Shame the Devil, Tell the Truth!

Shame the Devil, Tell the Truth!

An African American friend taught me a saying, “Shame the devil, tell the truth.” I love that saying because in its profound simplicity, it expresses the power that each believer has within him or herself. We have the power to shame the devil by exposing lies and hypocrisy. When we tell the truth the power that the devil has over us evaporates. In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls out evil from a possessed man, he exposes the truth - he shames the devil. I want to spend a little time shaming the devil today.

IS just executed another hostage.  That was a horrific act, but since we’re about truth today. Let’s start the discussion with our history - our Catholic history and our Mexican and US history. This barbaric act by IS doesn’t place us on the moral high ground. We’ve had our fanatics.  Whether driven by religious convictions such as Puritans or Spanish Missionaries or political fanatics that designed the Monroe Doctrine that resulted in the Genocide of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans (see this Howard Zinn article, http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnempire12.html) or the

Dominican Mexican Inquisition of the 1550’s (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Inquisition) that resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of indigenous leaders and Jewish colonists, fanatics have used terror tactics such as burning books and silencing academics or rounding up dissidents and heretics and hanging and burning them in the public square.  IS is merely the latest version of fanaticism.  “Shame the Devil, speak the truth.”

Fanatics are fearful of change.  They are fearful of new ideas and most especially, critical thinking.  Fanatics of all stripes believe that they are “justified” in their actions.  They believe that God or the constitution or the free-market is on their side because they believe that their work is to “purify” people, church or the country of error.  Moses said, “Whoever will not listen to my words which he speaks in my name, I myself will make him answer for it.”  How many fanatics have taken these words to justify killing those who do not “listen to God’s words?”  How many people have been arrested because they dared to speak up or lawfully protest? How many people in Guerrero or Michoacan have been rounded up and killed by paramilitary groups with the tacit agreement of public officials?  Regrettably, fanatics ignore the second half of what Moses said, “if a prophet presumes to speak in my name an oracle that I have not commanded him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, he shall die.”  In my reading of this, it is clear to me that fanatics that presume to kill in the name of God will have to reckon with God.

In today’s Gospel Jesus confronted the spirit that had taken control over a man in the synagogue. Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!” Jesus challenged the spirit to surrender control - that is, to leave the man, but the evil that possessed the man pushed back. It wasn’t going to let go. In fact, the evil demon tried to unmask Jesus’ mission. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” The demon intended to diminish Jesus’ power by trivializing Jesus. By stating Jesus identity out front, the demon realized that if people were to see Jesus as only a miracle worker and not Messiah, they would never take the step of leaving their old lives behind and take up the cross and follow Jesus. If Jesus were pure “magic”, people would simply sit and wait for Jesus to do everything. No one would take responsibility for their lives or for the lives of their neighbors. Within a generation, Jesus of Nazareth would be a little more than a myth. His story would gradually fade into history and his exorcisms and healings would be nothing more than a esoteric footnote in history.  By silencing the spirit, Jesus maintained the opportunity for true discipleship to emerge: people would have to make a hard decision about their lives and learn to stand up to evil themselves.

Discipleship requires two levels of commitment: a commitment to the person of Jesus and a commitment to the work of bringing about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is the vision of Jesus put into motion.  The Kingdom is the Beloved Community in which the leper is cleansed, the prisoner is set free and the lame leap for joy. 

The Beloved Community is true liberation and liberation means that things will not remain the same. The already-rich cannot remain ever-more powerful while the meek - the anawim -  remain  imprisoned in grinding poverty.  The Kingdom of God is liberation for the leper whose humanity is so reduced that she has no family to speak of and is forced to beg at the roadside. The Kingdom means opening the gates for the imprisoned who would otherwise never see the light of day. 

The Kingdom is indeed liberation and the Kingdom therefore demands that we tell the truth, that we call out oppression and that we call out the people who sit idly by while oppression runs its course. “Shame the Devil! Tell the Truth!” Looking at today’s Gospel we see that the unclean spirit made its home in a man in the synagogue. That means that this possessed man was not unknown to his fellow congregants.  They knew enough to realize that there was nothing that they could do for this man other than to become accustomed to his dysfunction. They accepted the presence of evil and probably chalked up the possession as an unfortunate and regrettable loss. But are we really any different?

Think about it.  The man was the synagogue’s white elephant. But we have our own white elephants don’t we? Have we grown used to homelessness and violence in our midst?  Have we become complacent to the plight of the people living in doorways of businesses, or along Silver Creek in back of us, and around our neighborhood?  Have we grown so accustomed to deportations, of being paid low wages or not having enough hours in our job to cover our rent and food that we lack sensitivity to our own pain or that we no longer have empathy for our neighbor’s suffering? Have we become so numb to living in over-crowded conditions or renting a space in a garage that we simply shrug our shoulders and say, “Oh well”?  Our immigrant labor has built this Valley and yet we live as indentured servants in the shadow of the richest real estate in California. Pope Francis said that the root of all social evil is the disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor…so where is the voice that demands that evil vacate this place?

I firmly believe that by virtue of our baptism, we are called to expose evil and to make people free. The demon in the synagogue tried to derail Jesus. As we imitate Jesus and as we call out evil, we - like Jesus - will face opposition. Ask advocates for children and healthcare.  They are confounded by those who underfund children’s programs and defund our national healthcare program while giving billions of dollars of tax breaks to the 1%.  Ask those who fight for immigrants’ rights who have to face dozens of spiteful politicians whose careers are made on the promise that they will make sure that no legislation to legalize immigrants will ever happen.  The Kingdom does not bend to evil, nor should we.

We cannot succumb to despair and discouragement. I expect that fanatics of both religion and the free market will do whatever they can do to terrorize anyone who calls for liberation and change.  They will work to discredit proclaimers of the Kingdom and will hold the innocent hostage. They will use their resources to try to stop progress and keep people prisoner using oppressive ideologies, fraudulent theologies and mean-spirited policies. They can do all that, but they cannot silence the cry for freedom.  They cannot derail Jesus.  They cannot delay the Kingdom. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on EARTH as it is IN HEAVEN.”   

So, as we step in the communion line and walk up the aisle to come close the altar to receive the Bread of the Angels, let us remember that each step we take not only brings us closer to Christ, but each step brings us closer to making a more profound commitment to discipleship so that we can in confidence, “Shame the devil and tell the truth.”