“No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.”[1] Jesus said that. Makes him sound like a master thief, doesn’t it? It’s a rather curious way to describe the mission of Jesus, and yet, this is how he himself sees it. He has entered the strong man’s house.
Following his baptism, Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and now he’s back among people, proclaiming the good news of God. He has tied up the strong one, and now the house can be plundered. It may sound like burglary, but in truth the mission is to invade the house and free its residents from foreign occupation. Forces of evil have taken up residence in the house, keeping in thrall the people who live there, manipulating and controlling them. But now Jesus has returned from the wilderness. Now Jesus is in the house.
He declares that the time if fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. And when he teaches, people are astounded — they half-recognize a kind of power their learned teachers, preachers, and legal scholars don’t possess. It’s not like listening to somebody talk about God, but like hearing somebody give human voice to divine speech.
Jesus is in the house, and the anxiety level among unclean spirits and demons is high: they know who he is and they know the purpose of this intrusion — to silence them and throw them out. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” they shriek. “Why are you picking this fight? Couldn’t you have just left things as they were between us? We know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus is in the house, their time is up, and they know it. They cry, they whimper, they taunt, but they can neither evade nor resist the authority of Jesus. He rebukes them, saying, “Be silent, come out,” and the man is free. To spread this freedom, throughout all of creation, is the ministry of Jesus. He is not just another teacher or preacher; Jesus is a Holy-Spirit-empowered invader who reclaims the house of creation that has become a playground for demons.
“What is this?” people ask with astonishment. “A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” A new teaching—not in the sense of fashionable ideas that are exciting today and forgotten tomorrow—no, a teaching that brings about newness like the voice that spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai. Jesus is not just a terrific new teacher who moves and inspires us, surprises and astounds us, and satisfies our hungry hearts and minds—he does all that—but he speaks with the voice of the Holy One who brings light and life into being. He speaks, and it comes to be. He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened, the possessed are unshackled, the wounded are healed, and the shunned are forgiven. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.
“Mark wants us to know, here at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry — that Jesus’ authority will be a contested authority,” writes Matt Skinner. “Jesus’ presence, words, and deeds threaten other forces that claim authority over people’s lives. These other authorities have something to lose.”[2] They have everything to lose, and yet they have already lost, because when the unholy coalition of church and state, mob and court betrayed, accused, condemned, tortured and executed Jesus, God vindicated him. These other authorities that have everything to lose can try and crucify the kingdom, but they can’t stop it from coming. They can’t silence the voices that declare its nearness. They can’t deport those who discover again and again, that with one foot they’re already standing in the kingdom, on solid ground: beloved, forgiven, free.
Mark depicts Jesus as the one uniquely sent and empowered to declare the reign of God and reveal its characteristics: It is intrusive, transgressing boundaries that benefit other kinds of rule; it liberates people from the powers that afflict them and keep life from flourishing according to the will of its Creator. Jesus comes from a place of blessing, where in baptism he was filled with the Holy Spirit and a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And Mark contrasts this affirmation and claim with the man in Capernaum, possessed by an unclean spirit, a spirit that will never tell him that he is beloved of God or a delight in the eyes of God. But now Jesus is in the house, and he’s here to end the occupation.
The first century world was full of demons and spirits; they regularly interfered in human life, often capriciously. It was common knowledge that they did control human behavior because they were more powerful than human beings. Most of us no longer use this kind of language; we don’t think of the world as occupied by demons and other spirit beings. But that doesn’t mean we no longer experience powers in our lives that are stronger than ourselves, ungodly powers that oppress and enslave us, individually or collectively.
I used to think that demons were little more than an imaginative way to understand mental illness or oppressive conditions. But I keep returning to pre-scientific notions of the demonic when I reflect on the terrifying fact that Germany under self-inflicted authoritarian rule murdered six million European Jews. Sure, there are historical circumstances to take into consideration, and political reasons, economic causes and cultural factors, but those kinds of explanation attempts can try to grasp what is truly unfathomable only from a high altitude, and to me, such distance often feels like betrayal. To face the demons and name them, and to tell them—and reminds myself—that their occupation will not stand, I need Jesus who has tied up the strong man.
Robert Lifton was a psychiatrist who conducted interviews with Nazi doctors who had worked in the death camps. He talked about this work with Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor.
We were discussing Nazi doctors—I had begun to interview them and he had observed a few from a distance in Auschwitz—when he posed this question to me: “Tell me, Bob, when they did what they did, were they men or were they demons?” I answered that, as he well knew, they were human beings, and that was our problem. To which Elie replied, “Yes, but it is demonic that they were not demonic.” [3]
In the face of evil, explanations will not do. In the face of evil we need a different kind of knowledge, one that can ground us in the presence of God the redeemer. There is no room in the house for demons, but they are here because we are here. We need the living Christ, because in his presence the demons become anxious and jittery and they start screaming. And when he speaks, they quickly lose their grip on power. He speaks, and the oppressed are unburdened, the possessed are unshackled, the wounded are healed, and the shunned are forgiven. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.
I have struggled to understand QAnon and other conspiracy theories and the hold they have on people.
In the summer of 2017, Lenka Perron was spending hours every day after work online, poring over fevered theories about shadowy people in power. She had mostly stopped cooking, and no longer took her daily walk. She was less attentive to her children, 11, 15 and 19, who were seeing a lot of the side of her face, staring down into her phone. It would all be worth it, she told herself. She was saving the country and they would benefit.[4]
One day, though, she had the first nagging feeling that something did not add up. Five months and many more inconsistencies later, Ms. Perron finally called it quits. “At some point I realized, ‘Oh, there’s a reason this doesn’t fit,’” she said. “We are being manipulated. Someone is having fun at our expense.” Sabrina Tavernise wrote a lengthy article about Ms. Perron, because she wonders, like many of us,
what will happen with the followers of QAnon and other anti-establishment conspiracy theories that have been bending Americans’ perceptions of reality. There are signs that some have lost faith ... But others are doubling down, and experts believe that some form of the QAnon conspiracy theory will remain deeply embedded in the nation’s culture by simply morphing to incorporate the new developments, as it has before.
Ms. Perron said, “Q managed to make us feel special, that we were being given very critical information that basically was going to save all that is good in the world and the United States. We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority.” People who tried to talk her out of the conspiracy theories by sending her factual information only made it worse. “Facts are not facts anymore,” Ms. Perron said. “They are highly powerful, nefarious people putting out messaging to keep us as docile as sheep.”
Eventually, though, she left, and she felt a lot of shame and guilt. But she has come to appreciate the experience. She has talked to her children about what she went through, and has learned to identify conspiracy dependence in others. There are many. Ms. Perron volunteers as a life coach, and recently was working with a 40-year-old man who had lost his marriage and was falling asleep at work. At some point, he began texting her Q links. She realized he was staying up all night consuming conspiracy theories. “I was watching his life fall apart,” she said. “I had no way to penetrate it. I could not even make a dent.”
Not even a dent. What are we to do? Reason doesn’t penetrate the massive walls of suspicion that surround elaborate structures of fear. How can we embody the liberating and healing presence of Christ? We must trust the good news that the strong man has been bound. We must love fearlessly and serve those whose lives are far from whole, whether they are estranged family members or more distant neighbors. We mustn’t tire of seeking ways to remind them of their true identity and dignity as God’s beloved. Humbly and courageously, we must do our part in casting out the demons that feed on our fear.
[1] Mk 3:27
[2] Matt Skinner https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-after-epiphany-2/commentary-on-mark-121-28-3
[3] Robert Jay Lifton, Witness to an Extreme Century: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2011) p. 240
[4] This quote and the following from Sabrina Tavernise https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/us/leaving-qanon-conspiracy.html