. By comfort, I’m not talking about material comfort, but physical and spiritual comfort. We are called to do more than send our thoughts and prayers when the demons confront us; we are called to do something as opposed to continue living our daily lives. Jesus isn’t calling us to just pray. He is calling us to action. I struggle with this daily. Sometimes we are so overwhelmed by the legions of demons that we do nothing or we are paralyzed with fear. Jesus isn’t calling us to confront all of the demons. But we can pick one issue—a couple of demons—that we are passionate about or can become passionate about. We can learn about it, see who’s currently working on it, identify what gifts we can bring, and join others to confront it. We can do this as individuals and as church, the beloved community.
The victims of demon possession are outcasts. They are estranged from the community. They cannot rid themselves of the demons alone. They need community. As the Beloved Community, we bring the love of Christ that confronts the demons and casts them out. We are there to support, uplift, and surround the demon possessed and bring them back into community as healthy and whole persons. Whether the demons are addiction, self-hatred, mental illness, materialism, intolerance, there are so many, we have the love of Christ that overcomes all.
Anniversary of the Arrival of the First Africans in British North America
ISAIAH 58:9B–14, LUKE 13:10–17
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil; if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom will be like the noonday. . . . Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of the street to live there. (Isaiah 58: 9b, 10, 12)
Let me begin with the context of this word from Isaiah 58. There are sixty-six chapters in the book of Isaiah, and scholars affirm that the first fifty-four chapters are the oracles of the prophet. Prophets are not astrologers nor soothsayers who “predict” the future. A prophet is one who looks at the present and, with the lens of the past, points to God’s promises. One could look at the present and say, “This is the trajectory that you will head into if you don’t follow God.” That’s not a prediction; it’s more of an estimation. Through their poetry and the lyricism of even their prose, prophets offer seeds of hope. Even if doom may come from human frailty and ego and sin, we can always turn around. We can still repent and find healing and hope of a new day.
Scholars also point out that the last eleven chapters (55–66) were not written by the Prophet Isaiah, but by another prophet who extensively studied Isaiah. These chapters are deeply steeped in the message and words of Isaiah but were written approximately seventy years later. Around 608 bce—during the Babylonian captivity—Isaiah himself was writing and saying, “Israel, Judea, Jerusalem, if you don’t turn back from where you’re heading, doom will come.” The Babylonian kingdom had conquered Judea. Jerusalem and other nearby towns had been destroyed. Some, but not all, Jews had been taken into captivity. Out of that experience, which Jeremiah says lasted seventy years, comes some of the most beautiful poetry in the Psalms. The writer of Psalm 137 says, “By the waters of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. . . . For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”
These are the words of lament: the lament of the formerly enslaved grieving over their history as they recalled the pain of captivity. The experience of remembering their slavery was the result of their emancipation from Babylon. The Hebrew return to their homeland was the result of a new Babylonian emperor who permitted them to go home. Some went back home, but not all returned; some stayed in Babylon, much like a hundred years earlier at the end of the Assyrian captivity. That is how word disapora gets into the lexicon: diaspora: the dispersion of the Jews. Other dispersions of captured and enslaved peoples have happened over history and continue to this day. History may not repeat itself, but it can rhyme.
When the Jews returned to Judea in approximately 538 bce, they found their towns destroyed and the temple reduced to rubble. Furthermore, social relations were fraught. Some Jews had remained in Judea during the captivity, and some non-Jews had taken up residence. Tensions between those two groups already existed. The returning exiles added a third group to the picture and they become scapegoats. The top 2 percent of the social structure were living off the rest. And the elite probably said, “The only good these new folks can have for us is if we oppress them as well.”
This is the reality Isaiah predicted of captivity, but in third Isaiah (chapters 55–66), there is the hope of a new day of return, alongside the acknowledgment that the present still held pain, oppression, and wretchedness: “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday” (Is. 58:9–10).
If we look to the stories that come after Isaiah, we hear stories of Nehemiah and Ezra and others who helped rebuild Judea and the temple. A ray of hope did come into the community. Something similar has happened five hundred years after Babylon.
Jesus of Nazareth was walking the earth and, as we heard in the Gospel lesson today, he saw a woman bent over for eighteen years. Take close note: there is no plea heard. The woman did not ask for help and healing. She did not even sneak up and try to touch the hem of Jesus’s garment. She was just stooped over. Bent over. The popular theology of the time saw her affliction as an attack of Satan. She could not lift her head toward the horizon. She could not look up at the sky. At best, she could look slightly forward, or a little to her left or to her right. She was in some ways like a small child, who, in a crowd of adults, could only see trouser legs and dresses as they frantically looked for mother and father.
The woman said nothing. She did nothing. But what did Jesus do? He saw her. He said, “Daughter, stand up straight. You are healed.”
In the context of the history of sin and disobedience, of the opportunity to repent, of healing and hope and restoration, Jesus lived out third
