Reading 1 1 Cor 2:10b-16
Brothers and sisters:
The Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God.
Among men, who knows what pertains to the man
except his spirit that is within?
Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God.
We have not received the spirit of the world
but the Spirit who is from God,
so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.
And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom,
but with words taught by the Spirit,
describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.Now the natural man does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God,
for to him, it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it,
because it is judged spiritually.
The one who is spiritual, however, can judge everything
but is not subject to judgment by anyone.For “who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
Gospel LK 4:31-37
Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.
He taught them on the sabbath,
and they were astonished at his teaching
because he spoke with authority.
In the synagogue, there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon,
and he cried out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”
Jesus rebuked him and said, “Be quiet! Come out of him!”
Then the demon threw the man down in front of them
and came out of him without doing him any harm.
They were all amazed and said to one another,
“What is there about his word?
For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits,
and they come out.”
And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region.
The first reading of today is a very powerful text of the bible. The truth therein is profound. The summary is that it is by the Spirit of God that we understand the mind and things of God. Without the Holy Spirit, the things of God are folly, boring, abstract and unattractive.
This is quite true, without the Holy Spirit, the things of God are uninteresting, the word of God is abstract, the spiritual life is an impossible life and hypocritical life becomes inevitable, without the Holy Spirit, our Liturgy is just a coordinated drama without profound worship.
If one is under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, the result is the following:
- He will always guide us from error.
- He will make the things of God meaningful and sensible to us.
- He will help us in our very difficult situations and guide our decisions.
- He will help us to live out the word of God in a concrete situation, i.e. we are able to apply God’s word to a real-life situation.
- We are being saved from prejudice, hypocrisy and wrong perceptions and judgment.
In brief, the Holy Spirit teaches us what we ought to know about spiritual things and how we should behave and order our lives.
When you look at someone’s behaviour, his lifestyle, his conducts, his reaction to issues, the things he does in private, his perception of life and things around, his attitude to people and to the things of God, to a large extent, you can tell what Spirit is directing him/her.
Even in the church, not all who gather to worship are under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. Some are under the control of unclean spirits.
It happened in today’s Gospel. Jesus was in the temple, on that day, someone with an unclean spirit was there too.
Let me tell you some unclean Spirits in some of us here- the spirit of pride, the spirit of lust, the spirit of enmity, hostility, hatred, the spirit of wickedness, the spirit of anger and quarrel, the spirit of worldliness/materialism, the spirit that prompts one to speak terrible words to people, the spirit of deceit (common in many people), the spirit of lukewarmness, the spirit of theft, rebellious spirit, the spirit of fear, etc.
The good news is that the Lord has the power to deliver us from the oppression and molestation of these foul spirits.
Let us identify this morning if there are any of these spirits controlling our lives, let us bring ourselves to Jesus for liberation and pray that the Lord will fill us with His Holy Spirit.
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami on Tuesday, September 4, 2018.