Pentecost 4. Lectionary 12. 2010            Christ Church

There are some stories in Scripture with which we can easily identify and there are others which are much harder simply because we have little or no experience of them. Take today’s Gospel story for example. I think it’s safe to say that most of us (I stress most of us) have likely not encountered a demonic man this week (although again some of you may have your own opinions about that!) And, apart from learning lots about swine flu over the past few years, most of us have probably never seen a herd of swine in our neighborhood. And some among us may never have even traveled across the sea to a foreign land. As a result this is indeed a difficult lesson to relate to our lives and we might therefore be tempted to dismiss such a reading as irrelevant and therein ignore its basic message. But that would be unfortunate, for this is a lesson which tells us a great deal about Jesus, about evil in our world and about the mission to which Jesus has called His Church.

Let’s start with that mission for this story takes place in Gentile country. Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee calming a storm along the way, until He arrives in this Gentile city located about 6 miles southeast of the sea. By calming the storm at sea, Jesus has shown His power over the forces of nature; but now He sets about demonstrating that He is also master of other forces in creation, this time the forces of evil in a person’s life. This is not the first time that Jesus has shown that He is the master over demonic forces, nor is it the first time that He has dealt with Gentiles. But this situation is different because now Jesus is on Gentile land and among Gentile people and in going there Jesus shows that His power is not limited to His own land or His own people. Indeed Jesus will show that His power is effective everywhere, even in an area where demons are more numerous and more destructive. By coming to this Gentile land and performing this miracle, Jesus prefigures that time when He will send His disciples out to other Gentile lands with the promise that they too will be able to confront the powers of evil and that they will also be able to cast out demons in the name and with the authority of the One who sent them. Jesus has come to proclaim a Gospel message which is for all people, Jew and Gentile alike, a Gospel message which promises to free all – regardless of race, color or creed - from the demons of their lives. Jesus comes to this foreign land with a liberating message for all people who are willing to acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior and in so doing, He unmasks all the destructive power of evil in their lives.

But as central as this story was to the overall mission to the Gentiles, it also speaks to many other issues which were of deep concern to the Jewish people, including the issue of pigs, tombs and names. Pigs are considered unclean by the Jews, as were tombs which were whitewashed so that no Jew would come into contact with one accidentally. And there was the Jewish understanding that to know a person’s name was to have authority over them, which is why, in the story, Jesus wants to know the demon’s name. And we cannot forget that during this first century there was a widespread belief that the world was populated by demons, spirits, nymphs and angels who controlled natural processes and often took possession of people or at least controlled their fate and that these demons could enter a person through the openings of the mouth, the ears, the nose or the eyes. Therefore a person had to practice magic, sacrifice and rituals if they had any hope of escaping these spiritual powers. So it was that, for the early Christians many of whom were Jews, this story showed the power of Jesus over such forces and so gave them not only confidence but also an increase in their faith.

But once again this story remains difficult to relate to our lives today. In our modern scientific world, we tend to dismiss such stories about men possessed by evil demons as pure nonsense. Instead we would prefer to say that such persons were suffering from mental or emotional problems and some of that may indeed have been true. But there is a good deal more going on here than someone who is in need of mental health treatment for, right from the beginning of His ministry, Jesus had encountered the forces of evil which were bent on derailing the will of God, of which the story of the temptation of Jesus in the desert was but the strongest example. It is these same forces of evil which seek to gain access to people’s lives and control them with effects which are deeply damaging physically, mentally or spiritually. Therefore to limit this story to just a man who has a mental health disorder is to ignore the problem of evil in our world.

And surely the existence of evil is a horrible reality in our world today. We don’t usually talk about demonic possession or unclean spirits today, but we do know about the power of evil among us. There has been the evil of genocide in Africa and Europe as well as other nations over the past few decades. There has been the evil of people oppressed or held captive in too many nations. There has been that evil we all know simply as 9/11; and there is to ongoing evil are too many among us who are possessed by the evils of drugs, alcohol, gambling or sex. Evil exists among us. Evil reigns around us. People are oppressed and held captive to the power of evil. Evil abounds. Yet Jesus came to set us free from the power of sin and evil and He begins that work by exorcising the demonic from this man and then by defeating the even greater power of sin and evil in the world as a whole. The demons and the evil powers at Gerasenet know the proper identity of Jesus and they rightly perceived that He is a threat to their influence in the world and their control of people. But that does not stop Jesus who, with the power of the Word of God, finally eliminates these demons and their influence in the world. Satan’s fall from power is already underway simply because Jesus has come into the world and has begun to proclaim the Good News of salvation. Evil powers will continue to arise and challenge the mission of Jesus in so many ways and there will always be questions about Jesus' authority and His power over evil. But the ultimate decision is not in doubt. Jesus not only has authority over demons, but He alone is the authority over such evil forces and over the evils which possess us in this life. For Jesus Himself announces that He has come to set the captives free – those who are captive to sin, to death, to evil, to addiction and yes, even those who are captive to possession by the evil one. And that fact alone is our sure confidence in the face of evil in the world today – confidence that the Christ who has come to set us free has done so by winning for us the victory over sin and death. The result is that the evil one no longer has any power over us, for it has been utterly defeated. Or as we love to sing in verse three of our famous Lutheran hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.”

“Though hordes of devils fill the land, all threatening to devour us. We tremble not, unmoved we stand, they cannot overpower us.

Let this world’s tyrant rage; in battle we’ll engage!

His might is doomed to fail; God’s judgment must prevail

One little word subdues him.

The powers of evil are still in existence in our world today, evil that is political, social, economic or personal. Such evil seeks to dominate, isolate and alienate its victims. But today’s story announces that the mission of the Gospel includes liberation from sin and evil, wholeness of mind, body and spirit and the restoration of all those who are bound to evil. In naming the powers of evil that hold others in captivity, the Gospel seeks to bestow peace and the invitation to once again belong to the community. Psychology can be helpful to treat those who are possessed by addiction, and diplomacy can be useful to resolve the evil situations in the world today. But in the end the only thing that will prove ultimately successful against the evil that surrounds us is for us to place our full faith and trust in that one little word. There is no greater power to deal with demons than the power of the One who has already defeated the evil one. There is no greater power than the One who has come to set us free from all the evils that possess us. There is no greater power than that one little word whose name is Jesus the Christ. Amen.