Robot Soft Exorcism

Calling out to the humans within the ICE machine

This story appeared as a UCC daily devotional yesterday. I’m constrained to 300 words over there, so I wanted to post it here, with a few more fulsome details.

Guiding scripture:

On the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
Luke 8:32-33 (NRSVUE)

Does anybody ever feel empathy for the pigs when they read this exorcism story? They didn’t ask to be taken over by demons, then plummet off a cliff to their deaths. Or maybe you are so softhearted you even feel for the demons themselves. After all, Jesus kind of did them dirty.

I was present at a modern exorcism recently. Honestly, it gave me empathy for everybody, too. About 50 of us gathered early one morning in the parking lot of an ICE substation. We carried large photographs of everyone who had died in ICE custody so far this year, placing them on the ground among candles.

Then we turned toward the squat beige office building behind us, utterly banal in presentation (what was that Hannah Arendt said about the banality of evil?). No one entered or exited, doubtless tipped off to our presence. The only humans we saw during our vigil were two acne-challenged rent-a-cops between us and the front door. They had their heads down, utterly ignoring us as they stared at their phones and made chuckling conversation.

When we started the exorcism, I wondered if they would engage, drawn by our shift in tone and volume. An evangelical pastor led the liturgy, the Robot Soft Exorcism he had adapted from Professor David Dark, who himself had weaved it out of a song by the band Thrice (a testament to the Holy Spirit’s creative movement, refining and sending the sacred on and on and on…)

Here’s an excerpt from the liturgy:

“I invite you to imagine with me as we’re out here this morning that this ICE office instead of a building is a giant robot that’s been wreaking havoc across the Bay Area and neighboring counties. See the ways this robot, this system has sucked up endless resources at the same time as it’s brought terror everywhere it goes, making vulnerable people’s lives a living hell.

Imagine now as you look at this robot, you see up in its eye socket a window. And behind this window is a human being at the control board of this machine. Maybe they’re aware of the pain and terror they’re causing or maybe they just see themselves as doing their job.

From one human being to another, from one image-bearer of God to another, we call out to them.

‘There’s another way

To face the unforeseen

You don’t have to stay

Inside of that machine

There’s a bigger game

And there’s a deeper dream

You don’t have to stay

Inside of that machine.’

We want to say directly to ICE this morning: you don’t have to stay in a job and a system that is making people’s lives hell on earth. Maybe you’ve ignored that nagging voice for too long. Maybe the need to pay your bills and feed your kids has felt too strong. But we want you to know, it’s not too late to reclaim your humanity by leaving. We, the faith leaders and faith communities of the Bay Area are here to love you and support you as you do the right thing.”

I detected no spirits moving out of the building and into the nearby wildlife that day. Certainly no federal workers falling on their knees in repentance. The beige building kept beiging, and the kid cops kept looking down at their phones and giggling.

But I want to believe that our words dented those walls, one soft blow toward breaking open the machinery. I want to believe the spirits of the dead heard us and took heart. I know that we did.

Prayer

Until every robot of oppression has disgorged our human kin, we will pray. Amen.

Questions for discussion:

Are demons, and demonic possession, real?

Inside what “robots of oppression” do you find yourself trapped, a kind of reversal of the traditional idea of possession? What keeps you from leaving those systems?

Imagine the particular robot of violent anti-immigrant enforcement has been dismantled so that it can’t cause pain or terror anymore. Instead, the resources that went into the robot now flow to the communities they once terrorized. What needs are there?