We’re All Demon Possessed (Monster: Week 3)

Mark 5:1-20

This sermon title has to qualify as the least inspiring ever.  I promise to try harder to come up with more appealing titles like “Three Steps to New You” or “The Secret Path to Weight Loss and Success” in the future. 

If you’ve traveled through airports in the last ten years or so you know that the screening process has intensified.   When you go through security to get to your gate, you have to step into a cylindrical machine and raise your hands while the x-ray circles your body.

I’m just glad that they don’t publicly display any information about the size and shape of your body.  That would be embarrassing – if everyone behind you in line could see a large screen displaying sensitive information about you.  “This traveler is 19% body fat.”  Or, “This traveler’s waist is officially larger than his inseam.  He definitely does NOT need the bag of peanut M&M’s he is planning to purchase at the kiosk.”

More embarrassing than that would be if there were a machine that could read and display your weaknesses, character flaws, addictions and secret sins.  We could set one up here in the sanctuary and then all walk through it before we confess our sins, just to make things a little more specific and real! 

Some of the ways our lives get twisted and distorted are visible, obvious, out in the open.  If we embezzle money, we’ll go to jail.  But if we nurse a seething jealousy and envy of what others have, that might never be seen by anyone.  You can hide it.  If we fail to care for the health of our bodies, that will become visible over time.  But if we fail to care for our minds and hearts – if we recklessly fill them with trash, violence, lust, anger and hate - that can all be hidden back behind a veneer of politeness and professionalism.

Today’s gospel reading concerns a man whose life was twisted out of shape in a very public, very visible way.  We might look at him with fascinated pity, like we would gawk at the distorted shape of a car as we pass a wreck on the highway.

But what happens if we read this passage NOT as an isolated, one-off, unusual encounter between Jesus and a demon possessed man, but instead as a story that can illumine what conversion looks like for all of us? 

What if this story can illumine the dynamics of Jesus’ healing power at work in all of us?  If the Gerasene man is a rare and unique case, then of course the story leaves us cheering for Jesus, and happy for the healed man.  Even so, it would basically leave us untouched.

But if our lives, too, are caught up in harmful spirits, then we might be able to see our own conversions, baptisms, and experiences of healing as a kind of exorcism.  It would be embarrassing to be demon possessed like the Gerasene.  We like to think of ourselves as basically ok, just needing a little help when we get into trouble.  But this story invites us to see that in life we are up against an evil that is not simply external to us, but also a frightening presence within us that twists and distorts who we are.

What a terrible life for the unnamed Gerasene man.  He is unfree in so many ways.  He is chained up like an animal.  He cries out and harms himself.  He is in terrible pain.  Do you think he is so unlike you?  Are we too not in all kinds of pain, cut off from ourselves, from the lives we want, and from others we need?  Most of us spend considerable amounts of energy concealing this from public view.  But he cannot.  Perhaps the reason the story leaves him unnamed is so that we can more easily imagine ourselves playing his role.

There is something wrong with the unnamed man, of course.  He is “a man with an evil spirit” (v. 2, 8, 13).  Most Bible translations will point out that the word “evil” here is actually “unclean” in the Greek.  These are unclean spirits.  There is a lot in this story that is “unclean” from a Jewish perspective.  The territory of Gerasa was on the far side of the Sea of Galilee.  This is where the non-Jews live; it’s unclean space.  The tombs are unclean.  The pigs are unclean in a Jewish diet.   And yet the Jewish Jesus can do his work of healing and blessing even here.  There is nothing in our lives, no feature of who we are, no experience we’ve had, that cannot be a place of healing.

It appears that the demon-possessed man is both scared of Jesus and attracted to him.  Note that the story is not told in a straightforward way.  It starts over twice.  It does this so that twice we can hear that the man with unclean spirits ran to meet Jesus.  “When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him” (vs. 2).  But then we double back to hear it again: “When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him” (v. 6).

When they meet, Jesus commands the unclean spirit to leave the man.  Jesus is not afraid of him.  Jesus is not angry with him.  Jesus does not punish or penalize the man.  He has pity on his painful life and heals him by commanding the unclean spirit to leave him.  This simple story might invite us to be more compassionate with ourselves when we get caught in the grip of something bigger and stronger than we are.  And it might suggest a way to treat others with compassion. 

Next there follows an odd and curious conversation between Jesus and the unclean spirit.  Jesus asks, “What is your name?”  And that seems odd, but in Jewish culture the name carries the essence and power of a person.   Jesus asks for the name.  “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many” (v. 9).  There may be a play on words here, since “Legion” is the name of a Roman military unit of 5,400 soldiers.  We might hear in this name a suggestion that this man’s insanity has something to do with the stress and trauma of living under the oppression of a violent military occupation.  Regardless, this poor man’s life is host not to one, but to numerous harmful spirits. 

When you heard the title of this sermon, “We’re all demon possessed,” perhaps you blew it off as the exaggerated rhetoric of a preacher who’s trying to stir up controversy.  (You’d partly be right).  But what I’m asking you to imagine is not a life fully occupied by a singular, demonic force or personality.  Instead, I’m asking you to imagine a life infested with a wide variety of unclean spirits, like an abandoned building infested with all kinds of nasty vermin.  As human beings we are host to a wide array of stories, memories, images, fears, and hatreds.  And to the extent that these spirits cause pain and harm, we might refer to them as unclean spirits.  These are forces that can get us in their grip and distort us in ways that are harmful to us and to others.

Not all those possessed by demons want to be healed.  We know our demons.  We like our demons.  They are a familiar presence.  And the cost of being healed is high.  There is pain that comes from the demons.  But there is also pain in being healed of them.  Neither the man nor the crowds wanted the healing.  They wanted what we often want – to be left alone.  And yet Jesus will not leave us alone.

The conclusion of the story is surprising.  What a great story it would have been had Jesus called the man to accompany him on his mission of teaching and healing. Instead, he asks him to do something much harder.  He sends him back to the people who already knew him.  To the people who had learned not to trust him.  Jesus sends him back home. 

His task was simply to describe and express as best he could what had happened to him.  “I used to be violent and crazy, they used to chain me up, I lived in the tombs, I was in terrible pain, I cried and screamed all night, I cut myself with sharp rocks.  But those harmful spirits are gone now.  Because Jesus healed me.”  All of us here have some small network of connections and relationships.  And usually, that is your calling, your area of influence.  The risen Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, can help you learn to identify and name those hostile powers that have bent your life out of shape.  And then you can begin to give thanks for any freedom from them you’ve experienced with God’s help. 

Are you less angry?  Are you no longer a slave to some of your former addictions?  Are you more content with your life, your finances, your singleness or marriage, your past?  Are you less anxious about things you can’t control?  Are you more generous with your money, your energy, and your time?  Have you dropped the terrible burden of some old prejudices?  Have you released the poison of retaliation and been able to forgive someone who harmed you?  These are the demons that have been cast out of your life.  Now go and tell your friends and family what Jesus has done for you.