Exorcism of a Man with an Unclean Spirit
Finding Jesus Second Edition!
I have some exciting news!
I have just signed an agreement with a new book publisher (Quoir), and we are putting together a launch team for the second edition of Finding Jesus, coming out next month!
If you have been blessed by the first edition, and you would like to see this book have greater exposure to reach an even larger audience, I want to invite you to be a part of the launch team. This second edition will be available in paperback, Kindle and an audio book available on Audible. And great news for those who already have a copy of the first edition, the first 25 people to sign up to be part of our launch team will also receive a FREE Audible copy of the audiobook for Finding Jesus.
To join the Finding Jesus launch team, all you need to do is four things:
1) Go to Amazon and pre-order a copy of the second edition when pre-orders become available.
2) Read the pdf copy of the second edition of Finding Jesus that I will send you after your pre-order the book so that you’re ready on launch day.
3) On launch day go back to Amazon and write a review for Finding Jesus. (You’ll be able to do this on day one since you’ve already read the pdf copy.)
4) Share your review of Finding Jesus on your social media pages that day, also.
It’s pretty simple. That’s all. And if you already have copy of the first edition this is a great opportunity to get the audiobook version on Audible as soon as it is available.
If you would like to join our launch team, you can email me at info@renewedheartministries.com and just put in the subject of your email “Launch Team.”
Thank you in advance for being part of this special second edition publishing and ensuring this edition is a success.
New Episode of JustTalking!
Season 1, Episode 48: Mark 1.21-28. Lectionary B, Epiphany 4
Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it.
You can find the latest show on YouTube at
Season 1, Episode 48: Mark 1.21-28. Lectionary B, Epiphany 4
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Exorcism of a Man with an Unclean Spirit
Herb Montgomery, January 26, 2024
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“People of faith should always be involved working for justice to be practiced when people are being marginalized and dispossessed, and faith communities should never allow themselves to be overtaken and possessed by any single political party. We are to be about justice, compassion, inclusion and love, not unconditional loyalty one political party or politician.”
Our reading this week is from the gospel of Mark:
They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had a uthority, not as the teachers of the law. Immediately there was man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit who cried out, “Why do you meddle with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the holy one of God!”
“Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.
The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee. (Mark 1:21-28)
Whenever we read the exorcism stories in the gospels, the first thing we need to remember is that these stories were not written to answer our modern scientific questions. These stories about Jesus were circulated by an oppressed community on the margins of the Roman empire. As difficult as it may be to temporarily park our attempts to rationalize these stories, we would do well to see them as the narratives of a community in a particular social or political location telling stories to communicate truths while still staying under the radar of the powers that be.
In all of the gospels, Jesus is characterized as an itinerant teacher. In the same gospels, Jesus is also an exorcist.
Rather than demythologizing this week’s story and trying to label it as a story of epilepsy or a mental disability, as modern Jesus scholarship often does, let’s leave the story as it is and instead look for how our reading functions within its original social context: a dangerous world, an oppressed community longing for liberation. Let’s see if there is any socio-political application we can make for our context today.
I also must admit the exorcist stories in the gospels are a bit triggering for me. I remember watching the horror movie The Exorcist on television late one night. I was just 9 years old and I was scarred for life! I still can’t tolerate movies or dramas that include the theme of this week’s story.
In this part of Mark’s gospel, Jesus has begun teaching and called his initial followers. Then, his first public act is this exorcism on the Sabbath in the synagogue!
The first act of Jesus in each gospel tells us a lot (see Luke 4:18-19.) Here in Mark, Jesus’ first supernatural act is an exorcism. Healers and exorcists were everywhere in the world for which the gospel of Mark was originally written, yet they did not provoke the wrath of the local authorities the way Jesus’ healings and exorcisms did. Others did the same activities Jesus did, but were not viewed as a threat by those in power. Jesus, on the other hand, experiences hostility from the authorities from his very first act.
Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus. (Mark 3:6)
And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.” (Mark 3:22)
In our story, Jesus comes from the wilderness or margins of his society to enter the local, central locations of sacred time (the Sabbath) and sacred space (the synagogue). I want to be clear, though. These stories are not a religious challenge to either the Sabbath or the synagogue. These stories are not anti-Semitic, though Christians have used them to harm Jewish people. Jesus never railed against the Sabbath as an institution. Nor did he ever preach against having synagogues. Rather his challenges were always aimed at those in positions of power over both sacred time and sacred space. Jesus also politically challenged those in power over the masses because of their complicity with the Roman empire.
From the very start, we see Jesus contrasted with the scribal establishment. The people claim that Jesus is offering a “new teaching with authority.” The Greek word for authority relates to doing what one pleases without having to have someone else’s permission. Those in the scribal establishment were under the authority of Rome and knew well not do promote anything that threaten Rome’s leave or permission for them to exist. Synagogue leaders also answered to the priesthood power structure back at the capital of the temple state, the temple in Jerusalem. This priesthood answered to the High Priest who was chosen by the Roman empire and answered to both Herod (Rome’s agent) and to Caesar.
The people also claim that Jesus’ authority was different and “not as the teachers of the law.” Jesus is standing outside of Roman permission, not answering to it. As the framing of Jesus’ first exorcism story, this gives us a hint as to how we should interpret these stories in the rest of Mark.
Again, I think that we should take this exorcism story symbolically, not literally. Jesus is liberating the people from that which has inhabited and “possessed” their sacred times and sacred spaces through the authority of Rome. No sooner does Jesus step into the status quo sacred space and authority structure than he meets this man. It’s a good hint that we are on the right track here: later in Mark’s gospel the author comes right out and tells us about another demon tormenting a man.
“Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion.” (Mark 5:9)
The Roman Legion was the largest military unit of the Roman army. It often inhabited, “possessed,” or was stationed in areas known to cause problems for the Pax Romana.
The language of this story tells us that Jesus met with opposition from the possessed man immediately: “Immediately there was a man.” Jesus’ authority comes in conflict with the local authority of the scribal authority immediately. Jesus’ teachings are seen as a threat from the very beginning. Our story uses language from the Hebrew sacred text in the context of opposition to political power:
“No! We did it for fear that some day your descendants might say to ours, ‘What do you have to do with the LORD, the God of Israel?’” (Joshua 22:24)
“Then Jephthah sent messengers to the Ammonite king with the question: ‘What do you have against me that you have attacked my country?’” (Judges 11:12)
“She said to Elijah, ‘What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?’” (1 Kings 17:18)
And in our story we read: “Why do you meddle with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?”
Even the demons’ naming Jesus as the holy one of God harkens back to those who stood up to corrupt power in the stories of old. Speaking of Elisha, Elisha’s host tells her husband, “‘I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God’” (2 Kings 4:9). In our story, as in Elisha’s, this designated a prophet who spoke truth to power for the liberation of the people. Our author is giving Jesus prophetic status that the original audience should interpret as equal to that of ancient prophets like Elisha.
There is also panic in the demons’ voice here. There is fear of disruption. How appropriate for when corrupt authority and power structures are threatened. Those who benefit from these structures fear disruption and change, and oppose change, while those being harmed rejoice. I hear this rejoicing in the people of our story: “The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, ‘What is this? A new teaching—and with authority!’”
The exorcism stories in Mark are to be seen through the apocalyptic lens of that time and place. The apocalyptic worldview sees the world dualistically, as a concrete material world and an unseen world filled with powers, demons, spirits. The concrete is connected with the spiritual and when there is conflict among the unseen, there is also conflict through their conduits in our seen world. This is how some of the ancients explained the existence of injustice, oppression and violence in our world. Jesus in our story in Mark is exorcising those “possessing” his people’s systems to prepare God’s creation for God’s just future, God’s coming rule, or, as the gospels name it, “the kingdom” where everyone is included and everyone has enough to thrive.
So the inaugural exorcism in our story this week begins with the scribal establishment in the synagogue system of Jesus’ people. The man possessed is the establishment, and the demon is the Roman empire’s coopting of the establishment. Jesus here is not against the scribes, but against their complicity in Roman oppression of his people. In Mark, from the very beginning, we are to see the exorcism stories in this narrative not as private liberations of individual people, but as systemic acts of purging corruption.
We will have this confirmed by the time we encounter the exorcism stories in Mark 3 and 5. In those chapters, those in power and authority accuse Jesus of exorcising demons in the name of the head demon Beelzebul and the demons themselves are blatantly associated with the Roman empire.
What applications can we make for our lives today?
Again, in Mark, exorcisms were a central action of Jesus:
“So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.” (Mark 1:39)
He also gave his followers the power to do the same:
“He appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.” (Mark 3:14-15)
“Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits.” (Mark 6:7)
When we look at these stories socially or politically, we are called to also call out and work for change in these areas where our communities are complicit in injustice, such as when our faith community being “possessed” and used by a political party. Outside of our faith communities, a system could be “possessed” when used by elites and the powerful at the expense of those they have made vulnerable.
Politics is about how power and resources are shared among humans. People of faith should always be involved working for justice to be practiced when people are being marginalized and dispossessed, and faith communities should never allow themselves to be overtaken and possessed by any single political party. We are to be about justice, compassion, inclusion and love, not unconditional loyalty one political party or politician.
We can be “exorcists,” as Jesus followers. Where is your Jesus following calling you to “cast out” injustice this week?
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. What would a society shaped by love look like? Share and discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate.
I have some exciting news! I have just signed an agreement with a new book publisher (Quoir), and we are putting together a launch team for the second edition of Finding Jesus, coming out next month!
If you have been blessed by the first edition, and you would like to see this book have greater exposure to reach an even larger audience, I want to invite you to be a part of the launch team. This second edition will be available in paperback, Kindle and an audio book available on Audible. And great news for those who already have a copy of the first edition, the first 25 people to sign up to be part of our launch team will also receive a FREE Audible copy of the audiobook for Finding Jesus.
To join the Finding Jesus launch team, all you need to do is four things:
- Go to Amazon and pre-order a copy of the second edition when pre-orders become available.
2) Read the pdf copy of the second edition of Finding Jesus that I will send you after your pre-order the book so that you’re ready on launch day.
3) On launch day go back to Amazon and write a review for Finding Jesus. (You’ll be able to do this on day one since you’ve already read the pdf copy.)
4 Share your review of Finding Jesus on your social media pages that day, also.
It’s pretty simple. That’s all. And if you already have copy of the first edition this is a great opportunity to get the audiobook version on Audible as soon as it is available.
If you would like to join our launch team, you can email me at info@renewedheartministries.com and just put in the subject of your email “Launch Team.”
Thank you in advance for being part of this special second edition publishing and ensuring this edition is a success.
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You can watch our new YouTube show called “Just Talking” each week. Todd Leonard and I take a moment to talk about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.
If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.
And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week.
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Jesus as Political
Herb Montgomery | March 11, 2022
To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.
“Even if threatened by those with privilege, we too, can keep on, in the language of our story this week, casting out demons. The demons of White supremacy, racism, patriarchy, misogyny, classism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia (and the current laws around our country that those possessed by transphobia are now trying to pass) and more.”
Our reading this week is from the book of Luke:
“At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’ He replied, ‘Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (Luke 13:31-35)
For the early Jesus community, this story would have been meaningful because it put Jesus’ work in tension with Herod and the powers-that-be in Galilee. Jesus is neither part of the power structure nor a domesticated insider here. He’s not a partisan within the system. He’s a radical whom the authorities are seeking to execute. Much like John the Baptist, whom Herod had previously executed for speaking truth to power (Josephus), Jesus is characterized as being on a very similar path in relation to the power structures of his region. His teachings and ministry are framed as a threat to those in power, specifically to Herod.
This helps explain why Jesus responds boldly in this narrative with, “Go tell that fox I will keep on driving out demons . . .”
This phrase immediately triggers me and my more scientific modern worldview and I’d guess it does for many of you, too. But I want us to step outside of the religious, supernatural definition of demons as beings we cannot see but who terrorize our world, just for a moment. I’m stepping away from the characterization of demons I grew up with in the horror films and shows of the 1980s and 1990s, like The Omen and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Let’s consider an interpretation that defines demons in the gospel stories through a more political lens.
Casting Out Demons As Political
Consider this explanation of Jesus’ first exorcism (Mark 1:21-28) by Ched Myers in Say to This Mountain:
“To interpret this exorcism solely as the ‘curing of an epileptic’ is to miss its profound political impact. In contrast to Hellenistic literature, in which miracle-workers normally function to maintain the status quo, gospel healings challenge the ordering of power. Because Jesus seeks the root causes of why people are marginalized, there is no case of healing and exorcism in Mark that does not also raise a larger question of social oppression.” (Ched Myers; Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship, p. 14)
In this story, Jesus’ exorcism takes place in the heart of a Galilean synagogue, because what the story is juxtaposing the political struggle between the scribal authority there and Jesus’ authority teaching something different.
Also consider the story of the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac in the synoptic gospels (Mark 5:1-20; Matthew 8:28-34; Luke 8:26-39). The name of the demon in this story is Legion. A Roman legion was the Roman army’s largest military unit and represented the occupying Gentile forces who were possessing the Jewish homeland. So in this gospel story, the people’s oppression by a foreign ruling power appears symbolically as a person’s possession by a foreign/demonic spirit.
Walter Wink asks us to make a similar interpretive choice:
“Some first-century Jews and Christians perceived in the Roman Empire a demonic spirituality which they called Satan (the “Dragon” of Revelation 12). But they encountered this spirit in the actual institutional forms of Roman life: legions, governors, crucifixions, payment of tribute, Roman sacred emblems and standards, and so forth (the “beast” of Revelation 13). The spirit that they perceived existed right at the heart of the empire, but their worldview equipped them to discern that spirit only by intuiting it and then projecting it out, in visionary form, as a spiritual being residing in heaven and representing Rome in the heavenly council. In the ancient worldview, where earthly and heavenly reality were inextricably united, this view of the Powers worked effectively. But for many modern Westerners it is impossible to maintain that worldview. Instead, fundamentalists treat the Powers as actual demonic beings in the air, largely divorced from their manifestations in the physical or political world (the theological worldview), and secularists deny that this spiritual dimension even exists (the materialistic worldview) . . . The demons projected onto the screen of the cosmos really are demonic, and play havoc with humanity. Only they are not up there but over there, in the socio-spiritual structures that make up the one and only real world.” (Walter Wink, The Powers That Be, Location 358, Kindle Edition)
Within this context, any systemic evil or injustice that becomes almost automated within a family, community, religious structure, civil structure, corporation, government, or world power is a demon that must be exorcised. Consider the demon of White supremacy, the demon of greed, or the demon of domination and subjugation that we see in the invasion and repression of Ukraine this year.
When we read of Jesus being threatened by Herod “who is seeking to execute him,” Jesus replies, “Go tell that fox, I’m going to keep on driving out demons.”
Jesus is showing the same political obstinance and determination against injustice and abuse of power, even in the face of lethal threat, that he will again show later in the story when he flips the tables in the courtyard in Jerusalem.
Anyone who sees Jesus the exorcist as simply passing out tickets to heaven rather than calling for concrete changes in the systems that harmed the marginalized people around him isn’t reading the gospel stories in their historical context. People don’t have their lives threatened for passing out tickets to heaven. After all, focusing folks on heavenly assurance doesn’t threaten the powerful, propertied, and privileged with change in the here and now. Yet Jesus is making change now. He’s casting out demons, challenging harmful political structures in the hearts and lives of his listeners, calling them to imagine the world differently. He, like John, is stirring up the people, and things that stir the people must always be stopped by those who benefit from the way things presently are.
Eventually, Jesus will reach Jerusalem, where his strongest demonstration or protest will take place in the very seat of the Temple state, and this week’s story intimates the result. Like the prophets of the poor who called for justice before him and were stoned and killed, Jesus’ story is going to get much worse as we hope for things to get better. The authors lean into the Jewish tradition of telling honest stories, of the good, the bad, and the ugly. We today could learn a lot from that tradition if we approached our own ugly histories with honesty rather than with sanitizer.
But this week’s story isn’t a story about how someone died or was killed. It is a story anticipating how state violence would be reversed and undone. This is a story of how life and life-giving triumphs in spite of death and death-dealing. Love triumphs in spite of injustice in the end. But we are not quite there yet in Jesus’ story. We are still on the journey with him.
Before we get to the end, we must first move through demonstration and protest, pushback from those who are threatened, and ultimately the state executing a man calling for changes that were too much for the powerful and elite to leave unanswered. His was a voice that must be silenced.
Yet in the end, death is not conquered with more death, even just one more death. Death is conquered by love, life, and justice. The salvific work that those in power sought to halt proved only to be momentarily interrupted. That salvific, liberative work would live on, and it lives on today in the choices we make every day, even in small things.
This month’s recommended reading from Renewed Heart Ministries is Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis’ book, Fierce Love. I’ll end this week with a quote:
“Alice Walker wrote: ‘Helped are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another—plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid.’ A movement to build a more just society begins with little steps taken by good people every day. Humankind desperately needs a love revolution that leads to equality and equity, to the end of white supremacy once and for all. You have the power to be an agent of change in your everyday living; you can influence your posse to also be the change you seek. And ultimately, together, in community, small steps can lead to morally courageous behavior that loves the world all the way to healing.” (Jacqui Lewis, Fierce Love, pp. 167-168).
Even if threatened by those with privilege, we too, can keep on, in the language of our story this week, casting out demons. The demons of White supremacy, racism, patriarchy, misogyny, classism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia (and the current laws around our country that those possessed by transphobia are now trying to pass) and more.
Here’s to more justice work.
Here’s to more courage, resistance, persistence and small things that we can do to create change.
HeartGroup Application
1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.
2. How does reframing the exorcism stories in the gospels impact your own Jesus following? Discuss with your group.
3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?
Thanks for checking in with us, today.
Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.
I love each of you dearly,
I’ll see you next week
March is Donor Appreciation Month
During the month of March, we want to do something special to thank you for supporting the work of Renewed Heart Ministries.
Renewed Heart Ministries provides deeply needed resources that help enable Christians to discover the intersection of their love for Jesus and their work of healing our world through actions of love, justice and compassion; actions Jesus modeled and called us to follow.
Engaging our communities in ways that shape our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone is often hard work and its worth it. We appreciate the actions, big and small, each of you take each day to engage this work.
This month, we are partnering with Watchfire Media to offer a free thank you gift, shipping included. We want to offer you Watchfire Media’s absolutely beautiful Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints 2022 Wall Calendar to everyone who makes a special one-time donation of $50 or more through the following special link during the month of March to support RHM’s work.
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*If donating by mail, simply make sure that your donation is specially marked indicating you would like a HolyTroublemakers & Unconventional Saints 2022 Wall Calendar as a thank you.)
If you are unfamiliar with this special calendar, The Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints 2022 Wall Calendar features 12 “holy troublemakers,” people of faith from different faiths and different eras who worked for more love, kindness, and justice in their corner of the world. Each of them did the right thing even when it was the hard thing, and even when it rocked the religious boat.
Like the book Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, this calendar centers holy troublemakers who are women, LGBTQ, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color who have too often been written out of religious narratives. Their stories inspire, educate, challenge, encourage, and move us all towards more love and a faith that works for the common good of everyone.
Packed with original artwork, short bios, and inspiring quotes, the calendar also includes important holidays from diverse faith traditions, social justice movement anniversaries, and dates that help us remember that joy is an essential part of holy troublemaking.
Thank you in advance for supporting the work of Renewed Heart Ministries. Together we will continue being a voice for change. And thank you to Watchfire Media, as well, for partnering with RHM this month to be able to share this special thank you gift with our supporters. We appreciate all you do, too!
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