Everything
The fifth grade student thought she was alone in the school’s library as she was taking a math test she missed the week before. She wasn’t. I was there as well, sitting at a desk hidden behind a set of bookshelves where I was catching-up on long overdue grading.
From across the room, I heard the student say aloud: “You stupid idiot. You don’t know any of this, you dumbass.”
At first, I thought she might be talking to someone else. Had another student walked into the library? Who had upset her so?
Peeking around the stack of books, I realized this 10-year-old was talking to herself. She was the “dumbass,” by her own reckoning. Think about that. In that moment under pressure, this little girl was her own worst enemy, and she fully embraced the lie she placed upon her young shoulders that October afternoon.
My heart broke for her.
We’ve all been there at some point, I can imagine. When I fail at a task, I berate myself. When I don’t live-up to the expectations that others place upon me, I fully embrace the negative-talk that runs through my mind. I am even willing at my lowest moments to accept what others have said about me from their own spaces of brokenness, jealousy, anger and hate.
It’s into this very space, however, where Jesus speaks words that must be written on each of our hearts and minds: “Quiet! Come out.”
They are words of freedom. Words that counteract the lie. Words that heal.
What an amazing moment that must have been in Capernaum’s synagogue that morning when Jesus stood before a man possessed and said the healing words the demon within didn’t want the troubled one to hear: “Quiet. Come out of him.”
It’s the sole reason why Jesus came. To destroy the lie.
And Satan hates it – which he why he does his utmost to fight back.
Make no mistake: The power of evil wants to engage us in order to win-over our minds and hearts. Satan knows exactly the card to play in order to deceive, to berate, and to make us think that we are unlovable, unredeemable and unworthy of mercy. He calls us by our sin and our shame, for in so doing, he knows that it’s from that space of being boxed-in that we call to others and make them live there, too.
That’s not of God.
Rather, look how God responds: instead of calling us by our sin, he enters into our pain and hurt, our fears and our struggles, and says to us: “I am with you. I am here.”
That’s love. A love that will go to hell and back in order to rescue us from the clutches of the hate that tries to chain us and make us captives to the power of shame. With Christ, we need not live there any longer.
No wonder the people were astonished at his teaching, as one who had authority. They watched him closely and saw a holiness that wasn’t afraid to enter the mess in order to set free.
A prophetic holiness that says: you are not the liar or the failure. You are not filth nor are you worthless. You are not the adulterer or addict. You are not your sinfulness.
You are so much more …
Jesus came as one of us in order to show us that Satan does not have the final word.
Rather, Love does. A love that opens its arms on the Cross and says: Give it all to me – everything. Let me take it, heal it and transform it. Don’t make your home where lies and self-hate dwell.
Think of all the encounters in the Gospels where Christ fought back against the lie: the Samaritan woman at the well; the possessed young man living among the tombs; the man who looked for healing at the pool of Siloam; tree-climbing Zaccheus; Levi the tax collector; Mary Magdalen and Simon-Peter. All were captive at one point to the chains of hate Satan used to keep them from embracing their God-given call of holiness and dignity. It was into these very places of darkness where the Lord wasn’t afraid to enter and call forth: “Quiet. Come out of them.”
And as he did, so must we.
Who the Christian disciple is and what the Christ-follower does is go to these places in the human heart and call forth something better. Francis of Assisi. Mother Teresa. Pope John Paul II. Catherine of Siena. Katharine Drexel and Dorothy Day. All were unafraid to enter the mess in order to stop the lies Satan uses to entrap and weaken and destroy.
The same call is ours, too. The task God places before us – the task which the Spirit puts upon our hearts – is this: How are we called to set others free? How will you and I be able to stop others from living in the space of Satan’s lies – to quiet the voice of hate and self-loathing?
Are we willing to go to another who is hurting and offer them healing by reminding them of their worth and their beauty? Can we present a glimpse of forgiveness and mercy to those whose brokenness might have hurt us at some point along the journey? Can we even begin by reminding ourselves that we are more than our sins and failures? That in the heart of God, we are never the names we call ourselves at our lowest, our weakest and at our most-lost moments …
If we start there, imagine how Christ can work in and through us. Imagine how the Kingdom makes itself present around us …
It’s quite telling that when the demon encounters the healing love and light of Christ, the question that is asked of him is this: What have you to do with us?
And Jesus shows us his answer by how he lived and how he died: Everything. Jesus has everything to do with us in order to set us free.
Accept the grace. Live in the true freedom that comes from the power of the Word and the healing of Reconciliation and Eucharist.
Stop allowing Satan to call you by your sins and shame. Hear instead the words meant for our hearts and minds and souls: “Quiet. Come out.” Be set free.