Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Luke 9:37-43
Jesus Heals a Boy with a Demon
37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. 39 Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. 40 I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41 Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and put up with you? Bring your son here.” 42 While he was being brought forward, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astounded at the greatness of God.
Jesus Again Foretells His Death
While everyone was amazed at all that he was doing, he said to his disciples…
Devotion from The Healing Center, New York, N.Y.
The church bears responsibility for centuries of harm done in its name. Among the harms perpetrated by the church is spiritual abuse, in which people have their faith used against them to control, violate or exploit them. The Healing Center in Brooklyn has begun the hard work of calling the “faithless generations” of the church to account through its faithful care for older adults who have survived spiritual abuse.
Jesus, too, confronts the limits of spiritual care. The demon that possesses the boy in the Gospel of Luke is an all-consuming entity. Possession implies that the demon does spiritual harm to him; it also does physical harm, “convulsing” and “mauling” the boy, and causing him to “shriek” (Luke 9:39). We do not know where this creature comes from, but for the first- or second-century authors of this text, demonic spirits were everywhere; they were part of the world, a peril of simply existing. Spiritual harm was everywhere and, as this story shows, could do severe damage to one’s entire person.
Jesus laments the prevalence of this embodied suffering by calling the boy’s entire society to task: “You faithless and perverse generation” (41). No one is spared Jesus’ scolding. Abuse is the responsibility of all — those who abuse, those who let it happen and those who create a world where abuse goes unseen and survivors go unheard. The word “generation” does the heavy lifting here, because generations are an identity marker from which we cannot escape: we belong to our generation for no other reason than the date of our birth. Jesus’ complaint calls all members of his generation to account for the boy’s spiritual and physical malady.
The Healing Center challenges our own generation to accompany survivors of spiritual abuse, especially older adults who have lived with spiritual pain for their entire lives. Their work poses the question: if older adults have experienced spiritual abuse throughout their lives, where is it happening for younger folks today? For the Healing Center, the need to address spiritual abuse among older adults in the community was unknown at first. In fact, what mattered was that it intentionally created a space for healing, for older adults in particular. By making room for people to express themselves genuinely and openly, the Healing Center learned that spiritual harm was an unaddressed reality.
In the year since the Healing Center began its spiritual abuse workshops, it has reached 149 people who have lived with that trauma, many of them people of color. This is real impact, facilitated in part by support from generous donors and the ELCA’s Lutheran Services for the Elderly Endowment. By remaining open to the stories of older adults in the community and making intentional space for them, the Healing Center is rectifying the abuse of generations.
Reflection Questions
Name one injustice you see your generation perpetrating. How have you participated?
What has spiritual abuse looked like to your generation?
What would it take to make intergenerational reparation for those injustices in your community?