Spirit-Possessed
THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
Mark 1:21-28
In some Daoist rituals of spirit-possession, people called “mediums” enter a trance state and wait for a spirit or god to enter their body. The mediums prove that they’re really possessed by using weapons to injure themselves in ways that would be impossible in an ordinary state of consciousness. Next, people watch the mediums strike strong poses, standing on one leg or flexing one arm, like you’d see in statues of particular gods. When the spirit leaves the medium’s body, they strike a last pose with at least two men holding onto them, and then wilt into a chair.
In some African traditions of spirit-possession, the experience begins with music and dance, coordinated by drummers and priests. Dancing can lead some participants into a trance that allows their bodies to be possessed. The possessing god delivers messages through the possessed person, which the community interprets together. After the god leaves, the possessed person usually remembers nothing.
I hope I’ve been at least somewhat fair in describing these religious traditions that are so far from my own. Daoism is a famously difficult religion to pin down. As for “African religion,” there’s not just one: there’s Santaría, Candomblé, Haitian Voodoo, and African Pentecostalism for that matter.
A scholar of African religions [1] recently described how much the idea of “self” differs between many types of African possession-priests and the assumptions held by many Western Europeans and Americans. Many inhabitants of a culture shaped by mainline Protestantism assume, maybe unconsciously, that the body is the vessel of one and only one spirit: ours. We might be influenced by God or nudged by the Holy Spirit or instructed by Christ, but ultimately we have the “free will” to decide how we act. After a bad deed, we might joke, “the devil made me do it,” but deep down we think some portion of our brain matter had a lapse in impulse-control.
But this idea of self really gets in the way of hearing today’s gospel. That’s not only because we meet in today’s gospel a man inhabited by “an unclean spirit” that can talk, and shout, and shake a human body. I actually want to make the case that there’s another possessing-spirit in today’s gospel: Jesus’ so-called “authority.” Through this “authority,” Jesus teaches in the synagogue and drives out the unclean spirit.
The biblical sense of “authority” is very different than we might think of it today. In many modern American contexts, someone who teaches “with authority” might be an expert in their field, or possess a certain degree, or just project extreme confidence.
But an “authority” in the New Testament and some other early Christian works can be a particular species of angel. An “authority” is like a cherub, a seraph, a throne, a dominion, and other creatures listed in the New Testament and in the hymn “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones,” which we sing here sometimes. An “authority” is a powerful being that praises God above and governs lower-ranking spirits below.
The letter to the Ephesians lists a series of heavenly beings and ranks the risen Christ above them all—over every “principality” and “authority (ἐξουσίας)” and “power” and “dominion” (Eph 1:20-21). The letter to the Colossians contains a similar list of beings created in the heavens, including “thrones” and “dominions” and “authorities (ἐξουσίαι)” (Col 1:16).
We also have examples of early Christians who saw themselves as possessed—not by unclean spirits or demons, but by a variety of angelic powers and by the spirit of Christ himself. They understood their own ethical behavior not as a result of will-power, but as an effect of angels, known as “virtues,” possessing them. One early Christian describes an angel visiting him, in the form of a shepherd, and saying, “I have been sent from the most reverend angel to live with you for the rest of your life.” [2] To be a Christian was to be possessed by powerful spirits—some for the moment, and some forever.
I think that the people gathered as a synagogue in today’s gospel see Jesus as possessed by an angel. To them, Jesus teaches not like a scribe, but “as one having authority (ὡς ἐξουσίαν ἔχων).” From what we know of assemblies like this, there wasn’t yet any system of rabbinical ordination. Jesus seems to teach more like a spirit-medium than a scholar.
The same word for “authority” pops up again when Jesus casts out the unclean spirit. There’s a problem for us modern readers, though: we’re not actually sure where to place the words “with authority (κατ’ ἐξουσίαν).” Ancient biblical manuscripts don’t use punctuation, so today we have to guess where one sentence ends and another begins. Our translators today put the words “with authority” right after the word “teaching,” so the people in the synagogue say to each other, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority!” But other scholars see the words “with authority” as the beginning of the next sentence, so the people say of Jesus, “With authority He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him!”
That’s the version I’d choose—that Jesus commands with authority, driving out a lesser spirit by means of a more powerful spirit—a spirit that Jesus himself rules. The Greek forms of the words “commands” and “obey” show that today’s gospel presents us with a hierarchy of authority. The word for “commands” begins with the word for “over,” and the word for “obey” begins with the word for “under.” So, it might be clearer to have the people in today’s gospel say something like, “Through this ‘authority’”—through this species of angel—“Jesus overthrows . . . the unclean spirits, and they submit to him.”
To the people assembled in this synagogue, Jesus seems like a medium possessed by a powerful spirit that speaks and heals through him. Of course, the theological perspective of Mark’s gospel and other New Testament writers is that Jesus is not the one possessed, but the one possessing and ruling all these orders of angels. I mean, Jesus already has both a human and a divine nature according to the orthodox christology spelled out a few centuries later. There’s just no room in there for a possessing-spirit.
But if we see the unclean spirit as the only possessing-spirit active in today’s gospel, then we risk seeing all forms of spirit possession as destructive or even demonic. That’s exactly how centuries’ worth of European Christians saw spirit-possession in other religious traditions of the world. But in the process, these Christians closed themselves off—and closed us off as well—from the world of spirits. And our models of self, our forms of worship, and even some of our orthodoxies, have limited the ways to participate in God’s healing and liberating work.
I know that I’m unlikely to change my religious and cultural conditioning overnight. But I hope to look afresh at the Jesus in today’s gospel, teaching and acting as though spirit-possessed. I hope that I can open my eyes to a Christ who upholds all the spirits that roam the cosmos and find places to speak and to act for the good of all people.
[1] J. Lorand Matory, in The Fetish Revisited.
[2] These examples are from The Shepherd of Hermas. Further information can be found in Giovanni Bazzana, Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Early Christ Groups (Yale, 2020).
© 2021 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas