Exorcising Evil, Rev. Dr. Eboni Marshall-Turman

0:48 I've said to both of the two prior congregations that I'm glad to be in the service one more time. And I know for sure, after having birthed my twin girls four months ago, that he didn't have to let me live. But I am glad to be in the service one more time. I give honor to God because, as I confess time after time, God is the head of my life. God is the first and the last. God is the beginning and the end. The Greek New Testament tells us that God is the Alpha Chi Omega. God is the author and the finisher of my faith. To God be the glory. Great things God has done.

1:43 I give honor to the angel of this house, the under shepherd of this old ship of Zion, the Reverend Dr. Howard John Wesley. I bless him as he takes a sabbatical during this season. I'm only on sermon number, what is this? Three. And I'm tired enough.

2:08 I'm tired enough for a couple months myself. So praise the Lord. He does this Sunday after Sunday, not including the, this is the priestly work, but not including the pastoral work that he does week by week. So God bless him where he is in this moment. And I thank him for the invitation to worship with this most esteemed congregation, worshiping with you on this Sunday in spirit and in truth. Thank you so much for having me. I give honor to the Reverend clergy who are present on today, to your executive pastor, the Reverend Dr. Judy Fentress Williams, who is my Yale sister and who has just been an incredible spirit of hospitality. She is kind. She has a spirit of grace and humility that is overwhelming, and I am grateful for her ministry.

3:06 I pray much for the remainder of the... Y'all have a big ministerial staff. You ought to thank God for all of these ministers who can serve you week after week. And they, I'm sure, do a marvelous job to minister Barbara Florville for her kindnesses and hospitality and excitement about ministry. She has been such a wonderful spirit accompanying me throughout the halls of this Grand Cathedral to Reverend Mark, who was my student, y'all, at Duke Divinity School. It's always wonderful to see my students serving the church and serving society in such marvelous ways, to Reverend Marsha and to all of the ministers, Minister Elijah. You all are just tremendous, and I bless God for your sacrifice and will continue to remember you in my prayers.

4:12 I know well the great blessing and also the heavy burden of being an associate pastor, and I will remember you, remember you in my prayers to the officers of this church, the deacons and deaconesses and trustees. I'm not sure if you follow that model, but it's a Baptist church, so I'm just going to name what it is. The deacons, the deaconesses and trustees to this marvelous singing aggregation. I feel like I preached too long. I feel like I missed a song somewhere, but the Lord will do what the Lord will do to this most beautiful congregation and to all of the friends of the body of Christ. I greet you this morning as I would any other in the name of the creator and in the name of the Christ and in the name of the Holy Ghost.

5:11 Good morning. Our scripture today is taken from the New Testament book of Mark the Evangelist. We are, for the 9.30 service, looking to Mark chapter 3, beginning at verse 14. Mark 3, verse 14. If it is your custom, please stand for the reading and hearing of the word. Following Mark 3 and 14, we will turn to Mark chapter 5 and read one verse there, verse 9. We're starting in Mark chapter 3, verse 14. I'm reading this morning from the new revised Standard Version of the Text. Hear ye now the Word of the Lord. And Jesus appointed twelve, who he also named apostles, to be with him and to be sent out to proclaim the message and to have authority to cast out demons. I'll read it again in your hearing.

6:23 And Jesus appointed 12, who he also named apostles, to be with him and to be sent out to proclaim the message and to have authority to cast out demons. And moving to a familiar text, Mark 5 and verse 9. It reads on this wise. Then Jesus asked him, the Gerasene demoniac, what is your name? And he replied, my name is Legion, for we are many. The word of the Lord is blessed. Please be seated.

7:15 Let us pray. Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of highest praise. Teach me some melodious sonnet sung by flaming tongues above. the mount I'm fixed upon it mount of thy redeeming love hide now your servant oh God behind the cross that in this preaching moment the people of God might not see her but they might see Jesus and decide to follow him this is your servants prayer in Jesus name and the people of God said amen I'd like to speak with you briefly this morning on the subject, Exercising Evil.

8:31 Exercising evil. For Jesus appointed 12 to be with him, to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons. I haven't taken the test. You know, there's a test, a DNA test. Oprah took it and Henry Louis Gates took it, but I have not yet taken the test because my husband said feds is watching.

9:26 But from what I've been told, From what I've been told, this test can tell you where you're from. It can tell you if you're 40% African or 25% South Asian or 10% European. I have not taken the test, but like so many of you, I've got Indian in my family. You and Welsh, and Finnish, not by choice but by force. for when my grandmother cried out me too none but god heard her Whether this is the case or merely a figment of my cultural imagination is not the point.

10:43 For the pertinent truth this morning is that I claim my social inheritance as a descendant of enslaved Africans in the diaspora. I'm a proud heir of the American slavocracy. King's Tree, South Carolina, Bahama, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Oxford, Mississippi. I am the progeny of slaves. I am the direct descendant of the Negro sharecropper. But whether we are talking about black subjugation in the antebellum South or colonial repression in the so-called West Indies or the legacies of black enslavement, the wretched of the earth, as Franz Fanon would identify them in South America, Salvador, GBA, Brazil, where there is, did you know, the largest population of black Africans in the Western Hemisphere? Eu falo português você.

11:47 I count myself as a descendent of a colorful people, a diasporian people. We are ebony and mahogany. We are sable and butterscotch. We are caramel and honey. We are chestnut and coffee. We are bronze and sienna. We are a colorful people kissed by the sun and scattered by the terrible hand of white supremacy throughout the world. So when I got the chance to go back to where it all started, when I found myself faced with the opportunity to go back to stand at El Mina, Cape Coast, Ghana, and to gaze out of the door of no return, having returned, to gaze out of the door of no return, having returned, when I got the chance, I jumped on the plane.

12:50 And though they brought my grandmothers and my grandfathers as cargo in the bowels of slave ships named Adelaide and Amistad, Concord and Desire Redemption and the good ship Jesus, I jumped on the plane and I flew first class for the ancestors, for the culture. And before I knew it, I was there.

13:30 I was there, and I saw it for myself. I stood for myself in the darkness of the slave dungeon. And while there, I noticed that the church where the slavers worshipped sat right on top, directly on top. The church sat right on top of the slave dungeon. And the doorframe to the church that sat on top of the slave dungeon was inscribed with the 132nd Psalm, for the Lord has chosen Zion. And it was then when I saw this sign up above the doorframe inscribed, the 132nd Psalm, it was then that I knew for myself what the great apostle Paul meant when he said, we fight not.

14:33 against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places. It was an epicenter of the demonic. The church, sisters and brothers, was on top of the slave dungeon.

14:56 And we are perplexed, huh? By the so-called religious riot. by the white evangelicals. We are perplexed by how so-called charlatan preachers can flank 45. But I came to tell you there was a church on top of a slave dungeon.

15:22 We ought not be perplexed because, and I'm just going to say it because I'm going back to my J-O-B. We ought not be perplexed because white faith has historically perpetrated black dispossession. White theology has historically yielded black theodicy. And the greatest theologians of our time, James Howe Cohn, Gayrod S. Wilmore, Katie Geneva Cannon, Dolores S. Williams, Emily Maureen Townsend, they would say that this is spiritual wickedness. In high places, Williams would call it demonarchy. The church was on top of the slave dungeon.

16:18 Spiritual wickedness, however, has political and material implications. Let me say this differently. Demonarchy. is how at the 11 a.m. service church folks could sing all hail the power of Jesus name let angels prostrate fall bring forth the royal diamond and crown him lord of all but by noon had formed a lynch mob chanting Eeny Meeny, Mighty Moe, Catch a Nick, By the Toe, Church Vote, were also civic leaders, mayors, governors, and even presidents would deny black folks the right to vote, the right to marry, the right to live, turn a blind eye to fire hoses and police dogs sicked on black children in the street. Shout obscenities while pouring ketchup and mustard, salt and pepper into the eyes of black youth at lunch counters. You may have not crossed the Atlantic and you may not have been there when they shot down a preacher king like a dog on a Memphis balcony. You may not have been there when four little girls went up in flames at the 16th street. Baptist Church, the great black poet Dudley Randall said it like this, a mother dear, may I go downtown instead of out to play and march the streets of Birmingham in a freedom march today. No baby, no, you may not go for I fear the guns will fire, but you may go to church instead and sing in the children's choir. You may not have been there when four little girls went up in flames in the 16th Street Baptist Church. You may not have been there when the bullets of a white supremacist riddled the bodies of the Emmanuel 9, but you know something about spiritual

18:28 wickedness in high places that seeks to steal and to kill and destroy for yourself. Jesus. a black Palestinian Jewish rabbi from a ghetto called Nazareth. Jesus asked the demoniac, what is your name? Jesus asked the demoniac, what is destroying you? Jesus asked the demoniac, what are you up against? There are many dimensions to this kind of spiritual warfare. There are economic dimensions and there are political dimensions. As I've said before, one-third of American children live in poverty.

19:29 And although African Americans constitute roughly 13% of the U.S. population, 40% of the children who live in poverty are black children. We come to church and we sing, bread of heaven, bread of heaven. Feed us till we want no more. But we are surrounded by hungry children who do not have enough food to eat in a nation that produces enough food for every person to have three square meals per day and two snacks.

20:06 There are political and economic dimensions to this kind of spiritual warfare. Our children are threatened by educational apartheid in the year of our Lord 2020. that we mistakenly thought Brown v. Board of Education had disrupted in 1954. But white flight and the privatization of American education, much like the privatization of the prison industrial complex, has left poor children who are, as established disproportionately, black and brown children in separate and unequal educational facilities that are administratively overtaxed, taxed, sorely understaffed, and underfunded, such that our teachers are restricted in their capacity to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic on par with their peer institutions. And we must not forget that the cradle-to-prison pipeline targets these very same underperforming elementary schools and school districts in its future projection of how many beds and how many jail cells will be needed in the days ahead.

21:16 And although statistics prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that black people in America do not commit the most crimes, that black people in America do not sell or take the most drugs, that black people in America do not traffic the most guns, that black people in America are not the most violent of offenders, we are the disproportionately incarcerated. That means there's more of us in jail than anybody else. And if you've read your constitution lately, you'll know that slavery has been abolished except as punishment for a crime. The elders used to say, before I be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave. But the fact of the matter is that there are more black people in jail today than were enslaved in the 1860s. And we are still trying to figure out who killed Sandra Bland.

22:14 We are still trying to figure out how you can asphyxiate a black man on a Staten Island street corner and continue to collect a paycheck week after week. We're still trying to figure out how in the 21st century we can lose our lives for walking while black, talking while black, driving while black, playing while black, laughing while black, sleeping while black, asking for help while black. But… Lest we start feeling sorry for ourselves, there are global and transnational dimensions to this kind of spiritual warfare. Though you've heard it said, he's got the whole world in his hands. Nobody talks much about those black girls still missing in Nigeria.

23:14 Bring back our girls. There are wars and there are rumors of wars in Iran. Like old Christopher Columbus, that doggone Mark Zuckerberg is stealing on Facebook right now. We need a new hashtag, hashtag stealing since 1492. Ah, and when. and when the highest office in the land is occupied by a poster boy for racism, sexism, misogyny, heterosexism, homophobia, ableism, narcissism, greed, ruthlessness, self-centeredness, name-calling, punitive, retaliative mechanisms, braggadocious, self-supremacist motifs, and outright lies. It's no wonder.

24:27 In the face of this kind of demonarchy, this kind of spiritual wickedness, Jesus asks the demoniac, what is your name? My name is Legion. For we are many. We know better than most that spiritual warfare has material implications. And given the state of things, sisters and brothers, there is no doubt that we are cast down on every side. There is political evil. There is moral evil. There is economic evil. There is social evil. And for some of us, it's not even that deep. We just work with evil-ing.

25:22 We go to school with evil-ing. We live next door to Evelyn. We sit in the pew with Evelyn. We serve on the ministry with Evelyn. We sing in the choir with Evelyn. And he always got something to say. But I stopped by to remind somebody that though we are troubled on every side. Paul said we are not distressed. Though we may be perplexed, we are not in despair. Though we are persecuted, we are not forsaken. Though we are cast down, we are not destroyed. I know that it feels like there's no way out. I know sometimes it feels like there is no hope. I know what we are up against.

26:15 But I stopped by to remind Alfred Street that the psalmist says that when evildoers came to devour my flesh, they stumbled and fell. I stopped by to remind somebody of one King David who said, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. I came by to remind somebody of the prophet who said, fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against workers of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass. I came to remind you of one Isaiah who said, no weapon formed against me shall prosper. Oh, yes, there is a word because if God before us, if God before us, if God before us, who I say can be against us, neither death nor life, it is written, neither angels nor principalities, it is written, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, neither height nor depth, or any other living creature can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

27:39 And how do I know? Because In our text today, we find Jesus. Jesus, who amidst oppressive economic and social and political conditions, chooses disciples. We find Jesus. John said it like this, the word became flesh and dwelt among us amidst the oppressive economic and social and political conditions. conditions, we find God in Christ choosing disciples. And they were a ragtag crew. They didn't look as good as Alfred Street. They were a ragtag crew. They were fishermen who couldn't catch any fish.

28:57 They were fishermen who could not catch any fish, and their employment status suggests to us that they are politically disenfranchised. They are socially marginalized. They are economically sidelined in addition to being smelly and dirty. And Jesus chooses them to fulfill his eschatological promise that the last shall be comfort. We serve a God who can take absolutely nothing. See, there'll never be enough money.

29:52 There'll never be enough resources to go around. There'll never be enough workers in the ministry. But we serve a God who can take nothing and make something. Don't you know that God has chosen you? don't you, I don't know where you've been, who you've been with, but God has chosen you. God can take nothing.

30:23 Oh, you are but dust. God can take nothing and turn it into something in the beginning, Genesis 1. Oh, when the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep God said, let there be light and there was light. God can make something out of nothing. Grandma said he's a way maker. He can make a way out of no way and somebody knows what I'm talking about because like the disciples, oh, you were part of a ragtag crew yourself. You might still be part of one up to no good in the neighborhood. there was a bullet with somebody's name on it in here. Maybe you were strung out or maybe you were thrown out or maybe you were kicked out or maybe you were just out of your mind, out of a job, out of control, out of money, out of answers.

31:22 But somehow God saw fit to spare your life and to lead your feet to the house of prayer. I don't know what you are up against today, but God has chosen you. But Jesus didn't stop there. See, Jesus didn't just choose the disciples. The text tells us that after choosing them, he gave them this ragtag crew. He gave them authority. In some translations, the word authority is translated as power. Jesus gave the disciples power. No, not to hit the power ball. But the Bible says that Jesus gave the disciples power to cast out demons. In other words, even in our broken estate, Jesus gives us everything we need to confront and exorcise evil in this world.

32:33 But many of us are perplexed because we are wondering how we, as broken as we are, how we are supposed to exercise evil, How we can eliminate social evil when the legacies of that great disaster, that Ma'afa, that middle passage, continue to crush us and our children under the weight of a new Jim Crow. Well, my brothers wouldn't let me take the test. My mother bought them a bench press when we were kids. And every day, they would gather at this exercise machine so that they could test each other to see how strong the other was.

33:37 I was just the little sister, so I couldn't take the test. I had to stand on the sidelines and I had to watch. But I remember one particular time when my brother, Darius, had laid down on the bench. And he was on the bench press and he was preparing to lift the weights. And my eldest brother, Eros, Eros was standing over him in order to spot him. And Darius began to lift the weight and he brought it down to his chest. But when he got the weight down to his chest, he realized that the weight was too heavy. The weight was too heavy. It was crushing him.

34:29 And he did not have the strength to lift the weight that was on him. So my eldest brother, Eros, he'd been standing over him the whole time, spotting him. And he reached down and helped my younger brother, Darius, lift the weight and put it back in place. Now I don't want to bore you, Mark, with my childhood memories, but I stopped by to tell somebody that beyond prayer and fasting, the only way to confront this kind of evil, the only way to put this kind of evil that antagonizes us day by day in its place is to keep on pressing. And we press marching and chanting and protesting and dying in.

35:30 We press, sisters and brothers, knowing that when the weight gets too heavy to bear, are you weak, the song says, and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care. When the weight gets too heavy to bear, we have a brother. Paul says he's the firstborn of many brethren. Oh, we have a brother, and his name is Jesus. And I've been told that he's seated at the right hand of the Father. And the Father and the Son are watching over us. They're spotting us so that when the weight of the world gets too heavy to bear, they're ready to reach over and give us a portion of their power.

36:27 That's the spirit, that Holy Ghost power that comes from above so that through the Godhead, your mother can't do it, your father can't do it, the preacher can't do it, The elders can't do it. But through the Godhead, that's by the power of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, the words of the new covenant can be fulfilled. When I am weak, then I am strong. Oh, our ancestors. They knew something about pressing on despite the evils of this world. Oh, don't get it twisted, sisters and brothers.

37:21 Uh-uh. Our foremothers and our forefathers, they knew God for themselves. before they were bought and exchanged in this colonial project. Malcolm said it like this, we knew God before the Nina and the Pinta and the whatchamacallit. They called him Oludumare in Nigeria. That means the creator God. Oh, in the Congo, they knew of a divine son.

38:02 His name was Osiris. But he was born of a virgin. Her name was Isis. You know, black people, we got our own names. Some of them even knew of a man named Jesus. For it was an Ethiopian eunuch out of Abyssinia, the first Christian nation in the world, who said to Philip, an Ethiopian eunuch. Oh, that means he was black and gay. Oh, he said to Philip, see, here is one. What doth hinder me to be baptized? And 700 years later, we came to know God as Allah. Oh, may peace be upon the prophet.

39:03 Oh, there is one God. But this God is called by many names. We know him as El Shaddai. We know him as El Olam. We know him as El Ra'i Jehovah, Rafa Jehovah, Nisi Jehovah. Shalom. Our African ancestors knew God for themselves. And despite the evil that threatened to crush them, remember the church was on top of the slave dungeon. They kept on pressing. So as we continue to fast and pray, to march and sing in order to cast out the demons of racial injustice and gender injustice and economic injustice and sexual injustice, No, I have not taken the test. I cannot pinpoint exactly where I come from.

40:07 The church was on top of the slave dungeon, but I know I have ancestors. And they are leaning over the balconies of heaven. Some of them are but children. Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley and Carol Robertson and Carol Denise McNair. Some of them are but children, Emmett Till and Michael Brown Jr. and Ray Marley Graham and Freddie Gray and Renisha McBride. But I have ancestors like Harriet Tubman, who wouldn't be no slave. Sojourner Truth, who told the white girls, ain't I a woman? Nat Turner, who had visions in the field. Toussaint Louverture who said to the colonizing power, Sat Passé, son. Henry MacNeil Turner who first said, God is a Negro.

41:04 Ida B. Wells Barnett who uncovered the veil of the red record in the lynching south. Mary McLeod Bethune, John Brown, and Viola Leuso, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Ashwyrner. Oh, Rosa Parks, who on December 5th, 1955, looked the bus driver in the face and said, not today, Satan. These are they. These are they who have come through the great tribulation and whose robes have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. So they are leaning over the balconies of heaven, telling us as we press against the evils of this world to keep on pressing, keep on singing, keep on praying, keep on keeping on, to keep our hand to the plow and hold on. Like Adam Powell Jr. used to say, walk together, children, and don't you get weary.

42:15 There's a great camp meeting in the promised land. So when you go out, saints, into the highways and the byways of the world, and you come face to face with the test, because they will test you. In the classroom, on the job, in the church house, in the White House, They will test you. Don't cry. Don't run for cover, but run right into that devil's face and say, get thee behind me, Satan. For Jesus sent them to proclaim the message and to cast out demons. Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown stands our God within the shadows keeping watch.