William H. Willimon - "Satan: A Second Look" (March 8, 1998)

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-	At the beginning of his ministry	0:11
	as a young man Jesus	0:15
	was led into the wilderness	0:18
	and there he	0:19
	was confronted by	0:21
	Satan.	0:23
	And maybe Luke is trying to say that	0:26
	if you ever	0:31
	meet	0:33
	Satan	0:34
	it'll most likely be in your mid 20's	0:36
	when you're just starting out like Jesus.	0:39
	And yet I dare say most of us	0:44
	expect not to be met	0:46
	by Satan.	0:49
	A few years ago	0:51
	Princeton Professor Elaine Pagels	0:54
	had a bestselling book called	0:57
	The Origin	0:59
	of	1:00
	Satan.	1:01
	And there she explored our fascination	1:03
	with the Devil.	1:05
	And Pagels tells how Christians borrowed	1:08
	the Jewish notion of	1:11
	a devil.	1:14
	And then in a peculiar act of perversity	1:16
	Christians applied that notion to the Jews.	1:19
	And then we applied it to Christian heretics,	1:23
	to pagans, to anyone with whom we disagreed.	1:26
	Pagels says,	1:32
	"That Satan,	1:33
	the Devil	1:35
	is merely and ancient Jewish Christian name	1:36
	for	1:40
	the other."	1:41
	"For anyone who is different from us."	1:43
	"For anyone whose existence	1:45
	poses a challenge	1:48
	to us."	1:51
	"So	1:53
	Whites	1:54
	depicted	1:56
	the Devil as Black,	1:56
	even though there's none of that in the Bible."	1:58
	No, the Bible says,	2:01
	"Satan masquerades	2:02
	as an angel of light,	2:05
	evil hides among the good."	2:07
	So Scott Peck in his book	2:11
	People of the Lie	2:15
	says,	2:16
	"If you want to find	2:17
	evil a good place for us to looks say is in the church	2:20
	because it is the nature of Satan	2:25
	to hide	2:27
	among	2:28
	the good."	2:29
	And here I think is where Pagels is wrong.	2:32
	For Pagels Satan is little more	2:36
	than	2:39
	our human propensity	2:40
	to regard	2:42
	others as threat.	2:44
	Otherness	2:47
	is evil.	2:48
	We take those whom we don't understand,	2:50
	those who are different from us	2:53
	and we label them	2:54
	as satanic.	2:56
	Satan	2:58
	for Pagels	2:59
	is only	3:01
	a kind of	3:03
	primitive name for a failure	3:05
	of multiculturalism.	3:07
	The projection of our evil ideas	3:10
	upon others whom we now call	3:13
	Satan.	3:17
	She thus reverses the traditional Christian view	3:19
	that Satan is the origin of evil	3:22
	now to mean that our evil is the origin of Satan.	3:26
	And you know that the modern world has a long history	3:32
	of reductionism.	3:35
	Of reducing faith to nothing more than	3:37
	a psychological or social projection	3:40
	of our dilemmas out there.	3:44
	Pagels does just that.	3:48
	It's all projection	3:50
	end of Satan.	3:53
	And yet I'm some what embarrassed here	3:58
	at this stage in my life.	3:59
	I don't know whether it's because,	4:02
	maybe it's because I'm over 50.	4:03
	Maybe it's because of the events on campus last weekend.	4:05
	I don't know.	4:08
	But	4:09
	finding a strange willingness	4:11
	to take a second look	4:15
	at	4:17
	Satan.	4:18
	To ask somebody like Pagels,	4:21
	How on earth	4:24
	does a mere projection of our imaginations	4:26
	have such	4:30
	power over us?	4:32
	When Jesus was confronted by Satan	4:35
	in the wilderness	4:37
	as we read about last Sunday,	4:38
	certainly Jesus was there face to face	4:42
	with some of his own inner turmoil.	4:45
	Jesus love life.	4:48
	He wanted to be loved.	4:50
	He wanted to avoid pain.	4:52
	Who doesn't?	4:53
	And it is true that those human desires	4:56
	to be loved, to be accepted, to be successful,	5:00
	it is true that these are the origins of	5:04
	some of our most satanic temptation.	5:09
	But by saying that Jesus was confronted by Satan	5:13
	that the evil which confronted Jesus	5:17
	there in the wilderness had a face,	5:19
	a personality,	5:22
	a name,	5:23
	I think Luke meant us to know	5:25
	that the resistance against Jesus	5:27
	was more than some kind of psychological projection.	5:31
	It was organized.	5:34
	It was subtle.	5:36
	And genuine threat.	5:38
	In resisting Satan	5:41
	Jesus wasn't just overcoming his own human inclinations,	5:43
	Jesus was confronting principalities and powers.	5:48
	Evil.	5:53
	Evil not just manufactured within the human heart	5:54
	but evil within the whole universe,	5:58
	cosmic,	6:00
	big,	6:02
	greater than that of our own creation.	6:03
	Pagels	6:07
	says, "That belief in Satan	6:09
	has tempted Christians to demonize those	6:11
	who are merely different from us	6:15
	and such belief has contributed	6:19
	to human sinfulness."	6:22
	And yet Harvard's Jon Levenson	6:25
	a distinguished Jewish scholar	6:27
	ask	6:30
	"If Satan is a temptation to do bad things,	6:32
	which in our better moments we might not have done	6:36
	might Satan also energize us to do good things,	6:40
	which left to our own devices we might not have done"	6:44
	Levenson invokes the blessed memory	6:50
	of the martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.	6:53
	Bonhoeffer was dismissed from his prestigious	6:56
	post by the Nazis.	7:01
	He came to the United States for safety.	7:04
	He lectured awhile here	7:06
	but then he made a courageous decision	7:08
	to go back to Germany	7:09
	at the beginning of the war	7:11
	and work against the Nazis.	7:12
	And when Dietrich Bonhoeffer	7:16
	spoke of Hitler and his followers	7:18
	what he spoke of people in the church	7:20
	who were willing to work with Hitler,	7:23
	Bonhoeffer did not shrink from using	7:26
	the inflammatory term	7:29
	Antichrist	7:31
	to describe Christians who collaborated with the Nazis.	7:34
	Eventually Bonhoeffer paid for his witness with his life.	7:39
	And Professor Levenson wonders,	7:45
	"Would Bonhoeffer have been as clear	7:48
	and courageous in his resistance	7:51
	if he had merely	7:55
	explained Hitler	7:57
	and his followers	7:59
	as those who were merely the victims of some kind of	8:01
	inner psychological turmoil?	8:03
	No.	8:07
	It is clear that Dietrich Bonhoeffer believed	8:09
	in the existence of the demonic.	8:13
	Evil	8:16
	has got a face,	8:18
	and a name,	8:19
	and is a personality.	8:21
	And it's like it moves against us and wants us.	8:22
	Maybe because Levenson is a member of a people	8:28
	who have suffered unspeakable evil	8:32
	at the hands of others.	8:35
	Maybe that's why he is willing at least	8:38
	to consider the possibility that evil is real.	8:40
	That evil has a personality.	8:43
	That he's got a name	8:46
	Satan.	8:48
	Levenson says,	8:51
	"Given the mysterious capacity of human beings	8:52
	for unspeakable evil,	8:56
	a belief in Satan may lead not only to acts of demonization	8:58
	but also to acts	9:04
	of courageous redemption."	9:06
	"In explaining away the challenge posed	9:10
	by the satanic to the divine	9:13
	to us,	9:16
	Elaine Pagels unwittingly contributes	9:18
	to a sentimentalization of religion."	9:22
	This make sense to me now.	9:27
	A number of years ago I wrote a book	9:31
	on sin and evil in the Christian life,	9:33
	Sign for Eden.	9:36
	And in that book I confess I took the rather	9:39
	conventional modern view that	9:41
	when discussing sin and evil	9:44
	the idea of a	9:47
	personal devil	9:48
	or Satan was just not helpful.	9:50
	"Evil is more	9:54
	in us."	9:55
	I said.	9:56
	"Than something outside us."	9:57
	Besides those people who say	10:00
	when they've done something wrong,	10:02
	"Oh, the Devil made me do it."	10:04
	They're just trying to excuse their own sinful behavior.	10:06
	I received a letter	10:12
	from a woman	10:14
	who had spent a number of years	10:15
	in the pastoral ministry.	10:17
	"What you say about there being no real Satan may be true,	10:21
	however as a woman	10:26
	pastor	10:29
	I've come to believe that if evil	10:30
	does not have a name	10:32
	Satan	10:34
	it ought to."	10:36
	"I came into the ministry because I believe God called me."	10:38
	"I sacrificed and worked."	10:42
	"The churches that I serve are full of good people,	10:44
	at least better than average people,	10:47
	who are in church wanting to be good	10:49
	and wanting to do good."	10:52
	"For the most part my ministry among them	10:54
	has been well received	10:56
	but not completely."	11:00
	"I have seen good people do terrible things."	11:02
	"I've witnessed the depth of cruelty"	11:06
	"Some but not all of it directed at me."	11:09
	"This has shocked me."	11:14
	"I am now willing to believe that our lives	11:16
	are not entirely our own."	11:19
	"That we are in the grip of something, someone	11:22
	who leads down dark paths."	11:25
	In short,	11:27
	I am more willing than you	11:28
	to conceive of Satan."	11:31
	Her letter really hit home to me.	11:37
	It's fine for me, you know,	11:41
	somebody who rarely encounters real injustice or cruelty.	11:43
	Somebody who's well fed, and non addicted, and free	11:47
	to dismiss the idea of Satan is outmoded,	11:51
	naive.	11:54
	And yet for somebody who has been the recipient	11:58
	of honest to God evil	12:01
	evil's got a face,	12:03
	a name	12:05
	Satan.	12:07
	It is no kindness to tell somebody	12:09
	who has been encountered by real evil	12:12
	that evil is only some warped projection	12:15
	of our human psyche	12:18
	the result of improper education	12:19
	or poor child rearing practices.	12:22
	The pain and the anguish suffered by victims	12:26
	of injustice, sin, and evil is real.	12:29
	So real we've even got a name for it.	12:32
	It's got a face.	12:36
	Paul wrote these anguished words	12:40
	after he became a Christian.	12:44
	"I do not understand my own action	12:48
	for I do not do what I want	12:51
	but I do the very thing that I hate."	12:54
	"It is no longer I that do it	12:57
	but sin	13:00
	dwells within me."	13:02
	I think that you know some of the inner turmoil	13:07
	of which Paul speaks.	13:10
	I know that Jesus knows	13:14
	'cause he felt himself at the beginning of his	13:17
	adulthood	13:21
	in the wilderness.	13:23
	Later in this service when we pray the Lord's Prayer	13:25
	we're going to ask all of us to be delivered from evil.	13:31
	Some versions of the prayer say,	13:36
	"Deliver us from the evil one."	13:38
	Thus the prayer makes explicit	13:42
	it's like there's this conspiracy against God's Kingdom.	13:44
	It's like they've gotten organized	13:48
	in which a personification of evil	13:52
	Satan makes a lot of sense.	13:55
	First Peter says to Christians,	14:00
	"Keep alert	14:03
	like a roaring lion your adversary the Devil	14:05
	prowls around looking for somebody new to devour."	14:09
	In praying to God to deliver us from evil	14:15
	we acknowledge that God is greater than any foe of God.	14:19
	I think the power of evil needs to be admitted,	14:25
	and named, and taken seriously.	14:28
	And yet not too seriously.	14:31
	Maybe that's why though The Lord's Prayer	14:35
	honestly focuses upon trial, and temptation,	14:37
	and sin, and evil.	14:41
	You'll note it never mentions Satan by name.	14:43
	It doesn't want to give him that much time within a service.	14:48
	And maybe that's the way we outta think about Satan.	14:54
	Evil is not a mere projection of our conflicted egos,	14:58
	evil is real	15:03
	and yet the cross and the resurrection of Christ tell us	15:05
	that evil doesn't have the last word.	15:10
	Evil is	15:15
	threat.	15:17
	Though it is a defeated one.	15:19
	Though the battle rages Monday through Saturday	15:24
	every time you come up here	15:27
	and break the bread and pass the cup,	15:29
	on Sunday	15:32
	we proclaim	15:34
	who has won the war.	15:36
	During the season of Lent	15:39
	we try to tone things down a little bit here,	15:41
	we turn down the lighting,	15:43
	we turn down the music,	15:44
	we don't have flowers.	15:46
	Things are kinda somber.	15:49
	This is the season that	15:50
	we focus upon sin, and death, and those Lenten themes.	15:52
	Yeah.	15:55
	But you will note	15:58
	finally the service ends in a song of triumph.	16:00
	A shout of praise.	16:05
	Because	16:08
	we know who's won the war.	16:09
	When we pray for deliverance from evil	16:14
	we honestly acknowledge that we don't have the resources	16:17
	on our own to resist.	16:21
	Satan has real power over our lives.	16:25
	But the good news is that	16:30
	just as Jesus was able to resist the wiles of Satan	16:32
	and to reject his tempting offers	16:37
	so we,	16:40
	with his help can also resist.	16:41
	In our weakness we reach out	16:45
	and there is deliverance.	16:49
	Isn't that how Alcoholics Anonymous puts it.	16:52
	We had to reach out to a power greater than ourselves.	16:55
	Note that one of the ways Alcoholics Anonymous	17:01
	enables you to reach out to a power greater than yourself	17:04
	and the chief means through which that power intervenes	17:09
	in our behalf is by putting you in a group.	17:14
	The group,	17:18
	the community,	17:20
	we call it church	17:21
	enables us to be free from Satan.	17:24
	Jesus	17:27
	stood alone in the wilderness when he encountered Satan	17:29
	but the good news is you don't have to stand alone.	17:34
	And maybe that's why you got up on this dreary morning	17:40
	and came to church.	17:43
	You're not alone.	17:46
	The church stands with you	17:49
	against Satan's temptation in whatever wilderness	17:52
	you find yourself.	17:57
	Jesus	17:59
	who knows what it's like to be face to face with evil,	18:01
	Jesus	18:06
	stands with you	18:07
	a mighty fortress is our God.	18:10
	A bulwark never failing.	18:14
	The prince of darkness grim	18:16
	we tremble not	18:20
	for him.	18:21
	Here	18:24
	is good news this second Sunday in Lent	18:25
	although temptation is real	18:30
	Satan	18:32
	doesn't get the last word.	18:34
	Thanks be to God	18:37
	through Jesus Christ we	18:39
	are more than victors.	18:41

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Satan: A Second Look" (March 8, 1998)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 0:11. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 18:49.
This sermon explores the devil that lies within human hearts through human projections of evil and the devil that exists outside of people with an individual face, personality, and name, which is Satan. The preacher believes evil is real and exists in principalities and powers. We cannot fight evil alone and need a community to resist it. Just as Jesus conquered Satan in the wilderness, evil does not have the last word in our lives. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r44t6fj69

Date:

March 8, 1998

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Lent

Biblical Book:

Luke

Chapter and Verse:

Luke 4:1-13

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0897
ref9943_y2o
uachapelsermaud
duke:320289
dcrau001541
ark:/87924/r44t6fj69
4796968d-65f9-4d44-a586-548f4d46d4a7

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Satan: A Second Look" (March 8, 1998)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Satan: A Second Look" (March 8, 1998)

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William H. Willimon - "Satan: A Second Look" (March 8, 1998)

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