A Disturbing Presence
John 8: 26-39
June 20, 2004
A pastor in a small church was greatly annoyed by one of his elderly members who fell asleep during his sermons every Sunday. After the service one day, the pastor said to the old man’s grandson who always sat with his grandfather, “If you can keep the old man awake, I’ll pay you a dollar a week.” This worked for two weeks; the aged man was very alert and listened to the sermons attentively. On the third Sunday, however, there he was, up to his old tricks again, sound asleep in the pew. After the service the pastor called the boy over and said, “I am disappointed in you. Didn’t I promise you a dollar a week to keep your grandfather awake?” “Yes,” replied the boy, “but Grandpa gives me five dollars not to disturb him.”
We are like Grandpa. We don’t like being disturbed. 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 one evening Jesus and his disciples encountered a very disturbing character in a somewhat disturbing place, and their boat was rocked as they stepped off of it to encounter the man in our Scripture today. And we are disturbed a little as we read the text and listen to the details of the encounter, and we get the impression that there is something entirely disturbing about the whole scene. There is definitely a disturbing presence in the air. Let’s look the encounter and see if we can identify the disturbing presence.
Luke 8:26-39
The Disturbing Man. This man Jesus and the disciples encountered was certainly disturbed. Yet we know the source of his disturbance. There was a disturbing 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 that had left him homeless, naked and living in a graveyard. Separated from his family and community, the man lived in constant tension as he battled the demons.
And 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 disturb us, 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 (and there were many of them inhabiting this man) 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 symbolize the destructive nature of the demons inhabiting the man.
All of our lives are touched by destructiveness of evil. The destructive nature of evil in our world evidences a disturbing presence. Take drugs, for instance. One who comes to abuse drugs can experience those destructive forces. If they were only self-destructive that would be one thing. But they destroy families and 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. The beginning of a life destroyed. A family broken in their relationships or in their finances. A job lost. A child neglected or abused. A marriage broken. Though not necessarily demonic, it is inherently evil. And it is destructive. Evil is a very disturbing presence.
Then Jesus comes along, and he doesn’t hesitate in disturbing the status quo of that community. We might even say that Jesus is the most disturbing 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 just 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 they can do is beg not to banish them to the abyss (the Bottomless Pit). They pleaded for Jesus to send them into the pigs, and Jesus obliged 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, a very disturbing presence.
But Jesus also disturbed 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 disturbed of all. They came out to see this thing that the pig herders spoke 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 townsfolk’ own complacency. He upset their apple cart, so to speak. And worst 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 disturbed indeed.
Perhaps they were disturbed 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 for them. They were so concerned with what might happen to them that they failed to recognize or even appreciate the deliverance of the man in their midst. 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. It was just too disturbing.
Jesus’ presence disturbs us in the same way. How does Jesus disturb us? First, I believe Jesus disturbs 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 hundred years. Things are moving 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 world we live in, 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.
Then, I believe Jesus disturbs us by the call of human need. With Jesus in our midst, 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 who 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 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 disturbs us by calling us to answer to the human need around us.
So how do we respond to the disturbing presence of Jesus? Do we respond as the demons do, cowering in fear before an all-powerful being who exercises his authority to our destruction? Hardly! There are really only two responses. First, like the people, we can ask Jesus to go and leave us alone. We prefer not to be disturbed. 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 around us 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 see 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 is the response of the man who was possessed by many demons. He wanted to follow Jesus. Jesus told the man the best way he could follow him was to return to his family and tell the great things God had done. That is what the man did. He was moved by the powerfully disturbing presence of Jesus to make a difference in his world.
Jesus stands upon the shore ready to disturb the evil of our world, and the complacency of our lives. The disturbing 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 awesomely disturbing 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 disturbed in his soul by the disturbing 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?
