Advent Lutheran Church

"It's Not About the Pigs!"

Grace and peace to you from God, the Creator, and from our LORD and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

            Well, it’s “Reunion Season” and everyone seems to be participating, whether it be family, school or organizational reunions, these events gather folks you’ve known for years, some who you haven’t seen for years, and some who “knew you when” those many years ago.  But it remains true that you will see faces from your past there, and finding that younger face among the wrinkles, fat, and graying hair might be a real challenge, if you really focus and concentrate, that face will reappear, and then, in your eyes, time stands still…

            Today’s Story from the Gospel of Luke is a fascinating narrative about Jesus as his ministry begins to take him beyond his homeland of the Galilee.  He and his disciples have crossed into the country of the Gerasenes, and, no sooner than they step foot on shore, they are accosted by a naked man who had been living in the cemetery, who is possessed by demons who seem focused on getting in Jesus’ face by shouting at him.  Curiously, these demons are more scared of what Jesus can do to them than he is of them!  So he turns and deals with the man, and the demons.  First, let’s focus on the man.  What a Mess! This guy…is naked!  How shameful!  He is such an embarrassment to his family that they have kicked him out of town, placed him in among the tombs, so he is unclean to Jesus and the disciples and he is tortured by the pain and suffering caused by the demons.  If that weren’t bad enough, consider the cost!  I mean the town had to pay for his guards, his food, chains, shackles – you can imagine that he was just a burden on everyone. 

            Don’t we all know someone who is just a MESS?  Perhaps we have loved ones whose problems are “legion,” (i.e. too many to number,) or perhaps that mess of a person is US!  Regardless, they seem to drag us down, and yet we care for them because we love them, or because they’re “family.”  We take care of them as best we can, sometime even begrudgingly, because we have been given so much, and after all, we really DO care about what happens to them.  And sometimes, we sacrifice ourselves a bit for someone else’s benefit.  If asked, that’s probably how the town would have described Legion.  But this story is not really about this guy…

            So is it about the demons?  You know, it’s really difficult to draw guidance from Jesus’ encounter with demons and demon-possessed people when we don’t really believe they exist.  After all, it’s the 21st century!  But many of you know Pastor Mike Clark whose Council President, Dennis Rader, confessed to being the BTK killer.  When Pastor Clark sat with Mr. Rader during prison visits, he says that when he looks into Dennis’ eyes, he sees nothing there of Dennis, but everything of evil.  Or Vicar Anteneh’s stories of the expected exorcisms requested by pastors in Africa.  They are commonplace among the people.  We like to think we’re too advanced, too sophisticated to accept that there may still be demons, but deep down we know they exist.  We know about pockets of evil, expressions of things so far from God that we cannot bear to acknowledge them.  But here’s one example to think about:  “Who do we demonize?”  BP?  Obama? The oil-rich Arab world?  It is all about “Who is TO BLAME?”  (And we point away from ourselves toward the other guy…)  But this story is not really about the demons…

            Do you know what bugs people the most about this story?  The Pigs.  Those poor, innocent pigs.  Jesus, it’s unfair what you did to this city!  Why would you take away their livelihood?  Do you remember the story of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 16?  They came upon a woman who had the gift of divination, she was a fortune teller.  After a few days, Paul ordered the evil spirit inside her to depart, and it left her, but it took the fortunes with it.  Her “handlers” were angry with Paul and Barnabas for rendering her talents useless (and losing them a lot of money) and they had them thrown into prison.  Should we feel sorry for her “handlers?”  Are we not willing to give up something, so others can go free? 

            Just as we get used to our disasters and discriminations, “these people were used to Legion.  His shackles, his raving, to keeping guard.  He'd become part of their everyday world, an unavoidable reminder that they are not perfect.  And so when the demons leave and he's now just plain old ________ (Bob, perhaps?) they don't know what to do.  In fact, they're downright upset.”  It’s not about the pigs, it’s just one herd - that’s not what upsets them!  Professor David Lose says,  “… it's Jesus' ability to rock their world and create unforeseen and unexpected futures that terrifies them. If he can do this to good old Legion, they might be thinking, what will he do to us?  And so they ask Jesus to leave, and he does.”

            You know, we have plenty of Pigs ourselves…and we might ask ourselves if we are getting too comfortable with those pigs and those demons.  Because if we are – we risk ignoring God in favor of ourselves.  We worry about sacrificing ourselves to free another.  We ask Jesus to leave…and he does.  And that, friends, is the terrifying truth under this story: They ask Jesus to leave, and he does..

            But no!  In the end, we will always have Jesus, because he promised to be with us to the end of the age.  God’s work of restoration and salvation goes on and on, and God’s love will never be withdrawn from us.  As Jesus cast out the legion of demons from the man, he also purged the town of their complacency.  God was using an “economic disaster” to resurrect their value system and give them new eyes to see past their fears and their demons.   “And God was using the man (who was one of them,) because Jesus was too much to handle for these folks.”  Sort of like another story Jesus told that raised the question, But what if someone should ‘rise from the dead,’ then, might they not believe?  That is our prayer, and God’s desire.

            So, in the end, we can hope that the town listened/heard “what God has done for you” through the first-person stories and the life of a man they used to call “Legion.”  The man who Jesus saved from demons and restored to his community, who remained in the midst of them as an unavoidable reminder of just what Jesus can do.  And finally, here’s the beautiful image:  Jesus addressing a man overwhelmed by demons, by looking him in the eye and asking, “What is your name?”  Jesus knew him, but he wanted the man to remember who he was.  And even if it is the demons who sometimes respond, God always see who we really are:  deep down inside, past the fears, past the messes – God sees the love of his life.  God sees you.  AMEN.

*quotes from David Lose at WorkingPreacher.org.