Are you a Star Trek fan?
Don't be embarrassed. I'm not going to make fun of you.
Admittedly, I am not a Star Trek fan and, yes, I do recognise that Star Trek has a fan-base made up almost entirely of computer nerds and guys who really should have stopped reading comics by now BUT my mate Scottie (who was once catechist at our church) was such a fan that he spoke fluent Klingon (or spoke some Klingon anyway) and he is one of the toughest men I know, so there must be something in it ... I guess.
Anyway, while I can't pretend to be a fully-fledged Star Trek fan, I can tell you that there was one aspect of the series that I do remember and that inspires me still when I think about it, and it was the mission statement of the Star Trek Enterprise - the mission statement that was a part of the title sequence of every episode of the original Star Trek series:
"Space... the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before."
It has a powerful ring to it, doesn't it? What though, you might ask, has it got to do with today's Gospel reading? Well ... the answer is in Luke 8:26:
"Jesus and his disciples sailed on over to the territory of Gerasa, which is across the lake from Galilee."
That's the Good News translation, at any rate. In our pew Bibles I think you'll find it says that he sailed over to the "region of the Gerasenes", though, depending on your translation, it may suggest that it was the Gadarenes that He visited or possibly the Gergasenes.
Were these all one and the same place, you ask? The answer is 'no'. The Gadarenes and the Gerasenes at least were different places and so it seems, rather, that there was a bit of confusion over exactly where it was that Jesus was visiting. And why do you think that was? The answer is because Jesus, as was His habit, was going boldly where no man had gone before!
We're not sure exactly where he did go. Indeed, I think you'll find that in Matthew's version of this story (in chapter 8) it says "Gadarenes" whereas in Mark (chapter 5) is says "Gerasenes" and in my NIV edition of Luke's version it says "Gerasenes" but has a marginal note pointing out that some of the earliest manuscripts also suggest either Gadarenes or Gergasenes.
Mind you, while there are various guesses as to exactly what village Jesus ended up in, there is complete unanimity over it's general geographical location. It was, the Gospel writers agree, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which evidently, for a good Jew was like saying that it was on the far side of the Black Stump.
On this west of Sea of Galilee you had familiar towns like Capernaum and Nazareth and other familiar villages with God-fearing, law-abiding people. On the far side of the lake you had places like the Gerasenes and the Gadarenes or the Gergasenes and a whole lot of other places where strange people lived and God-knows-what went on!
So where did Jesus land according to the Gospel reading? We're not sure but we do know that He was going boldly where no man had gone before!
Not literally, of course, as there were certainly plenty of men and women already living there, but they were strange people (so far as the average Jew was concerned) with strange practices. Jesus was going boldly where no self-respecting Jewish Rabbi had gone before. These people were not Kosher. They looked different, dressed different, worshipped different gods and had strange ways of doing things!
It reminds me very much of my first visit to a Mosque! Who are these strange people with their unfamiliar customs? That will teach me to go boldly where no self-respecting Christian clergy-person has gone before. Obviously these are not God's people, with their odd dress and incomprehensible language, and certainly we do not expect to find Jesus working any miracles here!
I imagine that the disciples of Jesus were radically uncomfortable when Jesus landed their boat in that hard-to-pinpoint region on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. And if they were indeed nervous about what sort of creatures they might meet in that unfamiliar land, their worst fears would have been entirely realised when the first person they encountered was that unholy eastside ambassador, known locally as Legion!
As Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a man from the town who had demons in him. For a long time this man had gone without clothes and would not stay at home, but spent his time in the burial caves. When he saw Jesus, he gave a loud cry, threw himself down at his feet, and shouted, "Jesus, Son of the Most High God! What do you want with me? I beg you, don't punish me!" (Luke 8:27-28)
It is the stuff of a Start Trek episode, isn't it, or perhaps the proper subject of a movie in its own right? And I notice that there has been a major apocalyptic horror movie just released that bears this name - "Legion", - and it does seem to be about battles between divine and demonic forces. Mind you, the reviews I read said that it was 'god-awful' 'apocalyptic twaddle'. Even so, I think they may have got the title right, for Legion, as he comes across to us in the Gospels, is indeed a scary character.
I remember this guy from my youth. Evidently when my father first read me this story it made quite an impact, and I remember wondering as a lad what it would have been like to have met this strange and dishevelled, yet powerful and muscular 1st century version of Conan the Barbarian! I remember, as a boy, even feeling a bit iffy about catching 'Legion Taxi Cabs' on account of the apparent association!
It all seems to wrong - the man, the place, the pigs, the demons. It's all so uncivilised and it's all so 'unclean' from a religious point of view! Jesus has walked into an unclean land, full of unclean people, to hillsides covered with unclean animals, and He seems to make a beeline for this crazy, demon-possessed man, who lives amongst the tombs - as unclean and unholy a character as you could find!
We've all dealt with mentally ill people, I suspect, but no one as extreme as Legion I'm sure. Some of the elements of his tragic story may be familiar to us - his lack of clothing, his homelessness, his tendency to self-harm - but there are other elements here that I assume are beyond our experience, such as his enormous strength when he raged, such that no man could restrain him, and most especially the strange cacophony of voices that emanated from inside the man - dark entities that asked that they might be allowed to transfer themselves into the pigs, presumably in the hope that there they might live on unmolested (a hope that was, mind you, entirely misguided).
Jesus heals the man, of course, and the wonderful sequel we see is of the man sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. It's a lovely image and a happy ending to a bizarre story ... sort of. I mean, it's sort of a happy ending, or at least it would have been a happy ending had it been the ending, but bizarrely we are given a postscript that takes the edge off the joy of the occasion.
It's interesting, but with most of the stories of the miraculous healings of Jesus you never hear what happened afterwards. They generally end with Jesus saying, "Go in peace" or "your faith has made you well" or some other command or exhortation that Jesus gives to the healed person and we just assume that those persons went on to live happily ever after.
And had the story of Legion ended with the depiction of him sitting at the feet of Jesus, "clothed and in his right mind", we probably would have assumed the same here - that Legion changed his name to Bob, got a job in a bank, and lived out as quiet and peaceable a life as was possible in his part of the world. But it was not to be.
The aftermath of Jesus' miraculous healing of Legion is not encouraging in fact. It seems that, once healed, his village no longer knew what to do with him, and so he wanted to come with Jesus but Jesus refused!
Simultaneously "all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes (or wherever it was) asked [Jesus] to depart from them." And it says that they asked Jesus to do this because "they were afraid".
This is the one part of the story that, as a youngster, I could never figure out. Why would they ask Jesus - Jesus, the miracle-worker, Jesus, the man who had been able to solve for them a problem that no one else in that region had ever been able to tackle - why would they ask Jesus to leave? Because they were afraid, the Scripture says? Afraid of what?
Were they afraid, perhaps, that the dark and mysterious powers that had controlled the man, Legion, were now on the loose and would seek vengeance on them? This is possible, as I'm guessing that they were a superstitious people.
Remember that we are not in Israel here. We are in a bizarre pagan place, and it is quite possible that these people had both feared and revered the man who had been possessed Indeed, I can't think why else they would not have just shot the crazy guy years earlier if that had not been the case.
I mean, if this guy was the public menace he seems to have been, possessed with power such that no shackles could hold him, and subject to murderous rages, why hadn't someone just put a few arrows into him by this stage? I'm guessing that while these locals were doubtless afraid of what the man might do to them and to their children, they may well have been even more afraid of what might have happened if his demons were let loose! There were dark forces at work in this guy, and so long as he just stayed out in the cemetery and fed on creatures of the bush and raw fish, that sort of kept the whole thing at a safe distance.
Maybe that was it, or maybe their fear had a much more mundane basis - namely, they feared losing another herd of pigs! After all, that many pigs (Matthew's Gospel estimates 2000) would have been worth a lot of money! Jesus had a habit of upsetting economies and divesting people of their wealth, and maybe these people just felt that they weren't willing to pay the price necessary to see their sick people healed, thank you very much!
Perhaps that was it. Perhaps it was a combination of these things? Personally, my guess is that the real problem is simply that these people realised very quickly that having Jesus around meant that they were going to be dragged into boldly going places that no Gerasian, Gedariter or Gergashite had ever gone before! They say that if you give people a choice between freedom and security, 90% will always choose security, and maybe it was that simple!
And so we leave the Eastside of the Sea of Galilee, with nobody feeling any better for Jesus' visit there - not the demons, not the locals, not the healed man and certainly not the poor pigs! And yet great things had been done there. Jesus had taken his disciples out exploring strange new worlds; seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no God-fearing Jew had gone before. Moreover a great miracle had taken place. Demons had been struck down and a man had been healed as the Spirit of God had begun to move in a region where no one had expected to see it!
There's a statement in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas that is attributed to Jesus, and my feeling is that it might be the one saying in the book that really did go back to Jesus. "He who is near me is near the fire" is the quote, and if Jesus didn't really say it, others recognised that it was true nonetheless.
To be near Him is to be near the fire! It means taking risks, taking the heat, and having the courage to go boldly where no man or woman has gone before.
first preached at Holy Trinity Dulwich Hill, June 2010
