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PDF versionExpelling the demons of war
by John Dear SJ on Mar. 29, 2011
They came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. When he got out of the boat, at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit, met him. The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.
War is never the solution. The Obama Administration’s new war in Libya (on top of our current wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) will not bring God’s peace to anyone; it just makes us all less secure.
These wars kill civilians and children, destroy the earth, fuel terrorism and bankrupt our economy. We have no money for schools, jobs, healthcare, housing for the homeless and food for the hungry -- but we always have money for war.
When will we learn? Why do we carry on the age-old methods of military occupation and warfare? And for us Christians, what must Jesus think of our militarism?
Last month in Palestine at the Sabeel conference scripture scholar Ched Myers, author of Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, led us in an extraordinary bible study of Mark 5:1-20, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac.
Myers helped us understand God’s response to military occupation and imperial domination. I thought I would share some of his insights to see how Jesus confronts the imperial domination of his day and what it might mean for us today.
We’ve all heard the story before but probably missed the political overtones. To be sure, whenever Jesus engages in exorcisms, he is liberating people from an “occupying” spirit, i.e., from the Roman Empire. He also longs to free us to live as children of God, and to follow him on the way of love and peace.
In the previous chapter in Mark, Jesus and the disciples set out across the Sea of Galilee to enemy territory. Jesus is determined to heal everyone; he truly loves enemies. This, of course, terrifies the disciples.
Each sea crossing to “the other side” symbolizes Jesus’ love for those in “enemy” territory and exposes the disciples’ fear. In this case, a storm arises, which symbolizes the terror we all feel when we dare love enemies. The disciples are terrified by the wind, waves and storm -- signs of the inner tumult and public outcry we too would feel if we traveled to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Libya.
Jesus calms the storm but insists we journey to “the other side.” (This month, Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and 25 friends have embarked on just such a peacemaking journey to Afghanistan. The challenge of peacemaking, we learn, is to overcome our fears and make the journey, come what may.)
So Jesus enters the Decapolis, the ten federated cities colonized by settlements of Roman military veterans. He meets the demoniac, a man possessed by empire and death. He’s out of his mind, doing violence to himself and others. He represents all those occupied by the powers of war, militarism and empire. Jesus expels the demons of imperial occupation and frees him. The story is worth rereading:
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Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” And he pleaded earnestly with him not to drive them away from that territory.
Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside. And they pleaded with him, “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.” And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned. The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town and throughout the countryside. And people came out to see what had happened. As they approached Jesus, they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear. Those who witnessed the incident explained to them what had happened to the possessed man and to the swine. Then they began to beg him to leave their district.
As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleased to remain with him. But he would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his mercy has done for you.” Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him, and all were amazed.
Legion is my name. What a political statement! A legion was a division of two thousand Roman soldiers. Four legions were based in that area to control the eastern part of the empire.
By naming the possessed man “Legion,” Mark offers a specific parable about how Jesus liberates us from military occupation and empire. Militarism kills us spiritually and physically, as we see in the lengthy description of the possessed man’s violence.
As the God of life, Jesus has come to liberate us. “Come out of him!” Jesus commands the destructive spirit. (He will say the same thing to the entombed Lazarus, as I explain in a new book to be released later this year, Lazarus Come Forth!)
Jesus wants to free all of us from military occupation and empire -- the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine and those of us here at home, all who are stuck in permanent war and global domination. If we are willing to hear his command, we will find healing and peace.
“Dispatch us into the swine,” Legion says to Jesus. Swine were popular with soldiers, Myers told us in his presentation. The mascot for the tenth Roman legion in Judea at that time was a pig.
Mark describes them as a “herd,” which is not the normal name for a group of pigs. Any reader of the time would know “herd” referred to a large group of Roman military recruits! Here Jesus uses military language and “dismisses” them.
So the swine run down the hill and are drowned -- a reminder of the Exodus account of Pharaoh’s army being drowned in the sea.
Wouldn’t the exorcism of the possessed man on the outskirts of town please the townsfolk? Not at all. They are frightened and run away. They do not want the man healed! They are used to violence. They have made peace with the forces of death. They do not want liberation from military occupation.
If they eject the Roman military from their area, they fear Roman retaliation. So they reject the nonviolent Jesus and his gift of liberation.
They know, too, that if the Roman soldiers and veterans leave, they will lose their income, their “way of life.” After all, military occupation and imperial war-making appear to be good for business. The death of the pigs symbolizes the price for Jesus’ gift of liberation -- the collapse of the local economy. (Jesus proposes an economy based on justice, sharing, sustainability, and nonviolence.)
Some of us hear this frequently when we vigil outside our local military installations, such as the Pentagon in Washington, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area, or the Oak Ridge nuclear weapons complex in Tennessee.
“We can’t quit,” Los Alamos employees tell us when we vigil each year outside of the national nuclear weapons laboratories. “We need the jobs.”
We don’t want nuclear disarmament because then we’ll be unemployed, they say in effect.
So Jesus and his gift of liberation from militarism are rejected then and now. We do not want to be liberated from militarism, weapons manufacturing, occupation, war and empire. As Jesus turns to leave, the healed man begs to come with him.
But Jesus tells him to go back to his own people and announce all the good God has done for him. So the healed demoniac becomes an apostle of peace who announces liberation from empire, much to the amazement of everyone.
Mark’s text raises many questions about our own global military nightmare.
How are we possessed by the demons of war, militarism, occupation, weapons-manufacturing and empire? How is Jesus trying to expel those demons from us? Do we want to be healed?
What is the economic price we must pay if we as a people were to disarm, dismantle our arsenals, and lose our jobs involved in the military or nuclear weaponry? How have we rejected Jesus and his gift of healing liberation? What can we do instead to welcome his healing gift of disarmament?
Lent is a time to recognize that we as a people are thrashing around in chains and shackles, hurting ourselves and others, at home and abroad. Our support of empire is not working. As we head toward Holy Week, let’s pray for the grace to allow Jesus to expel the demons of war, militarism and empire from among us that we too might possess the right mind of nonviolence.
Indeed, let’s ask Jesus to send us forth like the healed demoniac to announce our liberation from militarism and empire. Jesus wants to heal us and show us the way forward into a new nonviolent world.
Our wars are not working. Let’s listen to the nonviolent Jesus for a change.
* * *
John Dear will lead a retreat on the Sermon on the Mount (April 29-May1) in Los Angeles, and a retreat “The School of Prophets,” on the prophetic tradition from Isaiah to Jesus, (May 20-22) at Kirkridge, near Bangor, PA (www.kirkridge.org). To hear a new podcast interview with John Dear, go to www.jesusradicals.com. His latest book, Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (Orbis), and other recent books, A Persistent Peace and Put Down Your Sword, as well as Patricia Normile’s John Dear On Peace, are available from www.amazon.com. To contribute to Catholic Relief Services’ “Fr. John Dear Haiti Fund,” go to: http://donate.crs.org/goto/fatherjohn. For further information, or to schedule a lecture or retreat, visit: www.johndear.org.
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I always love what John Dear
I always love what John Dear has to say but among those works , this stands out to me as ground breaking. And I mean this as in the preparation for growth in many ways. I am very grateful to John Dear who holds true to the 'heart of the matter' in dark times.
I'm Canadian and we have a
I'm Canadian and we have a federal election coming up soon. I can't vote for the major parties because they support militarism and nuclear power plants, two things I don't agree with. The party I support, the Green Party, looks to the future...they won't win the election but every vote is a voice, no matter how small.
I agree with you in principle
I agree with you in principle and I believe we too readily resort to war, but what is the proper response when a just person sees people being slaughtered by a mad and cruel dictator? Should we just look away? Or is there some effective response we can make to this situation in Libya?
Older sister, you are not
Older sister, you are not alone in struggling with this dilemma. I know that war is unacceptable for all of the violations against the directive of the Sermon on The Mount. But so are the atrocities that are being committed by these regimes. I am truly lost here and wish I had some kind of an answer to help you. None-the-less, I am, without reservation, grateful to Fr. Dear and so many other who will speak out against war, as we need to be constantly reminded about the true horrors of war, not just the mythology of it's glory.
This war in Libya is all
This war in Libya is all about oil.
If one was to read history, it goes right back, George's Bush senior and junior both had personal interests not that long ago.
When one considers the breaches of human rights in countries run by Catholics it's more than a little spiritually selective.
Don't bring Jesus into it.
Absolutely wonderful piece
Absolutely wonderful piece Father Dear!!!! If only everyone could see the Lord's hand and realize nothing is impossible with the Lord--that He would be right there with us if we tried to solve problems by peaceful methods----we would be successful if we took his hand and worked at following his words!!!
Scroll down for an internet
Scroll down for an internet Excerpt, related to what Rev. Father Dear wrote:
Last month in Palestine at the Sabeel conference scripture scholar Ched Myers, author of Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, led us in an extraordinary bible study of Mark 5:1-20, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac.
Here also is a LINK to some of Ched Myers other Bible Studies, that can be purchased at a low cost:
http://www.chedmyers.org/catalog/bible-study
Excerpt LINK:
http://www.fosna.org/content/archbishop-thabo-makgoba-sabeel-conference-...
Excerpt:
In Bethlehem, bible study leader Ched Myers presented a radical Jesus unfamiliar to most Christians today. Myers is the author of Binding the Strong Man and a partner in Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, Oak View, Calif., USA.
“Jesus publically identifies with the notorious John the Baptizer, whose message of repentance was directed not just to a personal change of heart but to the whole nation. Jesus and his followers were complicit In John’s rebel movement,” Myers said.
Jesus did not propose “a utopian dream that can only be realized in heaven or the afterlife,” Myers said. “Jesus’ gospel leaves no room for otherworldly religion: `The time is now; the sovereignty of God is here.’ (Mark 1:15),” he said.
Myers called the destruction of Palestinian olive trees by Israeli settlement development “economic warfare” and compared it to Roman economic oppression of formerly self-sufficient fishermen in Jesus’ time. Fisherman had "fallen to the bottom of an increasingly elaborate economic hierarchy. It stands to reason that peasant fisherman would have been particularly responsive to a call to resist,” Myers said.
Myers explained that Nazareth in Galilee, Jesus’ home town, was located in the neighborhood of the demolished city of Sepphoris, re-built by the Romans as a powerful administrative center. “It was a dramatic case of imposing a colonial settlement on an indigenous landscape. Sepphoris would have towered over Nazareth, like the [Israeli] Har Homa settlement does over Bethlehem today, even more so,” Myers said.
Jesus the carpenter might have walked about an hour to get work in the new imperial city. “The trauma of Sepphoris’ destruction and reconstruction as an imperial city right at his doorstep would have had a profound impact on his consciousness, infusing in him a keen sense of the travails of empire,” Myers said.
I believe that the Obama
I believe that the Obama administration is doing their best in another difficult situation. I can't believe that any alternative administration would do anything better; they may have even done worse. This is a NATO action and the US is a team player. I can imagine the criticism if he had declined. Let's face it, no matter what this administration does they are criticised. I am very sad to see us involved in another military action but realistic enough to know that we don't always have a choice. We can't know what happens behind the scenes and how this administration is being pushed and pulled. As it is we are standing on the side of the oppressed. Pray, Pray, Pray and trust that God will be present in the midst of this.
I believe this whole thing is
I believe this whole thing is timed for the 2012 election cycle
Change is the transformation
Change is the transformation of anger, into love, through Gods love. From outside the personified anger in humanities consciousness, of a personified God, from outside the anger of ourselves, we will reside in the peace of love. Reach out, outside ourselves to our loving God, who is not of gender or form but the essence of pure love, and there will be peace. Ask for peace from our loving God. and it will be done. Gods love transforms our anger realising love, Fulfilling the intended...
Any reader of the time would
Any reader of the time would know “herd” referred to a large group of Roman military recruits! Here Jesus uses military language and “dismisses” them.
------------
Can you support this with a credible source? TIA
Anonymous, this extracted
Anonymous, this extracted phrase lies within the context of the name Legion. Did you not read the entire passage?
The Reverend Father John Dear SJ is the most consistently credible source we believers have, by our Faith in the nonviolent God of Love.
TIA?
Aunt?
He can't support the claim,
He can't support the claim, because it's false.
I just received an email from
I just received an email from President Obama. (I'm on his list, haha.) I will forward it to him, and the rest of the people on my list.
This is a powerful analysis
This is a powerful analysis of this bit of scripture.
It is so tactical that nearly every state in the union _benefits_ from the military industrial complex. This creates a situation where everone becomes, to some degree, complicity in its' maintenance.
Lets just pretend that as a people we came to agree that we needed to disinvest ourselves from the business of war.
What would the tax base need to do to support a restructuring of our economy in this way?
How would we, what would we need to do to support the millions in the system AND those harmed and disabled by our senseless military committments over the years?
It's clear that it would be a gargantuan task.
Much like eating the elephant, we'd need to take it one spoonful at a time. But at this time it is sufficient to contemplate this need to step away from a national acceptance of violence.
Bob Herbert writing in his column in the NYTIMES once said that American's have two responses to violence: To ignore it and to be entertained by it.
I have meditated on that idea over time and I see nothing to disprove it.
But violence harms us all and I think this reading of this story vividly illustrates that.
When we build naval fleets
When we build naval fleets that are unmatched in the world and place one in the Mediterranean Sea, when we build air fields for the our birds of death, and when we place our finest young women and men in 140 places around the world with modern weapons, the day always comes when we will use these things. These military units are there to carryout a foreign policy that is friendly to our commercial empire. We appointed ourselves policemen of the world whether we like it or not. We put ourselves in to a war position and we seem to be a war all the time. I don't see us pulling back from this role. Like Father Dear notes that we say we need the job!
actually, having your posts
actually, having your posts removed or not even put up on this bilge page is quite an honor. the readers wont agree anyhows, and it's merely a sign that mr dear cant hack it.
And what is it that you would
And what is it that you would like to say that would gainfully advance this discussion?
i've already posted. then it
i've already posted. then it was removed... not the first time.
if the staff here had the guts, they'd reinstate the original posts.
but they dont, and they wont.
too bad - your loss, not mine.
Mr. DeSade, are you a
Mr. DeSade, are you a masochist? If you find here bilge why come to this page? Certainly you do not read it! Yet, one person's bilge is another's blessing, and I find here an oasis of blessing and of strength. I pray for your conversion to the true Faith in Peace and Love which is our Catholic Faith.
this article has special
this article has special resonance with Ciudad Juarez and the military occupation it now suffers in the name of security, in fact bringing greater violence and death. The people get used to it . . .
This article in fact is an insightful analysis of the psychology of occupation which now enslaves Ciudad Jaurez. I urge the Reverend Father John Dear SJ to study deeply the coyuntura at work there now, and to pray deeply for peace, as he always does.
Remember Ciudad Juarez did not vote for the present federal president Calderon, and since his empowerment has suffered immeasurable agony and loss, and punitive federal economic policies as well as the military occupation which has done nothing to stop violence, only to escalate it.
And some taxi drivers I regularly speak with even called for a US military occupation as a solution?!
Have they seen Iraq and the Afghan lately?
El Salvador?
Colombia?
"...he was always crying out
"...he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones."
Just as we hurt our own young men and women by sending them to wars where they are killed or wounded ...and maim and wound our own spirit by exalting militarism.
Response to what MollyJ2
Response to what MollyJ2 wrote:
It is so tactical that nearly every state in the union _benefits_ from the military industrial complex. This creates a situation where everone becomes, to some degree, complicity in its' maintenance.
My response to MollyJ2:
I was at Barnes and Noble this weekend, and picked up a Documentary/DVD (it was on sale) called: “Why we fight.” Among other things, it looks at the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.”
One sentence Excerpt:
The message here is that while there may be some who sincerely believe that America's various military engagements (in Iraq, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere) since World War II are the product of our God-given duty to spread freedom and halt the influence of evil ideologies around the world, the real reason we fight is that war is good business.
Amazon.com LINK:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Fight-Gore-Vidal/dp/B000FBH3W2
The United States needs to
The United States needs to get out of the Empire Business. We have troops on the ground in something like 100 countries around the world. We spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. A lot of Americans are starting to realize the folly of Empire, and indeed the immorality of going into other countries who have not attacked us, and killing their soldiers and civilians.
Modern warfare is not as "surgical" as the Pentagon would lead you to believe.
They call the deaths of civilians "collateral damage." Tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq were killed via "collateral damage."
I am not calling for unilateral disarmament nor the US not defending itself. I am calling for a major reevaluaton of our foreign policy and a ramping down of our armaments to a more sane level.
We cannot rule the world by military force and we should not even try.
This is an urgent matter. I
This is an urgent matter. I truly need the assistance of someone honest about whether they have been successful and aimed experienced of expelling actual real demons from the human beings. I am not referring to bad habits as demons but the fallen angels of Satan demonic spirits. I was physically attacked by a fallen angel - a real demon while merely sleeping in December of 2010. I have gone thru many unsuccessful deliverance sessions and the ministers that I have met here in the States that are aware of my problem either are not truthful regarding their experience of expelling demons and only pretend to care about the lives of God's children. If you have been successful in casting out a physically demon from an individual please, I need to speak with you. Or if you know of someone who has this annointing and gift from God I expel demons please help me to reach that individual. I am physically tormented daily internally by the demon, and I don't know what to do. I am just trying to be good servant and child of God, live a good life full of love and hope that God is pleased with me. I don't know where the demon came from or why it was allowed to attack me while I was sleeping. I didn't invite this type of spirit, I actually prayed for Gods protection against these evil spirits. So please if you can... Help!
Sincerely
Angela Stewart
Reside in Virginia
Alstewart2@hotmail.com
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