Just the word “exorcist” will conjure up for most movie enthusiasts the horror movie of 1973. It ranks as the epitome of movies of that genre. Most people will say that having seen the movie once, they will never watch it again.
Do we really believe that a demon, or Satan himself can enter a person and take control of them? Many will say yes, they believe in the power of evil. Not all people believe in the power of God. When George Burns acted in the 1977 movie, Oh, God!, his character, assailing the doubts concerning God’s reality, noted, 'Nobody had any problem believing that the devil took over and existed in a little girl. All she had to do was throw up some pea soup and everybody believed. The devil you could believe, but not God?”
You will find the story of Jesus the Exorcist in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Luke. A man, who it was said had demons, had no home. He lived among tombs of a cemetery. He had no clothes. At times he was chained. When asked his name, he replied, “Legion, for we are many.” Think schizophrenia.
Legion said, 'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me!' The man who had demons was content with a God who never did anything. Nor did he want God to do anything.
Be a good Jesus. Just be what I expect and give me what I want; but don't go doing anything! Don’t torment me! I'll accept Jesus as God’s Son, but don't require me to be part of his Church.' Or 'I'll attend church, but I don't want it to touch my life. One hour a week is enough for me. Don't ask me to give of myself: my treasure, my talent, my time. Don't torment me. Be a good God.'
You may notice in reading the story there is no mention of sin. Of course God desires us to personify goodness and love. God does not want us to sin. But Jesus does not come to us first because we are “sinners.” Jesus comes to us because we suffer. Jesus cares about us when we have no home. Jesus relates to us because we are poor. Jesus wants to free us because we are imprisoned. Jesus accepts us when others treat us as outcasts.
Following the exorcism, Jesus is asked to leave the region, partly because he was the focal point of so much power for good—and partly because he had disturbed an area's economy: he had banished the demons into a herd of pigs.
Robert F. Kennedy once noted that our gross national product also counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them, napalm and nuclear warheads and television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet,” he said, “the gross national product does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
“That which makes life worthwhile”— this marks the economy of the Kingdom of God! If we permit Jesus the Exorcist to touch our lives, it may be said of us as it was said of Legion: “They found him from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”
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