Jesus went round healing the sick. It’s what he did. We read in Luke chapter 5 verse 17 ‘they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem and the power of the Lord was with him to heal.’ So when we read a particular healing story in the Gospels, and there are many of them, we are reading a story that the Gospel writers especially wanted to draw to the attention of the church. They are saying, ‘listen guys, you really want to hear this one’.
And it is with that in mind that we should read the story of how Jesus healed the man who was possessed by demons who lived in the land of the Gerasenes. We should be asking, ‘what is it about this story that we need to be paying attention to?’
It’s a pretty weird story and it’s a story that leaves us asking a lot of questions. I wonder what you were thinking about as I read the Gospel story?
- Why did the man who was possessed by demons meet Jesus on the shore of the lake?
- What significance should we attach to the fact that he went about naked; that he lived among the dead; that he had been kept chained up but had broken free from his chains; that he had fled to live in the wilderness?
- Why did Jesus ask him his name and why is his name legion?
- Why did the demons beg to be allowed to enter the pigs and why did Jesus agree that they should enter the pigs?
- Why, having allowed them to enter the pigs; did the pigs then hurl themselves off the cliff into the lake?
- Why were the people frightened and why did they ask Jesus to leave?
- Why did the previously possessed man ask to come with Jesus and why did Jesus tell him he should instead stay in his home land and proclaimed how much Jesus had done for him? What happened to ‘follow me’?
- What an earth has this story got to do with us?
For some of these questions, answers will readily come to mind. Other questions will be more of a puzzle. Turn those questions over in your mind. Be wary of the answers that arrive swiftly. Treasure the questions that remain unanswered. Dwell on these questions and wait upon the spirit to guide you in your reflections.
I am going to discuss briefly two aspects of the story which I think have something to say to our life as a church. Firstly, I am going to share with you my thoughts on the significance of the fact that Jesus crossed to the other side of the lake. Secondly, I am going to reflect on what it means that the pigs threw themselves off the cliff.
Luke makes sure that his readers know that the land where the possessed man lived was on the other side of the lake. He describes it as opposite Galilee. In fact it lay in the area known at the time as the Decapolis. It was an area where many retired Roman legionaries had settled. They were given land to farm and became effectively a reserve army that could be brought out of retirement to put down any rebellions in the Jewish lands.
Which is why, of course, there are pigs in this story. Jewish people obviously would not be keeping herds of pigs. But retired Roman soldiers were quite happy to keep pigs. These people were gentiles and oppressors of the Jews living in land that the Old Testament said had been given to the Jewish tribe of Manasseh as part of the Promised Land. So Jesus entered a hostile world when he took his disciples across to the other side of the lake. Who knew what they would encounter there? Nothing good, that was for sure.
Actually, our church has crossed to the other side of the lake for the last 3-4 weeks. As a church, we encountered a situation which was outside our comfort zone; a situation where we had no way of knowing what lay ahead if we chose not to ignore it. We took a risk. We knew that we might possibly encounter criminal and violent behaviour. We knew that we were getting into a situation that potentially had no easy answers. We knew that we might encounter the cruelty of bureaucratic intransigence. We knew we might encounter people whom we could not abandon to their demons. And still we crossed to the other side of the lake. We followed Jesus and crossed to the other side. I repeat, we followed in the footsteps of Jesus.
Let’s go back to the Gospel story and think about the man who met Jesus on the shore of the lake. He was possessed by demons. These demons had a name. Their name was legion. This man was possessed and controlled by demons who were legion just as the land in which he lived was occupied and controlled by legionaries. Specifically they were former members of the tenth legion whose symbol was a boar pig. The demon called legion enters the pigs and the pigs are drowned in the lake. Those forces which controlled the poor man are expelled from him and then destroyed in a manner that is full of symbolism.
It is a powerful message about the liberation that Jesus offers to us and the acts of liberation he calls us to participate in. He takes from us those demons which oppress us and control us from within as well as from without. He vanquishes them for ever.
The pigs rush down a steep bank into the lake where they meet their destruction and this ‘steep bank’ reminds us of the text in the precious chapter of Luke’s Gospel where we are told that the people of Nazareth are enraged by the teaching Jesus offers them and ‘They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way’.
This concept of executing people who threaten our world view by throwing them to their deaths from a great height is unfortunately an ancient tradition. It survives in one of the hadiths of the Moslem faith which can be and has been interpreted as an injunction to throw homosexuals from a great height so that they die. This method of execution was used in the caliphate of the so-called Islamic State when people accused of homosexuality were thrown to their deaths from tall buildings.
But the community where the man who was possessed lived did not throw him off the cliff. They tried to keep him under guard and they tried to keep him chained up but he broke his chains and went to live in the wilderness among the tombs. And that was the situation when Jesus came and released the man from the demons. And the community reacted by asking Jesus to leave.
You might think that they would react with great happiness that this man was no longer possessed by demons. He no longer had to be kept under guard. He no longer had to be kept chained up. They no longer had to worry about him wandering about possessed among the tombs. But actually, they were frightened and asked Jesus to leave.
We will get that same reaction when we cross to the other side of the lake. People who have tolerated having somebody kept in chains in their community may not share our joy at the good news of liberation. They will understand this liberation as an accusation of what they have done and what they have failed to do; of what they have tolerated. They will ask us to leave.
And Jesus did leave. It says, ‘He got in the boat and left.’ And the liberated man wanted to come with him. But Jesus would not take him with him. Jesus left him in his own land and among his own people. He told him to declare how much God had done for him. This man is actually the first evangelist commissioned in Luke’s Gospel. He is the first person sent by Jesus to proclaim the good news. The one who was liberated is chosen as the bringer of news to liberate others. He was a very special person and we don’t even know his name.
There are exciting adventures to be had when we follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ and cross over to the other side of the lake. The good news of liberation may only be accepted by a few. The majority may be uncomfortable with our presence. But those few will be a special few with a special commission; a special testimony to tell to others, sometimes a more powerful story to tell than the one we originally told.
So the feeling we have when we cross back to our side of the lake will be mixed. We may well feel that we did a bit but we could have done more. We may well feel that the challenges we encountered turned out to be greater than we initially thought. We may well feel that what we achieved paled into insignificance compared to what needed to be done.
But we will also have received a wonderful gift from the people from the other side of the lake and that is a deep understanding of our common humanity in Christ. Those words Paul wrote, which we heard again this morning, have resounded through the ages. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. They are such beautiful words. They are words that assure us of God’s love for us and of God’s love for all of us. To truly feel the beauty of those words, I believe, you have, every so often, to go on a journey to the other side of the lake.