Friday, XXVII Week of Ordinary Time
(Luke 11:15-26)
With an election year approaching, citizens of the United States can expect some freebies. Politicians will distribute buttons and t-shirts. Incumbents will work to pass favorable programs to get re-elected. Like the crowd in the gospel asking whether Jesus may be casting out demons by the prince of demons, we should ask whether these political gifts support worthy or malevolent causes.
Jesus knows the thoughts of the people and tries to calm their anxieties. First, he uses logic. Beelzebub would be working against himself if he cast out demons. It would be as imprudent as the “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Then, Jesus poses a question to the people. He knows that his exorcism is suspect because he is a stranger. So he asks, “If the Jewish prophets drove out demons by God’s power, why should you doubt that I might not do so with the same authority?” Finally, he proposes the reasonable alternative. He casts out demons by “the finger of God” which means that the long anticipated Kingdom of God has finally broken in on the world.
Jesus also shows how the coming of the Kingdom entails effort on the part of its beneficiaries. People have to convert to its standards of intellectual honesty, moral integrity, and religious worship. If not the good of having a demon exorcised will end in a much worse condition. We might think of a household that has exterminated all the mice that inhabited it and then has restocked the food supplies. Unless protections and safeguards against pests are also put in place, the mice are likely to return in force.
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