Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Beloved,
is set outside Cincinnati, Ohio, several years after the Civil War with the
characters haunted by the enduring trauma of pre-Civil War slavery. In this setting, fleeing and freed
African-American men, women, and children looked to Baby Suggs as their spiritual
leader—“uncalled, unrobed, and unanointed.”
Baby Suggs gathered the company of her people to worship in what they
called the Clearing—described as a wide-open place cut deep in the woods. Worship in the Clearing happened in this
way:
After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby
Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently.
The company watched her from the trees.
They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, “Let the children come!”
and they ran from the trees toward her.
“Let your mothers hear you laugh,” she told them, and the
woods rang. The adults looked on and
could not help smiling.
Then “Let the grown men come,” she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the
ringing trees.
“Let your wives and your children see you dance,” she told
them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet.
Finally she called the women to her. “Cry,” she told them. “For the living and the dead. Just cry.”
And without covering their eyes, the women let loose.
It started that way:
laughing children, dancing men, crying women, and then it got mixed
up. Women stopped crying and danced; men
sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until,
exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for
breath. In the silence that followed,
Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart.[1]
Baby Suggs went on to tell
them to love their flesh, for they do not; to love their eyes,
for they’d rather pick them out; love their hands for they only
use them to tie, bind, and chop them off; to love their mouths, their arms,
their inside parts, and, finally, to love their hearts.
In a world which hated, despised, and spat upon brown and
black skin, Baby Suggs exorcised the unclean spirit, the demon, which sought
lodging and home in flesh, eyes, hands, mouths, arms, inside parts, and
hearts. That demon told them they were
less than human, without agency, and less than the Children of God. If the demon was to be exorcised from their
community, it would begin with the worship and spiritual practice found in the
Clearing with the loving of the inside and outside of that brown and black
skin.
But the demon came.
A young woman named Sethe, nursing one child and pregnant with another
child, milked like a cow by the young men of the family who owned her, decided
when she escaped to Ohio that none of her children would ever again know
slavery. She escaped the plantation of “Sweet
Home” in Kentucky when she was 9 months pregnant. When Sethe knew the slave owner and the
sheriff were on the way to find her family outside Cincinnati, Ohio, and return
them all to slavery, Sethe took her children with her to the barn.
When they found her, Sethe had already killed her infant
child, Beloved, and was getting ready to kill the remaining children. From that day forward, the child, Beloved,
haunted Sethe and all of her relationships.
Though Beloved made Sethe’s life a living hell, Sethe could not let go
her lost child and all the trauma associated with it. Whether it was a mother’s yearning for her
lost child, the guilt Sethe felt for taking her life, the breaking of her
spirit in grief and sadness, Sethe just could not let Beloved go. Beloved offered Sethe an odd comfort.
I believe Beloved is one of the few modern stories
that tells the radical story of the Gospel of Mark. Much like Baby Suggs in Beloved, Jesus
comes uncalled, unrobed, and unanointed to exorcize the demons from the
Galileean countryside. We read part of
the Gospel lesson we had for Advent, the Scripture which begins Jesus’s public
ministry. The second Gospel lesson we
viewed, is Mark, chapter 5, other than the crucifixion, the height of the
gospel. They are both reminders that Jesus
is framed as an exorcist in the Gospel of Mark.
These unclean spirits, these demons, have all the right
head knowledge and even knows Jesus to be holy.
The demons protest, scream, yell, act as if they are the ones being
persecuted. The demons cry out in pain,
begging Jesus to just leave it alone. They
create a scene by shouting out their spiritual knowledge. Jesus is willing to endure their pain and is unmoved
by their faith language to lead in courage.
The pain of transformation and becoming is necessary. Using faith language does not make them
anything less than evil spirits.
While we tend to think of exorcisms as something that went
out with modern science or only fit for Hollywood movies, studies of social
science have concluded that demon possession is actually a world-wide
phenomenon throughout most of history involving social tension, class conflict,
and economic exploitation.[2]
In what is now the African country of Zimbabwe, the
Lunda-Luvale tribes sometimes had people who suffered from possession by
spirits. A special, 20th
Century version of this spirit possession, is called bindele. This phenomenon among the Lunda-Luvale tribes
is “caused by possession by other spirits [that] may be considered to reflect a
tension between the society of the victim and that of the group represented by
the spirit.” Bindele means,
literally, “European” or, metaphorically, “European colonialist.” Sufferers from bindele are believed to
be possessed by the spirit of a European.[3]
In our main gospel story for today, Jesus encounters the
Gerasene demoniac and asks the demon its name.
The demon replies, “Legion.”
Legion had only one meaning in first century Rome. Legion referred to a division of Roman
soldiers.[4]
The meaning of this story
becomes plan when understood within its historical context. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus
recounts that, in response to Jewish revolt, the Roman legions took the town of
Gerasa in conquest in the late 60s, killed a thousand young men, held their
families captive, plundered their property, and then set their homes on fire.[5]
Here is the man, symbolic of
an occupied and oppressed Jewish people, cutting himself with stones, bound in
fetters and chains, and living among the tombs.
How could the author of Mark portray any better what Roman imperialism
and violence is doing to his people—the harm and violence and death present in
that very place? Before Jesus exorcises
Legion from this person, the demon begs Jesus not to expel him from the
country. Jesus casts the demons into
swine, an unclean animal, who then run off a cliff into the sea, the Jewish
mythological place of primordial chaos.
What a dangerous story to
tell in first century Rome! Who is this
man that he might threaten to throw the Roman legion, the Roman military, out
of the country and into the sea? Is it
any wonder that after the herd of pigs drowns themselves in the sea, the people
of the village do not crown Jesus as Caesar and king, parade Jesus around town,
or offer Jesus a free night’s stay at the Gerasa bed and breakfast? Instead, the townsfolk ask Jesus to
leave—presumably fearful of what will happen if the Romans catch wind of this. The man, once occupied and oppressed by the
demon, is now full of agency and wants to follow Jesus. Jesus tells him to go tell his friends and
neighbors that a liberated life is possible—is desired by God.
Too often our demons have
offered us an odd comfort. They haunt us
into believing that there is no possibility outside the status quo. We fear what will happen when change and
transformation come. Indeed, community
organizer and climate activist Anthony Rogers Wright said that what happened at
the Capitol building on January 6th was not a coup but an attempt to
maintain the status quo through violence.[6]
The pandemic has been a
portal, a revealing, to show those who may not have believed in the naked
cruelty and violence of racism, its demonic nature, so that we now stand at a
moment brimming with possibility for transformation. That is why we see so many people
afraid. The possibility for
transformation is at hand. If we are to
be healthy leaders, we must be willing to endure the pain and fear shouted by
the demon so that we might all be found in our right minds as leaders of good
courage.
All of this fear and demonic
spewing has been fueled by a president who told us who he was even before he
took office. My good colleague, Rabbi
Sharon Brous, related the primary story of her people this past week and talked
about Pharaoh. She said that Pharaoh’s
narcissism, his hunger for power, his willingness to destroy the lives of
people he considered “other” that the cruel and wicked Pharaoh’s “trajectory
and character hewed so closely to that of our president that shortly after the
inauguration several of [her] rabbinic colleagues were told that they were not
to mention the word ‘pharaoh’ because that would appear to be an implicit
critique of the new President of the United States.”[7]
But he could not light the
fire unless there had been an historic kindling we are so close to
unseating. So many of us as white folk
are afraid that our country is being taken away from us? when
violence and death are being done through demonic policies, demonic police
practice, and demonic processes. As
predicted, the Black snake leaks crude and Native people die, the industrial
air of Cancer Alley along the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to New Orleans continues
to kill African-American folk, abandoned U.S. plants along the border leak
battery acid into the lone drinking and bathing stream for people who now have
rashes and lesions in Tijuana, and help me to know . . . does Flint have clean water?
And white folk are afraid
their country is being taken away from them?
What do we call that but demonic?
Racism is killing all of us. It
is the demon we house which gives us an odd comfort while it has us in fetters
and chains, cutting ourselves, living in death out among the tombs.
Racism . . . white supremacy
. . . white privilege . . . these are the unclean spirits which have haunted
our country from its inception. They
deny the humanity and divinity, the fertile soil and Divine breath, the agency,
freedom, and liberation that God wills for all of us. As people of faith, we must root it out of
ourselves and engage those we know to bring about transformation. Christ is still doing exorcisms. And we must allow him to do his work on us,
our community, and our nation. The
Epiphany season is about making things manifest. And we must transform manifest destiny to
manifest empathy.
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved,
the Body of Christ was thirty women who came to Sethe’s house to drive out the
demon. Some women didn’t come because of
the heat. Some women didn’t come because
they wanted to avoid the confrontation. Ella,
who knew slavery better than anyone else, got them started—mumbling, praying,
singing, and hollering. In other words,
Ella knew that she did not want that demon another damn day in Sethe’s house
and in her community. The sound of the
women’s collective voices, mumbling, praying, singing, and hollering were like
the Clearing and Baby Suggs come to Sethe and that sound “broke over Sethe and
she trembled like the baptized in its wash.”[8] With these loving faces before her, Sethe is
able to let go of the demon which is her child, destroyed by slavery and yet by
her own hand, leave it behind to join this group of freed and liberated women
and her community once again.
Let the violence that
happened in Washington, D.C., to maintain the status quo be the last stand of
the demon of racism in our country so that all people might know themselves as
Children of God and we might know ourselves, collectively, as the Body of
Christ. Peace and unity mean little in
the face of the violence done by the demons of white privilege, white
supremacy, and racism.
As Rev. Dr. King preached,
If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically,
dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don't want peace. If peace
means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don't want
peace. If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil,
I don't want it. Peace is not simply the absence of conflict, but the existence
of justice for all people.[9]
In the first exorcism of
Mark, Jesus tells the demon to shut up, stop playing the innocent or the victim,
and to come out of him. Jesus is willing
to endure the demon’s pain and screaming to show courageous leadership. Stop acting like you are the one
persecuted. In the second exorcism, Jesus
casts the demon “Legion” into pigs who then run headlong into the chaos.
We would do well to do the same. We must be like Ella who have been in such
solidarity that we know the pain and death brought by racism. And we say, as she did, “Racism? Not another damn day! Not another damn day in our house!” This exorcism will take all of us, our
collective will, as the Body of Christ to begin mumbling, praying, singing, and
hollering so that we might be baptized and found in our right minds—to know
ourselves as fully the Children of God and to continue to be the Body of
Christ. Certainly, we have an odd comfort from this
demon. Even more so, there are people
that we love, people that we know, that we must now engage so that this demon
is driven out. Transformation is
close. It is God’s good wish that we
begin. Cast the demon out. Amen.
[1]
Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York:
The Penguin Group, 1987), pp. 87-88.
[2]
John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus:
The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992), quoting Paul W.
Hollenbach, “Jesus, Demoniacs, and Public Authorities: A Socio-Historical Study,” JAAR 99:567-588.
[3]
Ibid, p. 315, quoting Barrie Reynolds, Magic, Divination and Witchcraft
Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Robins
Series 3, Berkley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1963.
[4]
Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A
Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), p. 191.
[5]
Ibid, quoting Josephus, War, IV, ix, 1.
[6]
UCC Climate Justice Zoom Meeting, January 13, 2021.
[7]
Rabbi Sharon Brous, “The inflection point,” IKAR Los Angeles, January
11, 2021.
[8]
Morrison, Beloved, p. 261.
[9]Excerpt
fron King's "When Peace Becomes Obnoxious" speech delivered on 18
March 1956 at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
