10/29/23 Sermon

I love horror movies.  I don’t know what it is about them, but I can’t get enough of them.  They don’t really scare me per-se and they aren’t always clever, but I love them.  One of the things I find so fascinating about horror movies is that you can see what society was afraid of and what we were going through when the movie was released.  They play on our societal fears.  I’ll give you an example.  In the late 80s and early 90s, we saw a resurgence of vampire films, but the vampires had evolved from the ugly, bald scary looking Nosferatu to a slick foreigner with Bella Lugosi to then by the 80s they were very attractive and sexual creatures who would seduce you in order to suck your blood and turn you into them.   You had sexual creatures who would suck and taint your blood thereby infecting you. And what was going on back then?  The AIDS epidemic. In the 2000s and 2010s we saw zombie movies and shows have an uptick.  They depicted brainless masses that would attack and consume society… No comment on that one.

But maybe my favorite horror movie of all time is The Exorcist.  Now, I think one could make an argument that the Exorcist isn’t really a horror movie - that it’s really more of a drama as a mother struggles to find out what’s wrong with her child.  It’s a very slow movie but as it builds to its final crescendo, it works its way under your skin.  William Peter Blatty based his Novel that became the movie off of accounts of a real exorcism performed in 1949 on a boy only named for a long time as “Roland Doe.”

 One of the themes that develops throughout the movie that I find so intriguing is that science, technology, and modern medicine have no answer for what is going on with the character of Regan MacNeil - the 12-year-old girl who’s possessed.  Only faith has the answers to what is going to cure her and only faith has the cure.  Science and technology prove useless. Only faith with its sometimes obscure and archaic rituals that can cure her.  It’s almost like a warning call that some things should be held on to and not abandoned.  That we need faith because Science and technology can’t overcome and defeat evil. 

 As I’ve been talking about wanting to do a horror movie inspired sermon today as we approach perhaps my favorite secular holiday, people have been naturally curious about where Presbyterians stand on this whole idea of exorcism and what evil really is in our reformed tradition.  The truth is we don’t really talk too much about the nature of evil or the reality of the devil or Satan or the demonic in our tradition anymore.  Certainly, there’s a history there, but we don’t talk about it. 

 In my research for this sermon, I found out that most witch trials happened between the years of 1566 to about 1735 and a disproportionate amount of them happened in Scotland.  The research I did all said that the church in Scotland really led the charge.  Considering John Knox returned to Scotland and started the Presbyterian church in 1563 - just three years before witch trials became prominent - we can clearly infer that Presbyterians led the charge in convicting and executing supposed witches.   And we did so at about the rate of 17 people a year, 85% being women which works out to be about a woman a month for almost 200 years was put to death by the Presbyterian Church for being a witch.  Maybe that’s why we don’t talk about it too much these days.  We basically committed evil trying to eradicate evil.  A story as old as time. 

I don’t know if the devil is real as in like a person and I don’t know if evil is some outside force that is enacted on us or if we use these concepts to try to alleviate ourselves from some responsibility for the evils we see and commit in the world.  Many people believe that evil is just a by-product or consequence of human willfulness.  But I want to offer you two stories that have shaped my thinking about this throughout my life and I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from them…

 Story #1

 A pious woodcutter once lived in the woods with his family.  Nearby lived a tribe of pagans who worshiped a pine tree.  The pine tree was their idol; they prayed to it.  One day the woodcutter said, “I’m going to go cut down that pine tree.  I’m sure that God will reward me for doing it.  It’ll stop people from being pagans and praying to an idol.  At the same time, I’ll get a nice pine tree to sell in the market place.  That’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

 As he was walking, axe in hand, toward the tribe, a man came up to him and asked, “Where are you going?” The woodcutter said, “I’m going to the tribe that worships a pine tree and I’m gonna cut down that tree.”  But The man said, “No, no.  Don’t do that.”

 “Who are you to tell me not to do that?  I’m going to do it for God’s sake. I’m going to chop that pine tree down.”

 The man said, “Well, I told you not to do that.”

Who’s going to stop me?” asked the woodcutter.

 “I am.” replied the man.

 “Who are you to prevent me from cutting that pine tree down?”

 The man replied, “I am Satan.  I’m the Devil.  You can’t cut the tree down.  I’m going to stop you.”

The woodcutter cried, “You! You can’t stop me.” And he grabbed the Devil and threw him down on the ground.  He sat on the Devil’s chest and put his axe to the Devil’s throat, ready to kill Satan.

 The Devil said, “You can’t kill me.  God most high has given me life until the Day of Judgment.  And my duties until that day are to lead everybody astray.”  The Devil went on, “Look, how much money do you make?  I know that you’re a devout man and you have a big family, and I know that you like to help people.”

“I make two copper pieces a day,” the woodman replied.

 “You’re really quite unreasonable,” The Devil said.  You’re going to try and chop down that pine tree but the tribe won’t let you cut down their god.  They’re probably going to kill you and then your family will be left destitute.  Be reasonable.  Leave that project.  And I’ll bargain with you.  You say you make two copper coins.  Every morning, I will put under your bed two fresh gold coins.  Is that a deal?  You’re a devout man.  Instead of going and getting yourself killed, you’ll get two gold coins, and you can spend it on your family’s needs.  And what is left you can spend on the poor.

The man replied, “I don’t believe you.  You’re going to cheat me.  Everybody knows the Devil is a cheat and a liar.  You just want to save yourself.”

 The Devil said, “No, no.  I’m not going to cheat you.  Besides, try me.  Go home and don’t do anything.  If you don’t find the two gold coins you can always take your axe and chop the tree later if you want to.”

 “That sounds reasonable.”  The man replied and went home.  The next morning the man looked under his mattress and found two brand new gold coins.  He went to his wife and said, “Honey, we have things all fixed up for the rest of our lives.  I made a contract with the Devil.  I don’t even have to work.  Every morning we’ll get two gold coins that we can spend as we wish.”  The woman wasn’t so sure.  She said, “Don’t you know the Devil is a liar?”

 “But here are the two gold coins!” replied her husband.

They ate well.  There was a little bit left, which they distributed to their neighbors who were in need. And the next morning, bright and early, he got up and put his hand under the mattress.  Nothing.  He lifted the mattress.  Nothing.  Pillows, carpets, he even lifted the floor up, but found nothing.  “Ah, he cheated me.” And so angrily, the woodcutter took his axe and set off to cop down the pine tree and take out the idol.  On the road he found the Devil again, this time smiling.  The Devil said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

 “You cheat, you liar!  I’m going to go and chop down that pine tree!”

 The Devil tapped the woodcutter on the chest with his finger and knocked the man to the ground.  Satan said, “Maybe it’s my turn to kill you since the other day you wanted to kill me.” 

The man was totally shocked. “Oh, no, no, don’t kill me, and I don’t want any money from you either.  I just want to ask one thing.  Just two days ago, when you wanted to stop me from cutting down this idol, I defeated you very easily.  I just grabbed you and threw you down, and i was just about to kill you.  Where did you get this force today?”

“Ah,” said the devil, “the day before, you were going to cut down that tree for God’s sake.  Today, you were fighting me for the sake of two gold coins.”

 Story #2 is one I share from time to time in other settings because I think it’s just a brilliant folklore story.

One day, the Devil and the angel Gabriel were out for a walk and comparing notes. And the Devil turned to Gabriel and said, “You know what bothers me the most about people? It’s how I get blamed for everything. I mean, how unjust is that?  Whatever people do, whatever bad happens, they always put the blame on me.  Why is it always my fault?  I’m innocent!  Look, I’ll show you how they blame me for everything.”

 There was a powerful ram attached to a rope which was tied to a stake.  The Devil loosened the stake and said, “There, that is all I’m going to do. All I’m gonna do is just loosen this stake a little bit.”

The ram tossed his head and pulled out the stake.  The door to his owner’s house was open, and in the front hallway was a big, beautiful antique mirror.  The ram saw his reflection in the mirror, and he put his head down and charged.  He shattered the mirror.

The mistress of the house ran downstairs and saw her beautiful mirror shattered.  This mirror had been in her family for generations.  She cried to the servants, “Cut off that ram’s head.  Kill him!”  So, the servants killed the ram.

The ram was a special pet of her husband, who had fed the ram by hand ever since it was a baby.  He came home and found his beloved pet ram dead.  “Who killed my ram?  Who would dare to do such a terrible thing?”

 His wife cried, “I killed your ram.  I had it done because he destroyed this beautiful mirror which was left to me from my parents.”

 The enraged husband said, “In that case, I divorce you.”

 Neighborhood gossips told the woman’s brothers that her husband divorced their sister because she had a ram killed.

 The brothers became extremely angry.  They gathered together their relatives and went after the husband, armed with guns and swords.  The husband heard they were coming and called his own relatives to defend him.  The two families began a feud which pretty much burned the whole town down and several people were killed.

The Devil said, “You see.  What did I do?  I just shook the stake.  Why should I be responsible for all the awful things they did to each other?  All I did was just loosen the stake a little bit.”

 Is evil or the devil some outside force or influence? Is it inward motivations, thoughts, and interpretations? Or is it some combination of both? I tend to think that if there is some creature called the Devil, it’s not like it is in the Exorcist.  I don’t think we get possessed in the way Hollywood likes to portray it.  I think it’s much more subtle and nefarious. 

 I think that if he’s real, that just like in these stories He doesn’t have to do much. Just loosen a stake here, shift our focus or motivation there, and we seem to do a good job of taking care of the rest.  Whatever evil is and however evil works, it only takes a little bit of it to run us completely off course. And so, we need to guard against it and spiritually strengthen ourselves to watch that our thinking, our motivations, and those influences upon our lives are pointing us in the right direction.