Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
June 24, 2007
Luke 8:26-39
Now this is one weird text. Look at what we have here: a raving madman, naked, wandering through the local cemetery; demon possession - or perhaps many demons named Legion (also perhaps a political comment – a play on Roman legions?); an exorcism by Jesus, but not just any exorcism…this one involves a herd of swine; and finally a response, not of gratefulness, but of fear – Jesus is asked to get out of town. Just another typical day in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
But what are we to make of this? How to begin to wrap our brains around this? As far as I know, not too many of us are into demon possession and exorcism. How can the respectable, rational, logical faith of The Community Church of Sebastopol possible deal with such a wild and crazy text? Possession and demons and pigs…oh my!
And yet, even as I say that, I am aware that, in spite of outward appearance, many of us, perhaps most of us, don’t always live lives that are rational and logical, calm and controlled. And so it just may be that this crazy text may not sound all that crazy in the midst of what are often crazy and frenzied lives – our lives - lives that at times threaten to spin out of control.
About ten years ago, Scott Russell Sanders wrote a moving essay, Under the Influence, in which he described his childhood with an alcoholic father and how that childhood continued to haunt him. In that essay, he made reference to our text for today. For him, it wasn’t weird. Rather, it spoke directly to the life he lived. Here is some of that essay:
“My father drank. He drank compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling. I am forty-two as I write these words, and I know full well now that my father was an alcoholic, a man consumed by disease...I realize now that I did not cause my father’s illness, nor could I have cured it. Yet for all this grown-up knowledge, I am still ten years old, trying to understand the corrosive mixture of helplessness, responsibility and shame that I learned to feel as the son of an alcoholic…In a matter of minutes, the contents of a bottle could transform a brave man into a coward, a buddy into a bully, a gifted athlete, skilled carpenter and shrewd businessman into a bumbler…the anguish of watching a prince turn into a frog.”
Imagine the young child, still new to this world, watching the mysterious conversion of his once lovable father into a drunken, raving beast….the fear, the terror. Some of you may know that terror. Demons, possession…we don’t believe in such things – ancient superstitions from an ancient world. And yet…as an alcoholic slips into the grip of the bottle, or an addict slips under the domination of drugs, or a loved one is gripped by mental illness or dementia, as depression grabs hold of our souls and won't let go, or as anger, grief, anxiety or fear dominate our days, it is as if we are watching a human being – or ourselves – become possessed. I think back to those dark days when my “baby” sister was in the final stages of cancer. She had been prescribed some powerful pain killers. Without going into too much detail or naming names, I’ll just say that a family member, who was struggling with drug addiction, actually stole pain-killers from my dying sister. So I too know something of possession. It’s not too strong a word.
Back to Sander’s essay: “The scariest and most illuminating Bible story apropos of drunkards, was the one about the lunatic and the swine. I knew it by heart…Hearing the story in Sunday School, my friends thought mainly of the pigs (who is going to pay for all those drowned pigs?), but I thought of the redeemed lunatic, who bathed himself and put on clothes and calmly sat at the feet of Jesus, restored – so the Bible said – to his right mind. When drunk, our father was truly in his wrong mind. He became a stranger, as fearful to us as any graveyard lunatic…. In my boyhood despair, I reasoned that maybe, like that lunatic, he was possessed by demons…But if so, who would exorcise him? If he was a sinner, who would save him? If he was ill, who would cure him? If he suffered, who would ease his pain?”
Sadly, neither Sanders nor his father ever found answers to those questions. He watched his father sink ever deeper into helpless despair, and nothing he tried could stop it. Finally, says Sanders, “In silence, he went rushing off that cliff. Unlike the biblical swine, however, he left behind a few of the demons to haunt his children.” A sad story, made sadder still by the fact that it is a story which is not all that uncommon.
But I find it interesting how Sanders found meaning in the story of Gerasene demoniac - this weird story which may not be so weird after all.
In his essay, Sanders says that his family never knew where to turn for help. His mother, none of them, could bring themselves to confide in anyone, to admit to the chaos and craziness in their lives. Church was no help, because the people in church seemed to live lives that were so ordered and polite and healthy and in control. It appeared that there was no room there for the disorderliness and unhealthiness of an alcoholic family. So they chose to suffer in silence.
You ever feel that way….ever feel that way in church? With our pews and carpets and heavy pulpits and tables, with our hymnals and orders of worship, this can look like a place of order and control, in spite of the chaos that seems to swirl around the senior minister! The bright, orderly, veneer of established, respectable Christianity. So I can understand why it might not feel like the right place for you in those moments when your life seems totally disordered. Except, look where you find Jesus, the Lord of this church….out on the fringes of our polite, respectable, ordered religion – out in the graveyard with that crazy man, out where demons dwell and people are confused and dangerous and out of control. In the words of one colleague, “Jesus wades out into the swirling vortex of raw human need and pain. He does not remain aloof or safe. He reaches out, touches and heals. This means that if this day you, or someone you love, is in the hellish situation of confusion and craziness, there is a good chance that Jesus is there too.”
We come to worship with so much on our hearts. So here, in this orderly and established place, perhaps your prayer today is simply, ‘God help me. I’m so lost, so confused, I don’t know where to turn.” You feel like you are out on the fringes. Guess who is there with you?
I also like the fact that Jesus is not passive in this text. He doesn’t simply offer a kind word of consolation, ask the man to share his feelings or say “Somebody needs a hug.” He takes action. He wades into the man’s desperate situation, rebuking demons, casting them out, liberating and restoring life. Jesus takes action. I like these words of Kenneth Carter, a United Methodist pastor: “This encounter in the graveyard demonstrates God’s power to overcome evil, illness, disease…even death. Rather than avoiding evil, pretending that pain doesn’t exist, we can enter into it, knowing that God is far more forceful than the powers of this world...Churches are places where the power of Jesus encounters the demons of the world.”
I think our church must live or die on the truth of that claim. Unless there is a regenerating, redeeming, renewing, reconciling, and healing power at work at the very center of our common life, a power willing to meet and join people on the often crazy fringes of their lives, there is no way we will succeed and flourish as an instrument of God’s will. Because that is precisely where God is…on the fringes. Next year, at the Annual Meeting, instead of our church clerk reporting on the number of new members we have received, instead of the chair of our budget and finance committee talking about pledges received, maybe we should ask: “How many people at this meeting have experienced healing, new life, a new sense of direction, wholeness and meaning in and through Jesus Christ and the church this past year? Raise your hands. Let’s have some testimony.” Now we’re talking church. I once heard a speaker at a conference say that at the very heart of our message, of our life together, is the faith that things can change… “There is a force in the universe that is a force of transformation and healing.” And we see it in this text where a man lost and possessed is introduced to the power of healing, saving, life-giving possibilities, and we see this power brought to the very fringes of life, where the demonic seems to rule with only terror and fear and madness and death. But it doesn’t rule for long. There is a force in this universe that is a force of transformation and healing.
No, this story isn’t so weird. I think we all carry that poor, confused, possessed man in our hearts. But he isn’t all that is there. Says Kenneth Carter, “We are here to be healers, to touch one another, to experience the new life of Jesus Christ. And we are called to leave our tombs and graveyards and isolation and enter into the freedom of what it means to offer our mind and our bodies and spirit to God. That is healing. That is salvation.” And it’s for us, for you and me, no matter where we might find ourselves. Thanks be to God.