This morning, Lent III, I had the joy of a liturgy that combines the best of two worlds: the pomp and circumstance, the glorious theatre, of a Tridentine Mass with the immortal texts of Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer; as well as the Kyrie, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei from Tomas Luis da Victoria's Mass Trahe me post te, sung by a superb choir of 8 voices; and, of course, Communion in both kinds. (I weekly curse the Council of Constance which forbade that in 1417.)
The only fly in the ointment was the sermon -- unusually so, for the Rector of this church is usually superb as a preacher. But he frankly admitted that he hadn't a clue as to the meaning of this morning's Gospel (Luke 11:14-28), that the commentaries he had read didn't seem to either, that something seemed to have got lost in translation; and so he confined himself to helpful if platitudinous hints for a "good Lent".
So, walking back through a gloriously sunny if cool Upper East Side of Manhattan, I pondered that thorny passage. As you will remember, it starts with Jesus driving out demons. Some magically inclined bystanders mutter that he must be doing this through the King of demons, Beel-Zebub, the Lord of the Flies. To which he crisply replies that for the king of demons to drive out demons would be like a civil war in the Nation of Evil: "a house divided against itself cannot stand". No: the only way a strong individual (man or demon) can be driven out is by a stronger one; after which he concludes, superbly: "If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you." You can meditate on just that last phrase for days: the Kingdom is not to come, it is come. It is come in him. The Meshiach does not just announce the Kingdom -- the reign -- of God, he is the Kingdom, the kingship.
But then comes the passage that is both gripping, unforgegttable, and difficult. First: "He that is not with me is against me." Then, and I think as an illustration: "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh unto him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first." Ouch.
This is not a parable, and in Jesus' time I think not even an allegory. Jesus did not use Beel-Zebub, but he knew him and all his tribe through and through; so this, I'm convinced, is his story of what actually happens when a demon is cast out. For the demon, the man is a house from which he has been expelled. Like all demons, this one is fundamentally miserable; uprooted, he seeks rest and, like all his ilk, cannot find rest anywhere. So he goes back to his former house and finds it, now "swept and garnished": thoroughly cleaned, and ornamented with bouquets of fresh flowers and sweet-smelling herbs everywhere. BUT. BUT. Not only is it swept and garnished, it is EMPTY. Empty, clean, spacious, and inviting. SO the demon goes and finds seven other demons worse then he, and they all move in. Before, the man was possessed by only one devil; now he has eight, quarrelling (as demons will) inside his head, his heart and soul.
And the moral of the story? Surely not difficult. Even if it is Jesus himself, the Son of God, who has cast out the demon from you, you do not, ever, leave your house -- your heart, your soul -- empty. Nothing is more dangerous. You put all the power prayer gives you to work to invite the Ruach, the Pneuma, the spiritus sanctus, to come in and dwell in you, to fill your space with His presence.
As I said above, the whole story is an illustration of "he who is not for me is against me". That phrase is one we tend to misunderstand. To many of us, it sounds aggressive and unkind: I (or my brother, my wife, or my teenager) may not be an active disciple, but I'm certainly not against Him. Can't you leave me a neutral space where I can call myself an agnostic (which someone defined as "you're something, but you don't have to go to church")?
As so often, Jesus doesn't prescribe, he describes. He's been telling you not what he and the Father are going to do to you to punish you; he's been telling you a natural consequence, as we do to a child. If you put your hand over a lit gas ring, you'll get burnt and it'll hurt horribly. If, once the police have helped you get rid of the criminal squatters, you clean and redecorate the desirable property that is your spirit and then leave it standing empty with the door unlocked, you will in the nature of things get new squatters, and more, and worse. If, on the other hand, you at once invite the very best of tenants in -- and, moreover those who have said that if invited they will come -- your house's foundations will be rock-solid and its windows will shine for miles around.
"If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." (John 14:23)
