In His Right Mind

In His Right Mind

Luke 8:26-39

This is a radical passage of Scripture, and not just because the Geresene man was demon possessed.

Jesus and His disciples got in a boat and crossed the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.

In doing this, Jesus was crossing boundaries…

…boundaries that had been set up for hundreds of years and had never been crossed before.

The Geresenes were Gentiles.

Gentiles were any people who were not Jewish.

Everyone here this morning, unless you are a converted Jew is a Gentile.

According to Jewish Law, Jews were not supposed to have any association with Gentiles.

But this is Jesus, and Jesus was continually breaking down barriers in order to bring people together in love, reconciliation, healing and wholeness.

Remember in the story of the Good Samaritan: what Jesus told the expert in the Law when asked: “Who is my neighbor?”

Samaritans were Gentiles as well.

And Jesus told the lawyer to go and be like the Samaritan being: the one in the story who stopped and helped the broken person everyone else tried to get away from and crossed to the other side of the road to ignore.

In our passage for this morning, Jesus is living out the parable of the Good Samaritan.

He has crossed over to enemy territory in order to be a neighbor to the Gerasenes.

And who should Jesus run into?

This poor guy who is in the saddest shape imaginable.

Driven by a legion of demons the man seems hardly human anymore.

He has lost his identity.

In the eyes of the townspeople and the man’s family he is basically a wild animal.

He is completely out of his mind, scary and violent.

Mark’s Gospel tells us that “he would cry out and cut himself with stones.”

Some versions of the Bible say “he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.”

That makes me think of a werewolf or something, not a human being.

But he is a human being.

He is created in the image of God.

He is a person of sacred worth.

He is a person who is loved and pursued by God, but his life was out of control.

And perhaps one of the most heartbreaking verses in Scripture comes when he responds to Jesus’ question about his name…

…because he has no name…

…or, more accurately, he says that his name is Legion.

In the Roman army which would have been familiar to everyone living around the Sea of Galilee at this time, a legion was a major unit of the army.

It consisted of 3,000 to 6,000 Infantry Troops and 200 Calvary Troops.

In other words, an army of demons had made their base camp in this guy’s head.

He was in a terrible state.

He’s the ultimate outcast.

He is homeless.

And, sadly, he is not unlike many of our homeless people today who wander the urban wastelands of our bridge abutments, alleys and woods.

A large percentage of the homeless population in the United States suffer from some form of severe mental illness which disrupts their ability to carry out basic but essential aspects of daily life, such as self-care, household management and holding down a job.

Mental illnesses may also prevent people from forming and maintaining stable relationships or cause people to keep their distance from them.

Clair told me of a time she was having a conversation with a homeless man.

Somewhere in the conversation she came to the point of asking him: “What do you want most?”

She expected him to say something like a home or a job that paid a living wage.

But that’s not what he said.

He said, “I want people to say ‘hi’ to me when they see me on the streets.

I don’t want to be ignored.

I don’t want to be invisible.”

In essence, he was saying he wanted to be treated like a human being and that is exactly what Jesus did when He encountered the demon-possessed man.

Jesus didn’t pretend not to see him.

Jesus asked the man his name.

Most of us tend to try and avoid the homeless, the dirty people on the streets who may talk to themselves or act a bit out of the ordinary.

The homeless are in a real sense considered “unclean” and unwelcome in most places, not unlike the man in our passage for this morning.

Oak Ridge has its Garasenes.

They are our neighbors.

And Jesus calls us to love our neighbors.

But of course, not all Garasenes are homeless.

They might be a suicidal teenager or adult.

They may be a depressed and overburdened mother living within walking distance of this church building or the alcoholic father trying to self-medicate his demons, only to find himself falling deeper and deeper into a hole.