Showing the Devil the Door

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

    In the Gospel today from the beginning of the 10th chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew, Jesus Christ calls his 12 disciples together and gives them remarkable instructions. His words are, and I quote: “He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and infirmity,” so spoke Jesus. Then Christ sent the disciples out with a final instruction, and I quote again: “Preach as you go, saying ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.’”

    The Gospel of St Luke, chapter 9, confirms these instructions from Jesus Christ to His disciples; and I quote: “And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases and to preach the kingdom of God and to heal.”  So, both St Matthew and St Luke begin the instructions of Jesus Christ to His disciples with firm directions to take authority over evil spirits and to cast them out of people. These directions are especially appropriate for us today, the morning after All Hallows’ Eve (or “All Holy Eve”). It was in the eighth century that Pope Gregory III set November First as a day to honour all the saints. Furthermore, when we were baptised, each of us united ourselves to Christ and renounced the devil—that is, we made a choice to follow Christ and to reject the devil. So, what does that mean for our lives today?

    St John Chrysostom offers us some important insights about the instructions Jesus Christ gave to his disciples to cast out unclean spirits. St John writes, and I quote: “If the [Holy] Spirit had not yet been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified, how then did the disciples cast out the unclean spirits? They did this by his own command, by the Son’s authority. Note the careful timing of their mission. They were not sent out at the beginning of their walk with him. They were not sent out until they had sufficiently benefited by following him daily. It was only after they had seen the dead raised, the sea rebuked, devils expelled … the legs of a paralytic brought to life, sins [forgiven], lepers cleansed, and had received a sufficient proof of [the power of Jesus Christ] both by deeds and words—only then did he send them out…,” concluded St John.

    Now, we have the Holy Spirit and the Great Commission given by Christ in the Gospel of St Matthew in chapter 28, verse 19 to “go and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all that [Christ has] commanded [us] to do.” That means it is important for us to learn about Christ and to experience His peace before we teach others about Him. As Father Gregory said in his blog on Tuesday, available on his Facebook page and the parish website, we each need to pray and listen to Christ to discover how He is calling us. That call needs to be persistent and insistent, as well as confirmed by our confessor, priest or close friends.

    In an excellent book, Christ at Work: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Vocation, available in our parish library and the parish bookstall, Ann Mitsakos Bezzerides reflects that, and I quote: “We are all called to become a divine image of our Creator, and this call means that all human activity can be sanctified…. The vocational search is not a problem to be confronted, but an opportunity to grow and mature, motivated by the potential revealed to us in Jesus Christ. The self, the body, society and one’s work within [society] can all be captured for Christ, provided we manage to recognize our goal in God, and then freely choose the difficult course that will make that union a reality,” she concludes.



    The epistle for today beginning with chapter 12, verse 27 of First Corinthians focuses on the many gifts we receive as members of the Body of Christ. We each need to discern our own gifts in prayer and help other members of the Body of Christ discern their particular gifts. Am I an apostle, a prophet, a teacher, a worker of miracles, a healer, a helper, an administrator—or some combination of those gifts? Whatever our gifts, St Paul makes it clear that those gifts need to grow and to be given to others in love.

    Now, throwing out evil spirits and demons is not listed by St Paul as a gift, but some of us may well have that ability, even is we have not yet discerned or exercised such a gift. Certainly, St Paul had that gift as St Luke writes in the book of Acts, when St Paul threw the evil spirit out of the magician Elymas and blinded him in chapter 13, verses 8 to 11. The Orthodox theologian, Jaraslov Pelikan writes in his commentary on these verses in the book of Acts that; and I quote: “The ministry of the apostles here in the book of Acts [is] portrayed as the ongoing conflict of [the victorius Christ], Christus Victor,  with the demonic powers and as his victory over them. In Acts, chapter 10, verse 38 we are told that Jesus Christ “went about doing good and healing all those under the power of the devil, because God was with him.” Jaraslov Pelikan points out; and I quote: “Here in Acts is the diagnosis of the sinful situation of the human race as one of being captive to tyranny of Satan and the demonic powers and of being ‘oppressed’ by them. This diagnosis needs to be put alongside the definition of sin as a pride that refuses to give God his proper glory.” Jaraslov Pelikan notes that in Acts, chapter 12, verses 21 to 23 Herod is killed by an angel of the Lord, because “he did not give God the glory.”

    For me, that is a good place for us to begin in confronting evil and demons in our own lives, whether or not we are explicitly aware of the presence of those demons. We begin by giving “God the glory.” In other words, we can praise God for everything good that happens to us and trust Him to help us deal with any evil that confronts us. It is not always easy to praise God in this way. As St Paul writes in Romans, chapter 7, verse 13, without Christ, and I quote: “I am … sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me….. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it…. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me,” concluded St Paul.

Now, St Paul is writing here about the limitations of the law as a guide to life, but his analysis goes to the heart of the problem of how to confront evil in our own lives. At times, we let sin come into our lives, even when we are willing that good should be present. The only way in which we can truly tackle that problem of evil in our own lives is to believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to accept that He died for each of us and that he gave us a model in His life, death and resurrection for how to accept any crosses in our own lives.

    I close with the words of St Paul in his Letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, verses 3 to 11: “Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and [given] him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.              Father Emmanuel Kahn