We began the message series last week with a look at the Apostle Peter’s transformation from failure to faith. I used the line “transformation can be a terrifying thing,” because in one transformative moment, Peter went from faith to failure while walking on the water. In a great moment of faith, Peter became terrified of drowning. Even though Jesus was present, Peter was afraid. Peter discovered that transformation can, indeed, be terrifying.
In today’s Gospel reading, we find an episode that is a bit terrifying, too. I mean demons, graveyards and dead pigs. If not terrifying, then certainly disturbing images that challenge our 21st century sensibilities. Could it be because we enjoy living in an atmosphere of quiet contentment? We don’t want anyone or anything rocking our boat. We like stability in our lives. But, Jesus and his disciples encountered a terrifying character in a somewhat terrifying place. The encounter reads like something right out of a Stephen King novel. There is definitely a terrifying presence in the air.
We first encounter a terrifying man. Don’t we remember Linda Blair’s head spinning around in The Exorcist? Put that scene in your mind as you contemplate this passage. This guy was terrifying. There was a terrifying presence that dominated his every thought and every action, so much so that it had ruined his life. The text says the man was demon-possessed, and he was left homeless, naked and living in a graveyard. Separated from his family and community, the man lived in constant tension as he battled his demons.
I am quite certain the man had caused no small disturbance in his family and community. The fact that he was living in the graveyard indicates that society had pushed him to the fringes. This man had likely been a disturbance more than once. The community had gone so far as to shackle him, but that did no good. He simply broke the shackles. To deal with the problem, they simply put him out of town. “Just put him out there and leave him alone” was their way of dealing with the man. The graveyard was an entirely appropriate place for the man to be as far as the community was concerned. The graveyard was the place where demons belonged, and as maniacal as the man was there was little doubt that he was demon-possessed. And the demons in this story are terrifying, too.
What of this demon-possession thing? C. S. Lewis says there are two equal but opposite errors into which we can fall concerning the devil and demons. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe in their existence but to also feel an unhealthy interest in them. As Christians, we believe demons exist in our world, and actual cases of demon possession have been documented. To believe otherwise would be to place ourselves outside the realm of what Jesus believed in the conduct of his ministry, and it would, in fact, make us un-Biblical. But we equally don’t believe that every ailment, every malady, every sickness, every form of bondage is motivated by demon possession. We don’t believe there is a demon behind every tree and under every rock.
These demons manifested an evil and destructive presence in this man’s life, and therefore, in that community. I think a more appropriate focus for us here is to note the destructive nature of evil in our world, whether that evil is demonic in nature or not. These demons had destroyed this man’s life. The demons continued their destructiveness in the pigs being herded nearby. Jesus allowed them to depart into the swine. Don’t try to make too much of the pigs in the story. That’s called majoring on the minors. The pigs simply symbolize the destructive nature of the demons inhabiting the man.
Each of our lives are touched by the destructiveness of evil. The destructive nature of evil in our world evidences a terrifying presence. Take drugs, for instance. A person who abuses drugs can experience those destructive forces. If they were only self-destructive to the person abusing the drugs that would be one thing, but they destroy families, friends and jobs, driving a wedge between the person and his/her family and the community. A young person in the bondage of substance abuse drops out of school. A family is broken in their relationships or in their finances. A job lost. A child is neglected or abused. A marriage is broken. The damage done to a person and a family doesn’t even include the costs to the community on the criminal justice system to deal with the issue. Though not necessarily demonic, it is inherently evil, and it is destructive. Evil is a very terrifying thing.
Then Jesus comes along, and he doesn’t hesitate in disturbing the status quo of that community. I might even suggest that Jesus is the most terrifying presence in this encounter. Jesus wasted no time in disturbing these demons who had tortured the man for so long. Jesus recognized the evil and demanded to know their names. They were “Legion.” But what is the significance of that? A legion was a group of Roman soldiers numbering as many as 6,000. The Palestinians would have been very familiar with a Roman legion, and the very name of the demons exhibited the depth of torment this man was under. But these demons were forced to bow before the power of Jesus as he appeared. Isn’t that what Paul said to the Philippian Christians? “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil. 2:10).
Acknowledging Jesus’ power over them, all the demons can do is beg Jesus not to banish them to the abyss. They plead for Jesus to send them into the pigs, and Jesus obliges them. But by his obligation, he was exercising his authority over them, and he gave direction to their destruction anyway. As those pigs plunged off that cliff and into the sea, it was the same as sealing their destruction. The sea, in the Jewish mind, was the symbol of the abyss. It was the place from which there was no return, and that is where the demons who inhabited this man found themselves. I would say that Jesus was, to the demons (and to every evil), a very terrifying presence.
There is also a sense in which Jesus terrified the pig herders. It didn’t take but just a moment for them to gather themselves and get into town to tell the townspeople what happened. Perhaps it was the pig herders who incited the community against Jesus, for we see it was they who were most terrified. They came out to see what the pig herders were talking about, and they found the man who had been possessed clothed, sitting at the feet of Jesus and in his right mind.
What was their response? It wasn’t “Oh, how wonderful. Now we can invite him back into the community and to his family.” No. It was, “Hey, Jesus? Could you just leave and leave us alone?” I find it incredibly interesting that these townspeople could live with a crazy man, but they could not live with Christ. Jesus’ presence there on the seashore became a threat to the community’s own complacency. He rocked their boat, so to speak. And worse still, he cost them money. After all, 2,000 pigs cost a lot of money in the first century. Jesus took their known, comfortable circumstances (they had gotten used to the crazy man in the cemetery and knew how to handle that situation), and forced them to confront the unknown. They could cope with the known, even if the known was bad, but they were afraid of the unknown. They were terrified, indeed.
Perhaps they were terrified by the fact that this Jesus, who had the power to cast out the demons from this man, might cast out their demons, too. And they rather liked their demons. If Jesus could destroy a whole herd of pigs, perhaps this power might strike again with even more serious consequences. They were so concerned with what might happen to them that they failed to recognize or even appreciate the transformation of the man. The biggest disturbance may have been the fact that the power of God was at work among them, and they wanted to pretend that nothing had happened. Jesus’ presence forced the people to confront the evil that was around them, and that was a very uncomfortable position. Sometimes, it’s just too terrifying.
I wonder if Jesus’ presence terrifies us in the same way. How does Jesus scare us? First, I believe Jesus scares us by calling us to live in a world so full of change. The only constant in this world is change. Nothing ever remains the same. View the changes in our world the last twenty-five years. Things are changing so fast in our world today that what was cutting edge only five years ago is obsolete today. Researchers tell us that society is reinventing itself every seven to ten years. That means what was acceptable only a mere seven years ago is no longer acceptable today. Or, what was not acceptable a mere seven to ten years ago is acceptable today. For better or worse, that is the worldin which we live, and Jesus has called us to minister in that world, to speak to the issues of the culture in the midst of change. He does not call us to retreat from the world. He does not call us bury our heads in the sand, and reject those changes, but he calls us to be in ministry to all those who live in a changing world, and that can be a terrifying thing.
Then, I believe Jesus frightens us by the call of human need. With Jesus around, we are forced to confront the destructive nature of evil in people’s lives. I wonder how many we have forced to the fringes of our culture because they were a disturbance to us. There are so many whose lives have been touched by brokenness and destruction, not unlike the man living in the graveyard. Have we banished any to the graveyard of our culture? That place where we don’t have to deal with them. Have we become so self-centered and complacent that we can say, “Just leave them alone?” Who are some of those people? Perhaps the mentally handicapped. Perhaps it is the many people who are suffering from some addiction in our world today. Perhaps it is the prisoner. Perhaps it is the poor. Perhaps it is the neglected and abused. Perhaps it is the “least of these my brothers and sisters” who stand in need of deliverance. Jesus calls us to answer to the human need around us, and that can be a terrifying thing, and yes, it can be a costly thing, too.
So how do we respond to the terrifyingly transformative presence of Jesus? Do we respond as the demons do, cowering in fear before an all-powerful God who exercises his authority to our destruction? Hardly! There are really only two responses. First, like the people, we can ask Jesus to leave us alone. We prefer not to be bothered. Let’s hurry up and get rid of him before he costs us anymore money or before he demands something of us. Oh, we would never say, like the people along the seashore, “Leave us alone.” But, we say the same thing, in effect, when we refuse to give up some habit that is destructive to us or to others. Or, we tell him the same thing when we turn a deaf ear to the needs that Christ is calling us to meet. We tell Jesus to leave us alone whenever we see injustice in our world and fail to respond to it in redemptive ways. We tell Jesus to leave us alone whenever we send the poor and others to the graveyards at the margins of our society, and we say, “That’s just the way things are.” And, just like in the encounter, we will find that Jesus leaves us alone.
The other response we see in the transformation of the demon-possessed man. He wanted to follow Jesus. Jesus told the man the best way he could follow him was to go home and tell the great things God had done. That is what the man did. He was moved by the terrifyingly transformative power of Jesus to make a difference in his world right where he lived.
Jesus stands upon the shore ready to disturb the evil of our world, and the complacency of our lives. The terrifying presence of Christ invaded the life of a fellow named Paul. Struck him blind on the Damascus Road not long after Paul had witnessed the stoning of a young man named Stephen. Stephen’s prayer haunted Paul in the days that followed. How could Paul forget that faithful, trusting prayer of Stephen’s as the mob stoned him to death. The peace and the joy of contentment in Christ was evident upon his face. When confronted with the terrifying presence of Christ, Paul could only ask a question, “Lord, what do you want me to do?”
Contrast that to another fellow named Felix. Paul stood before the Roman governor Felix and talked of righteousness and judgment. Felix was confronted in his soul by the terrifying presence of Christ made real in Paul. Felix could only say, “Go away for now. I’ll hear you again another time.”
What response must we make? What response will you make?
