June 23, 2019 “Fear” – Luke 8:26-39

Luke 8:26-39
“Fear”
June 23, 2019 – Second Sunday after Pentecost

Monday, we spent our last evening in British Columbia at Butchart Gardens, taking one more walk through the rose garden. It was a lovely quiet time, with the crowds all gone home and the beautiful place pretty much to ourselves… except for one crazy woman.

I don’t think the person we met that night was quite what you’d call mentally ill, but there was something definitely “off” about her. She approached perfect strangers. In an over-loud voice she tried to engage us and others in conversation about how great it would be to have a wedding there and how different this quiet place was from Disneyland in California, saying the same things over and over. She was just a bit too intense. All my brain could do was try to figure out how to put some distance between her and us.

Afterward I realized she was probably mostly lonely and didn’t know how to deal with solitude and quiet, but in the moment I just wanted to get away from her. Others of you might have done better, but I think my reaction was pretty normal. Strange conversation and behavior from other people can repel us, even make us afraid.

The man whom Jesus met as He stepped out of the boat on the other side of the Sea of Galilee was pretty definitely what we would call “mentally ill.” He had more than crossed the boundary from strange and annoying to wild and crazy. Verse 27 tells us he had not worn clothes for a long time and that he was hanging out in a cemetery. As verse 28 goes on to say, “When he saw Jesus,” he did not just speak loud, “he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice.” This was a person who would make many of us turn and walk away, or possibly run away as fast as we could.

Luke told us at the beginning the man had demons. He had lots of demons. I confess that in all my years of ministry and study of Scripture and theology, I have not sorted out just what to think about Bible passages like this one about demon possession in relation to what, as I said, we now call mental illness. On one hand, I’m pretty sure they are not the same thing. Very little, if any, of the mental illness we encounter around us today is demon possession. On the other hand, I take Scripture seriously and believe there really are forces of spiritual evil in our world and that they can and do trouble people today.

One thing I am absolutely confident about. As our text clearly shows us, Jesus Christ came into our world and defeated Satan and all his minions. That means that those evil spiritual forces have no great power over those who trust in Jesus. If you are a Christian, and through Christ the Holy Spirit lives in you, then there is no room for any evil spirit to live in you, to possess you. Please lay any fear like that to rest. Faith in Jesus sets us free from spiritual captivity to the forces of evil. We don’t need to be afraid of the kind of thing you see in movies like “The Exorcist” or all the other demon films Hollywood has generated. Just like in verse 29 for the Gerasene man, Jesus commands all the spirits. He won’t let them take possession of those who belong to Him.

Having said that, we all know Christians can be troubled mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Christ lives in us by the Holy Spirit, but our minds and bodies are weak, susceptible to injury and disease of all sorts. Specifically, we are aware that mental illness does trouble Christians, troubles some of us here today, who suffer from depression, anxiety, PTSD, schizophrenia and other serious maladies of the mind. Those are not failings of spiritual life, but problems caused by traumatic experiences, by faulty brain chemistry, or by set patterns of behavior, like that woman we met among the roses.

While we are not possessed by wild evil spirits, we as Christians can and do experience thoughts, emotions and circumstances which make us relate to that man living out among the tombs. Verse 29 goes on to tell us he was often seized by the “unclean spirit” and had to be restrained with chains and shackles. How often do you and I feel shackled and bound by troubling thoughts that won’t go away, by emotions which overwhelm us, by behaviors we just cannot change? For some of us that sort of bondage is every bit as real and troubling as the man’s spiritual captivity and material binding with chains.

The end of verse 28 shows us one of the deep ironies of the kind of bondage we’re talking about. One of the troubling emotions we struggle with is fear, and we can be afraid of the very thing, the very One who can make us well. That’s how it was as the man with the demons fell down and shouted, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me!”

We can’t be sure, but I think the fact that Luke speaks in the singular here—“he” shouted at the top of “his” voice—indicates this was the man asking not to be tormented, not all the demons in him. He was in absolute misery, naked, living out in wild country. But when he met someone who might set him free, he was afraid.

If we’re honest with ourselves, I think many of us would admit some fear like that. We want Jesus to help us and make us happy, but we’re a little afraid of what He might do to us if He meddles too much. We’re afraid of what letting Him deal with a bad habit or a traumatic memory or some dark emotion might mean for us, what it might bring out into the light of day to be seen by others.

Yet Jesus only wants to help, only wants to save us from the forces which trouble us. Verse 30 shows how Jesus responded to this wild and crazy man shouting at Him with mildness, even with respect. He asked, “What is your name?” Jesus did not quickly move Himself and His disciples down the road to avoid a person as you or I might. He took a personal interest in him, looked at him, asked his name.

The answer to Jesus’ question was disturbing, of course. “He said, ‘Legion,’ for many demons had entered him.” That name was even more filled with meaning then. The word comes from Latin. A “legion” was a Roman military unit of several thousand soldiers. To be filled with a “legion” of evil spirits would conjure up images of a huge army of demons quartered there in that man’s body and soul, waiting to march out in fierce force. It was a name that might make anyone but Jesus take a step, or many steps, backward.

Yet it was the demons who stepped back, the demons who also were afraid of Jesus. So in verse 31 we hear them begging, “not to order them go back into the abyss.” I know that some Christians would like to take this text and other texts of Scripture which mention demons or evil spirits and put together a whole “demonology,” a kind of theological science of what demons are, where they live, what they can do, etc. But the fact is that the Bible goes light on that sort of information. As C. S. Lewis says in the preface to Screwtape Letters, there’s some danger in wanting to know too much about the devil and the spiritual entities in his employ.

We can guess at what those spirits requested by not wanting to be sent back to “the abyss,” but we can’t be sure. Most likely they meant the place Jesus mentions in Matthew 25:41, “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” the “lake of fire” John talks about at the end of the book of Revelation. Those evil spirits knew that was where they were headed in the end, but they begged Jesus not to be sent there right then. Following up in verse 32, they begged Jesus for permission to enter a nearby herd of pigs instead.

When we read this same account in Mark chapter 5, Mark elaborates on the pigs, telling us there were about two thousand. Which fits well with the idea that there was a legion, thousands, of demons in the man. In any case Jesus gave the demons permission. So verse 33 says they “came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.” All those evil spirits that had been in one man were too much for two thousand pigs to bear and it drove them to self-destruction.

Maybe the thought of those poor pigs troubles you. I know it would bother my animal-loving daughter. It doesn’t seem quite right in these days when we worry about how both pets and livestock are treated and want to avoid unnecessary pain and cruelty. Some interpreters try to soften it by pointing out that swine, pigs, were unclean for Jews. Perhaps those who owned the herd should not have been keeping it to begin with. But Jesus here was in Gentile territory. The pig owners were probably innocent victims of these events.

We can’t really get too hung up here. The point of what the Gospel is telling us about the demon-possessed man’s encounter with Jesus has very little to do with pigs. If anything, their destruction gives us one tiny but vivid instance of how evil affects the world in which we live. When dark spiritual forces take control, there are disastrous consequences, not just for human beings, but for all of nature around us. We should admit that human submission to evil forces like greed and foolishness can ruin life not just for us, but for plants and animals and fish and birds. The nature of evil is to destroy.

So the man with demons was at first afraid of Jesus. Then the demons themselves were afraid. But the man’s fear was unfounded. All we are told is that the demons came out. This passage doesn’t picture the man screaming as the demons left or going through convulsions or any of that sort of thing. Instead, in verse 34 we learn that the swineherds, the pig tenders, ran off to tell what happened “in the city and in the country.” Then in verse 35, with the people who came out from the city, we get to see the calm aftermath of the demon exodus, “the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

As I said before, here is what Luke and the other Gospel writers want us to learn in this story. Jesus has power over the forces of evil in our lives. No matter how captive and out of control we might feel, no matter how strong the grip of darkness might seem, Jesus has power over all those other powers. We need not fear them. We need only let Jesus be Lord over us. That’s the posture the man was in, sitting at Jesus feet, like a disciple, like we’ll see Mary sitting and listening at Jesus’ feet next month. It’s there with Jesus that we may find calm, peace, and safety from the evil that swirls around us.

Yet here is a strange thing. The very next sentence at the end of verse 35, after they had seen the demon-possessed man freed and healed and in his right mind, says, “And they were afraid.” Afraid! We are not told just what they feared. Perhaps they didn’t trust the healing, thinking the man might go wild again, leap up and attack them. But it seems more likely by what follows that they were afraid of Jesus.

Fear of Jesus, in fact, is one of the big themes of this story. As we can see, the man was afraid of Jesus, the demons inside the man were afraid of Jesus, and ultimately the people of that area were afraid of Jesus. Verse 37 tells how not just the people from that nearby city, but from the whole region of the Gerasenes came out asked Jesus to leave, because “they were seized with great fear.”

In some ways, all that fear of Jesus makes perfect sense, in the same way in our call to worship we acknowledged what Scripture says many times, that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Acknowledgement of God’s power and respectful obedience to His will is a healthy fear we should all have. It’s like healthy fear of the power of electricity wired into your home and obedience to the rules for handling it safely.

But the demons and the Gerasene people were in the grip of unhealthy fear. Their fear was not motivated by a correct perception of who Jesus was and what He meant for them, which was only good. Instead, they may have been motivated by fear of losing more livestock or by fear that Jesus Himself was a wild uncontrollable spiritual force. They may have even felt a simple revulsion at being near the healed man after he had so long been a person they loathed and avoided.

Whatever reasons for their fear, Jesus did not press them. Verse 37 ends by saying, “So he got into the boat and returned.” Jesus commanded the evil spirits with great force, but He did not do that with the human spirits who feared Him. He let them be, knowing that their hearts and minds would be moved and changed in another, more gentle way.

The last two verses today show us that Gerasene man no longer afraid of Jesus at all. Instead, he’s almost afraid to leave Jesus. He begs to be with Him, to become a disciple. But Jesus told the man He saved to go away and do just what his fellow country people needed, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So the man who had had thousands of demons became one of the first evangelists, one of the first people to share with others the Good News of Jesus Christ.

There are a couple things we might want to learn and consider from this passage. One is that there are many, many people today who, like the Gerasenes, are afraid of Jesus. Like those folks then, they are not afraid of who Jesus really is and wants. They fear the image of Jesus too often projected by some of us, by Christians who may mean well, but who make those around us think that Jesus wants to stifle life and joy instead of giving it. Or we may cause people to be afraid of a Jesus who is more in the business of judging sin than in the merciful business of forgiving sin. And perhaps by thoughtless “Christian” participation in politics we may give people reason to fear that we Christians are more interested in getting power for ourselves than in submitting to the power of Jesus.

So let’s make sure we’ve got our message clear. It’s a message that should not make people fear either our Lord Jesus or us. It’s a message that loves and respects individuals, that wants to know them personally and by name. Most of all it’s a message not about us, but about Him, about the One who has done so much for us. As we meet together as a congregation in a few minutes, let us remember that our real business is the same as that man’s long ago, the same as what you read on the front of your bulletin, “So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.” Let us go away today with the same purpose, to proclaim what our Lord has done for us throughout our cities.

The other thing to remember is where I started today. Let’s not forget those around us who suffer and feel caught and bound and even possessed by forces they cannot control, but which control them. I think of those especially who daily carry and cope with mental illness and emotional disabilities. This may be some of us who often do a good job of coping with and concealing such problems. But they can also be very visible and very challenging people who cause us revulsion and fear.

Let us learn, then, to be more like Jesus as He met the wild man there by the lake. Let us not always turn away from the person who talks too loud or says strange things. Let’s not shun the individual who can’t control her body completely or the man who is clearly uncomfortable and nervous indoors or around people. Let us, like our Lord, look at them with love and offer whatever kindness, friendship, and, if needed, help we can offer.

As our epistle reading said today, Christ wants to set all people free, free from spiritual bondage, free from legalism, free from sin, and free from fear. Every person is included in that invitation to freedom. Galatians 3:23 told us, “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.” I think we can add that in Christ there is no longer mentally healthy or unhealthy, no longer nice people or obnoxious people, no longer Republican or Democrat. We fear the Lord, but in our Lord Jesus we are unafraid of each other and unafraid of His saving grace. Let us go out to tell that good news about what the Lord has done for us.

Amen.