Luke 8:26-39
We have probably all been
surprised at some point by a family member, friend, or acquaintance who behaved
out of character. We get to know people and have some idea of who they are, but
then they say or do something that makes us wonder if we really know them. If we are honest, we will acknowledge that
the same is true of each of us. We say,
do, and think things that surprise even ourselves. Sometimes we handle a problem or respond to a
temptation better than we thought we would, but so often our actions reveal a
brokenness that we do not like to see.
That is why we can so quickly become defensive when others see our
weaknesses, and especially when they point them out.
In
today’s gospel reading we read about a man whose situation was beyond
miserable. He surely had no illusions
about himself, for he was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.” His personality had disintegrated due to the
power of the forces of evil in his life.
That is shown by the fact that he was naked, like Adam and Eve who
stripped themselves of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into our
world of corruption. He lived among the
tombs, and death is “the wages of sin” that came into the world as a
consequence of our first parents’ refusal to fulfill their calling to become
like God in holiness. This naked man
living in the cemetery was so terrifying to others that they tried
unsuccessfully to restrain him with chains.
People understandably feared that he would do to them what Cain had done
to Abel. But when this fellow broke
free, he would run off to the desert by himself, alone with his demons. In the Gadarene demoniac we have a vivid icon
of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, naked of the divine
glory, and isolated in fear from loving relationships with others.
Evil
was so firmly planted in this man’s soul that his reaction to the Lord’s
command for the demons to leave him was “What have you to do with me?...I ask
you, do not torment me.” His brokenness
was such that he had no hope for healing and perceived Christ’s promise of deliverance
simply as pain. By telling the Lord that
his name was Legion, he was acknowledging that the line between the demons and
his own identity had been blurred. He
was in such bad shape that it was not clear where he ended and where the demons
began. The Savior then cast the demons
into the herd of pigs, who ran into the lake and drowned. In the Old Testament context, pigs were
unclean, and here the forces of evil lead even them into death.
Perhaps
there is no clearer image of human brokenness in need of the healing of Christ
than this miserable man. He represents us all in many ways. He did not ask Christ to deliver him, even as
we did not take the initiative in Christ's coming to save sinners. The corrupting forces of evil were so
powerful in his life that he had lost any sense of what it meant to be someone
in God’s image and likeness. Whenever we
are driven by our distorted self-centered desires, we think, speak, and act similarly.
We too are often so wedded to our favorite sins that, like him, we would rather
that Christ leave us alone than that He set us free. We are often so weak and confused that we
fear His healing mercy will torment us, for we have lost all hope of being set
free from them. We are afraid of what
life would be like without them.
After
the spectacular drowning of the swine, the man in question was “sitting at the
feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”
The one who had not been recognizably human returned to being his true
self, was back in society, and was learning from the One Who had set him
free. That was very disturbing, however,
to the people of that region. In fact,
they asked Christ to leave out of fear at what had happened. We may find their reaction hard to
understand. What could be so terrifying
about this man returning to a normal life?
Unfortunately, we all tend to get used to whatever we get used to. What we have experienced in ourselves or in
others becomes normal to us. Even as the
scary man in the tombs was afraid when Christ came to set Him free, his
neighbors were afraid when they saw that he had changed.
It
is no surprise, then, that the man formerly possessed by demons and still
feared by his neighbors did not want to stay in his hometown after the Lord
restored him. He begged to go with Christ,
Who responded, “Return to your home,
and declare all that God has done for you.”
That must have been a difficult commandment for him to obey. Who would not be embarrassed and afraid to live
in a town where everyone knew about the wretched and miserable existence he had
experienced? It would have been much
easier to have left all that behind and start over as a traveling disciple of
the One who had set him free.
But that was not what Christ wanted
the man to do. Perhaps that was because
the Lord knew that the best witness to His transforming power was a person who
had been healed from the worst forms of depravity and corruption. Why should people believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the
Savior of the world? Surely, the lives
of His followers must bear witness to His power in order to convince them. When someone moves from slavery to the
glorious freedom of the children of God, that person has moved from death to
life. Such a radical change is a sign of
the truth of Christ’s resurrection, for He makes us participants in His victory
over death by breaking the destructive hold of the power of sin in our lives.
Our Lord makes it possible for us
to become our true selves in Him, the Second Adam. That means being united with Him in holiness
such that, by His gracious mercy, we become “partakers of the divine nature”
who fulfill humanity’s original vocation to become like God in holiness. He has
overcome our nakedness by clothing us in a robe of light in baptism, filled us
with the Holy Spirit in Chrismation, and nourished us with His own Body and
Blood in the Eucharist. He Himself
forgives and restores us through Confession and repentance. Our Lord is even more present to us than He
was to the man in today’s gospel lesson, for He has made us members of His own
Body and dwells in our hearts.
Our challenge, then, is not to
ask Him to go away out of fear that He will torment us. Sin only has the power in our lives that we
allow it to have, and we all have a long, challenging journey to turn away from
it. Nonetheless, we must take the small
steps of which we are capable to turn our hearts more fully toward God through
prayer, fasting, almsgiving, forgiveness, and all the basic spiritual
disciplines of the Christian life. When
we fail, we must use our weakness to grow in constant dependence on the Lord’s
mercy and strength. We cannot save
ourselves by our own power any more than the man could cast out his own demons.
We may
be as terrified to think about life without our favorite sins as the man’s
neighbors were to see him in his right mind. Sharing more fully in Christ’s victory over
death will always be terrifying in a sense, for we must die to sin in order to
rise up with Him in holiness. His
Kingdom is not of this world and we must crucify the distortions of our souls
that have become so familiar to us. When
the struggle is hard and we want to give up, remember the difference between a
naked and isolated person out of his mind due to the power of evil in his soul
and that person “sitting at the feet
of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”
That is really what is at stake in the question of whether we will do
all that we can to welcome the Lord’s healing presence in our lives or run away
from Him in fear. May He grant us all
the wisdom and strength to choose blessedness over despair, to choose life over
death.
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