Engaging the Powers

A Sermon Based Upon Luke 8: 26-37

Dr. Charles J. Tomlin

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Father’s Day,  June 20^th, 2010

Something is pathologically wrong with Joran Van Der Sloot.  He not only killed Nattily Holloway and got away with it, but now he’s killed another girl in Peru.  A lawyer for the Nattily Holloway family recent confronted Van der Sloot, just before this second murder.   He traveled to Aruba to meet with Van der Sloot in an attempt to get information about Nattily’s death.  The lawyer told NBC news that when he looked into this young man’s eyes, he saw nothing---no feeling, no compassion, no connection, but only anger and rage, especially when Van der Sloot did not get his way.   It is almost unfathomable to consider how “sick” and even monstrous the human mind can become; and how deadly the world can be, even for “daddy’s little girl” or for a “father’s own son”.  

Can you remember a time you meet someone who was completely unreasonable, uncivil, perhaps mean, or even acting a bit insane in their behavior?   Worst of all, was how it finally became obvious to you, in your conversation with this “troubled” person, that you had no power to influence them at all and that they would not listen to reason; yours or anyone else’s.  There was no real connection, no real interaction; and whatever there was, it made you desire never to be near this person again, not just because of who they were, but also because of how bad they made you feel within yourself.  You had absolutely no power at all to persuade them one way or another and in their presence you felt this haunting emptiness,  a naked powerlessness, and an almost all-consuming void.   You needed to quickly to remove yourself to a safer, less threatening place.

Today’s Bible text, at first, does not seem fitting for Father’s day.   It is a story about power, evil and all that threatened a young man’s life.   What does this have to do with Father’s day?   Could this story remind us that father’s have a responsibility to help their families resist the negative, evil powers that are indeed “alive and well” in the world?   Don’t we have a very important role to lead our families to find redemption and healing in a fallen world where, Satan is still like a “roaring lion” seeking whom he may devour?   

As we consider this very “strange” story about evil; this text of the Gerasene demoniac,  we must already acknowledge that this text alerts us to our human struggle with evil in some unsettling ways.    In this story of a ‘demon possession’ along with an exorcism, this pre-scientific description is both challenging and difficult in and of itself.   However, the theology suggested within the text is also alarming and puzzling.   For in this story, we not only see Jesus exorcising a demon, this story gets more complicated as we watch Jesus  seem to make a “compromising deal” with this “legion” of demons  by granting their own request not to be cast back into their spiritual prison.   The other “strange” part of this text is how Jesus’ granting the demon’s request to enter the swine threatens the very livelihood of some local farmers.   The whole text is about as “strange” as our own human experience of evil can be.

Since this text has its own twists, turns, surprises and even questions, let me get to points in a very simplistic fashion:

I.  One immediate truth from this incredible story, is to be reminded that evil is a constant and consistent vulnerability to our existence as human beings. 

Again, let me be clear.  Evil is not just a real possibility in this world, but it is our constant and “consistent vulnerability.”  We not only will suffer under some kind of evil during our lifetime, but any of us can be overcome, controlled, if not even “possessed” by evil, in ways that take away our human dignity and maybe even our freedom or will to do what it right.   And it can happen so fast, so sudden, and it can be so destructive.   

Just the other day, I walked out of my house, and suddenly felt an insect brush up against the side of my head.     Immediately I turned and saw it was what we call a Japanese Hornet, and it was making a nest in a wooden decoration on a nearby cabinet.    Fortunately, I was not stung, but I could have easily had been suddenly, swiftly overpowered by a terrible injury.  It even made me mad enough to get the wasp spray and to destroy him and his nesting place in the very next moment.   That is a good example of how quickly, suddenly and unexpected evil can intercept our lives in ways that are out of our control.   

The kind of evil lurking in our passage goes beyond the threats of natural evil, to the threats of psychic ,  supernatural or spiritual evil.  We are not given all the details, but we do read in this text that this young man “had demons”, was wearing no clothes and lived among the tombs.    While scholars believe that this  “possessed man” is an exceptional case,  meeting him was not unlike meeting the deranged mind of Joran Van der Sloot.   But we don’t have to go to that extreme to imagine our own vulnerability to evil powers in this world.   

Just this past week in Winston-Salem, while driving on Highway 52, a person driving a silver Chevrolet  SUV, struck a man on his motorized wheel-chair.   Witnesses say, the man stopped the SUV, for a moment, then drove away.   The man in the Wheelchair later died at the hospital.   How do you think “evil” captured this driver in a way that he did not stop to care for this man, but decided in that instant to drive away?   Was he or she some calculated evil person, or just a normal person, who in fear, allowed evil to overtake them, maybe even for just a moment in their own mind?   Of course, we know that even that one brief encounter and overcoming by evil, when he is caught, either by authorities, or even if only by his own conscious, will impact him for the rest of his life.   The occasion of the worst kind of evil can come to us either in a moment, or even in the chemistry of our own mind, but it can come; and that is the real vulnerability to evil we all must face and come to grips with, by living in this world, where evil and sin threaten, just because we are born, not because we are necessarily bad.

Have you ever heard someway say, after a murder, especially when it was a murder of passion:  “I just can’t believe they did this?”   “I never thought they were capable of such a thing!”   What is hard for many people to fathom or face, is that all of us have a “dark side”.    Most of the Americans soldiers who freed Europe of Nazi German could not believe the kind of evil they witnessed as they liberated the death camps.   In Buchenwald, one of the camps I have visited, the murders were carried out in such sophisticated ways, that people who carried out the crimes were not even aware of the full extent of the evil they were doing.    In one room left standing, you could see the calculated sophistication of how the murders were carried out.  One person brought the victim into the room.  Another conducted medical exam.  Still another stood behind a hole in the wall where measuring marks were pasted.  The person behind the wall simply pulled a trigger, seeing nothing.   Another person came in quickly to remove the dead body.  Another came in to clean up any blood.   It was all done in a calm, regimented, manner so that everyone had a job to do, but no one was really responsible, and no one had to see what they were doing to another human being.  

Evil can be that way.  It can use us to do things and we are not even aware of what we are doing.  Can you think of a time when evil overcame you, used you and you were not, at least at first, aware of it or even afterward, you realize that what overcame you was not really you?  What about that time one of your class mates was on the ball field and they couldn’t hit the ball.  Everyone was joining in the ridicule of the poor, untalented athlete, and you, just for fun, joined in the chorus as well.   It’s was so easy to be a part of the victimizers, wasn’t it?   It just seemed natural.  You were just having fun, but later you realized that the words you spoke were hurtful and you were part of something we call “mob” mentality and the words you spoke, were cruel, mean, and in some ways, just as bad for that person’s soul as some kind of physical assault would have been on their body. 

But evil doesn’t only come after us in this way.   Sometimes evil is more sinister.   Take for example the case of this young man who was possessed by a legion of devils.   I know we might not use the same kind of diagnosis or explanation today.   Instead of saying this guy was possessed, we might say he was mentally ill, or had a personality disorder, or some sort of chemical imbalance.   This may or may not have been part of what was taking place, but there was no way then they could psychologically or medical analyze the event.   But I’ve read articles, written by people who have described their own mental illnesses, and they said, while it might have in fact, been chemical or medical, it felt more like it they were overpowered, controlled, or even “possessed” by unseen powers or forces.  The ancient stories in the Bible still describe inner struggles of the mind as accurately as any calculated, medical or scientific explanations.   

No matter what terms you put on it, scientific or religious, the human is vulnerable to being sick, overpowered, possessed, out of control and having unspeakable evil overcome them .    And when we have to deal with such people, whether it is demonic or mental, we will react very much the same way people did in that day.  We feel we need to send the person away, put them out of sight, out of the community and hopefully, we can also put them out of mind before they drive us out of ours.   Such experiences of evil, then and now, can be a family’s worst nightmare.

II.  Which brings me to the second tragic aspect of this story that we must not overlook:  We can be our own worst enemy.   If seeing this “possessed” young man, running around naked and having his life and behavior “out of control” is not enough, there is something even more sinister and twisted that takes place as the story comes to a close. 

What seems even worse than this young man being possessed by “legions” of demons out of his control, it is seeing how “normal”, hard-working people are overcome by an evil they could control.   When these farmers see that having their own “swine” jump off a cliff was the “trade off” for having this man in his right mind, they are not happy.   The cost for the healing was too high.   And for these, and perhaps other reasons, people seem to be more afraid of this man’s regaining his right mind and returning to sanity than they were afraid of his insanity.   In this strange turn of events, people like you and I, who once had pity on the demon-possessed guy, are unwilling to pay the cost for what it took to make this fellow better.   So, as the story ends, Jesus is run out of town because he is seen as a trouble-maker by everyone.   As the curtain falls, quite ironically, it is the good and “normal” people who seem to be “insane,” and it is this “insane man” who has encountered Jesus, who is the only person left who has his “right mind.”    Could you even make up such a strange and tragic story?

Several years ago, a small town Baptist church was considering me as pastor, and I was considering them.  We were in the middle of some positive conversation, then suddenly we hit a snag, or at least it was to me, and I think they would have said the same thing.   I had asked the church about why their last pastor left, and they told me a story that just didn’t sound very warm.   It seems that the pastor had attempted to lead the church to work with a local, low security prison, where the next step for the prisoners was to be released.   This pastor told the church that statistics revealed, if prisoners were able to find a ways to contribute and fit into normal society before their release, they had a better chance at not becoming repeat offenders.  

At first, leaders of the church were excited that church could help in this “reform” and “redemption”  ministry, but after the prisoners actually starting showing up and getting involved in the church, people started getting nervous.  They started seeing just how “troubled” some of these prisoners really were, and they changed their minds about their new prison ministry.   It costs too much and was too risky.   Eventually, because the pastor had instigated the ministry and believed, along with the warden, that the ministry was working, he refused to back up on his promise to help the prisoners.   Finally, the church leadership felt their pastor had “lost it” and they felt the need to confront him and demanded he either give up the ministry for the prisoners in their church, or give up being the pastor of “their” church.   These “prisoners” who were supposed be reformed, converted, and “in their right” mind made them nervous.    They just couldn’t make themselves believe in ‘conversion’ or the power of Jesus this way.   

I’ve just finished reading a book describing the struggles Mark Twain had when he wrote the book, Huck Finn  (Fredrick Buchener’s book,  Speak What You Feel).  Huck Finn was Twain’s literary masterpiece, but it was also a book written out of the pains and problems Twain felt and saw in the human race.   When he wrote about Huck Finn, befriending a black man name Jim, it was no accident that he wrote about finding more humanity and kindness in this escaped slave named Jim, than all the laws, customs, religion or politeness of society around him which, at that time, would make a man like Jim a slave in the first place.   That’s why Huck and Jim were always on the move, on the run, or on the river, only once in a while, risking to land somewhere and take a chance to land in the “real world.  It was Twain’s nice way of saying, the world, the way it is, people they way they are, and even religion can be practiced, can be very much, and most of the time, insane.    

It is not enough to say that evil is loose in the world, but we must also admit, as we read this story, that evil can easily possess us, in our choices, even in our own visions of what is good, right, and just.   Who can’t recall one of those “cowboy” posies going after the “bad man” and ending up just as bad in how they were trying to do the right thing, as the bad man was in actually committing the crime?   We humans have some very ingenious ways of becoming our own worst enemies.

Speaking of being our own worst enemy, in the news last Monday, it became public that a woman in Florida, who was working for a Christian school, was fired for “fornication.”   But what makes this case more tragic and even scary is how the school officials fired her for being “honest” with them.    When she went to school officials to let them know she was going to have a child, the school did the math and realized she must have conceived just before getting married.    And not only did the school “fire her” for this reason of past “fornication”, whether justified or not, then they made the mistake of going to other staff persons, students and parents giving detailed accounts as to exactly “why” she was fired: Fornication.   While most of us would agree that a Christian school should have the right to hire and fire teachers, the law actually says that when you are teaching America’s children, whether you are religious or not,  you move into the area where government protects both children and teachers from religion, especially from religious abuse or public discrimination.   

This is indeed the worst part of evil, that it can even pervert the good.   Our text reminds us once and for all, that the insanity of evil can take hold of the most sane, as well as, the insane or sick.  Evil is no respect of intellect, religion, morality, economics, race, color or nationality.   We are all vulnerable to evil and we can also become our own worst enemy.  If we see the truth any less than this, we are being deceived by the very evil we deny.

The reality of evil is what makes me and you need Jesus, just as much as this demoniac did when he encountered this Christ who has  power  to give hope, promise, and even spiritual power over evil that can be overwhelming and overpowering.   This story appears in the gospel, to remind us, how:

III. Christ came to give us the power to engage the powers of evil in this world and to overcome evil with good.   What started out as a seemingly impossible situation to remedy, ends with a man having the demons leave him, going from being naked to having clothes on, from living among tombs to living in a house, falling around shouting to setting at the feet of Jesus, to finally, going from having demons seize and control him erratically, to being a person who has their “right mind” sitting at the feet of Jesus.    

How does this happen?  How does Jesus overcome this legion of demons in this man and how can Jesus’ power empower us against the evil that still threatens us?

The real answer is that we aren’t told, at least not completely.  And this may just be the point.   It is rather striking in this passage, as well as, with many passages about the miracles of Jesus, that the things we’re not told can be just as powerful and important as the truths we are told. 

Consider what happens when Jesus comes near to this man possessed by demons.   Jesus does not go after the man, but the man comes to Jesus.   Besides that, it’s the demons themselves, speaking through the man, who start “worshipping” Jesus (as Mark 5: 7 says), and the demons start the conversation, already feeling his presence and realizing the potential of being “tormented” by this presence.   And it is the same kind of image that we get at the end of the story, where we find the demons having left the man, and now he is “clothed and in his right mind”, but look what else.  “He is sitting at the feet of Jesus.”   The sight of a person, sitting at the feet of Jesus, not only made the demons fear and tremble, but the other people are just as afraid of having a perfectly sane “Jesus” man in their midst.

Do you see what is being said here about the great miracle of deliverance?  The whole idea of the demon’s being “cast out” is both “down played” and now “upstaged” by this man “sitting at Jesus’ feet.”  Don’t miss this, because it is the very key that unlocks the spiritual sense of this strange story in a very familiar and understandable way.   What disturbs the demons, and what disturbs the people possessed by their own “selfishness”, was the very presence of Jesus present in human life.    The power of Jesus is not magic.   The power of Jesus is not a method to learn.  It is not even about learning some kind of art of exorcism which challenges the evil or the people.    What is implied from beginning to the end of this story, is how it is the very presence of Jesus that releases the work of hope, redemption, and deliverance over evil.   There is no fancy footwork, just simple “faithwork” that turns this man around for good and no longer for evil.

Several years ago, I had a pastor friend who was trying to be good pastor and a good father.  He was several years my senior at the time, and had a teenage daughter when he was pastor of a small church near Shelby.  At that time, some people with youth, were leaving the church, because they said, there wasn’t a large enough youth group.   People took their youth elsewhere and were drawn to bigger and better things going on in some other churches.   But where could the pastor go?  What could the pastor do?  He had a teenager, but his daughter seemed to be perfectly sane and even content and committed to be in a small church, and get involved in the church,  even when she was the was only one in the youth group.   What the pastor then told me was astounding.   He said that the key to the fact, that only a few years later, after this incident, his daughter was the one who ended up very mature, more mature than all those who left,  and very educated, and also very dedicated to her faith and later called to ministry, and also, she was the valedictorian of her class.   What he believed, as her Father, was that she didn’t become that through special programs, special powers or tricks, but what she had, even in that small church that blessed her, and helped her rise above the struggles so many were having, was a family who loved her and she possessed a seriousness about being one person who really wanted to sit at the feet of Jesus. 

 The pastor wondered out loud to the rest of us:  why can’t people see that the power that they are all looking for to save their families, to save their children, and even to save themselves, is not in the razzle dazzle of this or that program, but it is being a family, being a church and being a person, who simple truly desires, with their whole heart, to be the person who wants more than anything else, to sit down, with their children, and with their church, at the feet of Jesus.   It is Jesus’ presence in our lives, and our spending time at Jesus’ feet that makes the difference.   And you don’t make Jesus happen to you, you do like this “insane” man, did: When you see or hear Jesus is near; you run up to him, you really worship him, warts and all or with whatever you have and don’t have, and then while you are doing this, really worshipping Jesus, it is his presence in you that the demons lurking inside just can’t stand any longer.  The power is the presence (didn’t I just preach that recently?)   When a person puts themselves in the presence of Jesus, evil flees.   As person who spends time with Jesus, has the power to overcome.   

We might not understand everything about this story.   We might still have questions, like why did Jesus make a deal with devils to release them to the pigs.   I’ve got some ideas for understanding this, but my interest is not what happens to pigs, but what happens to humans.   Maybe that’s the point.  When the story ends, there is something here that is so visible, so real and so powerful, we can’t argue with the impact it can have in our lives, if we will learn the power.   When you sit at Jesus’ feet, the devils and the demons of this world can’t stand it.   And the more time you spend with Jesus, the less and less you need from the world, but the more the world needs you.   That’s why the story concludes with Jesus telling this man, “go home, and tell your friends..what the Lord has done for you” (vs. 39).   Amen.

© 2010 All rights reserved Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min