Scripture/Sermon of the Day

26 Jesus and his disciples sailed to the Gerasenes’ land, which is across the lake from Galilee. 27 As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, a certain man met him. The man was from the city and was possessed by demons. For a long time, he had lived among the tombs, naked and homeless. 28 When he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down before him. Then he shouted, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” 29 He said this because Jesus had already commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had taken possession of him, so he would be bound with leg irons and chains and placed under guard. But he would break his restraints, and the demon would force him into the wilderness.

“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had entered him. 31 They pleaded with him not to order them to go back into the abyss. 32 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs. Jesus gave them permission, 33 and the demons left the man and entered the pigs. The herd rushed down the cliff into the lake and drowned.

34 When those who tended the pigs saw what happened, they ran away and told the story in the city and in the countryside. 35 People came to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone. He was sitting at Jesus’ feet, fully dressed and completely sane. They were filled with awe. 36 Those people who had actually seen what had happened told them how the demon-possessed man had been delivered. 37 Then everyone gathered from the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave their area because they were overcome with fear. So he got into the boat and returned across the lake. 38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged to come along with Jesus as one of his disciples. Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Return home and tell the story of what God has done for you.” So he went throughout the city proclaiming what Jesus had done for him.

I. I’ve been watching Animal Kingdom on Netflix, a series that ran for six seasons (2016-2022) and 75 episodes. It’s based on a true story of an Australian crime family, the Pettingills. The family of the TV series is run by the grandmother Janine “Smurf” Cody. She has a borderline-incestuous relationship with her three sons and one grandson, “J” (Joshua), after he moved in with them following the overdose death of his mother, Smurf’s only daughter.

II. One of the things that make this such a great story is how complex the characters are. There’s goodness and evil in all of them, in different degrees. In one episode, the grandmother, Smurf, tells her grandson J: “You have to be careful of your uncle, Pope. He’s a good person, but sometimes he hurts people. He can’t help it.”

III. What Smurf meant is that sometimes Pope will kill someone, or beat them up badly. He can also be compassionate, as when he adopts his brother’s daughter when the brother abandons her. Pope tries to be a good father to her. But he can also be a sociopath. He suffers from a number of mental illnesses — like obsessive compulsive disorder and depression. Sometimes he’s suicidal.

IV. We need to be careful, if we watch a show like this, that we don’t judge the Cody crime family too severely. Instead of judging, imagine — what if we were born into this family? We could have been — we don’t choose our family. We also have no control over the personalities we’re “given” at birth, or the intelligence we have. We could have been born — anywhere, to any family.

The more we think about this, and realize the “arbitrariness” of our birth, the more we will hurt when we see how our country treats people who are just like us, except for their citizenship. If my grandparents came to today’s America, they’d be deported.

V. A great book — only 45 pages long — is The Human Condition by Thomas Keating. He says each of us is capable of saint-like goodness, and evil. The potential for both was there in the first children born in the Bible. We have both murderous impulse of Cain and innocent goodness of Abel. Thomas Keating quoted a woman who survived the Holocaust, though her parents were killed. She said, “I run a humanitarian organization that has helped millions of people. But I know that if my situation in life had been just a little bit different, I could have done the same things that the Nazis did to my parents and the others in the concentration camps.”

VI. All I’ve said up to now about the Cody crime family and this Holocaust survivor — and all the horrors we hear in the news every day — are contained in this short story we heard this morning in the gospel of Luke about that poor man who had a legion of demons living in him.

He was a good man, created in the image of God. But now, sometimes he hurt himself, and other people. He couldn’t help it. So his community cast him out — a homeless, spiritually dead man living with the dead in a cemetery.Evil spirits possessed him.

He was not Jewish, like Jesus. He had lived with people in the town of Gerasa who raised pigs — so they were Gentile. Gerasa is on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. Luke says as soon as Jesus got out of the boat, the man met him. The DEMONS living in the man PRAYED TO JESUS. Isn’t it odd — demons praying. And Jesus granted their prayer — they wanted to go into a herd of pigs, and Jesus “gave them permission.” Jesus is compassionate even to the devil.

VII. If you read the Bible, you see that we are all vulnerable to spirits — we are spiritually porous. Even someone as devoted to God as King David was possessed by evil. And someone as close to Jesus as Peter was overcome by fear and betrayed the one he loved. It was Peter who gave us one of the greatest prayers in the Bible. When he was sinking in the sea, he screamed for his life, “Jesus save me!”

The reading today assures us that Jesus has power over evil spirits that would harm us. He will cross a lake or any distance or obstacle to save us. We don’t even need to call him. The man with the legion of demons didn’t call Jesus. Jesus just shows up. The great Psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “Called or not called — God is there.”