Sunday, June 19th, 2022 – Expelling Empire, a sermon on Luke 8:26-39

Gospel: Luke 8:26-39

²⁶Then [Jesus and his disciples] arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. ²⁷As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. ²⁸When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”—²⁹for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) ³⁰Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. ³¹They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
³²Now there 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. ³³Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
³⁴When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. ³⁵Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. ³⁶Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. ³⁷Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. ³⁸The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ³⁹“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

Our gospel reading for today is one of those stories that makes me fall in love with the bible all over again. Whenever I start to worry and think the I don’t understand the bible, I can’t understand the bible, or the bible is so far in the distance that it doesn’t have much to say about my life or the world – a text like today’s gospel reading comes a long and reignites all the things that I love about the Scriptures and God and being a follower of Jesus in a church community like this.

It’s a strange story today. But tucked within it are clues as to the context of what was happening in and around this story being told. And the context helps us to interpret meaning from within the story for our own lives.

The story begins with Jesus and the disciples arriving in the country of Gerasa or the Gerasenes. The disciples had just experienced a massive storm on the sea – they thought they were going to die. They thought Jesus didn’t care but then Jesus stilled the storm and they did not perish in the sea. But they arrive in Gerasa. The name Gerasa – in Hebrew – means “expelled”. Jesus has landed in the land of the expelled. Scholar Amy-Jill Levine says we might as well call this place “Expelledville”. And immediately we get a sense that there is an allegory to this story at work. There is a deeper meaning than what’s at the surface. This is also Gentile territory, so Jesus and other Jews were not exactly supposed to go there.

When they arrive, Jesus is immediately confronted by a man who had demons. He lived much of his life naked and homeless – living in tombs and cemeteries outside the city, or running into the wilds. He comes to Jesus naked and bruised, with broken sores where his broken chains have pressed against his skin for so long.

You see when this man was out of his right mind, the towns people would catch him, and restrain him. We don’t know if this was punishment or care. Was he an outcast of society and restrained to stay away or was he the heartache of society and restrained so that he wouldn’t hurt himself.

All we know is he is a tortured soul. Because an unclean spirit, the text says, had seized himmany times. Note that word seized. We will come back to it.

And when this man first meets Jesus, he falls on his knees and shouted at the top of his voice “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” When was the last time you shouted at the top of your voice? What was it for? What were you desperate for?

Do not torment me. Do not torture me. Why does he say this? Why does he think Jesus will torture him? Harvard Professor Elaine Scarry says that for those who have undergone torture, they soon experience everyone and everything as a threat. “Everything is a threat, made to participate in their annihilation.”^[1]

“Do not torture me, Jesus.” No wonder those were this person’s opening words. When you have been tortured for so long, everything is a threat and a loving-presence is an impossibility. But Jesus goes to the place where his very presence is assumed an impossibility. And he does not run away.

Now – it’s hard to know who is saying those – the man or the demon. Who is begging not to be tortured? All we know is that these words are said after Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of him. Note that word commanded, we will come back to it.

And then Jesus asked a profound and yet simple question.

What is your name? What is your name? Now again – who is Jesus speaking to? The man or the demon? Either way – it’s the right question, because either he humanizes the man with a name (in the bible if you don’t have a name, you are almost always part of the marginalized, dehumanized class). Or he calls out and brings to light the name of the demon. You have to name the demon, otherwise it will always have control over you.

Jesus, asks “What’s your name?”

The response is “Legion.” For many demons had entered him, the text says. I guess we know who answered the question – the demons. Sometimes they always like to speak first for us don’t they – the demons we carry.

And here – their name is Legion.

Legion. Have you ever heard of someone named Legion? Me neither.

That’s because it’s code. Legion is a Roman military term – a term for about 6,000 Roman soldiers.

Here – a man has run up to Jesus, naked, broken and bruised, shackles on his hands and wrist, possessed by a demon and the demon’s name is “6,000 Roman soldiers.”

With that one word – Luke gives a key to the context of meaning.

This man has been possessed, occupied, invaded by the demons of Roman soldiers.

We start to see what Luke is doing here. This isn’t a religious story about the strange spiritual struggle of demon possession; this is a subversive, political, spiritual story about the evils of military occupation. This is a story about the invading, possessing, occupying, maximized Roman empire and it’s dehumanizing assault on the people of God.

It would be as if Jesus came across a broken down, anxious American who was out of their right mind, and Jesus asked what their name was and they simply said,

“AR-15 – for we are many and easy to get.”

“What’s your name?”, Jesus asks.

“White supremacy,” they say “for you think we aren’t here, but we are here.”

“What’s your name?”, Jesus asks.

“Prescription Opioids,” they say, “for you will let us come in and we will never come out.”

The story of the Gerasene demoniac is a story about the very real evils that sneak in and invade our lives, our country, our humanity to wreak havoc and take control. And in Jesus’ day and in Luke’s day, that was none other than the Roman Empire. “Just as the demons possess the man and strip him of his resources, so do the Romans possess the lands and people and take what they want.”^[2]

Once we can see that, other parts of the story start to take on meaning.

Once the demon is named, they know they are out of luck. Because once you name the demon, they have less power. The demons beg Jesus not to order them back into the abyss. Remember earlier, Jesus commanded the demons to come out? Order them, command them, those are military terms in the Greek. Who’s the General, the leader of the army now? Jesus. Jesus has arrived asserted his authority.

AND… the demons begged Jesus to not order them back into the abyss, meaning they’ve been there before. The abyss, which is another word for the ocean, which is another word for chaos – (meaning the Roman soldiers come from chaos, not from God). Instead, the demons – the legion of demons – want to be sent into the herd of swine on the hillside. Well, just in case the point isn’t clear– swine don’t travel in herds, soldiers do. And the swine, the pig was the symbol of Rome in Jewish/Rabbinic literature.

Because the Romans loved to eat pork – it was a delicacy. Perhaps this herd of swine was there in this gentile territory because they were the food for the military.

The demons beg Jesus to be sent into the swine, and so Jesus gives them permission. Actually, he dismisses them, the Greek says, like a general dismisses his troops. And then demons come out – fall out – of the man, enter into the 2,000 pigs, and the pigs do something strange. They rush down the hillside and launch themselves off a cliff. But they don’t rush down the hill..…they chaaarge.^[3] They charge like a battalion of soldiers, only to meet their self-destructive end in the chaos from which they emerged.

I find it fascinating that the demons beg to not be sent into the abyss, but rather into the pigs. The Roman soldiers would then eat the pigs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and therefore consume and take into their bodies the very demonic possession they represent. But before that happens, the pigs – the pigs take those demons where they do not want to go. Into the deep, into the abyss. On a highly imaginative and creational level, it might be outside the bounds to say this, but perhaps the pigs were martyrs for the kingdom of God. Giving up their lives to put evil back in its place, to starve the Roman Empire of its power, by taking away it’s much beloved pork.

You can see the symbolism is layered and deep in context and meaning. But in the end the message is simple – the Roman Empire and its minions are a demonic possession that need to be cast out. They do not belong in the kingdom of God.

After that, the man who had been possessed by the demon, was found to be clothed and in his right mind and sitting at the feet of Jesus. And you would think that the town would celebrate – but they don’t. In fact, when they see this man and what has happened, they are seized with fear. Remember, I told you to remember that word. The man was seized by the demon; the towns people are seized with fear. Who is possessed now? The town is now possessed with fear. But no wonder they are afraid. The towns people are victims of the Roman empire too – tortured by the despair that this is how life will always be. Remember for those who have lived in torment, “Everything is a threat.” Even the thought of liberation.

The way I see it, the battle may be over but the war is not won. The collateral damage and the seeds of evil lives on in the wounded.

And the man who is now in his right mind wants to leave his community and join Jesus on the way, but Jesus tells him no. You see, as the Rev. Otis Moss III has said, if the man goes with Jesus, then no one will know his story, his transformation.^[4] Everyone will assume he has always been well-behaved and in his right mind. And as is so often the case, we see others who have been to hell and back, but we never know. And so we think we are alone in our struggles, alone in our need for transformation, alone in our battle with the demons trying to work their way in.

But when we meet someone who knows what it is to be tortured and tormented and who has lived to tell the story, suddenly we feel less alone. Named and known and suddenly there is a power and a hope within us that maybe we can survive too.

And so Jesus says to this man, “You cannot come with me. I need you – God needs you – to be with your people.” Jesus ordains him to be a disciple to his own people. To heal them of their demon, their internalized belief that everything is a threat. To be a force for love and healing and resistance in the face of the Roman Empire and all it represents. This is his calling now.

I tell you all of this because I want us to see how this text (and the Bible) has so much more to do with real life than we might first imagine.

All you have to do is imagine a Ukrainian reading this story today from the bunker of a bombed-out hotel. A Ukrainian who knows all too well what it is like when the demonic invades and possesses and destroys you. It’s staggeringly timely when just yesterday, the New York Times does a report on Ukrainian gravediggers, and funeral directors. Also known as people who live in tombs and cemeteries. They would go out in the mornings to dig the graves and smoke cigarettes and make jokes. They said you had to make jokes, because, “If you take it all close to heart, you go mad.”^[5] Out of your mind. Perhaps the story of the Gerasene demoniac is the story of a gravedigger during the time of war who took it all so close to heart. Perhaps he had a heart of flesh and took it all in, and the demonic damage of death caused by war broke him.

This is the story of every Ukrainian today, in need of liberation from the demon -the legion of soldiers – that have invaded. To hear this story as a Ukrainian today is to hear that God is with them. That God comes to their shores. The tortured and people who have gone mad from this invasion of evil. And that God in Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit is at work casting out the demon of the Russian invasion.

It is to hear an ancient promise – that God is not on the side of the Empire. God is not on Russia’s side. Now, God is on Russia’s side in that God cares for the people of Russia. God cares for the soldiers who are just pawns for war. God even cares for Vladimir Putin, who has become a distorted version of the image of God he was made in, a person who in dehumanizing others dehumanizes himself…but God is not on Russia’s side in this demonic invasion. God is with the suffering.

Or take today, June 19^th. Juneteenth. As we recognize and learn more about Juneteenth, our newest federal holiday that has been celebrated for a lot longer, all we need do is hear this story from the perspective of an African American in 1865 who has been enslaved, enchained, possessed and controlled by the evils of American slavery, waiting for this demon of racism to be exorcised out of their life and out of America’s life. A demon that still lurks.

And to hear this story is to hear that our God we are called to follow is a God who calls out and casts out such demons and sends them into the abyss where they belong. Our God is about setting people free and taking people out of oppression. That’s the God who claims us and calls us.

Or hear this text from the ear of one of our youth. Just a few weeks ago, in our high school sexuality program, known as OWL, one of our youth said, “My friends regularly make homophobic and mean statements. How do I tell them that it’s wrong? How do I respond?” I marvel at the question and the courage to ask it. This youth probably didn’t think of it this way, but they were asking a discipleship question. She had this sense of her role as a disciple of Jesus and she wondered – How do I cast out the demon of homophobia that lives in and has invaded the life of my friends? How do I follow God’s call to set people free? After being set free herself, she had a sense that she was called to stay in her community and to liberate or exorcise the demon.

Now I know that some of those examples might feel so big and so far away from the reality of your life and the other demons many of us have lived with, close at heart and in our own lives. Demons that invaded our lives at a young age and continue to torment. But make no mistake – this story is for you too.

May we all have the courage to name the demons that invade our hearts, our systems, our countries. May we trust and give our hearts to the promise of the Gospel. That God in Christ has come to us and the places we think God will never go and is at work casting out that demon and setting us free. May we know deep in our hearts of flesh that God wants for you and for all people liberation and is at work in you and in others bringing healing and exorcising the demons.