Richard Davenport
July 9, 2023 – Proper 9
Romans 7:14-25
If you haven’t seen it, you’ve probably at least heard about it: The Exorcist. The old, black and white movie from the early ‘70s that was at the same time incredibly popular and incredibly shocking. The Exorcist gave birth to a whole genre of supernatural horror movies, especially those involving some kind of demon possession. Even if you aren’t a fan of those kinds of stories, it’s hard to discount the impact the Exorcist has had.
What many don’t know is that the events, while sensationalized by Hollywood, supposedly happened, as I understand it, and not just out there in the wide world, but on the campus of Concordia Seminary. There was a book about the events in the library, but you could never get it. It was always checked out. Still, the basic gist was that there was a boy back in the 1920’s whose parents thought might have something going on. They went to their Lutheran pastor who did some investigation. He involved the folks at the Seminary who looked into it further. We Lutherans don’t have a lot practical knowledge about this sort of thing, so the seminary got the Catholic Church involved and they more or less took it from there. I never got a chance to read the book, so I can only go on what I was told. But, I did hear the story from several different sources around campus, so it seems at least plausible.
The whole idea of demonic possession has a lot of people terrified. To have a demon running around in your body, ruining your life, hurting you, hurting people you love, spewing their evil all over the place. The very thought is highly disturbing. Victims of violent crime, rapes, home invasions, muggings, will talk about the feeling of powerlessness. Some evil person is coming into your life and inflicting their desires on you. Maybe because they have a weapon and you don’t or their stronger than you, they’re threatening loved ones, or whatever the case may be, they’re in control and you aren’t and their evil is allowed to go unchecked.
In a home invasion or any of those others, maybe, if you’re careful, you find a way to turn the tables on the attacker, you slip away or you get his gun or something like that. But that doesn’t work when the invader is on the inside. You can’t escape. You can only hope someone else recognizes your problems and sets you free.
How much does this sort of thing still happen today? Eh, I couldn’t really say. A hundred years ago seems like a long time, but, if true, it would tell us that even in the modern day these things can happen. We certainly know it happened during the days of Christ and we have no reason to believe this sort of thing has gone away.
Does that mean it’s something to be afraid of? No, not in the sense we usually think about it anyway. Even if such a thing should happen, even if Satan should afflict you horribly in that way, his power is limited. God is still in charge and Satan isn’t capable of taking away your salvation. Your life is firmly held in the hand of your Heavenly Father and no one can snatch you out of it. That won’t make it fun. But it also means the situation can’t follow you into eternity. As Jesus goes out and about during his ministry, he encounters a number of people possessed by demons. He is concerned about them, but it’s the same kind of concern he shows for people who are sick or suffering from some other kind of ailment. It’s bad, but also something easily remedied. He cares for their needs and brings them back to health.
Unfortunately, what St. Paul is describing here is something much worse. Sin, at work in his body. It’s like he’s not even in control of his own body. He’s trying to do good things, but he can’t seem to make himself do them. Instead, he finds himself running off and doing all sorts of terrible things instead. It’s not like it’s even a separate entity that can be cast out and banished. It’s inside him, inside every part of him. He can’t escape it. He can’t reason with it. He can’t control it. He can’t get rid of it. The sin that infects every part of his body wants to kill him and it will win.
But, so what? That’s all old news. It’s boring and mundane. We know all about sin. We hear about it all the time. Demon possession is so much more interesting. It has all of those elements that draw you to watch horror movies. It’s disturbing and fascinating all at the same time. It makes you want to learn more about it. What do we know about them? How do exorcisms work? Is everyone susceptible? How would you know if you were possessed? On and on. For this sin thing? Meh, it’s not that big a deal. Sin doesn’t make you do weird and crazy things. It isn’t flashy. It isn’t even all that scary. Why worry about it when there are so many more interesting things to deal with?
The insidiousness of it all shows how clever and conniving Satan is. He uses something big and scary like demonic possession as a distraction, all so the sin we find in our own bodies goes unnoticed. Jesus even tells us not to worry about someone who can only kill the body and not the soul, but that doesn’t stop us.
Now, you may not have spent a whole lot of time worrying about demon possession, as some have. But there are many other dangers that try and pull our attention away, dangers which have no eternal significance. Natural disasters? Floods? Hail? Tornadoes? Sure, they’re scary. Sure, they can hurt you. Sure, they can make life rather miserable. But, can they condemn you to an eternity of darkness and solitude? No. No more than any demon can. Illnesses? COVID? Staph? AIDS? Those can all be scary too, but they still won’t condemn you to hell.
There’s violence out there. There are drunk drivers. There’s anger. There’s hatred. There are people who care nothing for your wellbeing and who will be all too happy to take from you whatever they want. All of it scary for one reason or another, and yet, none of them can do more than kill you, which was something sin was always going to do anyway. And sin can do so much worse.
The sin there in his body, the sin that drives him to do things he knows he shouldn’t do, things he doesn’t want to do, things he knows will end up just hurting himself or other people or both, the sin that keeps him from doing all of the loving and compassionate things he would much rather be doing. It’s the sin he’s worried about, because not only is he powerless against it, not only is it going to kill him, it’s going to get him condemned to hell for eternity.
Satan distracts. He misdirects. He conceals, all so you won’t realize that the most boring, most mundane ailment we all have is actually the most dangerous. St. Paul is sounding the alarm bell. He wants you to wake up to the threat of sin. He says it’s sin and only sin that will kill you, and really, it already has, you just haven’t gotten there yet.
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Who indeed? You can’t do it. You would somehow have to carve out, scrape away the sin from every cell of your body.
It’s even more telling that when Jesus comes and is out and about during his time of ministry that he encounters many people who are sick, many people who have suffered terrible afflictions, many who have been possessed by demons. Taking care of them is but a few moments of Jesus’ time. They don’t require much effort. Jesus simply speaks and creation responds. Even demons are powerless before him. Sin is not so easy. It doesn’t simply vanish. Sin requires death. Sin demands death. There is no way out of sin except through death.
If diseases, disasters, and demon possessions the worst of our worries, God could have simply spoken from on high and done away with all of them. But, sin isn’t just worse than all of those things, it is the root cause of them.
Sin demands its due. Sin demands death, and so that’s what Jesus gives it. Jesus comes to earth. He waves his hand and the leper is healed. He issues a command and the demon flees. But, in order to save you, to truly save you, there has to be death. Jesus understands the threat posed by sin. So he gives it death. Not yours, his. Jesus sacrifices himself to pay sin its wages, so its demands will finally be satisfied.
Back at the beginning of Romans 6, St. Paul asks the, somewhat rhetorical question, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” It sounds strange to think of Baptism as death, as being joined to someone’s death, even if that person is Jesus. Yet now we understand why. Through Baptism, his death becomes your death. Sin’s price has already been paid for you. Your Baptism gives your death to him and his to you. Where your death and your condemnation into the darkness is given to him. He pays the price. His death, already done, already over with, is given to you. No more condemnation. No more threat of eternal darkness, eternal separation, eternal isolation.
You have his death credited to your account. Sin has been paid. Now that you have Jesus’ death, you also have his life. Sin has no claim to lay against you. For that, we give thanks, as St. Paul says.
Many other church bodies will tell you that being here in worship is important because the service is all about praising God and giving thanks. St. Paul shows us that is incorrect. We do give thanks to God. We do lift our praises to him. But we do so as a response to what he gives us in the service. God serves us so that we can serve him. We give thanks to him, but only after he shares his mercy and forgiveness with us. We sing his praises, but only after he gives the tremendous gift of his Body and Blood. God saves. God redeems. God gives life through the death and resurrection of Christ. Without these things, we have nothing to give back to him.
Consider what God has given you. Consider that each day you live is a day that is no longer governed by sin. Consider that your life now extends before you into eternity. Consider that God made himself subject to death in order to save you. Consider all of this and give thanks that God loved you enough to do all of this for you.