My Encounter with a Demon: A Sermon on Luke 8:26-39

I had an encounter with a demon this week. I didn’t recognize it as such at the time, but our text this week gave me the opportunity to reflect on the experience and realize that what I had experienced was, in fact, a demon. I’ll tell you that story, the demon and how it was cast into the abyss, later in the sermon, but before we get there, I want to talk a little bit about what a demon might be, and what we can learn from this text about demons.

Demons are a tricky subject in modern time, especially in mainline, science-embracing denominations like our own. Because what actually is a demon? What is wrong with the man in this text? Are demons really external supernatural forces that cause us to do things beyond our control? Is “the devil made me do it” a legitimate excuse for evil behavior? Are they undiagnosed mental illness, something we’ve now done away with, with medications and a deeper understanding of human brain function? Are they a literary device or a social construct of a pre-modern era?

One of my favorite sermons of all time is on this text. I’ll post a link to it on the Trinity Facebook page. The sermon is by Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber. She talked about how she struggled with how to think about demons, until she remembered a time when her depression felt so much like a character in her life that it seemed appropriate to give it a name. She called it Francis.

It doesn’t as much matter what a demon is, Bolz Weber reasoned, as what a demon does. Demons are things that isolate us, that separate us, that cause us pain, that make us feel vulnerable and powerless and weak. Be they depression, addiction, stereotypes, or corrupt and fixed systems, demons are the things that keep us from living the kinds of lives of connection and richness and freedom that God wants for us.

So with that as our working definition, let’s take a look at this story of the Gerasene Demoniac. Jesus traveled across the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gerasenes. When they reach the shore, they are met by a man who had demons. He lived in the tombs, which for the original hearers of this story would have been an immediate clue to this man’s isolation. In the first century, tombs were considered unclean. In fact, in first century Jewish culture, tombs were painted white so people would know to stay away from them. The text tells us this man was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles. If our working definition of demons is something that keeps us isolated, vulnerable, powerless, and in pain, an affliction that kept a man shackled to tombs away from everyone else certainly fits that description.

The man with the demons approached Jesus and shouted, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God.” Which is fascinating because the central question in this section of Luke is who is Jesus? In fact, the verse immediately preceding this story, Jesus and the disciples were out on the boat, Jesus had just calmed the storm, and the disciples asked each other, “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” The disciples, who’ve been traveling with Jesus, learning from Jesus, following Jesus, the disciples didn’t know who Jesus was, but the demons immediately identified him.

There’s also something else going on here, with the demons naming Jesus. In first century culture, the name, the identity of something, was believed to have great power. If you could name something, you could control it. So the demons are making a power play on Jesus. They are naming him for what he is, in an attempt to gain mastery over him, to control him. They’re saying to him, you cannot hide from us, we know exactly who you are.

But Jesus flipped the script on the demons, demanding of them, “What is your name?” “Legion,” they told him. A legion was a unit of the Roman army of four to six thousand men. So a lot of demons. But it doesn’t matter, because Jesus has forced them to identify themselves. By naming them, he’d forced them to come out of the shadows and into the light. They could not hide and play their sneaky games anymore, they had been identified for what they really were, and now, no matter what they try, they could be seen and named and controlled.

Jesus named the demons, and the demons knew they were defeated. And so, in order to avoid destruction, they begged Jesus to let them enter a herd of pigs. Jesus gave them permission, but this legion of demons were too much for the pigs to handle, so the pigs rushed down the banks and into the lake and were drowned. Thus, one can assume, sending the demons into the abyss anyway. Theologian Alan Culpepper writes: “When it gets its way, evil is always destructive, and ultimately self-destructive.”

And the man? When the people from the city rush to the tombs to find what has happened, they found the man clothed, sane, and seated at the feet of Jesus. The man wanted to journey on with Jesus, but Jesus instead told him to return to his home and declare how much God had done for him. Because that is another feature that is always true of any healing Jesus does, the final step of healing is to end their isolation, to restore the person to their community. If the effect of a demon is isolation, the cure is connectivity. Demons are not kept at bay alone, but in the midst of a community.

So we’ve been talking about demons on a micro level. But this same definition, things that isolate us, that make us feel alone, and vulnerable, and powerless, that same definition works for demons on a macro level. I’m talking about demons like homophobia, religious extremism, racism, and Islamophobia. Let me tell you about the demon I encountered last Sunday. And I have to be honest with you; this is a confession as much as it is an illustration.

After the council retreat on Sunday, I went to the gym. I was tired, my heart was heavy, from the news of the shooting in Orlando, and I needed to just work it out of my system. Some of you may have picked up by now, I don’t actually enjoy running all that much, it is a spiritual discipline for me. There is something about the oxygen deprivation that helps quiet the chaos in my mind and lets me hear the still, small, voice of God. Sometimes I talk to God while I run, sometimes I listen. And sometimes I just rest in the peace of being too exhausted to think. The peace of exhaustion was what I was seeking on Sunday. So I went to the gym, cranked the treadmill up to a speed just on the edge of uncomfortable, and I let the world disappear.

Pretty soon, a woman came and got on the treadmill next to me. This was fine; though the treadmills are close enough that we could touch each other, the unspoken etiquette of the gym is that it is perfectly acceptable to totally ignore the person next to you. We might as well have been in separate rooms.

I was watching the soccer game, but a few TVs down, CNN was playing its unending mass shooting news script. I’ve seen enough of these now to know you can never trust the reports in the first 24 hours of a tragedy, so I was deliberately ignoring it. But the person riding the bike was not, and pretty soon, that person got up and struck up a conversation with the woman on the treadmill next to mine. And as much as I did not want to be bothered, as much as I wanted to sink into my own head, I could not help but hear their conversation. It started out innocently enough, shock at the horror of the events, sadness for the victims, wonderings at the motives of someone who could commit such violence. And then slowly the conversation started to shift away toward refugees, toward homosexuality in general, toward what scripture might or might not say about homosexuality and Islam and what the message might be. The woman on the treadmill next to me immediately recognized the demon of homophobia and Islamophobia begin to rear its ugly head and she struggled to name what she was hearing and bring light and identity to it.

So this is the confession part. I did not immediately speak up. I ran on my treadmill wishing to God, I won’t say praying, but wishing, that this conversation would end, that she would be able to wrap it up, and that I could ignore it. I was, after all, “off-duty,” on the treadmill at the gym, and I was out of breath, and just as baffled as she was at how to respond. Me, an ELCA pastor, a trained Bible scholar, an ally and partner with people who work for inclusivity. But the demon of fear took power in my fear and my silence and it fed and grew in the midst of the three of us. Friends, let me tell you what you already know, it is scary to speak up in these sorts of situations. But I did eventually speak out. And let me tell you why. Because it wasn’t my own courage that got me to enter into the conversation. It was the courage of the woman on the treadmill next to me. It was the fact that I had spent the morning in worship with all of you, and I knew I owed it to you to be the kind of pastor who speaks up. It was my dear friends and colleagues from seminary and beyond who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered and are some of the best, and brightest, and most faithful pastors I know. Her, and you, and them, it was this community of believers who finally cast out the demon of fear and silence that had possession of my own heart and freed me to turn to the people next to me and say, “you know, I can’t help but overhear your conversation. Can I tell you what my faith has taught me?” And you know what happened when I said that? That demon? The demon of fear and homophobia and religious extremism? That demon went away. And the three of us. The three of us, because let me be very clear, none of us, not even the person who started the conversation, none of us were the demon, the demon was the fear and the ignorance, the three of us were then able to have a beautiful and grace-filled conversation about love and acceptance and what it means to be made in the image of God. That demon went away because we named it. Because we named it, we brought it to the light, we called it for what it was, and it could not stand up to the truth of its own name.

So what are demons? Honestly, I don’t think it matters and I don’t think that is the point of the story. I think the point of the story is that demons can be defeated. We do not have to be held captive by that which seeks to keep us isolated, vulnerable, alone, powerless, and in pain. Isolated, vulnerable, powerless and in pain is not what Jesus wants for us. We know that because anytime Jesus saw a demon, he sent the sucker packing. And what’s more, I think the point of this story is we have the power to cast out demons. It is a power Jesus gave to the in Luke chapter nine, and it is a power that we also inherit through our baptism in Christ Jesus. The man with a demon was found clothed and in his right mind, our Galatians reading for today said that “As many of you as were baptized with Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” And what’s more, this casting out demons is not a thing we do alone. Jesus always ended by connecting the person back to their community. The good news in this text is that we have this power together. Further on in the Galatians reading, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. So stand up, be brave, call a thing a thing, and send those demons packing. We have this authority through Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God, the one whom demons fear. Amen.

Here is a link to the amazing sermon Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber preached on this text. The title of her sermon is "Demon Possession and Why I Named My Depression Francis."