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About Evil                        Mark 1: 21-28                   February 1, 2009

I don't think I'll ever get used to being called an old fart. Oops. Can I say, "old fart" from the pulpit without offending you? Well, there, now I've said it twice. Sorry if I've offended anyone.

But if you think about it, only someone who was, "showing his age" would be offended by such mild vulgarity, right? So if I'm not offended by it and am even willing to use words like that, I mustn't be guilty of being one of those. . . well, you know what I mean.

Let me get to the point. Back in October I wrote an article for our newsletter about Halloween. It was, I thought, a generally positive look at a decidedly non-Christian holiday. One statement I made in that article, though, evidently struck a chord. I mentioned that it made me a little bit squeamish to think about a child from a Christian home dressing up as Dracula. A number of people here in Riverside took issue with my point of view on that subject, and my son dropped me a note, also challenging my viewpoint - a note, I might add, that included a picture of my grandson in his vampire Halloween costume.

The consensus of my critics? You're getting old, Jeff. Lighten up. The whole modern-day vampire phenomenon - and it is a phenomenon; try Googling "vampire" some time - is nothing to be concerned about.

Well, here's a news flash that will not surprise anyone: I haven't lightened up. Rather, I've been stewing about this subject, off and on, for the past couple of months, just waiting for a chance to raise it again, think it through more thoroughly, and share it with you.

So when our Gospel lesson for this morning - Mark's account of Jesus' conversation with and exorcism of an evil spirit that had possessed a man - appeared on the lectionary calendar, I jumped at the opportunity. It's a perfect text to help us ponder a subject that most of us who pride ourselves on our broadmindedness don't talk about much - evil.

Permit me to begin with a broad generalization. Vampires, over the ages, have been symbols of evil. This is not a value judgment, by the way, it is just a simple statement of fact.

Legends and folk tales about vampires have existed for centuries. The earliest stories all describe unattractive, vile creatures; corpses, really, who climbed out of their graves to terrorize people.

The modern vampire legend, of course, owes its genesis to Abraham "Bram" Stoker's novel about a Transylvanian Count, Dracula, the countless films and plays his story spawned, and the classic portrayal of the title role in the original movie by Bela Lugosi.

Though Dracula and its many imitators pushed the portrayal of vampires into the mainstream, make no mistake. These characters were still evil. The name Dracula is derived from the word "dracul," the Romanian word for devil.

More recently, vampires have softened a bit. Anne Rice, in her 1976 novel, Interview with the Vampire, introduced a different, more ambiguous type of character. Rice's vampires didn't cower before crucifixes or live in coffins, and the point of her story didn't involve the destruction of the undead by a stalwart band of slayers. Rather, Rice's novel and its sequels explore the nature of immortality, humanity, and beauty. In her own words, Interview with the Vampire, the novel that brought her to public attention, "is about the near despair of an alienated being who searches the world for some hope that his existence can have meaning. His vampire nature is clearly a metaphor for human consciousness or moral awareness. The major theme of the novel is the misery of this character because he cannot find redemption and does not have the strength to end the evil of which he knows himself to be a part."

And, speaking of beauty, the 1994 movie based on Rice's novel starred Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas and Tom Cruise. People don't get anymore beautiful than that!

If we fast-forward to the present, we find that our culture's fascination with vampirism has grown to the point where it has become a major theme in young adult literature and film. The most popular series for young people in bookstores now - since Harry Potter has retired to raise a family - is Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, which at its core is a love story about a high school couple, one of whom is a vampire.

This series, all four of whose books top the current bestseller lists week after week, is accompanied in bookstores by a huge number of similar, vampire-oriented young adult titles. It seems that among our youth, and our teenage girls in particular, loving vampires is cool. Witness the number of so-called "Goth" hairdos and outfits you see among the kids walking to school in the morning.

When I visited my family over the Christmas holidays, one morning during yet another conversation about my off-handed comment about vampires and Halloween, my daughter in-law Tobi asked me if I had ever read any of Stephanie Meyer's books. The vampires in these stories aren't evil, she told me. They don't prey on people; only wild animals, and even then only those who are overpopulating.

So I bought the first book in her series, and here's what I found.

The book is not great fiction, but it is easy to read. I understand why it's so popular. Like all good reads, once you get into it, you want to read more.

Meyer's vampire characters have super-human strength and agility - they can run faster, drive faster and hit a baseball farther than any normal person; in fact, they move so fast that they show up and disappear in the blink of an eye.

Like the vampires of legend, they never die. The central vampire character in the book, Edward, has been 17 for nearly a hundred years.

All the vampire characters are drop-dead gorgeous (pun intended, actually). And while they are monsters by nature, they are not monsters by will. Edward and his "family" go on hunting trips in the mountains of Washington to feed on things like grizzly bear and mountain lion, and, as Tobi had said, they never hunt humans. On the contrary, they save them. Edward's adopted father - a 300 year old who still looks like Young Dr. Kildare - is a physician at a local hospital.

There are lots of theological themes in the book. Here are two examples:

First, Edward provides one example of "eternal life", or at least the absence of death, yet the promise of eternal life as a vampire seems to have little real value, except that if Bella, the central human character, becomes a vampire also, she could be with Edward forever - a prospect that has a powerful, life-changing influence over her.

And second, Edward is stuck in the state of being a vampire. Similar to the sinful state of humans, Edward did not choose his vampire-ness, and he cannot escape it. However, he can choose to live the right way, despite his inclinations. His struggle is a daily one and he chooses, every day, to live according to a higher set of standards-standards that value life.

Despite the theological themes in the book, God doesn't even get so much as lip service. The only sign that God is even in the consciousness of the characters is, interestingly enough, the presence of a large hand-carved cross hanging in the stairway of the vampire family home.

But while there is no mention of a Higher Power, the interplay of the forces of good and evil is an almost constant theme. And here is where the book comes up short, in my view. Edward, generally portrayed as good, is not so good after all. He has almost total power over Bella and he uses his power to draw her into his world - even though he knows that his world is one where evil wins out most of the time. He's also with Bella every second of the day, preventing her from spending time with other boys and even female friends, and he basically plans her life for her. This chaste teenage love affair dangerously borders on an abusive relationship. It de-humanizes Bella. The British have a word for it. It's downright dodgy.

As I mentioned before, our Gospel text for this morning is the story of Jesus' exorcism of an unclean spirit - a demon. It, too, is a story about the interplay of the forces of good and evil.

Jesus and his new disciples are in Capernium. In typical fashion, Jesus, a wandering rabbi, attends the local synagogue and is invited to expound the scriptures to the congregation. We don't know why the people sensed authority in Jesus' teaching. Not a word of what he said is remembered here in Capernaum. Whatever it was that so astonished people was not written down for us to hear.

But suddenly, Jesus' teaching is interrupted by a mad man. Right in the middle of the service, perhaps in the middle of the sermon, we hear a wild voice, disruptive, disjointed, crazy. Coming not from a man, but from a demon that has possessed him.

"Where were the ushers?" the people in the Synagogue must have thought. "Who let this man in?"

"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?" the demon goes on to ask, his shouting drowning out the preacher.

I know who you are," the mad man says, "you are the Holy One of God. Have you come to destroy us?"

"You better believe I have," Jesus tells him, bluntly. And then he goes on to cast out the demon. He tells it, in no uncertain terms, to take a walk.

Jesus, you see, is not the least bit wishy-washy when it comes to evil. He hates it. He destroys it. He is unwilling to compromise when he encounters it.

Jesus had no patience with demons. He cast them out. And guess what? If we jump two chapters later in the Gospel of Mark, to Mark 3:13 where Jesus appoints the twelve disciples, we find that he expected his followers to do the same. Casting out demons is, in fact, the first thing he commissioned the disciples to do.

We don't talk much about evil, evil spirits and demons any more. The modern mind isn't very comfortable with the idea of demons, but they're with us nonetheless. And no one here this morning needs me to start listing the examples of evil in the world.

I think our text suggests that we need to avoid the temptation to be politically correct and dance around the evil we see.

So despite my attempts to understand the opposite point of view, I continue to believe that our culture's willingness to embrace the notion of vampire love is more than just dodgy. I believe it is an example of evil.

I'm not suggesting, by the way, that good and evil are always divided by a bright line and that everything in life is on one side or the other. That would make our choices easy, but it wouldn't be realistic. No, most of the time living a life that reflects our faith is a study in shades of grey.

What I am suggesting, though, is sometimes the old cliché is correct: if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. . . it's a duck. And sometimes, you need to avoid the duck. Sometimes you need to tell the evil to take a walk.

Jesus preached the gospel and cast out demons on a regular basis. He then commissioned twelve disciples and they were given two jobs: to preach the gospel and cast out demons.

The pattern is clear. The job that Jesus gave the church has not changed. That is the mission of our congregation as well and the mission of all who are called to be Christians. We are to preach the gospel and cast out demons, to work for the elimination and control of the power of evil in our midst.

May we, with the help of God's Spirit, be about that business each day. Even if it means being out of step with the popular culture.

                                                                             AMEN

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