Sermon for joint Lutheran / Episcopal service on Wednesday, March 8, 2006

by The Rev. Susan Anslow Williams, from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Texts: Psalm 23; Mark 5:1-20, Jesus heals the Gerasene Demoniac

Everyone in the region knew he was up there, that crazed and dangerous man who lived in the tombs. It was getting so you couldn’t pay your respects to the dead, without worrying that he might accost you, maybe even attack you.

It had started out naturally enough, as anyone would tell you. A widowed father, pushed beyond his mortal limits. Everyone had reached out to comfort him when his wife had died in childbirth, all those years ago. And he had struggled through, taking some consolation in his babe who had lived against the odds; and he cared for him and raised him on his own. No one was quite sure where other relatives lived; they certainly didn’t turn up to help.  So the neighbors did their best, and it was enough. The child grew.

Then tragedy struck again. Just as the little fellow was old enough to attend classes in the synagogue, and help his father with their small farm, he began to grow weak, wouldn’t eat, and had no energy even to leave the house. When the pain set in, he couldn’t even sit up, let alone walk. Everyone could hear his cries; and no physician’s potions made any difference. His father lived in a daze, leaving the farm to the weeds and the insects as he ventured out occasionally to buy food, or accept a gift of soup, or a soothing poultice, from a concerned neighbor.

When the child died it was a blessing, for him; but his father could bear no more. Disappearing immediately after the child’s burial service, covering his ears to blot out the refrains of lament still fresh in his memory, the poor man began to roam the hillside,  even taking up residence in those horrifying tombs. Separated, untouchable – for any contact with the dead renders one unclean. And for cutting himself with stones, for he did this also, and it is forbidden.

So what could they do for him? The neighbors who had tried to help during the child’s illness brought him food; and when he ran from their sight, they left it under an olive tree, and the next day the bowl was licked clean.

Some thought they would help him forcibly, and tried to restrain him to bring him home, but through some unnatural strength he could break any strap, even shackles. In his fury he roared at all would-be benefactors, and threatened violence to himself and to any that came near. The conclusion was reasonable enough:  He has been possessed by demons. He has lost his soul through grief, they said; and something evil has taken hold of him instead.

Soon even the kindest neighbor found reasons not to walk near that place, stopped making the extra bowl of soup, even forgot him during their prayers. The people of Gerasa began to bury their dead on the other side of the hill; and a new footpath was worn on that side to avoid the area known to be home of the violent “demoniac.” So there he stayed, alone with the dead, and his memories, and his pain; until Jesus of Nazareth crossed the sea, calming a storm, to find him and bring him out of the valley of the shadow of death.

***

I’ve never seen an actual demoniac – a person possessed by an evil spirit, or perhaps more than one as this Scripture passage suggests. But I have known persons who dwell in the tombs – figuratively, spiritually, if not literally. Those overcome by their grief, perhaps mixed with blame; those so angry at God for the death of their beloved that no hope can bring them out of that valley. Probably we all know someone who has gone to that dark place, or has a family member, whose personality, spiritual life and/or relationships with others have been forever changed by grief. 

“The Gerasene Demoniac,” as our story’s anti-hero is called, has been remembered for 2,000 years primarily for that aggressive and cruel legion of demons he sheltered – who met their doom so dramatically in the herd of swine plummeting off the cliff. He victim himself is more of a mystery.  So I made up a history for him; what tragedy would send him into the tombs, apart from living companionship, to rage and injure himself with stones? Once he had a life, once he had a community – his “own people” to whom Jesus finally restores him.

There are other clues hidden in the text – for instance, the herd of swine. No pigs would be raised by Jews, so this area was clearly Gentile; quite a step for Jesus to be traveling there. To get over to this side of the Sea of Galilee,  he and his traveling companions took a boat –  and on the way was the great storm that had the disciples so terrified they cried out to Jesus “Do you not care that we are perishing?!” – after which he rebuked the winds, and also the “little faith” of his friends.

As our Wednesday series draws stories of healing from Mark’s Gospel, it’s helpful – for me, at least – to place them into the larger framework that Holy Spirit would like us to know.     These healing events – particularly in the first half of Mark, before the definitive Transfiguration experience on the mountaintop – are providing hints as to who Jesus really is, and what his mission on earth might be.

Seeking out the lost –even the most untouchable – is what I find. Jesus is willing to brave the storms, literal, religious and political, to find those who feel themselves cut off from God and the community.  Last Wednesday we heard about the hemorrhaging woman, whose healing follows this story in Mark’s Gospel –  emphasizing to all his listeners that absolutely no one is “too far gone” to be found, and loved into wholeness, by Christ.

He is also willing to take on the demons. Our culture has trouble with that concept; so perhaps think of them as all the powers – and they are real – which would tempt us, or drive us, away from God’s love. We let them in, not realizing what they are about; and allow our grief, or our anger, or our self-recriminations, feed them from within. The tombs or the wilderness in which we find ourselves are frequently of our own design, at least in part.

Yet Jesus seeks us even there, though the powers do their best to oppose him. This story touches me particularly, this week as several good friends and a handful of parishioners are journeying through the valley of the shadow of death. One family is coping with the devastating news that their child has cancer, and will be facing a very difficult battle, essentially living at Children’s Hospital in Buffalo for the foreseeable future. Another dear person has had a relapse in her cancer treatment. Another has a family member in need of a heart transplant. We shake our heads daily at a new piece of bad news.

Yet it is to these shores that Jesus makes his way. And it is often through us, through you and me, and our larger communities of faith, that Jesus confronts the storms and takes on the demons. Do we know, in our deepest hearts, that the Psalmist is right:

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me…” ?             Are we brave enough to venture into that dark place to tell the people we love that they are not alone, and that Christ who broke the gates of death and hell is calling them out, into the light of Easter?

For yes, even in the midst of Lent we are always an Easter people.      Those who feel lost to the power of the wilderness may need a guide to get them through; those who have made that journey and come out on the other side are called and empowered by God to do just that.

After his own healing, the former demoniac from Gerasa asked if he could join Jesus and the disciples. We can imagine him begging at the lakeshore, “Please, take me with you, let me travel with you. Let me repay you for my healing.”  But Jesus refused, and instead gave him a different commission: to return to his community, everyone who had given him up for lost, and report to them his amazing news of God’s loving and healing mercy.

That commission stands. And the world is still in as much need of amazement as was the Decapolis region, 2000 years ago. Those demons of despair are still out there – we see them in those who suffer that debilitating grief, or anger, or doubt.  Still powerful, they’ve simply learned subtler ways of binding their victims.

As Easter people may we never fear to proclaim the good news that sets the captive free: Jesus Christ has braved the storms and come to our side of the lake; and the power of death has been broken.         Let the captives be free.

Amen.

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