June 23, Ordinary 12C (Luke 8:26-39)
Sometimes the terror we know is more tolerable than the peace we can’t imagine.
Has a naked person ever walked into your church? One Sunday morning, in the park across from our church’s front door, a man sat on a bench completely unclothed. Nervously, the ushers asked my boss what they should do about it, and he replied, “Nothing—unless he crosses the street. If he does, don’t let him come inside!” Although apparently set free from the “curse” of our first parents, a man who displays such freedom was not welcome in a dignified place of worship.
In Luke 8, we read about a naked man who has plagued the people of Gerasa with his unruly behavior. Although the townspeople have tried to lock up the demon-possessed man “with chains and shackles,” he has always been able to overpower them. Unable to restrain him yet unwilling to submit to a demonic force they cannot control, the Gerasenes have managed to push him away to the place where they feel that he belongs—on the very edge of society, amidst the tombs, out of sight, out of mind, as good as dead. They have not solved the problem, but they have succeeded in brushing it far enough aside to establish an uncertain peace.
When Jesus arrives, this precarious balance is upset. Confronted by the presence of the Holy One, the demon-possessed man falls at Jesus’ feet and cries out, identifying the rabbi in ways no ordinary human has yet discerned: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” Jesus demands the demons’ name, claiming authority over the Legion yet granting the evil spirits’ request to enter a herd of pigs. The pigs rush down the bank and drown, symbolically returning the spirits to their primordial realm—the realm over which Jesus has just asserted his power in the stilling of the storm (8:22–25).
