At the start of his ministry, Jesus read from the prophecies of Isaiah in the synagogue in Nazareth about the release of captives. He taught us to pray ‘Deliver us from evil’. Jesus is recorded as ministering to possessed people more than any other sort of work; if we look at the gospels afresh it almost seems to be his main work, and indeed for the first thousand years of Christian history his death on the cross was seen principally as the rescuing of people from the grip of Satan’s power.
Given the prominence of all this, we might wonder that New Testament scholars of recent generations generally haven’t paid more attention to the realities of this ministry (though there are notable exceptions such as Morna Hooker and James D. G. Dunn). We have been taught that Jesus was demonstrating the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom, but almost nothing has been said over the what and the how of this action. Perhaps this reflects a prevailing Western worldview that finds it hard to know how to deal with such stories because they do not fit with the world as we take it to be. Every worldview has its cultural limitations, and the lack of attention to this aspect of Jesus’ ministry highlights one of ours. This is a challenge, but also an opportunity, for preachers. In my experience people want to know about and to understand these matters.
