TRISTAN SHERWIN

Due to some health issues, I was unable to prepare throughly or speak this Sunday on the lectionary text from Luke 8; the famous story of a possessed man who identifies as, ‘Legion.’

Like most of the Gospel stories, it’s a dense account which has a lot going on. But what follows are my very rough notes of what I would have shared from this passage.

I repeat; they are rough notes. So I apologise in advance for their crudity, the unfinished thoughts, the lack of cohesion, and the poor grammar. But I’m hoping there’ll still be something in here that the Spirit will use to stoke your heart.

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“As Jesus stepped ashore, a certain man from the town met him who was possessed by demons. For a long time this man had worn no clothes and had not lived in a house, but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before him, and shouted with a loud voice, “Leave me alone, Jesus, Son of the Most High God! I beg you, do not torment me!” For Jesus had started commanding the evil spirit to come out of the man. (For it had seized him many times, so he would be bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard. But he would break the restraints and be driven by the demon into deserted places.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him.” ‭‭Luke‬ ‭8:27-30‬ ‭NET‬‬

This individual was made in the image of God, but his nature has become unrecognisable.

But when Luke describes this man’s condition, he’s not just describing the man; he’s highlighting the failures of this community.

Regardless of the reasons why this man is how he is, the community’s “solution” to his disruption—to his noise, to his suffering—is to shut him up by shutting him out. They exclude him, chain him up, and banish him to a graveyard. They don’t see this man’s humanity—they treat him like an animal.

Mostly, the enemy doesn’t need to possess people. He just needs to distort our view of others, to the extent that we are no longer willing to see the Divine image in others. And if he can distort our view of others, then it’s not long before our treatment of others also distorts.

It’s not just the man who is under the influence, but the community is also behaving exactly how these demonic forces want them to behave. They’re buying into this false, distorted image that they’re being presented with. They’re believing the lie about this man’s nature—and instead of knowing this is someone who has been made in the image of God and who is being held in bondage, they see him as a danger and problem. Not only do they believe the enemy’s lies about this man’s nature, they also begin to do the enemy’s work.

The enemy puts this man in bondage, and then the community echoes this tactic by also putting this man in bondage—they isolate him and chain him up (or at least attempt to). Instead of being cared for, he’s left to wander around naked, living in a cemetery. It’s messed up. It’s satanic.

Maybe they felt helpless, having no idea of how to deal with this man, and therefore felt they had no other choice? Who knows. But this exclusion hasn’t helped.

Rejection can be a damaging thing; when we’re isolated by others we can be prone to making worse choices, and our insecurities, anxieties and paranoia are amplified as we see the world around us physically reflect the monsters that have psychologically haunted us for so long. This can be severely destructive to our ability to hope. If the only way we have got by so far was through holding on to some grain of truth that our paranoia was just that, paranoia, then what happens when the world around us manifests our fears back at us? What happens when what we suspected to be irrational begins to take concrete form in the actions and reactions of those around us?

I can only speak of myself, here, but when you’re rejected from a community you can find yourself, in your desperation for embrace, just running towards anything that is willing to embrace you; seeking refuge in tombs.

As Jean Vanier wrote in his book, Becoming Human, “To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore unlovable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.”

What came first—the man’s possessed state or the community’s shunning—we don’t know. But evil doesn’t cure evil. Demonisation doesn’t rid this man of his demons. It just perpetuates this crisis.

But then Christ lands on the shore. Christ: the image of God—the perfect reflection of what humanity is supposed to be like, both individually and corporately.

Jesus doesn’t enslave, Jesus liberates. Jesus doesn’t demonise, but heals. Jesus is not persuaded by the enemy’s lies about this man’s nature, nor does he echo the enemy’s methods; he knows that this is an image of God that has been placed in bondage, and so he breaks the chains.

Jesus breaks the chains, not just of this man, but of this community. The illusion has been snapped, and they are presented with the truth of who they have rejected for all these years. In the presence of Jesus, the humanity of this man is revealed. The one they regarded as a wild animal is sat at Jesus’ feet; fully clothed, in his right mind, and at peace. Jesus exposes their inhumanity.

When they see this, and they hear about what happened to their pigs, they become suddenly aware of Jesus’ liberating power; they’re terrified, and so they plead with Jesus to leave them alone (interestingly echoing the posture of Legion—the demonic horde that had possessed the man—at the beginning of this story).

In response, Jesus says… ‘Ok’, and gets back into the boat that he arrived in.

Jesus—the all powerful, who drives out a legion of satanic influence—consents, and leaves at the people’s bidding! He doesn’t assert himself, but he doesn’t abandon them, either. In other words, Jesus doesn’t treat this community like they treated this man or like they treated him; he doesn’t forsake them or reject them, instead he leaves them a light.

It may seem cruel of Jesus to refuse the ex-demoniac’s desire to come with him. But Jesus’ doesn’t want to abandon this community, either. So he commissions this man to be a living memorial of God’s liberation in that place.

The tormented voice at the start of this story, becomes the voice of hope at the end.

The person rejected by the community, becomes the central witness of the presence of Christ’s work within the community.

This man—the rejected man—becomes the cornerstone of the Kingdom of God in this land that was once enemy territory. (Is there an echo of the crucifixion here?).

God chooses the weak, fractured things of the world to humble the wise and the powerful.

Of course, I’m left with a question: How long did it take to lift the demonic perceptions from this community? Casting out a legion a took a moment, but changing the distorted, prejudiced, stigmatising, narrow and blind, demonic views co-opted by humanity…well, that work’s still taking place.