Becoming a Human Person Fully Alive to the Glory of God: Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Luke 8:26-39

             St. Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Adv. haer. 4.20.7).”  To be a human person is to bear the image of God with the calling to become more like Him in holiness.  The more we do so, the more we become our true selves.  The God-Man Jesus Christ came to restore and fulfill us as living icons of God.  He enables us to become truly human as we participate personally in Him as the Second Adam.  As St. Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”  (2 Cor. 1:20)

            If we need a clear example of how the Lord has extended the ancient promises to Abraham to all people in order to restore the beauty of our darkened souls, we need look no further than today’s Gospel reading about a man so miserable that he was barely recognizable as a human person.  He had no illusions about himself, for he was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.”  His personality had disintegrated due to the overwhelming 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.  The Gadarene demoniac provides a vivid icon of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, stripped naked of the divine glory, and isolated in fear.  His wretched condition manifests the tragic disintegration of the human person that the Savior came to heal.   

            Evil was so firmly rooted in this man’s soul that his reaction to the Lord’s command for the demons to depart is shocking: “What have you to do with me?...I ask you, do not torment me.”  He had understandably abandoned hope for healing and perceived Christ’s promise of deliverance simply as even further torment.  By telling the Lord that his name was Legion, he acknowledged 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, which ran into the lake and drowned.  In the Old Testament context, pigs were unclean, and here the forces of evil lead even them to destruction. 

            Perhaps there is no clearer image of how evil debases our humanity than the plight of this miserable man.    He is an icon of our brokenness and represents us all in many ways.  He did not ask Christ to deliver him, even as we did not take the initiative in the Savior’s coming to the world.   The corrupting forces of evil were so powerful in this man’s life that he had lost all awareness of being a person in God’s image and likeness.  We can also become so distorted by self-centered desire that we lose all sense of being a living icon of God.  When that happens, we would rather that Christ leave us alone to serve our passions than to set us free from them.  We can easily become overwhelmed with fear that His healing mercy will simply torment us, being so spiritually blind that we cannot even imagine a life without the corruption with which we have come to identify ourselves.  

            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.  That was a very upsetting scene to the people of that region, however.  They actually 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 routinely in ourselves or from others, no matter how depraved, becomes normal to us.  The scary man in the tombs was afraid when Christ came to set him free, but his neighbors seemed even more disturbed when they saw that he had been liberated.

            It should not be surprising 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 sign of His transforming power was a living person who had been restored from the worst forms of depravity and corruption as a sign of the glory of God.   There could not be a better witness of the salvation that the God-Man has brought to the world.  When someone moves from slavery to personal decay to the glorious freedom of the children of God, that person has moved from death to life.  That person has become his or her true self as one who bears the divine image and likeness.  Such a radical change is a brilliant 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.   

The presence of the pigs in this story reminds us that the man to whom Christ restored his humanity was a Gentile. The Savior has fulfilled God’s promises to the children of Abraham such that all with faith in Him are “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) His Kingdom is not a nation-state, is not defined according to ethnicity or cultural heritage, and knows no geographical boundaries.  The Messiah repudiated the temptation to set up such an order, for His reign is the complete opposite of earthly powers so enslaved to the fear of death that they have become blind  to how their enemies bear the image of God every bit as much as they do.  People will never find the healing of their humanity by refusing to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile in order to break cycles of retribution and violence which have become second nature in our world of corruption.  No one will become more truly human by continuing to pour fuel on the fires that consume the lives of the living icons of God, regardless of their religion, nationality, or politics.   Those who do so degrade themselves and become more and more like the wretched man overcome with evil who lived naked in the tombs, a terror to himself and everyone else.

We must not reject Christ’s healing out of fear that He will only torment us.  Sin only has the power in our lives that we allow it to have, and we must all embrace the eternal journey of opening ourselves fully to the Savior’s restoration of our humanity.  Since we all bear God’s image and likeness, the path to such blessedness is open to us all if we will take the small steps of which we are capable each day through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, forgiveness, repentance, and the other basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.  We must cultivate the mindfulness that is necessary to resist the personal disintegration that comes from identifying ourselves with our passions.   That is not easy because often nothing is more appealing in the moment that wallowing in pride, anger, lust, resentment, and other distorted desires to the point that we have more in common with pigs at a trough than with the man after his deliverance, when he sat “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” 

  When we experience temptations, we must make them opportunities to embrace Christ’s healing of our corrupt humanity through His victory over death. We must die to sin in order to rise up with Him in holiness.  We must crucify the distortions of our souls that have become second nature to us.  When the struggle is hard and we cannot imagine being set free, we must remember the difference between a person disintegrated by the power of evil and one gloriously restored as a living icon of God.  That is precisely what is at stake whenever we face the choice between welcoming Christ’s healing presence in our lives or hiding from Him in fear as we cling to our passions.  May God grant us all the spiritual clarity to become fully alive and radiant with the divine glory.