Talking about demons
Published: Mon, 02/10/14
"That must have been difficult to speak about?" Said a
member of the congregation after the service. I had been preaching
on the subject of demon possession and driving out of unclean
spirits. The text was from the first chapter of Mark's gospel
and it says that Jesus did three things, preached in synagogues,
healed the sick and drove out demons (also referred to as unclean
spirits, the modern translation of 'evil spirits' is
incorrect). The surprised reaction to the sermon seemed to come
because people who had been attending church regularly for perhaps
60 or 70 years (I am not exaggerating) who said that they had never
heard the subject preached on before. Come to think of it I
can't remember hearing anyone preach on the subject either. My
attitude is that if it is there in the text it should be engaged
with. If you are going to be a preacher then your job is to
explore, and if possible illuminate, the fundamentals of the
Christian religion. You don't achieve that by avoiding the
"difficult bits". I reserve the right to say how I
understand something that is in the bible and share my own
interpretation of it. Members of the congregation are more than
welcome to take me to task afterwards if they don't agree with
me. (Surprising how rarely that happens, I must try harder). But
I am not going to pretend that a passage which seems a bit
difficult isn't there by trying to ignore it and hoping I get
away with it. (The sad part is I probably would.)
When I actually started to think about the subject of unclean
spirits and what it means some ideas quickly became clear. Jesus
is addressing the whole person, the mind (through preaching,
discussion and argument) , the body through healing and making
people well and the soul or spirit by driving out the entities
which can attach themselves to people and torment them spiritually.
Of course if you have a materialist view of life then there is no
spiritual dimension and therefore place for spirits of any kind.
But if you do accept all three dimensions of reality then it should
be no surprise that Jesus engaged with all three.
I believe that it is essential to honour the whole of a system of
knowledge and practice and not be tempted to leave out the
'difficult bits' or the parts that don't seem to be all
that useful. I don't mean all the rules, regulations,
interpretations and extras that readily accumulate in any activity
or system. I mean the fundamentals and working with them. If
preaching that means the biblical texts as they come on the
lexionary (the readings appointed for each Sunday). If teaching
Stav then the runes, all sixteen of them. When I wrote the members
newsletter for December I was looking at the Ur rune. I was
telling myself that Ur isn't really very interesting,
certainly it is very limited in its martial applications. Then I
realised that the power that comes from dropping into the Ur stance
is fundamental to making all other applications work. Not exactly
surprising when you consider that Ur basically means
'primal-stuff' but it would be easy to overlook Ur when
teaching on the grounds that it isn't very exiting and the
applications are far from obvious. Unless of course you work with
the whole Futhork and make the effort to see which each rune has to
offer you at that moment in time.
Come to Crewkerne on Saturday and see what I mean, we will do all
the stances and staff exercises. Not all of them will speak to you
on the same day, but that is okay, if you know them then they are
ready to help you when the time comes.
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/train.html
regards
Graham