Monday, June 13, 2005
LUKE 11:15-26
There's a very deep mystery at work in today's gospel. Not the mystery of Jesus or of his miraculous exorcism. The mystery is situated in the Pharisees. The Pharisees were men of deep religious conviction. The mystery is this: how could these deeply religious men look at Christ and see Satan? How could they witness Jesus' godly works and see them as the works of the devil?
The background to today's gospel selection is a man possessed by an evil spirit. The spirit had bound his tongue, he was mute. Jesus expelled the demon from the man and the man spoke. The Pharisees watched this stupendous miracle as it happened. They saw Jesus drive the demon out of the man; they saw the man who had been mute, speaking. And they said, "Jesus expels demons because he is a devil himself; his power is from the Prince of Devils."
How could they have missed the spiritual reality that unfolded before their very eyes? It wasn't hidden. It was clear as day. They should have recognized it. I think the problem was that their faculty of spiritual perception had atrophied because they often abused it, and more often failed to use it. They saw what they wanted to see, not what was actually there. They saw Jesus opposed to them, a threat to their power and privileges. So they saw him as evil. They literally looked at God and saw Satan. And these were religious men!
Spiritual blindness is a self-inflicted disease. It develops because we intentionally distort spiritual reality. We do not want to recognize spiritual reality as it is. Maybe it's too burdensome for us, maybe we see it as demanding too much of us. And so we shift our gaze from the spiritual reality to the comfort, the ease, the pleasure, the power or whatever else it is that we want and that we will lose if we admit spiritual reality's existence.
Let us pray for ourselves that we will not allow the faculty of spiritual discernment God has given us, to atrophy and to waste away. That we will rather make use of it, hone it, exercise it, so that we will always recognize God's reality when he steps into our lives.
The background to today's gospel selection is a man possessed by an evil spirit. The spirit had bound his tongue, he was mute. Jesus expelled the demon from the man and the man spoke. The Pharisees watched this stupendous miracle as it happened. They saw Jesus drive the demon out of the man; they saw the man who had been mute, speaking. And they said, "Jesus expels demons because he is a devil himself; his power is from the Prince of Devils."
How could they have missed the spiritual reality that unfolded before their very eyes? It wasn't hidden. It was clear as day. They should have recognized it. I think the problem was that their faculty of spiritual perception had atrophied because they often abused it, and more often failed to use it. They saw what they wanted to see, not what was actually there. They saw Jesus opposed to them, a threat to their power and privileges. So they saw him as evil. They literally looked at God and saw Satan. And these were religious men!
Spiritual blindness is a self-inflicted disease. It develops because we intentionally distort spiritual reality. We do not want to recognize spiritual reality as it is. Maybe it's too burdensome for us, maybe we see it as demanding too much of us. And so we shift our gaze from the spiritual reality to the comfort, the ease, the pleasure, the power or whatever else it is that we want and that we will lose if we admit spiritual reality's existence.
Let us pray for ourselves that we will not allow the faculty of spiritual discernment God has given us, to atrophy and to waste away. That we will rather make use of it, hone it, exercise it, so that we will always recognize God's reality when he steps into our lives.
# posted by F O O D F O R T H O U G H T @ 4:48 PM 
