Sermon 1.11.26 Misconceptions about Spiritual Evil & Warfare Theology

Sermon Begins @ 17:50

The strange and sometimes disheartening thing about getting out of normal life for a little while (and tell me if you’ve had this experience) is that the world doesn’t slow down.

Vacation, it turns out, is not an escape from the world, because even while you’re on vacation, you’re still in the world.

Biblical Scholar NT Wright, who is the retired Bishop of Durham in England, has done a series of interviews recently with American evangelical podcasts.

In these interviews, Wright points out a few theological errors that he thinks have hindered American Christianity. And, to be fair, he points out that they precede our country’s founding.

But, they have found a particularly destructive form in our country.

And, he opines, that “the rest of us from around the world, we look at it and think, please, I hope you guys can get your act together, because the world is too dangerous a place to have the most powerful country on Earth being taken over by this."

What are the errors that he sees in our theology?

First, he thinks that our conception of heaven and earth are wrong.

Second, though he doesn’t call it this, we have become susceptible to a new kind of Gnosticism, which was an ancient heresy that was all about personal salvation and secret knowledge; that we can have a sort of inside track on God, an “I know something that you don’t.”

Third, he notices that we have an “unhealthy” fascination with demons and spiritual warfare.

The first error, we have talked about here at St. Andrew’s before, but it bears repeating.

The idea that heaven is like a vacation, where we get whisked out of the world, when we die is not the view that the Bible has of the afterlife.

Wright points out that the popular idea of our souls leaving our bodies and going up to heaven is a middle Platonist conception.

The New Testament, from the Apostle Paul to the Revelation of John, affirms that the end of our lives and the general resurrection at the end of days will not be a floating away, but a descending of heaven onto the earth so that the dwelling place of God will be among mortals.

And we have signs of this in our burial practices.

We’re all familiar with the epitaph R.I.P.?  Now someone help me preach, and tell me what that stands for. (Rest in Peace)

The resurrection, just like Jesus’ resurrection, is a bodily resurrection, a waking from sleep when the trumpet sounds.

It’s not an escape from earth, but a consummation and perfection of creation.

When we think of death and resurrection as an escape, we tend not to care for the earth as much as we should, or our fellow people, because we’re only concerned with the question: “how does my soul get to heaven.”

This leads into our second error, modern Gnosticism.

When we make our ultimate question about our personal soul escaping to paradise rather than God’s ultimate victory over sin and death and salvation for all of creation, we start ourselves down a very selfish path.

We narrow our conception of who can be saved.

We start to think of us and ours as better than them and theirs (even if it is other Christians).

We tell ourselves that we are the ones with the real truth, the secret knowledge, while all those other fools are being led astray.

Some of these theologies even believe that God himself misleads people who are not ordained to enter into heaven, and thus disagreements on theology are a sign that God really only wants us to know the truth.

This kind of theology leads to dehumanizing others and not loving our neighbor as ourselves. It can lead to violence; violence in our hearts that can precipitate violent actions with our bodies.

We see this and pray for an end to it every week.

None more so than this week as we see the tragic, but inescapable consequence of the violent rhetoric that has infected our national discourse especially in this past decade.

Many of us have become outraged about the current state of affairs with immigration raids and rightly so.

so safe in our cocoon of privilege that taunting a person with a loaded gun doesn’t seem dangerous.

On the other hand, our federal government has armed and deputized thousands of people with a chip on their shoulder, little training in de-escalation, unbridled power, and a contempt for human life.

Instead of seeing fellow human beings or neighbors, whom we are supposed to love, we have been conditioned to see demons around every corner.

Which leads to Wright’s third observation.

American theology has become all too fascinated with the demonic powers and “spiritual warfare.”

Wright calls this a “dark fascination that should be avoided like the plague.”

Over the past few centuries, there have been two ways that we think about spiritual evil, two sides of a coin.

On the one hand, the secular world has denied the existence of spiritual evil as superstitious.

On the other, some Christians in their pursuit of “secret knowledge” have found demons hiding under every stone.

Neither of these two extremes is healthy or true.

There can be no denying, when you see the events of the 20^th century and the early part of this century that when you see vast swaths of people and whole societies perpetrating injustices, that evil is not just a problem of a few bad individuals, but is a spiritual force that rebels against God, which can corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.

But, we must also hold to a truth that a spiritual director once shared, “demons can only get in, if you let them in. Jesus gives you the power to deny them entry into your soul.”

Over the past few weeks and months, I have personally seen instances of this theology being pedaled to people I love.

One of them I received personally from someone who wanted me to see the dangers of demons in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder.

It was a sermon about spiritual warfare calling all Christians to be soldiers against evil and corruption (narrowly defined as people who aren’t with us).

The second, I didn’t receive directly, because people often know I don’t deal with nonsense, so I sometimes get left out of the best ones.

It was a scare-tactic video claiming that the most recent childhood meme, wait for it… “6-7,” is a demonic ploy to corrupt our children.

Now, to me, childhood Joy is not demonic, it is one of the only signs that the world is a place that God intended for us to find Beauty, Grace, and Love.

When we as Christians get too focused on “spiritual warfare,” or demons, we actually give our souls over to their corrupting influence.

We can’t put ourselves into these extremes, as NT Wright reminds us.

Spiritual evil is real and we must contend with it as Jesus did, when it appeared, but Jesus didn’t spend his whole ministry casting out demons.

He broke bread with people, broke barriers of difference, healed the sick.  As our reading from Isaiah reminds us, he did not exploit weakness by breaking a bruised reed or quenching a dimly burning wick.

He brought justice, he called us to righteousness, he opened the eyes of the blind, and he set prisoners free.

The problem with looking for demons everywhere is that old admonition of Jesus, “seek and you will find.”

If you look for demons everywhere, you’ll find them everywhere.

If you look for love everywhere, you will find love everywhere.

And if you have the love of Jesus in your heart, there is no demon or spiritual power that will be able to harm you.

So, we see, as NT Wright points out, the triple problem of American theology at this moment and how it is infecting our society.

But, what is the solution?

I’m glad you asked. There are probably many solutions, but I will offer you my take.

For me, the solution is to get back to the basics, to the fundamentals of our faith.

Away from the noise of demon hunters, who are either trying to capitalize on this moment of theological confusion for fame or for money.

Away from the demonizing of other voters, or even of the ICE agents whom the system of oppression has deployed to bring terror and fear to our streets.

Today, we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord, the first and most fundamental act of Christian faith;

The moment promised by the prophet Isaiah, when God would put His Spirit on His servant to bring justice to the nations;

A moment recounted by St. Peter in the Acts of the Apostles;

A moment that redefined what the psalmist meant when he said that “the voice of the Lord is upon the mighty waters, the God of Glory thunders.”

Today, in recognition of Jesus’ baptism, we will renew our own baptismal vows, and we will remember what is fundamental to our faith, the promises that were made for us, and that we make for ourselves as followers of Jesus:

Belief in a triune and almighty God,

The promise to continue in the apostles’ teachings, the breaking of bread, and prayer.

The promise to persevere in resisting evil in our own lives first, through a cycle of repentance.

The promise to proclaim Jesus’ Good News in our words and in our lives, not just devils and demons.

The promise to seek and serve Christ in everyone that we encounter.

The promise to strive for justice and dignity for every human being.

I intimated earlier, though didn’t say it explicitly, that salvation is not an individual thing, we are all our brother’s and sister’s keeper, who seek the salvation of the whole world, not just our own individual souls.

And yet, there are things in our faith that do pertain to us as individuals.

No one can be baptized for you, no one can receive communion for you.

Baptism and Eucharist are about your personal transformation and commitment to a life of faith and justice.

But, neither is your individual transformation in these moments just for you, it is a transformation that puts you on the front lines of Love’s victory over evil and death.

In this confusing moment, when so much focus seems to be on evil, when it may seem like evil is winning, because it is all we see or talk about.

Remember to go back to the fundamentals. Remember to go back to your baptism. Remember to make space for Joy.

The mighty waters seem scary to us, built up on every side.

Remember to guard your hearts from violent thoughts and actions as best you can, don’t let the waters overtake you or the spirit of this age corrupt you.

Above all, remember that God sits above the flood, as our psalmist reminds us.

Remember that Jesus went down into those waters and came out to resurrection glory, so that you too might have eternal life.

And remember that at the end of the age, when that trumpet sounds and the sleepers wake, “in the temple of the Lord, all will be crying, ‘Glory.’”

And as John Legend once crooned, “One day when the Glory comes, it will be ours, it will be ours. One day when the war is won, we will be sure, we will be sure. Oh Glory. Glory. Glory.”

We don’t need an escape plan, because Jesus has already won.

We just need a baptism.

Amen.