Texts: Psalm 83; Luke 11: 14-26

When I practiced law -- great phrase, “practiced,” like it’s not real -- be that as it may, but when I practiced law back in Connecticut, the probate judges would routinely appoint me to represent alleged incapables in court. They picked me because they knew I took the work seriously. After all, it would be my recommendation as to whether people would be involuntarily committed to Connecticut Valley, established by Dorothea Dix in 1867 or would be considered incapable or managing their own affairs.

The guard at Whiting, the hospital for the criminally insane, told me he wasn’t permitted to leave the room so I decided to get a bit closer to the man in the Texas belt -- a thick leather belt with handcuffs attached so the hands are not free. I’d never seen such a wild look in a man’s eyes before; he was truly possessed by demons he could not even name. One of the standard questions to be asked was the names of the parents and it was only half way through the question of asking for his mother’s name that I realized he was starting to lunge at me. The guard whom I had asked to step back so I could have some semblance or privacy lurched forward and grabbed him just as he was less than a foot from me. The file did not contain the reason that he had been committed; in this case, he had murdered his mother, because that might have colored the attorney’s assessment.

Although happily most of us -- I think -- are not possessed by the kinds of demons that unhappy soul had or that possessed Leisha James to slash the throats of three of her children before committing suicide in a set fire this past week, each of us has our own demons that struggle to overtake our lives. For some it is depression, for others anger. It could be regret, the sadness that comes when we realize what could have been; it could be the desire to possess a thing or things, or even to accomplish a certain task. As A.S. Byatt wrote in his novel, possession is, in a way, to be possessed by a force that we sometimes do not even understand.

Possession can be individual or societal; and, one can lead to the other. The fear that seized us and possessed us following September 11 is a case in point. Because we were so possessed by fear, we permitted our government and society to act in certain ways we never would have even considered, such as rounding up Muslims on the streets and stores in Paterson or tolerating the infringement of our civil liberties by our own government. When we as a society are possessed by the demons of fear and anger, we lose all sense of rationality. The battles that exist over the construction of mosques constitute a case in point.

Possession is insidious; the demons that hold us creep into our consciousness. Today, as in the time of Jesus, demons can paralyze us, make us dumb, unable to speak and unable to act for what is right. The demons of fear can take over our lives usually expressed in an unfocused anger. As a society we are caught up in our fears and the resultant anger; but those demons are more than just societal fears; they are individual demons that possess us. Excising those demons must be done individually before they can be excised societally. How do we address those demons? How do we excise them?

We can only excise them by addressing our fears directly, by examining them, not just to understand them, which is necessary, but to address them, really address them. This means we must analyze the fear, its root cause, and determine what part of the fear is within our control and to take it head on. No question about it, the attack on the World Trade Center made us fearful but we really had no one thing to be fearful of: Al Quaeda is much too diffuse and our fears translated into a broadened anger -- towards Muslims in general, the inability of U.S. forces to “accomplish” anything on a battlefield -- there was no one battlefield. The use of the term “war on terror” served to make our fear even more diffuse. We’ve lost confidence in our leadership, our military, ourselves. This isn’t a war like Korea that ended in a truce, not even a war like Vietnam that ended in an ignoble withdrawal. And additional attacks, some by U.S. citizens, have only served to increase the fear -- and the anger. And it all overtakes us insidiously in subtle ways.

How do we deal with this? Not the war going on abroad or even the attempted bombings here at home, but how do we deal with our fears and our anger? First, we must step back and analyze the situation, not just piecemeal but from a holistic framework. We need to confront our fears by talking about them; this church is a good place to do that. We need to learn how to talk about our fears with each other. The insight of another may be truly helpful.

Then we can reorient our thinking, something we must do each and every day. It’s not easy to do this, to be sure, but with God’s help it is possible. By destroying the demons of fear within us, we can help to destroy those same demons within others. In the Scripture lesson, when Jesus removes the demons from the man so possessed, he is able to speak again. That’s what the demons do to us; they silence us through paralyzing fear. When we excise the demons we are able to speak: for righteousness, which is the word Scripture uses for justice; for mercy, that quality that falls like the gentle rain from heaven; for truth that confounds fear; for love that embraces us all.

Let us pray: Holy One who understands our fears, help us to overcome those fears that possess us and limit us in sharing your redeeming love with all. Amen.