Sermon for Trinity 3

Luke 8:26-39

Luke’s Gospel is full of stories of healing. It’s not surprising really as Luke was a physician and it was these stories of healing that would have really grabbed his attention, especially those stories where it appears the medical profession could do nothing. And so we have the story of this deranged man, so dangerous that he had to be restrained and when that did not work, left to roam among the deserted tombs on the hillside. On first reading, it would be easy to dismiss this story as being fanciful and irrelevant – just another story written to illustrate the power of Jesus. After all, nobody today believes in things like demon possessed people and whole herds of suicidal pigs. But look deeper and the story has a lot to tell us about ourselves. So this morning I want to do just that by splitting it up and looking at the main protagonists: the people and the man.

The People

A number of things strike me about the people of the region; the first is that they are a people who have forgotten the laws of God. How do I know – simply because they are keeping pigs and animal forbidden under Jewish law. The second thing is they are a people living in fear. They are in fear of this man. They don’t know how to handle his violent outbursts and so they try to restrain him. When this does not work, it seems they are prepared to put the man out of sight in an area that is not frequently visited. They are in fear of Jesus. When someone does come along with the answer they don’t like it because that answer includes the very God they have rejected and that too brings with it fear of judgement. They are also a people who have put profit before the individual. They are more concerned for the pigs and what they represent than the man who has been made well. The more I think about it the more I realise they are just like us.

We in the UK are a nation who has forgotten the laws of God. At not so long ago it could be said that British Law to a great extent reflected the laws of God, I doubt that could be said today, laws are passed that constantly run against the teaching of scripture. But that is hardly surprising in a nation that puts spending a Sunday morning in Tesco above spending time with God. Consumerism now rules at every level – we prefer pigs to people, paying more in bribes in order to sell arms in one year than we spend on Mental Health in ten.

As God has become less and less important so fear has risen in the population. People now live in fear. We refuse to let our children play alone, for fear of the paedophile: we fear to go out because a couple of ‘hoodies’ are standing on the street corner; we are in fear of our homes being broken into and so we invest in all sorts of security; we are in fear of going to the city centre and so we have more CTV cameras than the most oppressive dictatorship. We are afraid of the young Muslim lad down the street because he has a beard like the 9/11 terrorists– I could go on.

So we try to deal with these people who have us in fear. We place them in chains, with restraining orders and electronic tags, but they break free and so we seek to put them out of the way in places we rarely go among the tombs of prison. Our problem is we are running out of places.

Finally, we are in fear of God. We have the new phenomena of aggressive secularism which seeks to erase God from all public life. We even have aggressive atheism, which is positively evangelical about spreading the message that there is no God. Whatever reasons people may give for not believing in God, or not coming into church, the thing I sense most is fear. Fear that if they engage with God, they will have to change and all they value will be taken away. The pigs may well run down the slope.

The Man

And so we turn our attention to the man. Naked and in the wild he is rejected by his family and society. He is being driven by forces of which he has no understanding and has little personal control over his life and what he does. But Jesus attitude to this man is in stark contrast to that of his community. Jesus immediately recognises the forces that are driving him and decides to do something about it. Instead of being afraid, Jesus approaches the man who responds by falling to his knees. There is a conversation, the outcome of which is the man is freed and is later found sitting “clothed and in his right mind.” The man desires to follow Jesus with his disciples but is given a more important job of telling his story to those who are at present just as driven, by their fear.

Just as there were parallels with our society and the people, so too there are similarities with the man. All of us are driven by forces of which we have no understanding. All of us, to some extent, live in our own private world which may be very different from the one people see. All of us need the healing that comes from Jesus that frees us from those hidden forces and private worlds and allows the real you and me to exist. And, having received that healing we need to make sure that the message gets around. The truth here that Jesus was not healing one man, but a whole society. None of us who have encountered Jesus do so just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all with whom we come in contact.

Conclusion

This is a story of hope. It reminds me that however hopeless things may seem, Christ is able to redeem the situation. A later incident is recorded in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus lands once again on their shore “And after the people of that place recognised him, they sent word throughout the region and brought all who were sick to him, and begged him that they might even touch the fringe of his cloak: and all who touched it were healed.” Our man had done what was asked of him.

It seems to me that we have two options . We can live in fear feeling we are being driven by powers outside our control. Or we can accept the healing and freedom that Jesus offers and then confidently go and tell others.

Remember: no society is ever changed by its rulers and its laws which can only ever deal with external things. Society is changed however, by ordinary people who seek to free people from their fears and (for the want of a better phrase) the demons that drive them. Strikes me that all of us have some pretty important work to do.