I thought this morning of this passage from Luke 10.
The seventy-two returned with joy and said, "Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name."
Jesus replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."
What might his passage mean? I think it's important to focus on the Hebrew word הַשָּׂטָן (ha-satan) -- accuser. So what might it mean that our accuser has "fallen from heaven"?
"I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning", Jesus tells us. I think it's important to notice right off the bat that the satan isn't a person; there's no capital letter to make this a particular person. Instead, it's a common noun. He isn't Satan (as we usually perceive him in our culture); he's the accuser. Or, probably more properly, the accusation. We have to say that wherever in any form or for any motive an accusation is made (including true and justified accusations), there's satan. Satan is then at work, is present, and becomes a person. The process (as for the devil) is clear-cut. The accusation crystallizes in some way, and it results in the development of a personalized accusing presence. We're very familiar with the process in the development of accusations, for example, collective accusations. Jesus tells us that satan is no longer in heaven. That makes this much clear: There's no longer any personified accusation before God (as in Job) now that Jesus the Son of God has come to pardon us. To use the patristic image, an advocate, not an accuser, now stands at the side of God.
You'll recall that Job's problems start with accusations made by Satan in the Heavenly Court:
One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it."
Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil."
"Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face."
The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger."
Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD (Job 1.6-12).
So Job is afflicted because, the accuser stands before God in heaven. Consequently, throughout the book of Job, Job cries out against this. Rather than an accuser standing before God in heaven Job wants a witness, intercessor, friend, advocate and redeemer, someone to compassionately plead his cause before Yahweh:
"Earth, do not cover my blood;
may my cry never be laid to rest!
Even now my witness is in heaven;
my advocate is on high.
My intercessor is my friend
as my eyes pour out tears to God;
on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend."
"Oh, that my words were recorded,
that they were written on a scroll,
that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead,
or engraved in rock forever!
I know that my redeemer lives,
and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
yet in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
with my own eyes -- I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 16.18-21; 19.23-27)
Curiously, we never see Job's prayer answered. The redeemer/friend/witness/advocate never makes an appearance in the book. Job's answer has to wait for the New Testament. Satan is no longer accusing us in heaven. Instead of Satan we find Jesus at the right hand of God as our advocate, friend, and redeemer. Job's prayer is finally answered.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need (Hebrews 4.14-16).
So accusation has been cast out of heaven -- "I saw Satan fall like lightning" -- and in its place is the redeemer Job had longed for, an advocate at God's hand who can "empathize with our weaknesses".
Given that accusation/satan has been cast down from heaven we confront the fact that accusation (the satanic) is now on earth. Accusation has become human sport.
God doesn't hear, doesn't want to hear, won't listen to the accusations that assail him from every side. But if accusations are no longer in heaven, if they no longer emanate from heaven, if God is not himself as accuser in any matter, then not only is accusation still on earth but it is also flourishing there. It's developing to the same degree as it is banished from heaven. That which no longer explodes as hatred and accusation in heaven is condensed on earth. Satan, accusation, is found in our world.
In this sense, we're satan. We're the accusers. We act like Job's satan, judging and accusing each other before God. We speak the words of the Pharisee in Jesus's parable, "I thank you Lord that I'm not like these other people".
Or the words of the crowd seeking to stone the woman caught in the act of adultery: "The Law says to stone her".
Or the words of the older brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son: "This son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, and you kill the fattened calf for him!"
Or the words of the religious leaders to the disciples: "Your teacher eats with tax-collectors and sinners".
Satan on earth.
And guess who's really good at this accusation, and often the very source of it? The church.
The church becomes the origin, the perfecting, and finally the model of all accusations and all systems of inquisition. We've taken the mechanisms of accusation out of the world of individuals, and made it institutional. I don't want to overemphasize the Inquisition but it's still true that that was one of the biggest and ugliest perversions of the New Testament's image of Church we've ever known. What was a faith based on forgiveness and love, became a faith of accusation. Satan took up residence in the church's heart, the church itself became the great mistress of accusation and transformed itself into an invading cancer, crushing without end.
And because the church became preoccupied with accusation rather than pardon, the rest of the world followed her example.
That's the genuine heritage of Christendom. The world is a world of insatiable accusation -- political, social, intellectual, and moral -- because we've sometimes been a church under satan's influence. Satan made the church his special prey so that by means of it as his intermediary he might make the world his. Ours is that world. From the abuses we inflict on one another through the accusations and assaults we inflict, to the neglect we give because we're engaging in "tough love".
Several years ago, Rene Girard wrote of the church's use of violence to victimize and accuse. From the more blatant example of Westboro Baptist to the more subtle ways in which we continue to accuse others through moral power plays (a la Nietzsche's critique) to the contributions we make to our culture in accusations about sexuality and violence toward families, we're really good at being the satanic church.
What the world needs is less accusing and more pardoning.
I'm also reminded this morning of these lines from Eliot's "Choruses from the Rock":
In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain.
We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for work or play.
We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad to sleep,
Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night and the seasons.
And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it;
Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.
Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow.
We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.
And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.
And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.
O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!