“Hungry Wolves”
1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
February 1, 2015
For the next few Sundays, our gospel readings are stories of healing from Mark’s account of Jesus’ life. True to Mark’s style, the stories are short and to the point: someone is suffering, and Jesus heals them, right then and there. In today’s world, it is hard for us to know what to do with these healings. We have a different understanding of the causes of illness—germ theory, genetic predisposition, diet and environment—factors people in Jesus’ time didn’t understand. We are suspicious of claims of dramatic healings. Many people who struggle with chronic illness can tell of horrible experiences with those who use these biblical texts to imply they would get better if only they had more faith.
If healing stories in general are difficult for us to understand, this one, in which Jesus casts out an unclean spirit, seems downright incomprehensible. We generally don’t envision our world as inhabited by unclean spirits, by demons that can possess our bodies and take over our lives. Occasionally we hear of groups that perform exorcisms, but these seem like a throw-back to a pre-scientific age.
Even so, there is something about the image of a person being manipulated by a strange power that resonates with us. We don’t have to believe in spirit possession to know the feeling that some force is taking control of us, contorting our lives and distorting our vision. Fear that takes on a life of its own, hurt that grabs hold of us, anger that hardens into hatred, disappointment that paralyzes—these forces aren’t demons, but at times they do seem to take over our lives and leave us twisting out of control.
The promise of our scripture passage, confusing as it is, is that Jesus has the power to free us from these forces within us, the power to heal us and restore us to wholeness. How do we make sense of that promise in our world, in our lives, today?
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Some years ago, I came upon a traditional Cherokee story that gives me a fresh lens through which to view this gospel promise:
One evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.
“There are two wolves struggling inside each of us,” the old man said.
“One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear . . .
“The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love . . .”
The grandson sat, thinking, then asked: “Which wolf wins, Grandfather?”
His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”
What a fascinating way to make sense of the struggles of human living. Within each of us live metaphorical wolves—the Cherokee story suggests two, but I wonder if there are more than that. Within each of us is the potential for destructiveness and also for creativity, for greed and also for generosity, for hatred and for love. In the end, the part that dominates our lives is the part—the potential, the wolf—that we feed. When we nurse our hatred, it grows stronger until it takes charge. When we devote our attention instead to our capacity for compassion, love expands and fills our lives.
What if the demons in the biblical story, rather than being some external forces that invade us, are destructive wolves we have fed until they have grown so strong they take over? Healing, then, begins to happen as we make a different choice about which wolves we feed. We are restored to wholeness when we choose instead to feed the wolves of compassion and hope.
It’s tempting to take this metaphor a step further and conclude that the goal is to starve those undesirable wolves until they die—gone from our lives forever, so that the only force at work within us is the spirit of compassion and hope. It won’t happen, no matter how hard we try. Wolves are resourceful; they will scavenge enough food to keep themselves alive. And the truth is, those seemingly destructive wolves play a role in our lives. They force us to name realities we might like to ignore; they remind us that we are human beings, not gods. They are dangerous when we deny they exist. They are dangerous when we feed them with our energy, time and attention. We cannot cast out these wolves. Instead, we can choose to devote our time, energy, and attention to feeding their cousins–the wolves of compassion and faithfulness. With enough consistent feeding, they become the dominant force in our lives, and the wolves of vengefulness, anger and fear recognize that they are no longer in charge.
How do we do that? How do we make choices about which wolves we will feed? How do we make changes when we realize we have been feeding the wrong wolves for many years? The wolves inside of us, especially if we have been feeding them for a long time, can be very powerful and very destructive. Most of us, most of the time, cannot make these changes on our own. We need help—from a power higher than ourselves, from a community that will support our efforts. Our gospel story reminds us that help is there for us—that healing happens not through our own power but through the power of God, made known in Jesus.
The promise of our faith is not that we will experience dramatic, miraculous healing. It is not that the forces within us that distort our lives will be cast out with a single word. Instead, the promise is that God will help us in our life-long struggle to choose which wolves to feed.
Through the teachings and example of Jesus, through the words of scripture and the ways we experience God’s love in our lives, through the caring of friends, God offers us inspiration to choose to feed the wolves of compassion and faithfulness. The story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection is the story of the ultimate triumph of love over hatred and fear. The two great commandments call us to love God and to love our neighbor. We experience the power of love in community. While the wolves of greed and selfishness promise us happiness, the witness of our faith is that those are false promises. Meaning and joy come when we choose love.
God offers us inspiration, and God also offers us wisdom, for it is not always clear which wolf is which. In our complex human psyches, the wolves seem to change shape, morphing from courage to arrogance, from healthy anger to destructive rage, from hurt to forgiveness. How can we be sure we are feeding the right wolves? When we take time to pray, when we listen for God’s voice, when we ask a friend to help us sort things out, when we dare to trust that we deserve to be whole, we will receive God’s gift of wisdom and insight; we will learn to discern which wolves we want to feed.
Finally, God offers us strength to live out the choices we make. Wolves that have grown accustomed to being fed are not going to accept a change in status easily. The wolves of greed and fear and self-pity will demand our attention—and it will take strength to keep saying no. God will give us that strength—strength deep inside us we didn’t know existed, the strength of a community that holds us up and urges us forward.
Feeding the wolves of compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth and love takes many forms. Sometimes it is about the big things we do—the life work we choose, the ways we work to change laws and transform our culture, our efforts to fight racism and income inequality. It’s also about our everyday choices: the ways we spend our money, how we treat our bodies, the words we use, our ordinary acts of kindness. It is about every choice we make—large and small.
The Cherokee story, of course, is a metaphor—a picture, if you will, to help us make sense of our lives and the choices we face. I invite you to think about how this metaphor applies in your life. What are the wolves within you that clamber for food? Which ones do you need to stop feeding in order to become whole? Which other ones do you need, instead, to feed with your care and attention? What makes it hard for you to make that change?
The good news is that you do not have to do it alone. God is with you and God has given you companions for the struggle. God will offer you inspiration to choose the wolves of compassion, faithfulness, and hope. God will give you insight and wisdom to know which wolf is which. God will bless you with strength to follow through with the choices you make. God will lead you toward healing, and God will help you make the choices that lead to wholeness.
Within you, within me, there is the potential for destructiveness and creativity, for hatred and for love, for greed and for generosity. Within you, within me, there are wolves howling to be fed. Which wolf will you feed? May God bless our choices. Amen.