Hilton Head Island, SC – January 15, 2017
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 5:1-13; Luke 8:26-33
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Texts – And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” – Mark 5:9 – Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. – Luke 8:30 (RSV)
As far as my sieve-like memory can recall, this is the first time I have ever used two Gospels that tell the same story in one service. I did it for two reasons. First there are a few differences in what is known as the Story of the Gerasene Demoniac between two of the Gospels that contain this story, Mark and Luke, and I shall note some of them. Secondly, because you now have heard both versions of this event read, you will have noticed they are both essentially similar, but you may also have caught a few of the differences in the telling.
Neither Mark nor Luke was an eyewitness to this event. Mark presumably got his information about Jesus from Peter, and Luke got his information about Jesus from reading Mark and Matthew, plus another lost Gospel that German New Testament scholars labeled “Q.” It stands for the German word Quelle, which simply means “work,” as in “written work” or “manuscript.” But we’re not going into any of that; we have too many other fish to fry here, except to say that all three Synoptic Gospels include the account of the man possessed by demons who lived on the east side of the Galilean lake, in what then was Syria and until 1967 was still Syria.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree that Jesus encountered a man then known as a “demoniac.” He lived on the eastern shore of the lake. That was not Jewish territory; it was Gentile country. From this we may deduce that Jesus did not spend all of his time among Jews. He also went among the Gentiles from time to time. Luke tells us that the man didn’t have a home but that he lived “among the tombs.” Mark corroborates that. If we didn’t know this man was a Gentile otherwise, we know it now, because no Jews would never live among tombs, not even crazy ones. Jews buried their dead in cemeteries, but other than those rare occasions, they avoided graves like death itself. They regarded graves to be ritually unclean.
Mark says this poor soul had been chained up, but he continually broke the chains. Luke adds he was so deranged that he wore no clothes. Clearly this man is what we in the 21st century would call insane. First century people would also know him to be insane, but they differed from us in what they thought was the cause of insanity. In Jesus’ time, insanity was attributed to demons. The understanding of the origin of mental illness may have progressed greatly in two millennia, but unhappily society’s treatment of the mentally ill has not come nearly as far.
In both Gospels, when the man saw Jesus coming toward him, he shouted out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, the Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” And at that point in the story, both Gospels say that when Jesus saw the man, before he said anything to him, Jesus commanded the “unclean spirit” to come out of him. How did the man know who Jesus was, you ask. I answer, “I don’t know; he just did.” This is, after all, a healing miracle, and modern minds are not usually in synch with such things. I’m not saying, “Don’t ask”; I’m just saying we shall get nowhere by trying to go there.
Jesus wanted to address the man by his name. He wanted him to know that Jesus perceived him to be a person, a fellow human, a man like other men, except that he had a mental illness. So he said, “What is your name?” The man gave a strange answer. “My name is Legion,” he said, “for we are many.” From this we learn two other things. First, the man believed he was possessed by many demons. And remember, both he and everyone else assumed his very peculiar behavior resulted from demons being inside him. But secondly, when he called himself “Legion,” he was probably using a nickname everyone else used for him. However, “Legion” is a Latin word, not a Hebrew or Aramaic word. It is actually a military term. A Roman legion was a large army unit, not a squad or platoon or company, but more like a brigade or regiment in our terms. A legion represented three to six thousand soldiers in the Roman army, including cavalry, my dictionary says.
Thus when this naked man living among tombs said his name was Legion, he was telling Jesus he believed he was possessed by a legion of demons, thousands of them. In those days, demons were believed to be the cause of numerous natural misfortunes. Astonishingly, having somehow recognized Jesus as the Son of God, he pleaded with Jesus to leave him alone. Was that because he thought Jesus couldn’t help him, or was it because he didn’t want Jesus to bother with him, thinking himself to be unworthy of being cured of his terrible malady by the one he instantly recognized as the Son of God? He didn’t say, Luke didn’t say, and we don’t know.
Although we don’t know what the man’s motivation was, we are told the motivation of Jesus. Jesus was determined to cure this poor lost soul of the illness which had presumably plagued him for most of his life, as mental illness often does to the people who suffer from it.
Here is where this bizarre story takes a beyond-bizarre twist. By now the demons had also recognized Jesus, and, according to Luke, they did not want to be sent into “the abyss.” (Presumably that means hell.) To you people I say this, with all the conviction I can muster: There truly are no actual demons and there is no actual hell. But in Jesus’ day, nearly everyone was absolutely convinced of the existence of both. But this is now, and that was then, and those people, including poor old Legion himself, believed in hell and the legions of demons which were thought to cavort all around there. If Jesus was going to cure this man, he had to do so in a way that the man was convinced he had been cured. Furthermore, I shall also use the term “demon” in this sermon, because some problems are truly what we often call “demonic.”
So we return to Jesus and the great multitude of first-century evil spirits. The demons, not wanting to go back to hell, begged Jesus to send them into a herd of pigs groveling for grubs nearby. (I made up that part.) If we weren’t convinced the east side of the Sea of Galilee is in Gentile country, we are certain of it now. Jews had nothing to do with pigs. Pork was a forbidden item in the Jewish diet. There were (and are) no pigs in Israel proper.
Therefore Jesus commanded the demons to enter the herd of pigs, and they all went charging down the hillside into the lake, where they all drowned. I must admit I have always felt sorry for the pigherd in this story. (If a shepherd is a sheep herder, a pigherd is a pig herder, I guess. I’m just trying to keep you interested in this story, don’t you understand, you post-modernists, you.)
On the east side of the Sea of Galilee, about midway between where the Jordan River runs into the lake on the north and where it runs out of the lake on the south, there is the ruins of an old Crusader church. It is there, tradition declares, where this event occurred so long ago. It is a picturesque spot, and one of the most readily imaginable sites where a particular miracle of Jesus took place. If you go to Israel, insist that the guide take you there, and you will never again picture this story as you have previously. Seeing is believing, as they say.
Did Jesus cure people of their ailments? I honestly believe he did. Can God cure us of our ailments, or can He cure us of whatever kinds of “demons” afflict us? He can. I have no doubt He can. But now we describe our demons as problems or challenges.
Esteban Santiago was the very troubled young man who recently flew from Anchorage to Fort Lauderdale. When he got there, he summarily killed five people in the airport, wounding six others. Then he meekly surrendered to the police. God can cure people like Esteban, but He does so mainly through psychiatrists, psychologists, and researchers and developers of various medications. However, the Estebans of the world must be convinced to avail themselves of the help that is offered to them. And that’s where God may enlist us to come in.
In the old days, we used to hear about “demon rum.” Alcohol can take hold of a person in such a way that it turns life into a tragedy equal to that of the Gerasene demoniac. It can rob its victims of respectability, turning them into social pariahs. That is what the Syrian Gentile living among the tombs had sadly become. If we allow God to do so, He can break an addiction to alcohol. Almost never does He do it directly, however. He does it by means of other people, just as Jesus was used by God to free the insane tomb-dweller from his insanity. Furthermore, a cure is likely to happen only if the alcoholic genuinely believes it can and wants it to happen. Perhaps in this situation the best source of divinely-provided assistance is through the angels of Alcoholics Anonymous. The friends of Bill W. can be fantastic therapists. But all twelve steps must be taken if the complete cure is likely to be effected. If alcohol or drugs is your demon or that of someone you know and love, there is help available. Nevertheless, it is a necessity that the alcohol or drug addict must be willing to accept the help. And that’s where we come in.
Demons come between people who differ on important matters. We don’t all see the same things in the same way. Lately huge differences have emerged among many Americans. The demons need to be sent down the hill into the lake. And that’s where we come in.
There are people who have hurt us. It may have been intentional; it may have been unintentional --- but it hurt. We need to forgive them. Demons crop up whenever forgiveness is deliberately withheld. They need to driven down the hill and into the lake. And that’s where we come in. God needs our assistance to make that happen.
Samuel Wells in the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church on Trafalgar Square in London. I’m sure some of you have been there. He writes columns on a regular basis for Christian Century, an ecumenical magazine. Several months ago he wrote a piece called “When the church gets it wrong” (August 17, 2016). He told of a woman who, for years, came to St. Martin about once a year. One particular Sunday she asked Fr. Wells if she could talk to him. They set a time for lunch, where they talked about this and that. She casually included the fact that she and her husband had been divorced. Samuel Wells felt she hadn’t really addressed what she truly wanted to talk about. So they set another time, and again, they talked about this and that. Finally she said, apropos of nothing they had previously discussed, “Do you believe the archbishop of Canterbury was correct when he told Princess Margaret that she should not marry Group Captain Peter Townsend?” This is an event that occurred more than fifty years ago. Some of you will recall it, and others not. But to this woman it was as though it had happened yesterday.
After several forays of beating around the bush, the vicar decided they had finally gotten down to what was really bothering her. He began to make some comments about how the Church declares what it thinks is right about many issues, even if sometimes it may be mistaken. Then, to uncover the issue that most concerned her, the lady said, “After my marriage failed, my husband asked me for a divorce. I think he’d met someone else. But I was brought up to believe that marriage is indissoluble. Even though there wasn’t any prospect of a reconciliation, I said no. And he took his own life.”
Was a demon involved in that story, even a Church demon? The Church is right to oppose divorce, but is it always proper to forbid divorce, to prevent every Christian from marrying a divorced person? If, for what it believes are good reasons, the Church, or any other institution, makes an inflexible and sometimes indefensible policy, should not that demon be driven down the hill and into the lake? That’s where we come in, although we may fail to get the policy altered. As James Russell Lowell’s poem and as the hymn based on it declares, “New occasions teach new duties; time makes ancient good uncouth.”
Circumstantial demons insert themselves into human life frequently. When it happens, they must be driven out by people of wisdom, intelligence, and good will. To allow them to continue doing their malicious mischief is to turn our backs on God, who bids all of us to do our best to rid the world of the dark forces of disease, despair, and dissension.
Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday. He was a major change agent who tried to do everything he could to diminish racism. Nearly forty years ago, on April 3, 1968, he stood in a large hall in Memphis, Tennessee. In his speech he recalled Moses, who stood on Mt. Nebo, looking over into the Promised Land, knowing he would not get there with the children of Israel.
To the enraptured crowd Dr. King said, regarding the demon of racism, “Let me say…that we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis….Like anybody, I would like to have a long life….But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up on the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!”
On the next day, April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray would look through a telescopic sight from an open window across a large parking lot from the motel in which Martin Luther King and his staff were staying. And in a couple of seconds it was all over - - - except that it wasn’t. The struggle goes on. Things are better now than they were on that fateful day. Our first black President said that last Tuesday evening in his farewell address. Nonetheless, God still needs people like us to bring the struggle to a more just conclusion. It is coming. Surely it is coming, because God is God, and ultimately His will cannot be thwarted. The demon of racism must be sent down the hill into the lake. And that’s where we come in. We can give him a good stiff shove.
Legions of demons exist in the world. Usually they are not visible, or tangible, or palpable, but they are there. They seek to do us harm. God and Jesus seek to do us good. Let us give ourselves to the ongoing battle, lest we supinely submit, and the demons win. Legion was freed from his demons. And so can we be.