When Jesus encounters the demonic, we may not be sure what to do with that. But look at what others do with that…
For Sunday
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 7C
Collect
O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Luke 8:26-39
“They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.”
Reflection
When Jesus encounters a man chained in a cemetery, only to discover that he is filled with a legion of demons, we know this is going to be an exciting story. And this one doesn’t disappoint.
A legion is a collection of Roman soldiers, numbering between three and six thousand people. For the demon to tell Jesus to call it “Legion” is evoking a scale that is mind-blowing. When one demon can do incredible disruption to a person or his family, thousands must be unbearable.
This is, of course, the reason the man is chained among the dead. To protect the people from the demons within him.
So many profound connections!
We have a really handy sense of the metaphor when it comes to demons. If we say to one another, that a friend is “battling his demons” we all get it and send our sympathy. Our demons can vary depending on our situation. For some it is addiction. Others it is illness. And for others it is relationships.
We also look to science fiction or horror films to better explore the demonic in more literal terms. We can see the evils that infect us and find ourselves rooting them out and building new patterns which represent health and growth for us.
Taking it seriously
Of course, my regular refrain when wrestling with the stuff of scripture is that we tend to either take it too literally or not literally enough. We have a way of avoiding the profoundly revelatory truth embedded in the gospel by thinking its about demons in a story or else it is a friend’s struggle with alcoholism.
What we need is to engage the demons in the story as they are and go from there.
And when we do, we find that the demons unsurprisingly fear Jesus. After all, he’s in the demon-stomping business.
But what we might find curious is that the demons fear him before he’s done anything. Only the demons know who he is and what he’s capable of. This tells us a lot about demons and everyone else.
And yet, when Jesus puts an end to the town’s demon problem, what happens to the people who are no longer tormented by them? They, too, fear Jesus.
We have an easy time comprehending why evil fears good. But why the people fear it too—that is extraordinarily curious. Perhaps there are evils beyond the demons that they would rather Jesus not uncover.
Problem in the Text
This week’s video notices that Jesus’s show of power makes everyone afraid.