This week, I received the most annoying email.  It came marked with the label “Urgent!!!” and its message was cleverly designed to make me anxious, “Your Amazon.com Account is in Jeopardy!”  Perhaps you have received similar messages. The text of the message claims that some account of yours is in danger of being closed and that in order to preserve it, you must click on the supplied web link and enter the requested information such as account names or passwords. It can appear to come from any reputable business, but in reality it is a scam.  Although these emails usually have official looking logos and graphics in them, they are really just fishing for personal information.

One way to tell if the email actually originated from the company it claims to be from is to take your cursor and roll it over the link they want you to click on.  Without actually clicking, your browser will show somewhere the domain to which that link leads.  More often than not, these links lead not to the company who clams to be the sender, not to Amazon, your bank or your credit card.  Instead the address window reveals that the link actually leads to “joeshomepage.com” or some domain name registered in a foreign country.

For our own protection, it’s a good idea not to just click on any link without knowing the domain from which it originates.  Before we follow a link or start down a path, it is wise to find out to what domain it is registered.  Today’s story from the Gospel of Mark does just that.  It’s as if Mark is rolling his literary cursor over both a tormented man and Jesus and revealing the domain behind each of them.

Mark’s Gospel always seems strange to me.  It was most likely the first to be written.  We know this because Matthew and Luke were both familiar with it and copied large sections of it into their Gospels.  It is the shortest Gospel.  In fact, one could easily read it in one sitting.  Jumping quickly from one incident in Jesus’ life to another, its style is very frenetic and fast-paced.  But strangest of all in Mark, is how Jesus is portrayed.  There is no Sermon on the Mount in Mark, no story of Jesus’ birth, those aspects of Jesus that leave us with a warm fuzzy feeling. 

Instead a principle factor in Jesus’ fame, especially in Mark, is his reputation as an exorcist.  He casts out demons from people.  Other than a few horror films, this whole concept is so utterly bizarre and unfamiliar to us that we would just as soon ignore it.  As 21^st century intelligent and rational people, demon possession is the type of thing that we wish were not in the Bible.  But it is.  So what do we do with it?

For some churches, the answer is to obsess on the possessed.  Many Christians and preachers seem to talk more about the Devil than about Jesus.  Some would even say believing in a literal Devil and demons is a requirement for being a Christian.  There is something ironic about that.  It seems to me, that regardless of one’s views on demons, being a Christian should be about believing in Jesus, not about believing in Satan. 

Now, I am not so arrogant as to think that I understand the universe completely.  I acknowledge that there may be some reality to stories of demon possession that is beyond my limited understanding. My questioning and skepticism may just be symptoms of my modernist upbringing.  I may be wrong. Maybe people do get possessed by demons.  But Jesus sure seems to have run into a lot of them in his day.   That leads me to wonder, is something else going on in these narratives?

Not all the exorcism stories of the Gospels are the same.  Some might more accurately be described as healings.  For instance, if we were to encounter some of the people Jesus encountered who are described as possessed, we would describe their situation differently.  If we met the man whose story is told in Mark Chapter 5, we would most likely say he was suffering from multiple personality disorder.  The convulsing boy in Mark Chapter 9 we would probably diagnose as an epileptic.  Still, there are stories of Jesus encountering those who are portrayed as being under the influence of forces that are hostile to God.  Yet Jesus restored all these people to wholeness.  What do we make of that today?

Sometimes, as 21^st century Christians, the 1^st Century worldview and cosmology of the New Testament writers gets in the way of us hearing their message.  If this seems somehow heretical to you,  I would respectfully suggest that chances are you don’t believe in possession either ­ at least not in the same way a 1^st century person did.  How do I know this?  Imagine if your child or loved one was suffering from seizures and convulsions and you took them to doctor.  Suppose the doctor examined them and listened to you describe their symptoms.  How would you respond if that doctor’s recommended treatment was an exorcism?  Would you go back to them?

So assuming the world worked then the same way it works now, I am moved to wonder if these stories may point to a deeper reality than merely the events they portray.  In fact, in telling these stories, Mark himself leads us in that direction.  The story in Chapter 1, is the first exorcism in Mark.  But rather than focus on the miracle itself, Mark emphasizes the reaction of the crowd when they say, “Here is a teaching that is new, with authority behind it.”  This story was preserved and passed on, not so that we would believe in demon possession as if it were some fantastic paranormal experience like UFO’s, Bigfoot or ghosts.  It was told so that you and I would know, 2000 years later, the authority of Jesus.

Ancient people had seen exorcisms before.  Nothing new there.  This was about who Jesus was.  Even the man with the unclean spirit acknowledges him as the Holy One of God.”  There is fear that Jesus has come to eliminate the destructive influence that had a hold on this man.  There is resistance to the change and transformation that is about to happen in this man’s life, as he is about to hand over the primary influence in his life from a demonic authority to the authority of Jesus.

Life is all about whose influence we live under.  This story is just like our computer cursor.  It rolls over this man and it rolls over Jesus and reveals the domain, the influences behind each of them.

This time of year, the weeks preceding Easter called Lent, are a time of self-examination.  When we examine ourselves, it is healthy to uncover who and what has influence and authority over us.  Is it God or is it something demonic?

Is demonic too strong a word to use?  In the video we showed earlier, a few people shared their struggle to kick the habit of smoking.  Some might say that comparing something that is simply a bad habit to demonic possession is trivializing or watering down the Bible.  Others would say it’s merely a chemical dependency.  No need read morals into molecular reactions.  Yet, some of us have seen people suffer and die of lung cancer and emphysema.  When we couple that with all the lies, money and corruption that spew forth from tobacco companies, is demonic too strong a word to use?  Like an otherworldly spirit, don’t these components combine to create an influence greater than the sum of their parts?

Look beyond behavioral habits and to the bigger picture of the life decisions we make, the lifestyles we choose.  What influences those choices?  What values and goals are at the base of our behavior?  Can we honestly name God as our primary influence?  Few of us would say it is intentional, but it is almost as if cannot help but resist the influence of God in our lives.  It is as if, some force has power over us and almost makes us do the things we don’t want to do.  As the apostle Paul put it in Romans 7, “I can will the good, but I can’t perform it.  For I don’t do the good thing I want to do, but I end up doing the evil thing I don’t want to do.  So if I do what I don’t want to do, it is no longer ‘I’ doing it; it’s sin, living inside me.”

No one sets out consciously on a track that leads to a train wreck of a life.  Instead those journeys begin under the guise of seeking personal happiness or a better life.  But somewhere along the way, something goes wrong.  Just look at the insidious nature of forces such as pornography, adultery, alcohol, drugs, materialism and ambition and the unearthly power they have to destroy the things we hold most dear. Look at the words we use to describe those who are under such influences.  The people they hurt often say “It’s like they’re another person.”  Or, “I don’t even know them anymore.”  Is demonic too strong a word to use?

Every person who turns the ignition key of their car while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, thinks they are in control.  They think they can handle it.  It’s always, “I’m not that drunk. I can drive.”  It’s never, “Wow, I’m really wasted.  I’ve gotta’ get on the road and kill myself or some innocent victim!” 

Yet every day, you and I make choices and start down roads under the wrong influence.  We do it with the arrogant self-assuredness that we’re not all that bad.  We can handle it.  We move through life under the influence.  It may be the influence of ego, power or the need for approval, but it is an influence that leaves God out of process. Is demonic too strong a word to use?

Later in Romans, Paul goes on to say, “What a miserable person I am. Who will rescue me?”

God offers us a way out in Jesus Christ.  It’s not some magic step-by-step plan, but a path of transformation.  That is the good news or the gospel.  There is a more powerful influence available to all of us.  It is a power that we can cry out to anytime or anywhere. 

Next week, we’ll explore the primary message of Jesus ­ the kingdom of God.  It means the domain of God or the influence of God.  Jesus’ mission was to bring you and I into that domain, and under that influence.  As transformed disciples, our mission then becomes to bring others, in fact the whole Creation, under that influence.

To be under the influence of God - it is a thought that is simultaneously exhilarating and creepy.  We resist it because we misconceive it.

This week, I was talking to a woman I work with about her boyfriend.  She told me she has thought about marrying him but resists it because if they were married that would make her his possession.  Here we are in 2006 and people still have that unhealthy attitude about the relationship between the sexes and marriage.

Just as we all recognize that possession is not a healthy concept in a marriage, we also need to recognize that it is unhealthy in spiritual relationships.  God does not want an unhealthy possessive relationship with us.  In Christian tradition, possession is the language that is used about Satan and his demons, not about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. 

God is not out to possess us.  We may want to think that or use it as an excuse for not being under God’s influence, but that has more to do with our own baggage about religion than with reality.  In some mysterious way, God can purge from our lives all those demonic forces that will eventually lead to our destruction

Maybe right now you’re rolling your cursor over some of the links in your life, the possibilities and choices.  If that process reveals to you influences that are not of God, you need to out yourself under a different influence.  You need to connect with a different domain.  Sometimes we are linked in a web of relationships that drag us down. 

Teens, if you’re drinking or smoking pot and you hang around people who do, you have to get yourself in a different crowd.  Sure, I know you may think it’s no big deal.  But remember a few months back, we showed a video about someone’s struggle with drug addiction.  I could bring you into a thousand different churches and you could hear that same story.  The story of how someone’s life improved when they fought their addiction.  But I defy you to find me anyone whose life is better because of drugs or alcohol.  Ask yourself, whose influence are you under?

Even in the church, you may be feeling the nudge of God, the tug of the Spirit to serve God more and you have people telling you things like, “Oh, you need to take care of yourself.  You don’t need to join a Vision Group, go on Workcamp or become a Covenant Partner.”  If that is what those people want for their life, fine.  But they are right in the sense tat you have to think of you.  When you hear things like that, you need to get yourself into another circle of influence.  You need people who will lift you up not drag you down.  We all need people in our lives who will encourage and support us in our relationship with God ­ not drag us down to a level of mediocrity and laziness so they feel comfortable.  Ask yourself, whose influence are you under?

Having your demons exorcised is not pretty.  Ask anyone in a 12-Step program.  It’s a lot of hard work.  When Jesus cast out demons people convulsed, foamed at the mouth and cursed him.  They even accused him of being a demon.  If you are under the influence of forces that are making your soul sick, getting free of them is one of the hardest things you will ever do.

As I said earlier, I’m the first to admit I don’t know everything about how the universe works.  In the past four years God has done amazing things through this church.  We have all seen incredible and unlikely things happen as people have come under God’s influence.  At the same time, however, I have also seen equally unlikely things conspire to stop what God does.  I have seen people on the verge of transformation, about to turn a corner in their life, suddenly and almost intentionally screw it all up.  I have seen people explode, implode and self-destruct.  I have seen people ready to take the next step deeper into their journey with God suddenly disappear and cut themselves off from the community of faith.

Maybe you have people like that in some area of your life.  Maybe it’s your story.    Although it is tempting to be discouraged, Mark invites us to wait and  we will be amazed.   No matter what egotistical and selfish influences drag us down, Jesus is registered to a different domain.  Jesus’ domain is the Kingdom of God.  When we live in that kingdom,  under the influence of God, God has the power to transform and overhaul us into a completely new life.