More to the Story

There is a lot going on in today’s gospel.

It might seem like a simple story at first.

Jesus arrives in the land of the Gerasenes.

He comes across a man inhabited by many demons.

The demons and Jesus have a bit of a tete a tete.

Jesus sends the demons into a herd of pigs.

The pigs run into the sea.

The formerly possessed man then moves on to preach the good news as Jesus then moves on to other lands.

It’s a good story!

But let’s look at it a bit more deeply.

Our story starts with Jesus landing ashore in the land of the Gerasenes.

This happens directly after a rather rocky trip across the waters.

Luke refers to these waters as a lake and in actuality it is a sea, the Sea of Galilee.

And it is a famous journey too, for it was during that ride in a boat Jesus calmed the storms that so worried his disciples and questioned them saying, “Where is your faith?”

So, they survived the storm and landed in the country of the Gerasenes.

This country’s exact location is not truly known by scholars but Luke describes it as a land directly across from Jesus’ home of Galilee.

We also know that it is a country of non-Jewish folks.

This is important because by doing what he is about to do, Jesus is expanding his ministry into new territory.

He is now preaching and healing amongst Jews and non-Jews alike, meaning all peoples are the people of God and a part of God’s kingdom.

And we see a bunch of this with Luke.

Certainly some in Luke’s gospel and quite a bit in Acts, which Luke also wrote.

Now there was a debate in the early church.

Should the church fathers and mothers preach and bring the word to non-Jews?

And the debate was pretty fierce which we see too in the gospels.

In Matthew we read about Jesus saying, ““Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

And in Luke we just read of Jesus being in a gentile town.

The argument really comes down to one of timing, do we preach to gentiles when the return of Christ is imminent?

Do we preach to gentiles when the word of God will reach them anyway when the Kingdom arrives here on earth?

Luke answers this question by placing Jesus in the land of the Gerasenes and showing that Christ will minister to all who call, all who seek out his healing, his forgiveness, his love.

And we have to think about all of this and we’re only at the very beginning of the story.

We’ve read about 15 words and already we see just how deep this story of healing the Gerasene demoniac can get.

So Jesus gets out of the boat that carried him from Galilee and through the storm at night.

He steps out of that boat and as he steps out on land and…

Now, let’s try and picture this.

He’s probably just swung his leg over the bow of the boat and just as he is swinging the other one out to touch land, he is met by the man who had demons in him.

Like, you’re walking up the driveway after just returning from the supermarket, your arms are filled with groceries because you didn’t want to take more than one trip so you do that thing where you hook every bag handle onto your arm and you kind of walk funny towards the house and then you have to get your keys out because you always forget to get your keys out when you’re doing the strong-person grocery bag trick and you then finally reach your keys and you open the door and there is your child, who’s obviously been watching you walk up the driveway from the window as you do the grocery bag mummy walk, greeting you at the door saying: “Hey, what’s for dinner?”

And rather than throwing your groceries at the child, you ask for help putting them away.

So, Jesus, arms full of groceries, arrives in a foreign land.

And he is immediately greeted by the demoniac.

And the Gerasene Demoniac says, “Hey, Jesus! What’s for dinner?”

Well, not really, what he really says is important: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me"

These are not the words of the person before Jesus, but the demon within.

The demon, using this man’s voice, recognizes Jesus.

The demon in foreign lands recognizes the son of the Most High.

Again, this is evidence that Christ’s word is for all peoples.

For even the ones most fearful of what the Christ’s arrival will mean to them, recognize Jesus in lands not yet inhabited by him.

For they greet Jesus by the boat just as he lands.

And in response to their plea, Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to leave the man they possessed.

And Jesus asked the spirit what its name was.

The spirit replied, “Legion.”

Legion.

A word many contemporary Lukan readers would know because a battle took place near the town of Gerasa, Gerasenes would be from Gerasa, in the First Jewish-Roman War in 66 during the Common Era.

(It is thought Luke’s gospel  was written between 75 and 95 CE.)

And after that battle, at least one Roman Legion, a battle group of 600 soldiers descended on the town and killed all of the able-bodied men and took their children and wives prisoner; the Gerasenes knew what a Legion was.

So just the use of the word Legion to name itself, or themselves, is evocative, provocative even, and most likely, heartrending.

For the readers of Luke would have a direct memory of what happened just a few years earlier and were so brutally met by a Roman Legion.

Jewish readers would know the oppression the Romans could bring, their own temple was destroyed in Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Gerasenes themselves reading this story would have direct memories of the cruelty Rome brought to its subjects.

Legion meant death.

Legion meant destruction.

And still, there’s more to think about.

See, there are many who describe the healing of the Gerasene Demoniac as one of Jesus healing someone from mental health issues.

There are others who reject the description of demons in the gospels as folks suffering from a mental illness and instead are truly possessed by something.

Something only the intervention of God can cure and make well.

They would argue that to describe mental illness as a possession is offensive to the one who suffers from mental illness as those folks are not possessed.

It would be like describing a person with a flu or a heart murmur as someone possessed by demons when we know better.

We know that medicine and therapy can work wonders to heal.

Demonic possession they might say, is far different and to argue otherwise would reduce Christ’s miracles to allegory or metaphor.

I am not sure on what side of that argument I’m on, but it is important to think about such things as we need to wrestle with scripture if we are to allow it into our hearts and impact how we go about allowing the Word to transform our lives.

Back to the shores on the Sea of Galilee.

The demons named Legion are begging Jesus.

“Do not send us into the abyss.”

And the demons look at a herd of pigs.

Jesus, they say, let us enter the swine.

So he gave them permission.

The demons enter into the pigs.

Being addled by their possession or otherwise made different, the pigs then run into the sea, entering the briny abyss in a fashion unforeseen by the demons.

The man now freed of demons becomes his old self.

The swineherds having watched all of this transpire, run into town, telling all who would listen what happened.

And the townspeople… are afraid.

This man who tormented them enough to have been banished into the wilderness outside of town, are afraid of what happened.

Their Legion had left.

And I wonder about that.

Why respond to the healing of this man with fear?

Perhaps we are sometimes comforted by things that are bad because they are normal.

Perhaps we grow used to things that if they were fixed would cause upset to our routines and daily lives.

And the reader in Luke’s gospel is already in a scarred community.

They saw what happened when the Legion came.

They saw the death and destruction that arrived with it.

Now that it has left, will the Legion return?

Will the Legion’s return bring even more death?

Will there be new destruction?

As to the townsfolk in the story, perhaps they grew used to the safety of having the demoniac outside their walls, the demoniac who was able to tear himself away from chains and captivity.

For so long, their town was peaceful when the demoniac was camped out on the shores of Galilee and there was a detente between the town and the man’s demons called Legion.

Jesus healed the man and the townspeople were fearful.

Jesus brought change to the town and the town faced the unknown.

The town seemed to prefer its demons over the wholeness of its people if only that would guarantee peace.

And I wonder, do I at some point, favor my demons: my biases, by assumptions and presumptions, do I favor those because I am comfortable?

I know I sin and I do not think I do so in any great way, but being human, I am imperfect and I am a sinner.

I know too I ought not to sin.

When I look at a broken world and witness its environmental destruction, its racial disunity, its divisions and discord and yet I do not try as hard as I can to fix such things, to me that is sinful.

But there is comfort in leaving things be.

Why stir the pot if when I do so, the Legions might return?

There is a lot in this morning’s reading.

It is about more than the freedom of one man, it is also about how we respond to that freedom and dream of a freedom for all peoples.

On this day especially, Juneteenth, the day when the word of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the slaves way down in Texas a hundred and fifty-seven years ago, let us consider and reflect on that freedom and God’s dream that we are all freed from the demons that would impede such freedom, such equality, such equity.

And through the freedom we do have through Christ, we can declare just how much God has done for all of us.

Amen.