ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

SATAN CAST OUT

Sermon preached by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis at St Andrew’s Church, Holborn, London: 15 July 2007

Matthew 9:27-35

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

In the Gospel today we have heard the story of two miraculous healings performed by Jesus. First, the healing of the two blind men, and then of the man afflicted by a ‘dumb spirit’, someone who couldn’t speak. The second of these is too much for the Pharisees who are watching what is going on. They say, with indignation, ‘[This man] cast out demons through the prince of demons.’

Two things are to be noted. The first is that the Pharisees accept that the healings have taken place. They are real. And second, that in their eyes Jesus, while appearing to do good, is in fact an agent of Satan. It is through Satan, the prince of demons, that he works his miracles. They are not alone in accepting that what appears to be good can come from the enemy of God. St Paul himself, in 2 Corinthians, says that ‘Satan himself [can be] transformed into an angel of light.’

This is something that we all have to learn to accept: things are not always what they seem. And this presents us with difficulties, both as regards other people, and, even more importantly, as regards ourselves. If things are not what they seem, how can we tell what is really going on? How, when it is necessary, can we unmask Satan?

Now Satan, by definition, is ‘the Opponent’, the adversary of God. But he is also an imitator of God and of the godly forces of good, as both St Paul and the Pharisees accept. It is this aspect of imitation that is one of the most important clues to unmasking Satan. Because imitation is – or easily can be – a form of rivalry. To imitate someone is not only a form of flattery. It is also a way of setting oneself up ‘over against’ another. To imitate someone is to say that I want to be like you. And it takes only a small step for this to become ‘I want to be where you are.’ ‘I want to occupy the space that you occupy.’ ‘What you have, I want to have.’

The effect of this is that imitation almost inevitably leads to conflict. Or better yet, imitation is a hidden form of conflict. It is conflict. To want to be like someone else is inevitably to set oneself up over against someone else. When Satan tempted Adam and Eve, he encouraged them to be like God: ‘In the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ But in order to be like gods, they had to disobey God, they had to set themselves up over against him and against his will for them – which was the Good.

But what about the ‘imitation’ of Christ? Surely this is something good in itself. Are we not called to be like Christ? Christ died as a martyr, as a witness to the truth. But the early Church was quite clear when it discouraged its members from seeking martyrdom. To imitate Christ wilfully and in an outward way was not the way of God. It was not even the way of Christ.

We must ask ourselves, ‘What did Christ himself do?’ Yes, we know that he did what the Father does, that he spoke the words that the Father gave him to speak, that he judged as the Father judged. But he did not do this in an external manner. He did it because the Father was in him: ‘The Father is in me, and I in him.’ In other words, there is no opposition here, there is no ‘over against’. Christ and the Father are one.

How can this be? It can be so because the Spirit also dwells in Christ. The Spirit that proceeds from the Father rests on the Son. The Spirit lives within the Son. Both Father and Spirit act from within the Son in unity and with one accord. There is no external imitation here, but oneness of heart and mind. What Christ does is what the Father and Spirit want him to do. This does not mean that he imitates them or does what they have done elsewhere in or through some other person. God does not repeat himself. Whatever God does is always new and whatever Christ did was always new.

How does this relate to us? Quite simply. We do not imitate Christ in any external sense. Our outer path will never be the same as his. But are called to act from within at the prompting of God dwelling in our hearts. Christ within us, and the Spirit within us. And if Christ is within us, then the Father, of whom Christ says, ‘the Father is in me, and I in him’, is in us as well. Jesus himself tells us not to worry when we are threatened or under pressure from without: ‘And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates, and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say: For the Holy Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.’

What the Spirit tells us will be something new, and so there can be no question of our imitating anyone else at that hour. We will be ourselves alone, acting and speaking at the prompting of God.

In all this there is a great freedom. The presence of God in the world is prolonged in the temple of our bodies, in our hearts, and Christ lives within us as we live in him. As St Paul said: ‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ Amen.