The Curious Case of the Gerasene Demoniac

Picture from The Brick Testament

Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

This morning we meet Jesus in the midst of his travels going from town to town to preaching about God’s love and mercy given freely to all. Jesus’ boat has just landed in the town of the Gerasenes which is located opposite of his home territory of Galilee. As soon as he steps on land a naked wild looking man runs to meet him and asks Jesus to remove the demons from him. I imagine the demoniac was a quite a sight for sure: dirty, smelly hair flying all over the place, probably shaky, screechy and all together scary. Luke’s gospel says that he was so seized by demonic forces that he has to kept under guard and bound in chains and shackles. However this man was so strong that he could break the chains and shackles and then he would run into the wilds.
 
While some things in the bible are hard for us to understand in our modern day context, the scariness of this situation is easily understandable. However what is puzzling is how the townspeople reacted to Jesus healing this man. The before and after of the demoniac’s extreme makeover is stunning to say the least. When the people find the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at Jesus’ feet fully clothed and in his right mind, they are not relieved…instead they were afraid. And when people in the surrounding country heard about this dramatic healing they asked Jesus to leave them; for they too were seized with great fear.


What’s up with that? If I were one of the townspeople, I would like to think I would be happy to be rid of this “boogey-man” who lurked on the edges of my town in the tombs. I would be in awe of knowing that there was someone like Jesus who was so filled with the power of God that he could command a thousand demons to leave a man and go into a herd of swine. However when I step back and look at the situation systemically, it becomes easier for me to understand why the group’s first reaction to Jesus was fear. They feared Jesus because he was changing the dynamics of the town by removing the thing that was causing them the most anxiety, the boogeyman in their midst.

Last week I preached about how when a group of people face change, the group’s natural reaction is to resist that change because a group’s natural inclination is to seek equilibrium to keep things on an even keel. Some note that for the country of Gerasenes, having a boogey-man on the edges was part of their equilibrium. “The people had isolated the man with the demon and had given time and expense to guarding and controlling him. This is to say they met the situation with tolerance and management of the demonic among them. Now the power of God [through Jesus] comes to their community and disturbs that way of life. Even when it is for the good, power that can neither be calculated nor managed is frightening.” (1)  The people can’t tolerate the change that has happened. They knew how to deal with demoniac being sick, but they didn’t know how to deal with him being well. The townspeople become upset because they need him to stay sick because that is the only way they know how to deal with him. His being sick is part of what keeps the community going. In essence the community de-humanized this sick man and Jesus’ healing affirmed his humanity and brought him back into the fold.

I remember when I was in junior high I experienced a very awkward adolescence that was complicated by the death of my father when I was in seventh grade. My family had to move to a new neighborhood and so I started eighth grade in a new school. My mom was overwhelmed by the grief of the loss of my father and so attending to the finer things of raising a girl was low on her priority list. I didn’t get the new clothes, make up and fancy hairdo’s that my peers were sporting and at first I didn’t care because I was knee deep in grief over the loss of my father. For the most part I was ignored, but unfortunately there some kids would not leave me alone. Being a new kid and one that didn’t fit in, I was cast into the tombs of the junior high cafeteria, or what was known as sitting one lunch table away from the special ed. kids. Now I’m not going to relive my traumatic childhood memories from the pulpit but suffuse it to say, I was de-humanized by some in my junior class just because I didn’t fit in.

I don’t know if it was because the veil of the grief of my father’s death was lifting or if it was peer pressure (probably a bit of both) but I started caring more about my appearance. I decided to start saving my allowance so that I could purchase my own clothes rather than relying on my mother buy all my clothes for me. I also started going to a professional beautician to get my hair cut. I remember the first day I came to school with my new feathered bangs ala’ Farah Fawcett (yes I know this dates me), the reaction of my peers was legion. Many approved of my new look, suddenly wanting to play with my new locks by French braiding my hair. Some even volunteered to let me use their make up, but I kindly declined because I knew that my mom did not approve of eighth grade girls wearing makeup.

However what surprised me most were the reactions of some of the kids who picked on me during my awkward phase, the ones who made a point of de-humanizing me because I didn’t fit in. I thought that these kids would stop picking on me because I was trying hard to become one of them, but in some ways the bullying escalated. I remember getting pushed into the lockers with such scathing comments such as “I bet you think you’re better than us because you got new hair.” And “You can change your clothes, but you can’t change being a loser.”

As a child I was perplexed, but as an adult I look back and understand the negative reaction. You see, in my junior high (as with most) the kids had set up an informal pecking order. It doesn’t seem like a kind thing to do or even the right thing to do, but for kids who are struggling with the changes of adolescence it is a matter of survival. Everything makes sense when everyone has a place such as the cool kids being on the top of the heap, the brainiacs a little left of center and the rejects on the bottom. However when a kid steps out of their place and improves, for the kids who are not secure in themselves this can be perceived as a threat. For these kids, having someone who is more awkward than they are makes them feel better about themselves. As long as there is someone who is in worse shape than they are, they can at least muster up some worth for themselves by saying, “at least I’m not her.”

We have this same dynamic with the man formally known as the Gerasene Demoniac. As long as the town had a boogey man on the outskirts of town, the townspeople can sigh a breath of relief that there is someone in town worse off then they were. As long as they were putting all their energy into containing this man they could avoid looking at themselves by making this wild man their scapegoat. Jesus upsets this dynamic by making the man whole and holy enough to go back to his home to proclaim to the city how much God had done for him.

I believe that one of the struggles of the human condition is that most of us struggle with a sense of not being good enough. While it is good to strive for excellence in all we do we also need to forgive ourselves for being less than perfect. Unfortunately if left unchecked this sense of unworthiness can overwhelm a group and systemic ways of oppression are manifest in such forms as racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination that serve to lift one group as superior over another.

However as people of faith we can hold fast to our faith in the knowledge that God loves us just as we are. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians he assures his readers that they are justified by their faith alone. This justification, that is God’s salvation that comes by God’s grace, is done by God’s initiative alone. Our faith comes from God and salvation is a free gift of God’s grace and it cannot be earned by any work that we humans do. As Paul states “Now before faith came we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to the disciplinarian for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” (Gal. 3:23-26)

My brother’s and sister’s in Christ the good news is this, it is not our social standing, or the size of our bank accounts or which even which group we are associated that makes us righteous in God’s eyes. Christ teaches us that we are righteous because God created us and God loves all that God has created extravagantly. Have faith in this and clothe yourselves in this sense of beloved-ness and worthiness. Remember that as children of God, there is no longer Greek nor Jew, no longer the in crowd nor the rejects, no longer male nor female, no longer gay nor straight, no longer citizen nor illegal immigrant; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus.

May it be so.

Amen.

(1)  Craddock, Fred B. Preaching Through the Christian Year. A Comprehensive Commentary on the Lectionary Year C. (Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International, 1994.), 311.