2 Cor. 6:16-7:1; Luke
8:26-39
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 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 overwhelmed by our inflamed passions that we lose all sense of being a
living icon of God. When that happens, we
would rather that Christ leave us alone to wallow in the mire of our sins than to
heal us. We can easily become overwhelmed
with fear that His salvation will simply torment us, for sometimes we cannot
even imagine living without the corruption that has become second nature to us.
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 and 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 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 than a person who moved from death to life. 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, like the compromised and confused Christians of Corinth
to whom St. Paul wrote in today’s epistle lesson. Even as they kept falling back into their old
ways of idolatry and immorality, he referred to them as “the temple of the
living God” and applied the exhortations of the Hebrew prophets to them: “’I
will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from them,
and be separate from them,’” says the Lord, “’and touch nothing unclean; then I
will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and
daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’”
Contrary to the
legalistic attitude of his fellow Pharisees, St. Paul knew that being a Jew was
not a prerequisite for receiving the blessings of the Messiah, for all with
faith in Him are now “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal.
3:29) His Kingdom is not defined according to ethnicity, nationalism, or
geography. St. Paul also knew that being spiritually clean and separate from
the corruptions of the world was not a matter of merely checking off the boxes
of outward behavior. The Corinthians had
strayed far from the path of faithfulness to Christ, but the Apostle did not
tell them that all was therefore lost. They had put on Christ like a garment in
baptism and been nourished by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist. He reminded them of who they had become by
grace as “the temple of the living God” and called them to live accordingly. Doing so was not an exercise in religious
legalism, but required embracing the ongoing struggle for purity of heart as
they did the hard work of reorienting their lives to the Kingdom. As today’s reading concludes, “Since we have
these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body
and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”
We must learn from
the Lord’s deliverance of the demon-possessed man and St. Paul’s exhortation to
the Corinthians that, no matter how consumed we are by our passions, we must never
give up hope for healing. Regardless of
how far we have strayed from the path of faithfulness, we must refuse to define
ourselves as spiritual failures cut off from the Lord’s mercy. Instead, we must remember that, as “the temple
of the living God,” we have the freedom to cooperate with the infinite healing
power of the Holy Spirit poured out upon us as living members of Christ’s Body,
the Church. If we will do what we presently
have the strength to do each day in embracing our true identity in the Savior,
then we may all become like the man who was finally able to sit “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right
mind” and able to bear witness to the great salvation that He has brought to the
world. As the Apostle taught, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse
ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect
in the fear of God.” That is how we may
become fully alive and behold the divine glory.
