the Devil Is Real

Over the years, I have visited many homes and pulled up many a chair, to listen to stories, confessions, and musings. People have shared with me their hopes, their dreams, and their lives. Many of the people I first visited when coming to Resurrection were people who came to Canada at the end of WWII; having fled Estonia and Latvia. Most of these members have died. This past week I have been remembering their stories: stories that are chilling, unbelievable, at times miraculous. The tales are full of chaos, sadness, and fear – peppered with faith, hope, and determination.  I remember the chairs I sat in, listening to: Agnes Kuttner, Laine Suskdorf, Mirdza Damberg, Aino Brzak, Andris and Biruta Knudzins.

Their stories flood my memory because I catch glimpses of their stories being repeated in Ukraine.

 

Time and time again I heard stories of couples fleeing in the cover of darkness moments before raids to round people up and send them to work camps; of women slipping through a tight spot undetected with a baby wrapped in their arms- a baby who was quiet despite the chaos; of families reuniting after hundreds of kms of journey; of groups being held up – just long enough to miss being blown up in an ambush, or the sinking of a ship. 

 

The conversations first began when I noticed and commented on the old small Eastern Orthodox icon framed and hung on a wall of their homes.  Each icon had a candle holder and each night a candle was lit for pray.  These icons traveled with people, some were lost and replaced. Prayer was the foundation of faith, and prayer at times was all there was.

The stories I would be told emphasized the miracles in the midst of madness.

The sense that God was present, that there were angels all around, a peace and faith that all would be okay

…and then there was the pause… a long pause that held the questions of ‘why me?’; ‘where was the miracle- God - for those not saved?’; the deeper unsettling thoughts of doubt, evil, the Devil, God’s power capability?

If the moment was just so, the conversation turned to deep matters, very deep matters. I remember Aino Brzak -with great passion- and wrestling from the depth of her heart- speaking about living under tyranny of Lennon, Stalin, Hitler, and her fears in what she saw in an American presidential election (before Obama and Trump, and the world affairs of today). We wrestled with thoughts of evil – evil incarnate; does the Devil take on human form in our time? Are people -specifically dictators- possessed by evil spirits? Or are humans good and tempted to be drawn aside, away from relationship, and goodness, and a sense of commonwealth? Who or what does the tempting that turns the human heart?

 

It is not often that we speak about the Devil, or Satan, in a personified form. The Gospel tells a story where the Devil meets Jesus in the wilderness and tempts Jesus. Preachers often focus on the temptations – relating temptations to self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-sufficiency; philosophically suggesting the temptations are hedonism, egoism, materialism; the temptations tempt, body, mind, soul. The temptations tempt the human ideals of truth, beauty, goodness; and religious understandings of faith, hope, love.  It is far safer to speak of temptation than the Devil.

Historian Thomas Renna wrote a piece called, “Martin Luther, the Devil, and the True Church.”  In it he wrote: “The Devil runs loose in the world by instilling doubt in the hearts of believers.  Luther’s Devil is more menacing than the affliction of private consciences; he disrupts the whole world with his promotion of war, social rebellions, domestic turmoil, diseases, demonic possessions, natural disaster, and despotic governments.”

For Luther the Devil was real.

 

Bonhoeffer in his writings sees the Devil as a literal being, not a metaphor. From his lectures on homiletics he said, “as a witness to Christ, the sermon is a struggle with demons.  Every sermon must overcome Satan. Every sermon fights a battle. But this does not occur through dramatic efforts of the preacher. It happens only through the proclamation of the One who has trodden upon the head of the devil.”

For Bonhoeffer the Devil was real.

 

Walter Sunberg, a current Lutheran theologian, wrote: “to expurgate the Devil from the core of faith is to cut ourselves off from the nerve of biblical religion concerning the teaching of evil.  It is to ignore both the Christian tradition and crucial aspects of contemporary reality.  The old dogmaticians warned, sive diabolus, nullus redemptor- without the Devil, there is no Redeemer. Only by grasping the depth of the Evil One can the full extent of the love of God be known.” 

For Sunberg the Devil is real.

 

For you, is the Devil real?

I have always appreciated a well place BUT in a sentence.  My answer is: the Devil is real, BUT…  

In saying this I don’t picture the Devil walking around earth today, any more than I picture Jesus walking around in person on earth. This is not to say that either is not present in the world in other forms.

Do I see Jesus in people? Yes. Do I see the Devil in people? Yes. Are people, Jesus or the Devil? No.

 

Bonhoeffer shared some wisdom that I find helpful when reflecting on our times, and on the Devil; particularly when I think about where evil is, how it plays out in our lives, and who or what puts temptation in front of us. Bonhoeffer said, “the devil doesn’t fill us with hatred for God, but with forgetfulness of God.” Repeat...the devil….

 

This brings me back to the Estonians and Latvians who shared their stories. The devil -as described in various ways in their stories- continually placed temptation in front of them; bread, life, power; self-preservation, self-elevation, self-sufficiency; with the purpose of distraction, to fill them with forgetfulness of God.  BUT that is not what happened. God was not forgotten.

Rather a deep well of faithfulness was carved out that held onto hope, experienced miracles, noticed resurrection moments.

The faithfulness of people -who I knew and loved- who shared their stories and themselves- bore witness to the Gospel, facing the Devil they prayed every night by candlelight, they appreciated participating in Holy Communion, they prayed in their mother tongue (Estonian or Latvian) and in English, and sometimes in German or Russian too.

Devil or not, these faithful were not scared off, were not tempted to give up, did not stop praying, did not loss faith. Perhaps that is the biggest miracle of all. For our troubled world, that is the Gospel for today.