The Rev. Dr. Joseph Lund
St. Margaret's Episcopal Church & School
Luke 8:26-39
I wonder how many times the word "demon" comes up in your daily conversations. I would guess not much. For in polite society we do not want to talk about demons or the demonic. It wouldn’t sound very bright in our educated culture. In our age we seem to believe that sin is due mostly to ignorance and that evil can be eradicated by education.
Saying that, I am amused at the number of television shows and movies aimed at adolescents and young adults that are about the demonic. On TV, beautiful young women and handsome young men turn into all sorts of creatures in order to battle other creatures who are the designated bad guys. Even now the young, and some adults, are patiently waiting for the latest movie and the latest book about Harry Potter. So we haven’t forgotten about the demonic in our world we have just made them celebrities.
In these psychologically enlightened times we have avoided the more ancient and sometimes mythological language of devils and evil. Instead we prefer words like, depression, phobias, neuroses, schizophrenia, and more. While we seem to be suspicious of religious healers, exorcists and even spiritual counselors; we have eagerly trusted and welcomed into our lives psychologists, psychiatrists, group therapists, and television personalities.
While we have been doubtful about the power of prayer, meditation and religious conversion, we have placed our health in the hands of barbiturates, tranquilizers and amphetamines – not to mention alcohol and illicit drugs.
Whether demons and the demonic are widely talked about or believed in today can be debated. But there can be no doubt that they were common in Jesus’ time. In His time, when most illnesses were attributable to sin, it was an easy step to associate all mental illnesses or diseases like epilepsy to demonic powers residing in the person and controlling him or her.
There were also healers in the land. To be a successful healer one had to have the power not only to name the demon, but power to cast it out of the person. Since demons and evil were everywhere, even catastrophes and disasters of all sorts were attributed to their power. So if one was to gain control of human life and history, one had to contend with demons and devils – "the powers of darkness in this present world" as Saint Paul put it.
So it is no wonder that the early Church was fascinated with the story in our Gospel from Luke today – Jesus and the Gerasene demoniac. Luke is the only non-Jewish writer of the New Testament, so he liked to emphasize Jesus’ interest in all people, including the Gentiles. This story takes place in a Gentile location and the person so possessed is a Gentile; and he subsequently became a witness to Christ to other Gentiles.
This demoniac lived in the carved-out caves or tombs near the Sea of Galilee. Ostracized from society because of his initial mental illness, his condition is made worse by society’s total rejection. For his efforts to resist exclusion from the community the authorities chain him down at both hands and feet. But in one of those surges of physical power that arises out of intolerable conditions, he bursts his bonds, ripping off his clothes and runs wildly among the rocks, bruising and cutting himself in the process. He shouts out all kinds of obscenities and shrieks uncontrollably.
Jesus and His disciples had sailed across the Sea of Galilee to the territory of the Gerasenes. While it was predominantly a Gentile area there were Jews living and working there. The first person Jesus meets is this very troubled man. He verbally assaults Jesus because Jesus had ordered the evil spirits to leave him. Jesus has a discussion with the demons –note I said demons-- who possess the man. Jesus asks the name of the demons and the answer is "My name is Legion." Legion is the term for a Roman garrison of 6,000 soldiers. The demons then beg Jesus not to banish them from the earth into the abyss.
Jesus does not send them to the final abyss; instead he decides to inflict them on a herd of pigs that happen to be nearby. The infected pigs then run down to a nearby cliff and hurl themselves off into the lake to be drowned. The pig herders rush off to spread the news of what they saw, and probably report the loss of the pigs to the authorities.
The local people rush out to see what the shouting was all about. They find Jesus in a congenial discussion with the man they knew to be totally out of his mind. The formerly possessed man is sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and calm. The demons are gone and how does the crowd react?--with fear. They know that a very powerful healing has occurred but they ask Jesus to leave. Healing someone with demons apparently is not the way to get praise and adoration.
Even now, when we hear this Gospel story we tend to get caught up with the demons that appear in it. In our minds we conjure up all we know about demons. Some of that undoubtedly comes from movies like "The Exorcist." Maybe we are thinking that the man just needed some medication.
Demons were the supernatural creatures that took control over an individual when they were not expecting it. They made individuals act in ways that were not acceptable. The person was lost and the demon took over all that the individual did. Jesus spoke directly with the demons in this man. The individual could not come forward because he was not in control.
The demon was different than sin. Sin is what individuals do. Sin is disobedience to the will of God. A demon took control and in many ways, the individual was not capable of sinning – under the power of a demon one is not himself. The demon and the self were in a constant struggle for control. In the case of the Gerasene demoniac the demons had already won.
Jesus stepped in and ended the demon’s control. Perhaps that is why the local people were so afraid. Jesus was showing a power that was greater than the human world, greater than even the spiritual world. More than once, people asked, "Who is this that can control even demons?" They were afraid of the possibility that Jesus might be more than human.
So where did all those first century demons go? There are still demons in our world. We speak of them all the time but they have names now: alcoholism, drug addiction, HIV-AIDS, cancer, and mental illness are a few. Victims of these demons are often treated as pariahs to be shunned and isolated. We run away rather than offer our support and care. AIDS, for example, is just as demonic as any creature. It ravages individuals while some pretend it will go away if ignored long enough.
No doubt most of us would resist being labeled demoniacs, and many more would hesitate to admit that our society might be demonic. Nonetheless, the more sensitive and perceptive among us see swirling powers and forces in our midst that threaten to take control of us and destroy us.
Unfettered power and greed are also demons. Both are demons threatening to make us slaves of want. We were all raised knowing avarice is one of the deadly sins, but our culture encourages us to want to accumulate treasures on earth. Often, as a result, things become more important than people, more important than faith.
Our Scripture reminds us that demons are legion. They enslave us, destroy what is valuable, and release the very worst in us. The only way we can hope to cope with them is to come face to face with one who can drive the demons out and make us willing to sit at His feet, clothed and in our right minds.
And when that happens we need also to be aware of the fact that many of those around us will not be able to cope with our healing; for their fears are often as powerful as the legion of demons that inhabit our world. But our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ. With his presence and strength, we will drive the demons from our lives.
That is what this story is about. Christ walks into the tormented life of the Gerasene demoniac, this madman, whose life is coming apart at the seams. Jesus turns it around for him. He gives him a new beginning, a new start, a new birth.
Consider this slant on the story. Jesus, a practicing Jew, is consorting among Gentiles who, of all things, are raising forbidden pigs for non-kosher food. Maybe there are some Jews who are working with them to sell the pigs for a profit to the Gentiles. So, when looking for a place to put the 6,000 demons, Jesus honored the request of the demons not to send them into the abyss by putting them into the pigs. There is some suggestion that there were 2,000 pigs. Now demon-possessed, the pigs in a demonic frenzy run over the cliff to a sure death in the lake.
At least the Orthodox Jews in the crowd might agree that it was a good use of the pigs. But most of the crowd that arrived after the herdsmen ran into the town is not amused. While they can see that the man has been returned to sanity and health, reality sets in on them, "at what cost?" they are asking each other, "Is this man worth 2,000 pigs?"
I don’t know if many of you trade in hogs and pork bellies, but Friday I looked up the latest trading figures and if I did it right, those 2,000 pigs would be worth today about $228,000. A tidy sum to be sure. Is it worth a quarter of a million dollars to cure one demoniac? What if those pigs belonged to you or me? But what if the demoniac was your son, the Iraq veteran, or your father, or your disturbed brother or mine? Would it be worth $228,000 to make then well?
What price shall we put on a man or a woman? Shall economic cost be the only value by which we judge life or death? If our pigs have been lost, would we have focused more on them than on the person made whole? And would we, like the Gerasenes, ask Jesus to leave our city?
Doing battle with demons is part of what Jesus does. It is part of what we as Christ’s church do. As they are being fought, these battles are not pretty. There is pain. Sometimes pigs die. But evil, by its very nature is destructive. No wonder society at large is uncomfortable with the process, even to the extent of asking Jesus to leave.
But to individuals for whom there is an everyday battle with the demons in our lives, the message is: there is hope in Jesus. Jesus stands before all and in His powerful, peaceable voice says, "Come out of them, you negative, destructive demonic power. Come out of them you oppressive ideas, you controlling compulsions and obsessions. Come out of them you powers of guilt, regret and revenge. Come out of them you faulty self-images and harmful habits. Release them. Let them go. Be healed. Peace be with you."
A church historian, T. R. Glover, reflecting on this passage of Scripture wrote, "And Jesus comes again and again, making his assault on demoniacs and demonic societies, making them whole and peaceful and integrated …and greatly purified and sweetened life. Whenever the Church returns to him there is a resurrection, an evidence of new life. As the demoniac was made whole, so might we be." A M E N
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