Have You Come to Destroy Us?

Have You Come to Destroy Us?

Jesus came to Capernaum with his followers, 
and on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught.
The people were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.
In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit;
he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are–the Holy One of God!” 
Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.
All were amazed and asked one another,
“What is this?
A new teaching with authority.
He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee. (Mark 1: 21-28)

In this Gospel reading, there are two nonhumans in the room, both of them clothed in human flesh. One of these is the demon in the demon possessed man. Jesus is teaching in the synagogue and the demon shouts out of the man. Did the people in the synagogue know beforehand that this man was possessed? Or did they find out when they heard him yell?

The demon shouted, “What have you to do with us? Have you come to destroy us?” The demon was attempting to frighten the people. “I know who you are-- the holy one of God.” The demon has no choice but to recognize Jesus, but he wants people to fear Jesus and to dismiss him.

The demons are always self-centered. This one asks, “Have you come to destroy us?” The demon cares little or nothing for the man whom he has possessed, just as the demons always seek to destroy the dignity of the human person and care nothing for him. In other incidents in Scripture, the demon tries to drown a person to destroy him or throw him into the fire to disfigure him. The demons care nothing for the intellect, soul, spirit, or body of a person. Wherever you find the degradation of the human person, of a person’s body or intellect, we see the influence of the daemonic. We see it everywhere in society, in strip joints, tattoo shops, and young people slashing and cutting themselves to disfigure themselves. The evil one is at work. He disfigures the beauty of the human person.

There is, in this room, another nonhuman person wrapped in human flesh and that person is eternal. He does not force entry but comes when welcomed. He remains a divine person while becoming a human person, which he did to enhance the beauty and the dignity of the human person by sanctifying it in his own body. Jesus, a divine person in a human body, does not force himself on anyone. He does not offer another person to be slashed, but rather offered his own body to be slashed and killed for the redemption of humankind. He does not destroy our beauty, but the incarnation of God clothes us with such dignity that we are truly beautiful. The demon throws the man into water to drown him, but Jesus baptizes us in water to save us and cleanse us from sin. The demon throws man into the fire to kill him, but God gives us the fire of the Holy Spirit, not to disfigure us but to beautify us, to raise our intellect to his, and to make us, as it were, divine.

As the demon approached Jesus, Jesus said to him, “You get out of the man,” and he does with a shriek. The demon does not want to leave, but he has to for he must obey the voice of God. This was a little battle in the synagogue. There will be larger ones between Jesus and Satan. In this encounter evil faces the good. Jesus came to set people free, and the people ask, “What is this that even the demons obey him?”

Demons surround us. People today ask, “What do you have to do with us?” There trying to blow Jesus off, to dismiss him as irrelevant to their lives. “Have you come to destroy us?” The demons continue to try to incite fear into the population. Our mission is to tell the evil one to get out. We are to let the people know that Jesus came to save, not destroy. God has everything to do with us and he has come to save us.

--Transcribed as best as possible from a homily by Father David Engo, FFM