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Today’s story may seem like an odd story. It’s hard to know exactly what’s going on this man.
We do know that he’s in distress, and he’s been that way for a long time. He lives underground, in the tombs, where it was dark…maybe the only light that he saw fell in shards and slivers. And he’s watched – guardspeople are clocking his every move. He’s in chains, which he sometimes breaks free of, so that he can get out into the open wilds. But then he’s driven back down into the tombs, where he is shackled once again. It may have been cold down there, and he may have been cold because he had not worn clothes in a long time; which makes me think that maybe he did not know how vulnerable he was.
Vulnerable to the dramas of the world, as if he had been transported from the Gospels of Mark and Luke where this story appears, and deposited into one of the Psalms that describes the deep dark depths of the pit closing in on him, alone with no companions, and crying out to God. It almost sounds like this story could be one of the Psalms.
But we are in the Gospel of Luke and down below, we don’t know if it was a small space where he lived or a cavernous one. Places like that can have a echo, which makes it hard, sometimes, to distinguish between your voice and someone else’s.
In today’s story the voice that the man hears is Jesus’ voice. And there are other ones: the voices of demons.
Scripture tells us it’s demons that have a hold on this man. That’s what’s driving him in and out of the tombs, and in and out of the wilds and in and out of chains.
Jesus tells the demons to leave the man.
I think Jesus speaks as if the demons are separate from the man, like they’re a different entity from him. I think Jesus is articulating that the demon is in the man, but is not of the man. It is there temporarily, taking up space in him, but it is not what he is made of.
The demons beg Jesus to have mercy on it, to not throw them into the abyss. I find this endlessly fascinating. Even demons recognize Jesus’ sovereignty! Which makes sense because Scripture tells us that after the crucifixion Jesus knows the pit because he has been there. Right after this sermon when we say the Creed, we remark that “he descended to the dead.”
So our Lord Jesus Christ is familiar with the abyss. As Christians, we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God, that God is always with us, even when we are in the pit. Jesus is there too.
Jesus asks the man who he is, what is his name. The man responds, “Legion”, which with a historical lens we learn is the word for a unit of the Roman army made up of anywhere from 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers.
“Legion.” Those demons seem to know that Jesus is going to do something to them. And he does. Jesus drives the demons right out of the man. He puts the demons into some pigs, the pigs drown, the keepers of the pigs get mad, maybe because their livelihood of poultry is ruined (we’re in Gentile territory now) and so they want Jesus to leave.
Then we see the man healed. In an image which I find beautiful and captivating: the man is sitting at Jesus’ feet, now wearing his clothes and in his right mind.
I believe what is happening here is Jesus has returned the man to himself.
The demons that had a hold on him are gone.
In the Episcopal church, we don’t talk a lot about wrestling with demons. But we do know what it’s like to wrestle. We might not struggle underground with chains and shackles, but we know what it’s like to struggle. We wrestle with the stress of career or job loss or even getting a job. We may struggle with financial stress or work drama or we get caught up in the headlines of the day. We may struggle with our inner critic or with expectations that other people have for our lives. In your life, it might look like something else. Sometimes you might feel outside yourself or like your life is fractured or not coming together.
We might not understand biblical demons, but we may be familiar with a modern demon: that sometimes we lose ourselves.
I think that’s what’s happening in today’s story. The man forgot something important: he forgot who he was. It was Jesus who reminded him.
Jesus does that. He has done that in my life and maybe he has done that in yours. Jesus reminds us who we are.
Jesus healed him by reminding him that he is not Legion, but that who he is, is a child of God, made in the image and likeness of God.
We Christians say that a lot, it’s in Scripture several times – we are made in the image and likeness of God.
I’ll share with you one way I learned what that meant ~ it was because of something my husband Darius said to me years ago. I remember I was mad about something someone had done, I wasn’t mad at him, I was mad at someone else. I was having a tirade at home telling Darius about how angry I was and how I was going to talk to this person and tell them about themselves! Darius listened, wisely and quietly as he does. He told me this: “Think of who you come from. You are your mother’s daughter, Maggie Martin’s daughter. You are your grandmother’s granddaughter, Ruby Davis’ granddaughter. When they faced difficult experiences, when they suffered – they carried themselves with an elegance, and a dignity. You can see it. They didn’t let anyone take them out of themselves. Don’t let anyone take you away from who you are.”
What those words reminded me is the inherent dignity that was inside my mother and grandmother, and is inside of me. And that’s not something passed down through our ancestors. The point is, we are all made that way by God. There is a dignity in everyone.
Being made in God’s image is not just about attributes, it’s about how we act in our everyday lives that reflects God’s nature and God’s purposes.
What I think Darius was telling was to be merciful.
That’s why now when I get mad I try to count to ten and either bite my tongue or choose my words carefully because that upholds my dignity and it serves the other person and their dignity. I know God is merciful, and I want to live in to that.
That’s why we tell the truth, even when it’s hard or uncomfortable. Because God values justice and we want to live in to that.
That’s why we forgive the person who hurt us and we decide not to hold a grudge. Because God is forgiving and we are made to be too.
God tells us that when we act differently than how God made us, God still loves us and embraces us. And if Jesus can be merciful to biblical demons, then we can remember that the person we dislike the most, is also made in the image and likeness of God.
That’s why we are encouraged at here at Epiphany to have a devoted, daily prayer life. Because that connects us to our soul. Our soul ~ The untouchable, piece of God that God put in us, that doesn’t belong to us and is eternal.
I want to make one last point ~ When I reflect on what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God, there is one thing that I believe to the depth of the core of my being. Being made in the likeness and image of God means we have a bandwidth for love and for care and for compassion that is infinitely wider and deeper than we think it is. We are here, with one another, to remind each other of that.
The world can be a cacophony of voices, and often we are vulnerable to them, but God’s voice of love tells us that we are not those chains, we are not our demons. Even when you have a legion of worries, you are not any of those things. God always calls us to remember who we are. We are here to live and to love as the Body of Christ, and so we remind each other…You are a beloved child of God.