Demons (Luke 8)

     “As Jesus stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8, verse 27.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     In our city, in every city I have been in, and, I’m sure, in every city of the world, there are people with demons. Nowadays, we don’t usually name them “men (or women), with demons”. We call them mad, crazy, insane, mentally ill, drug-addicted, alcoholic, and so on and on. They are usually, but not always, homeless, as we say these days. When I was young, the mentally-ill homeless had other names: street people, bag ladies, derelicts, and more. Experienced city-dwellers are used to them, used to mad street people that is, and they, we, have learned to pay no attention, learned not to acknowledge them, learned to pass by; we do not let the mad, the demon-possessed, get the idea that they have permission to engage us. And so we keep the mad at a firm distance, and we do not intend that we or they should cross the boundary between us.

     The “man of the city who had demons” in our story, however, has no intention of respecting any supposed boundary between him and Jesus, between him and the people around him. He is not aware that there is any boundary. But he is aware that there is power in Jesus, spiritual power, which he recognizes immediately. He falls down before Jesus and begs not to be tormented. Jesus, before we hear any account of what he has said, has commanded the demon to depart, and this is tormenting the man. Jesus has apparently given the command silently, or at least out of earshot. But we do hear Jesus ask the demon a question, “What is your name?” By this time the demon is outside, so to speak, and it turns out that his name is Legion, that there are in fact many demons. And they ask Jesus not to send them to the abyss, but to send them into a herd of pigs. Jesus does this, the pigs rush into the lake and drown. The man is freed of his demons, but the people, understandably, ask Jesus to leave them, since he has apparently ruined the living of at least a few farmers by destroying their livestock.

     There are many themes to consider in this story. But I’ll stick to just one, which I have mentioned already, that of boundary-crossing. The man with the demon demands attention from Jesus, and plainly does not think that there is any boundary between himself and Jesus. Jesus takes his authority over the demons for granted, and does not recognize any boundary between himself and them. And, somewhat oddly, perhaps, in our contemporary, property-oriented point of view, Jesus does not show any regard for the boundary around the property of others, in this case, the pigs, and allows the demons to steal the pigs from their owners. And, to continue bringing out this boundary theme, the people of the surrounding country want to put a boundary around themselves, to protect themselves from Jesus. And Jesus does not allow the formerly possessed man to remain with him, in effect establishing a boundary between him and the formerly possessed man. What can we make of this boundary crossing and boundary building, this back-and-forth, as it were, between closeness and distance, approach and withdrawal? Is there a pattern here, a structure in which we can discern spiritual meanings?

     Underlying the story is a spiritual reality in which everyone in the story believes. Everyone believes in a spiritual world where God is, and where demons and other spiritual entities are.  Everyone in the story believes in demon possession, and at least two people in the story, believe that demons can be driven out, Jesus and the man possessed. So we can think of the presence and absence of boundaries, of closeness and distance, approach and withdrawal, as demonstrations of different attitudes, differences of faith, differences in spiritual maturity, in relation to the spiritual reality. Here the spiritual reality is appearing in the forms of Jesus and the demons.

     Jesus has just come from the Sea of Galilee, where he has demonstrated his power over nature, by calming a storm. There is no boundary between him and nature. His spiritual power is evident to the man possessed, who recognizes him immediately as Son of the Most High God! But it is possible that it is not the man, yet, who recognizes Jesus, but the demons in him, who speak through the man, as it were. In any case, the man, in recognizing Jesus, has reached the moment of his liberation; he has not allowed any anxiety about boundary or status to get between him and Jesus, and what he knows Jesus can do for him. In the moment of his torment, what perhaps we can call his last moment of fear, he lets it go and Jesus is able to free him from his demons. There is a movement here from fear to faith, from torment to liberation. This is possible because the man does not allow there to be a boundary between himself and Jesus. And Jesus recognizes this and in this moment of freedom, he is able to act.

     Notice how Jesus does this. As I mentioned, he has silently, or at least out of earshot, commanded the demons to depart. We don’t know whether the man heard the command, but the demons did. But Jesus is able to do this because the man himself is ready to let the demons go. His liberation is not merely an external act of Jesus, but an act of faith on the man’s part, and Jesus’s response to it.

     But this is not the whole of Jesus’s action. He asks a question of the demon, “What is your name?” And we know the answer, “Legion!” Questioning and naming the demon is very much a part of the liberation of the man. Questioning and naming cut the demon down to size, so to speak. The demon is not some huge, giant, nameless, pervasive, fearful power that everyone should be afraid of, but a local, nameable entity, not that powerful really, who responds readily and submissively to the power of Jesus. The named demon, or demons, have to ask Jesus to send them into the pigs. (That is an interesting choice for the demons to make, but I resist going down that path, that digression. Perhaps I can take it up another time.)

     In Jesus and the man possessed we see spiritual freedom at work: the man desires freedom from the demon, and he experiences a moment of freedom in which he knows he is able to let the demon go. And Jesus sees this moment of freedom, and is able to take full advantage of it. We see here a clue to the nature of faith, that it is a free act, a choice, to which Jesus responds, and helps the newly liberated person to escape fully from the demonic power that prevents him or her from being the person that God intends them to be.

     The people, the spectators in this story, respond very differently. Their response is one of fear. Fear of the calm, sane man in his right mind. Fear of the power of Jesus, as they see it. And the rather practical, worldly fear of people who have lost their livestock, it must be said. In their fear, they want Jesus to leave. And fear, probably, of the liberation that they see before their eyes. The people are also possessed of a demon, and that demon’s name is Fear. They think that they can free themselves of it by sending the sign of their potential liberation, the presence of Jesus, away, somewhere else, anywhere else. Then they think they will be free. But it is nothing like the freedom of the man in his right mind. The fear of the people is the opposite of the fear of the man possessed. It is a fear they actually want to cling to, because their potential liberation from it would be more frightening. But this spiritual dynamic is a subject for another sermon, another day.

     “As Jesus stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.