“Reaching Across Boundaries”
Luke 8:26-39
After studying passages like this one, author Mark Scandrette and his friend Joseph became convicted that God was calling them to reach out, not just to folks who showed up at their church or were already a part of their circles but to outsiders, people on the margins like Jesus did.
So, they went outside.
They picked up trash off the side of roads.
They talked to people.
And eventually, they met a homeless man who referred to himself as The Emperor.
The Emperor lived in a rusty old abandoned school bus which was parked in a vacant lot.
His hands were brown with filth, dirt was caught in the creases of his skin.
And his mouth, was, according to Scandrette “grotesque, toothless and rotting.”
The Emperor had been living all alone and homeless for over 30 years.
He had no friends, and when speaking he would say all kinds of “of the wall things” that would probably scare most people away from him.
He appeared to be out of his mind.
When Mark and Joseph told The Emperor that they were followers of Jesus Christ, he flew into a rage, cursed at them wildly, and told them to get out of his bus.
This scared them and they stayed away for several months, but they kept feeling God calling them to continue to try and befriend this man.
Eventually, they went back to his bus and ask him if there was anything they could do for him.
He replied, “Well, I’m hungry and I haven’t eaten for days.
My legs aren’t working too good so I can’t get to the store.”
So, along with other friends from their church, Mark and Joseph began visiting The Emperor several times a week, bringing him groceries, helping to cut his hair or clip his toenails and cleaning up around his camp.
Gradually he started to trust their friendship and revealed more about his life, how he had gotten where he was, and so forth.
One day he told Mark and Joseph, “I’m going to kill myself on New Year’s Eve.”
They told him how sad they would be if he chose to do that, and he replied, “Why should you care if I live or die? Nobody has ever cared about me.”
At Christmas they decided to throw a party for The Emperor, including his favorite foods and a birthday cake.
Mark told him that he was going to bring his family along, so he would need to be on his best behavior.
Mark writes the following in his book, Soul Graffiti: “There was a full moon on that December evening when I knocked on the door to The Emperor’s bus.
We ate by candlelight serenaded by music from a transistor radio.
The Emperor declared that the food—a collection of his favorites dishes he requested—was delicious.
After dinner,” Mark continues, “my wife Lisa put candles on a cake.
‘Let’s sing Happy Birthday to someone who hasn’t celebrated their birthday in a while,’ Mark suggested, ‘Who could we sing Happy Birthday to?’
Just then, beaming, our three-year-old son Noah blurted, ‘It’s Christmas, let’s sing Happy Birthday to Jesus!’”
Mark writes, “I panicked.
The name ‘Jesus’ was the worst thing I could imagine mentioning in front of The Emperor, and I waited to see how he would react.
Slowly, with a big toothless grin, he said, ‘Yes, let’s sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.’”
And so, under a clear and starry night, they sang together, Mark, Joseph, The Emperor, and Mark and Lisa’s three small blond children with red cheeks.
Mark writes, “As I helped The Emperor back into his bus, he turned and said, ‘This was the best night of my life. Thank you!”
(Pause)
In our Scripture passage for this morning, when Jesus steps out of the boat, “across the lake from Galilee” in the region of the Garasenes He is met by a homeless man.
Driven by a legion of demons, the man hardly seems human anymore.
He lives in tombs among the dead.
He is naked, unpredictable, violent and alone.
He is not asking for help.
He is not asking for healing.
He is asking Jesus to leave him alone.
And yet, here Jesus is.
He has intentionally gone into this dangerous territory, searching for outsiders, the marginalized, the hurting--people who were outside of His circle.
And Jesus is still doing this today.
As United Methodist Christians, we believe in something called Prevenient Grace.
This is the grace of God that goes before us, and surrounds us, from the time we are born.
It’s God’s Spirit, nudging us along the way, seeking us out long before we even have a thought of looking for God.
It is God seeking to embrace us with God’s love and goodness long before we realize it and it continues throughout our entire lives.
The parable of the Shepherd searching for the lost sheep and the woman searching for the lost coin are examples of this.
God seeks us out in our lost and lonely states…
…He calls to us, nudging us toward a realization of His love, His existence, and the free gift of salvation He offers us.
Before I gave my life to Jesus Christ, I hadn’t been looking for Him.
It was Jesus Who found me, living on the margins, far from Him.
When I did accept the faith and salvation Christ offered me, I had this radical change happen in my life.
And I realized for the first time, how unhappy I had been…how lost I was, and I hadn’t even been aware of it.
Prevenient grace can also be likened to the grace shown to the Prodigal Son by the father in that story.
God is the Father waiting for us to return to Him when we go astray, and when we do He runs to us and puts His arms around us and throws a huge party.
It’s been said that the demon-possessed man’s response to Jesus is one of the more heartbreaking verses in Scripture.
Asked for his name, the man replies that he doesn’t have one, or more accurately, he says that his name is Legion, that is a multitude.
He is oppressed by so many demons it is too many to count, and he has lost himself in the chaos of their voices and has lost control of himself.
And the demons are causing him to do harm to himself.
In Mark’s version of this story the man was bruising himself with stones and he was so totally possessed that though the demons recognized Jesus as the “Son of the Most High God,” the man still can’t free himself from his terrible state.
Are any of us similarly overwhelmed by voices raging at us from inside and out, denigrating our identities and driving us to loneliness and despair?
Do we recognize Jesus as
“The Son of the Most High God,” but still can’t shake the demons that often seem to control us?
Demons can be thought of as forces that have captured us and kept us from becoming the people God intends us to be.
They can show up as addictions, obsessions, sin, and destructive habits.
A main point of this story, as well as all the demon-healing stories in the Gospels, is that the love and power of God in Jesus Christ can cast out demons.
(pause)
In verse 26 it says that Jesus sailed to the region “across the lake from Galilee.”
This is also interpreted as the region that is “opposite Galilee.”
And thus, this phrase refers to much more than geography.
Think about it.
Jesus was Jewish, as were His first disciples, and according to Jewish Law, Gentile territory was unclean.
Gentiles themselves were unclean and to come in contact with one would make a Jewish person unclean.
Graveyards were unclean because dead bodies were unclean.
And pigs were unclean.
This is one great big story about Jesus in an unclean situation.
And so, this also teaches us that there is absolutely nowhere that Jesus is unwilling to go to reach and free and save and heal people who are broken and filled with despair.
There is no place that is God-forsaken.
And there is no person that is God-forsaken.
No one is left out.
There are no conditions that have to be met in order to receive God’s love.
After-all, God IS love.
God can’t NOT love you and me and the rest of humanity.
It is because “God so loved the world,” that Jesus has come for you and me.
You don’t have to be rich…or poor.
You don’t have to be from one ethnic group…or another.
You don’t have to have gone to church your whole life.
You don’t have to have any faith at all.
Jesus seeks all of us out.
And in the same way, God loves all of us no matter who we are and what we have done.
He has great plans for our lives.
We don’t have to live in slavery to evil, destructive forces which cause us to wander in lonely places—whether literal or in our minds—stumbling in the darkness, with hearts and minds that are numb and hardened.
Jesus is here with us.
He is calling us and reaching out to us, searching for us--offering us His grace, His salvation, a better way to live and a new way to love ourselves and others.
All we need do is surrender to His love and accept the freedom, the new life He offers.
And follow Him.
And we will be made whole.
My favorite part of our Gospel lesson for this morning comes in verse 35 when the people of the town who had known our main character only as the naked, homeless, demon-possessed man who lived in the tombs find him “sitting at Jesus’ feet, dressed and in his right mind.”
This is what it looks like to be found by Christ.
(pause)
Mark Scandrette and his friends are followers of Jesus who felt God’s call to reach across boundaries like Jesus did.
They wanted to take the next steps of living into what it means to follow Christ by loving God and others.
And so, they leaned in and let God do the leading.
And He led them to a homeless man named The Emperor, a man who lived in complete isolation, loneliness, anger and self-hatred.
He was a person whom Jesus Himself was seeking out and had been for a long time, like a shepherd searching for his lost sheep.
Jesus uses people like Mark Scadrette, and people like you and me to in His rescue missions—if we are willing.
And in doing so, He blesses us, strengthens us, encourages us, and sets us free at the same time that He is freeing people like The Emperor and people like the demon-possessed man through His loving action made manifest through our lives…which, again, is what makes us whole and brings us closer to God.
Following Christ is a spiritual discipline that brings us salvation.
And it sometimes means crossing boundaries and reaching out to those outside our circles.
“Nobody has ever cared about me,” said The Emperor.
This is what he had experienced and this is what he believed.
And his plan to kill himself, to end it all, on New Year’s Eve was foiled by a small group of people who decided to do what Jesus was calling them to do.
“Yes, let’s sing Happy Birthday to Jesus,” The Emperor said with a big toothless grin.
It was the best night of his life, Jesus had found him and was finally welcomed into his heart.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, we admit that we are powerless over our demons; our lives are unmanageable without You.
We believe that You and You alone have the power to cast out our demons, to restore our sanity, to save us and make us whole.
Lord, we turn our will and our lives over to Your care, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Change us.
Transform us.
And use us to bring hope and healing, not only to our own lives, but to the people within our circles and outside our circles.
We pray this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
