First Sunday after Trinity
“Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.”
Summary
The story of Jesus’ encounter with the demoniac in Luke 8:26-39 could be read as just another miraculous healing. A man is set free from all that has imprisoned him: physically, socially and psychologically.
But healing miracles are never just about the person being healed they are metaphors for some larger social ill in need of healing.
The miracle takes place in Gerasa, the site of a massacre of Hebrews resisting Roman rule. The demon calls itself Legion, the term for a garrison of 5-6,000 occupying forces. Even the pigs echo the symbol of the infamous 10th fretensis legion. All of these references would be familiar to those who witnessed the healing.
Isaiah 65:1-9, reminds us that Jesus is entering a dangerous and prohibited place, that dealing with swine and entering tombs is forbidden. The story assures us that there is no human condition so abject and abominable that God cannot enter, bringing healing and redemption.
But just as the people of God in Isaiah have rejected God’s “outstretched hands” and turned instead to other powers, so the crowd in Luke reject Jesus. They are “seized with fear”. They understand that Jesus’s actions are about more than the healing of one the man; they are a challenge to all the forces that constrain and exclude God’s children.
They are a challenge to us too: can we see what binds us? do we believe that God’s power is greater than the forces at work in oppression and injustice? do we have the courage to challenge them? do we want ourselves, and all God’s, children to be free?
FIRST READING
Isaiah 65:1-9
I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask,
to be found by those who did not seek me.
I said, “Here I am, here I am,”
to a nation that did not call on my name.
I held out my hands all day long
to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good,
following their own devices;
a people who provoke me
to my face continually,
sacrificing in gardens
and offering incense on bricks;
who sit inside tombs
and spend the night in secret places;
who eat the flesh of pigs,
with broth of abominable things in their vessels;
who say, “Keep to yourself;
do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.”
These are a smoke in my nostrils,
a fire that burns all day long.
See, it is written before me:
I will not keep silent, but I will repay;
I will indeed repay into their laps
their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together,
says the Lord;
because they offered incense on the mountains
and reviled me on the hills,
I will measure into their laps
full payment for their actions.
Thus says the Lord:
As the wine is found in the cluster,
and they say, “Do not destroy it,
for there is a blessing in it,”
so I will do for my servants’ sake
and not destroy them all.
I will bring forth descendants from Jacob
and from Judah inheritors of my mountains;
my chosen shall inherit it,
and my servants shall settle there.
GOSPEL
Luke 8.26-39
“Then they arrived at the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on shore, a man from the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had not worn any clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me,” for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they became frightened. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then the whole throng of people of the surrounding region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone out begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
