The Second Sunday after Pentecost

It doesn't have to be that way. That’s precisely what this story is all about. Jesus walks into the tormented life of this suffering soul who is coming apart at the seams and he turns it all around. He is described as someone who had demons. Today he might be categorized as mentally ill, high on some substance, or just drunk. He wore no clothes and lived among the tombs instead. He was considered ritually unclean and shunned by the community. He lived in isolation—not unlike the lepers of that time.

When Jesus asks for the demon’s name he is told it is “Legion,” reference to a Roman legion of as many as 6,000 soldiers; in other words, 6,000 demons possessed this poor fellow. Recognizing the authority and power that Jesus had over them, they ask him to send them into the herd of pigs where they assumed they might be safe, but the swine hurled themselves into the water and pigs and demons drowned. When we next see this Gerasene man, he is fully clothed and restored to complete sanity—wholeness and health.

What is the point of this story? Jesus’ authority over demons and all evil sway. Jesus caring for people with terrible difficulties and life-altering crises. And Jesus welcoming even a crazy acting gentile, having compassion and healing him is the point. Does the story of the Gerasene demoniac speak to our day as it did its own? Absolutely! There may not be actual demons floating around the universe but there is certainly more than enough malevolence.

Where we fight the demons of social evil, the message is there is hope in Jesus.

For those for whom there is an everyday battle with the depression, the message is there is hope in Jesus. To those who live with anxiety, the message is there is hope in Jesus. Those who fight the demon of addiction, there is hope in Jesus.

It is no small thing that Jesus first asks this man’s name. Jesus knows that he is more than a naked, crazy person. He knows that he has a name. And he asks it. It is our name that gives us identity and recognizes our dignity. It is usually the first piece of information we entrust to a stranger.  When Jesus released this man from the shackles of demonic possession, he restored his dignity and gave him back his life as a member of the community.

And Jesus wants the same for us—wholeness and restoration and freedom from the fetters and constraints that may inhibit us and make us feel “less than.”

You know by now that it is my custom to welcome you to the Eucharist by name because in God’s eyes you matter greatly. You hold in your hand and taste on your lips the sacrament of God’s love for you. And in God’s realm there are no exceptions. And this Gospel today comes with a challenge to us to be sure that there are no exceptions.

Author and UCC Pastor Martin Copenhaver tells of a small gathering of church leaders considering how to become a more multi-racial and multi-cultural church. Around the table were people of color, of different ethnic backgrounds, and sexual orientations. They had wonderfully serious conversations about how to be a more inclusive church that accepts people’s differences.

In the next room of the hotel was a large convention of tattooists all wearing just enough clothing to be decent and yet display their tattoos. After the church folk had finished their meeting about inclusive church, they opened the door of the packed hotel lounge and, seeing all the tattooists there, simply closed the door.  One of them remarked, “You know, it’s one thing to be open to differences, but I’m not sure I’m ready to drink with a crowd like that.”

“Since then,” Copenhaver says, “I’ve wondered if we might have learned more about being an inclusive church if we had abandoned our polite and careful discussions around the table and just spent some time hanging out with the tattooists. Sadly, we didn’t look around long enough to see if Jesus was there, because that’s exactly the kind of place he was criticized for frequenting.”

Now Jesus relies on the church even as society fails on so many levels to restore wholeness to the Gerasenes of our time. No matter what our individual differences, there is always some person different from us, someone who tests the limits of our ability to be radically welcoming, someone like this man in the Gospel still on the outside looking in.

There is today an epidemic of loneliness, of longing to belong, of anxiety about the state of our world. How can we be the hands and heart of Jesus for those who so desperately need to find peace—to know that they are loved and that they matter?

Can we share the Gospel message that there is always hope in Jesus—that whatever “demon” is making their life seem desolate, it doesn't have to be that way?