The Power of Christ in the Ordinary: Bringing Light and Freedom

On the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, Daniel McInnes reflects on the return of the Seventy, ordinary people with no special skills who nonetheless drove out demons in the name of Jesus Christ. Drawing on St. Paul's call to walk in wisdom toward outsiders and to let our speech be gracious, he shows how Christ works through ordinary lives, and how living the life in Christ brings light and freedom to the people and places around us.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is the feast day of St. Luke the Evangelist. He is also St. Luke the Physician, and we hear St. Paul mention him in his letter to the Colossians — though he mentions him almost in passing. Today I want to talk about the Gospel and the Epistle, and simply refer to St. Luke as an example for us of the type of person we should aim to be and the type of life we should aim to live.

In the Gospel reading today, we heard that Jesus has sent out the Seventy. He has chosen seventy disciples to be His apostles, and He has sent them out ahead of Himself into all the different villages and places of Judea, so that they will go before Him and make the way for Him, because He is going to visit those places as well. And when they come back, they say, "Even the demons are subject to us in Your name." They seem very, very surprised about this.

And He says, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." In other words: yes, I have the power to destroy the demons; I have the power to cast them down. But He says, "Don't rejoice over that. Rejoice that your names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." He also thanks His Father that He has given this work to people He calls babes — these innocent people — rather than to those who are super wise.

Now, when I was reading that, I wondered why they were so surprised. I didn't know much about how the casting out of demons was done in the first century. What did it look like? Usually it wasn't just a matter of saying, "In the name of Jesus Christ, depart." There was a whole ritual involved. There were substances that were used — smokes and things you would burn. There were special prayers. There were objects. There were a whole range of things you would do. They would invoke the name of Solomon, because Solomon was seen to be very, very wise. And sometimes they would speak as if on their own authority. It was a very ritualistic thing. The people knew what they were doing. It was like a profession; this was a particular group of people who did that.

Now, Jesus didn't choose people like that. He chose ordinary people — ordinary people from the society in which they lived, who had no special abilities at all. None. But they went out, and in the name of Jesus Christ they drove out demons. They drove out these things that ordinary people wouldn't have known how to deal with.

And so we see here the power of Christ working in the ordinary. I think today that is the theme: the power of Christ working through the ordinary. Ordinary people like us. We don't have special skills. We're not specially trained. We're ordinary people living ordinary lives, doing ordinary things. And in that ordinary life, Christ works in us and through us.

So when we look at the Epistle reading today, the very first thing St. Paul says is, "Brethren, walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time." He is talking about the everyday of life. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders: do good, be helpful, all those things we know we ought to do. Be kind. Treat people as you would like to be treated.

"Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person." So our speech should always be of a kind that, when people hear it, they hear Christ in us — whether they know it's Christ or not, and whether we're speaking about Christ directly or not. The way we speak and the way we act ought to bring Christ into people's presence. Whether we're talking about the Gospel, or the football, or lunch, or whatever it happens to be, our everyday life should be permeated with the sense that we are Christ to most of the people out there, who will never necessarily come into a church. We are Christ to those people, and we need to bring Christ to them in the way that we act and in the way that we speak.

And the connection I want to make here with the Gospel reading is this. Those ordinary people, those Seventy, went out and cast out demons. If you want to think about what the Gospel is: at that time the demons were basically running amok in the world, and Christ came to destroy the power of the demons and to destroy the power of death. That's the Gospel. We have this understanding in the Orthodox Church that this is what Christ came to do — to destroy the power of demons and to destroy the power of death.

So those Seventy went out and did that work. They were casting out demons. How does that work for us in our world today?

We live in a post-Christian society. This society was, more or less, Christian until fairly recent times, and so we don't see a lot of weirdness in the world, would you agree? If you just walk around in your everyday life, you don't see a lot of weirdness. But in some places in the world, people do see a lot of strange things going on that come from the spiritual side of life.

I happened to watch a video yesterday — I watch Japanese content. It was about a couple of guys in Japan who go to a train station, talk to someone, ask what they do, and if it seems interesting, they ask, "Can we come back to your place and see where you live?" So these guys were waiting outside a station, and a couple of men came by. They asked, "What have you been doing?" "Oh, we've just been at the bathhouse and we're about to go home." "Do you mind if we come back to your house with you, to see where you live?" And he said, "I'm not sure you want to do that. I've got a room full of cursed objects."

That sounds kind of strange — a room full of cursed objects. And they said, "Oh, that sounds interesting. A bit scary, but interesting. We'd like to come." So they go, and this man has a room full of objects that are apparently cursed — and some of them, I'm absolutely certain, would have been. He had a box with what you might call a voodoo doll in it, which had been stabbed through the heart and the abdomen and various other places. And on the lid of the box there was a kind of Buddhist prayer meant to protect you from the demons.

This is the kind of thing that happens in the world. We don't see it much, but it's certainly out there. In our society it's pushed to the margins, but in some societies it isn't. And when we live the life in Christ that we're supposed to live, we're bringing light into the world. Why hasn't our society seen much of this? Because until now it was, more or less, a Christian society. We didn't have much of that influence, because Christ was working in that society. But as people turn away from Christ, these things will come back. We need to be the ones who go out there and bring the light. We need to be the ones who do that.

Our life, if you like to think of it this way, is exorcistic, in the sense that when we live the life we're supposed to, it brings freedom. It brings freedom to the places and the people in our lives. It's important. It's not small. This is not just, "Live your life this way because it's the best way to live, and it will bring goodness and blessings to you." That's true, but it's more than that. Living the life in Christ actually brings freedom — freedom to the people and the places in which we live and exist. And we owe that to the people around us, because Christ has called us to be Him to those people.

So may the Lord help us to live the life that we ought to live, and to be that freedom-bringing light to the people around us. Amen.