Pentecost 3 Luke 8:26-39 6/20/04

"Possessed"

No one who hasn’t been there can begin to imagine what it is like to be possessed. Whether it is truly having demons take over your mind, body and spirit or a form of mental illness, like schizophrenia, being possessed is terrifying.

We get a small picture of what it must have been like from today’s gospel. We are told that for a long time the demon possessed man had worn no clothes. Even leaving aside how out of touch with reality a person would have to be to break social rules about dress, the possessed man would have suffered physically from scorching sun by day and bitter cold by night.

Then, there was having a graveyard for a home. In a communal society being together and contributing to the group is far more important than seeing to one’s own individual needs. To be excluded or to isolate oneself from the community was unthinkable.

This is what life was like for the Gerasene demoniac: being filthy and smelly all the time, feeling extremes of pain, terrified, confused, driven and, oh so terribly alone.

It must have been almost as bad for the towns people and farmers or shepherds who had contact with the one possessed. Just imagine this raving lunatic banging on your door in the night, or jumping out at you as you traveled down the road or perhaps, threatening your children as they played. And this had gone on for years ?!

Then, in just minutes, everything changes. The demons are sent off to infest a herd of pigs - the first known case of deviled ham, the man is found to be fully in possession of his faculties, clothed and listening to Jesus as a disciple.

Ahhh, peace could finally return to the community. You would expect the people to be beside themselves with joy and gratitude.

But, just the opposite happens. The people are afraid and ask Jesus to leave the area. What ingrates!

I think though that there is more here than just a primitive people being scared witless by a demonstration of divine power.

Jesus has turned a whole social system upsidedown. In freeing the possessed and restoring his stability, Jesus has de-stabalized an entire community. The freedom they can now experience scares them crazy.

We can, I think, safely assume that this man had exhibited bizarre signs of possession for many years. During that time the community had acted to accommodate his presence and had even perhaps built a life around him. There were people who found purpose and a sense of self-worth in trying to restrain him. The local economy may have benefitted by the frequent need for better, stronger chains. Why, there may even have been a system of child discipline centered around the admonition, "If you don’t behave yourself you may grow up to be like that man out among the tombstones." And who knows how many other ways the community benefitted or had, at least, developed coping techniques so that life could go on with some sense of normalcy. Surely, many would have wished he could get well and be out of his misery, but in time people get used to, even feel a perverse need for abnormality because it keeps the system going.

Any system seeks a state of stability and will do its utmost to achieve it or return to it when upset. If a part of the system becomes dysfunction - like having a demoniac living in a community - the system will adjust itself so that life can go on, even if the going on is itself dysfunctional. This is true for all systems. It happens in a community, an institution, a family and even the church. If the system has developed an unhealthy way of coping with a person, process or event - one that is ultimately damaging to the system - the system will still resist change, even a change that could be a blessing. Systems seek stability and change destabalizes, so the system resists change, including change for the better.

Living with and adapting to this demon possessed man must have been a long term experience because "the people from the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them." Like antibodies that come from all parts of the body to ward off a viral invader, the people come together to protect their system. Their system was threatened by this healers who brought change, thus Jesus must go.

This makes me wonder. What might we be coping with that we think we’d like to have changed? How would we react if Jesus appeared and made changes that held promise for a better life together? How would those changes effect us? Would we ask Jesus to leave? Amen.