“How Free Do You Want to Be?”

Luke 8:26-39

Beaumont Presbyterian Church

June 20, 2010

The Rev. Susan Warren

Luke’s story about Jesus exorcising these demons stands in stark contrast to most healing stores that we find in the gospels.  True, it’s a story about healing.  But there are other elements here.  Chains and shackles and stampeding pigs.  More importantly, the reaction of the crowd that gathers.  We hear throughout the gospels about Jesus attracting crowds – sometimes they try to touch him, they listen to him preach, they follow him.  But this crowd, after seeing the demons demolished, asks Jesus to leave.  What’s going on?

The first thing we need to know about this story is that it reflects the literary genre known as apocalyptic.  Apocalyptic writing became prominent in the centuries after Israelis were exiled.  Apocalyptic literature is characterized by its sense of history moving to a climax.  It usually contains stories about the faithful people of God being rewarded and the wicked destroyed.  Often it’s written in code, so as to prevent it from being understood by those in power.  Apocalyptic stories were written to people being persecuted, in order to give them hope.

Our first clue that this is an apocalyptic story is revealed in the name of the demoniac.  His name is Legion – which is not a name, really, it’s a number.  Roman legions numbered between 3,000 and 6,000.  This poor man, who lives among the dead and wears no clothes, has lost his identity, just as Israel fears losing its identity.  When Jesus asks his name his coded response:  my name is Rome.  The demoniac is in shackles and defiled by death, just as Israel is shackled and defiled by Rome. Thousands of Jews had been killed by Roman legions near the year 68 in the area of Gerasa.  It was not a happy place for Jews, it was gentile country.  The power of the Roman government was oppressive.

Now, what about all these pigs?  We know what Jews think of pork.  So we know that the herdsmen who tended the swine were either gentiles or Jews who were forced to raise the herds for Romans.  Either way, when we hear of Jesus sending the demons – sending the legions of Rome – into the swine and then over the cliff – we’re hearing a story of liberation.  Jesus heals in this story, yes, but more important, Jesus is liberator.

This is classic apocalyptic literature.  It’s a story that symbolizes doom for the oppressor Rome, and liberation for Israel.

But wait.  As we have come to expect, there’s a twist.  It turns out that the people were not happy about this turn of events.  The herdsmen ran off and spread the word about what had happened. When the crowds descended on the area, they found the demoniac now sane and sitting at the feet of Jesus.  You’d think they would have been overjoyed.  You’d think they would have praised Jesus.  But no.  They were afraid.  They wanted nothing to do with this liberator Jesus, and they asked him to leave.

What are we to make of this behavior?  The story doesn’t tell us who was in the crowd or why they were afraid.  Some commentators claim that gentile herdsmen must have been upset at losing their swine and their livelihood.  Maybe the cost of liberation was just too high.

I hear something else in this story.  I hear the all-too-human fear that can accompany liberation.  Oh, we claim that we want to be free.  And when it comes to living in a free country, when it comes to our ability to move about unrestricted and to make our own choices, I suppose that’s true.  But then how do we explain the shackles with which we bind ourselves?   We enslave ourselves to our schedules, to our possessions, to our need for superficial gratification. We burden ourselves with anxiety and worry.  I’m not talking about reasonable concern for the health and safety.  I’m talking about the sort of pacing and hand-wringing that often accompanies every-day living.

For 11 years a man named Merhan Karimi Masseri was a man without a country. He lived in a Paris airport.  He had no passport.  He had no citizenship.  He had no papers that enabled him to leave the airport or fly to another country.  He said his refugee documents had been stolen.  After several failed attempts to leave, he finally won permission from airport authorities to live in Terminal 1. He wrote in a diary, lived off handouts and cleaned up in the airport bathroom.

Nasseri lived in the airport for 11 years before French authorities gave him a travel card and a French residency permit.  Suddenly he was free to go anywhere he wanted.  But when airport officials handed him his walking papers, he smiled, tucked the documents in his folder, and resumed writing in his diary.  He was afraid to leave the bench and table that had been his home for 11 years.[i]

Liberation can be frightening.  True liberation – the kind of liberation in which we live exactly as we feel called to live; the kind of liberation in which we express how we feel despite the cost; the kind of liberation in which we stand for what we believe and answer only to God – is a truly scary concept.  Most of us live and behave to some degree according to the standards that we perceive are expected of us by our peers, by our bosses, by our families, even by strangers with whom we share community.

The Jewish author Herman Wouk told of meeting modern Israel’s first president, David Ben-Gurion, and how Ben-Gurion urged him to move to the newly planted nation of Israel.  Wouk and his wife Sarah visited Ben-Gurion at his home in the Negev desert.  It was 1955 – just seven years after the country was established, and it was being harassed by terrorists from Egypt and Gaza.

“You must return here to live,” Ben-Gurion told Wouk.  “this is the only place for Jews like you.  Here you will be free.”

Wouk was incredulous.  “Free?  Free?  With enemy armies ringing you, with their leaders publicly threatening to wipe out (the country), with your roads impassable after sundown – free?”

Ben-Gurion retorted:  “I did not say safe, I said free.”[ii]

I suspect that some of the people in the crowds at Gerasa secretly yearned for the kind of liberation that Jesus offered.  I suspect that many of us have that same longing.

What would it take to liberate even a small portion of your life from the burdens you carry? The answer will be different for each of us. We can figure it out only by paying attention to our priorities, how we spend our time, the value we place on relatively insignificant matters, the time we waste trying to control what might be better left to God.

I confess to carrying with me every day the burden of self-imposed oppression.  But I carry with me, too, a hope and a prayer that one day my faith will overcome my fear.  It’s a prayer that I hold for all of you and for all of humankind.  For that is the day that our demons will be exorcised.  That is the day that we will sit clean and whole as disciples at the feet of Jesus.  May it be so.  Amen.