Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Hmm. Interesting reading from
Luke, isn’t it? Sort-of a Hollywood-esque spooky narrative about a naked,
demon-possessed man who lived out in a cemetery. The demons gave him
extra-ordinary strength, so that when he was caught and locked up with cuffs
and chains, he could break them and escape back into the desert, the place of
the dead. Hello, Stephen King.
I’ll be honest – there is part of
me that wants to bypass this account for that very reason – it sounds kind of
like a script or a novel. And, judging from the market, these kinds of books
and movies do well – at least, well enough that they keep making them. And,
because we are so familiar with the genre, whether first or second hand – even
if you’re not a fan, you’ve seen the commercials, heard people talk about them
– that the devil has become sort-of a paper lion, nothing more than a
caricature, a myth in the vein of Sleepy Hollow’s pumpkin-toting horseman. Years
ago, I had one of my confirmation students tell me that the devil was just
something that old people had made up to scare kids into being good.
On the other hand, it’s easy to
focus on the devil and his power as the center of the narrative. There’s something
fascinating about it, after all; a guilty curiosity about the unknown-ness of
satan’s darkness. If I asked you what to title this reading, I would guess most
would simply refer to it as “The Demon Possessed Man.” See what I mean? Where
is the focus? Where does that leave Jesus? He gets second billing, at best. The
demonic gets center stage while Jesus is just a supporting character. Satan and
his demons grow in stature and legend to the point that they seem almost unstoppable,
an insurmountable enemy against us as God’s people, God’s creation, almost an
even match against God Himself.
Hmm. Tough choice. So, do we so
neuter the demons so that they are imaginary, or do we inflate them that they
are overwhelming and indefatigable enemies? Wherein does truth lie when it
comes to satan, his demons, and his power? I said that part of me wants to
avoid this text, but the fact that the Holy Spirit saw fit to have St. Luke
include this in his gospel tells us that there is something here for us and we
need to speak to it. We need to see the truth of who satan is, what he does to
creation and to God’s people, and more important, what has been done to him by
Jesus.
First and foremost, this narrative
is about Jesus. This miraculous exorcism shows Jesus’ divine authority over
satan and his wickedness. Where, usually, men would run in terror from the
man’s power and demons, when Jesus arrives, it is the demons who recoil. No one
else in the Gerasenes meets Jesus at the shore, but this poor man does. Jesus
is invading their territory, so to speak, and the demons recognized Jesus for
who He was: the Son of the Most High God. It would be funny, if it wasn’t the
demonic: they, who had tormented this man for years now beg Jesus for Him to
not torment them. They know who Jesus is and they know what He has come to do –
do battle with them and all of satan’s powers and satan’s wickedness. Don’t
torment us Jesus. Jesus obliges by sending the demons into a herd of pigs which
then rush over the cliff, into the water.
These were real demons, not
figments of the man’s imagination, not a psychotic episode, not an out-of-body
experience. Demons are under satan’s control, part of his domain as prince of
the world. Whatever they did to the man, we can only begin to imagine. And, we
can’t really hazzard a guess as to why or how these demons possessed this man
or any other person in the Bible, for that matter. If I wanted an analogy, its
as if demons are a terrible and unwanted spiritual virus, or a thief that
breaks into a house to destroy. There
does seem to be some truth to whether a person left themselves, their spiritual
door if you will, propped open for satan and his demons to enter. We call it
demon possession, but in a real sense, that’s a misnomer: satan can’t possess
anything. The best he can do is borrow it since God is the giver of all things.
God is the maker of all things, and that is the devil’s greatest frustration.
In spite of his desire to become something greater, all the devil is is an
inverted piece of God’s creation. Here’s a secret the devil doesn’t want anyone
to know: even his domain, hell, is not his; it is not under his control. In
hell, the devil suffers most of all. Miserable, he is determined to make God’s
creation and God’s people as miserable as possible.
I tell you this, not to scare
you, but to alert you. The devil is real; his minions are real. They are not
figments of Hollywood. But, at the same time, don’t overdo it. He is NOT God.
He is not omnipresent, omnipotent, or omniscient. He cannot create, only cause
chaos with his lies and misdirection, his misuse of good for his evil ends.
With this man in the Gerasenes, apparently,
the demons had been doing this to the man “for a log time.” The devil has been
doing this very thing for a long time – disrupting and separating man’s
relationship with God. It began with a whisper of serpentine seduction: you can
be like God. The original demonized, homeless man was Adam who runs, naked and
afraid into what was suddenly a dying world. Ever since then, he has done what
he can to seduce God’s people into thinking he is winning this cosmic battle
and God is left playing catch-up, like the proverbial detective who is always
one step behind the vicious serial intruder.
Chances are you haven’t met and
will not meet a person who is demon possessed like this man. If I were a
betting man, I would give big odds that you will never witness anything like
what is truthfully recorded in the Bible or fabricated by a fiction writer. But
you do experience satan’s work and the frustrated efforts of his demons – not in
the otherworldly sense, but in his real-world, personal attempt to distract you
from the wonderful, life-giving and life-changing Good News of Jesus Christ.
Satan is a defeated enemy. He
knew it from the moment in the Garden that God declared that He would put
enmity between woman and the serpant and that he would strike her heel but her
seed would crush satan’s head. He realized he was living and working on
borrowed time. As part of mankind’s punishment for sin, God allows satan limited
access to man – remember his mandate that was recorded in the beginning of the
book of Job, “Do what you will, but you cannot take his life.” Likewise, God
will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, and He will always
provide a way out of that temptation.
I think we often take the idea of
being tempted and do our own Hollywoodizing of it. So, for example, consider
the Commandments. Don’t steal – well, of course, I’m not going to go carjack
someone sitting at the light at Navarro and the loop. Don’t kill – well, of
course, I’m not going to go whack the guy who ordered the last chicken fried
steak at the restaurant. The devil knows that, so he’s much more subtle. I won’t
steal a car, but I’ll steal time from my company by goofing off, making
excessive personal calls, cruising social media. I won’t kill someone, but I’ll
think terrible thoughts about them, wish them harm, and call them terrible
names. Jesus says if you have done even these, you are guilty of breaking the
commandment.
But the devil’s pièce de resistance
is then turning the Good News of Jesus against you. And he does it in your
own voice, too. “Of course, Jesus died for the sins of the world. But, did he
die for yours?” “A real Christian never would have done such a thing.” “Do you
really think God can forgive you?” “How do you expect God to forgive you, again
– after all, you keep saying you’re sorry but you keep doing the same thing…” “You
really need to fix this thing to show God how sorry you are. You need to read
your Bible, or pray, or cry harder, or punish yourself or some other mark of penance
to prove to God you are worthy of his love.” Demonic confusion penetrates into
our belief system, altering the Scriptural truth of saved by grace through
faith in Christ to becoming self-worthy and self-justified and, sadly,
self-damned.
Never forget this: Jesus invaded
the demon’s territory. When He walked ashore that day at the Gerasenes, He did
so as the conquering victor. “He’s judged, the deed is done,” we sing in A
Mighty Fortress, and Jesus spoke judgement against the demons, yet in a way we
might not expect. From His temptation in the wilderness against satan, to His
final, dying breath, Jesus allowed Himself to be the target of satan’s worst.
Each time, Jesus stomps again on satan’s head, crushing it more and more. Yes,
at the cross, satan gets his fangs deep into Jesus, the venom of sin and the
Law that poisons sinners to death coursing into Him. His heel is bruised,
bruised to death.
I have an image in my mind that
when Jesus sighed the final, “It is finished,” satan – misunderstanding – rejoiced.
If in heaven there is rejoicing over one sinner who repents, in hell there was celebration
that the seemingly impotent so-called savior allowed Himself to die. Salivating
over what he could do now that Jesus was out of the picture, the devil was ecstatic.
And then, Jesus showed up, preaching to the spirits and demons and even the
devil himself, proclaiming that He, Jesus, is God enfleshed; He is the
fulfillment of God’s promise to Eve; He is the conqueror who paid the sin-price
and death-payment for the world, and satan’s seeming victory was over because
he would now spend eternity being tormented by all of the evil he had
committed.
You, my friends, are baptized
into Christ. His death is your death. His resurrection is your resurrection. As
Christ rose, you also will rise. You are forgiven fully and freely in Christ
Jesus. Satan’s lies to the contrary, nothing can strip that gift from you. In
your baptism, the old adam, the old eve, is drowned. Luther actually calls this
a small exorcism. You’re familiar with the question, “Do you renounce the
devil, his works and his ways.” Luther actually added the command, in Christ’s
name, “Depart you unclean spirit and make way for the Holy Spirit.” I use that
when a Christian soul is troubled by the devil’s lies, commanding satan’s
departure from the child of God in the name of Jesus, and then proclaiming the
forgiveness of sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, the Trinitarian baptismal formula spoken again, reminding the child of
God that He is God’s through Christ Jesus.
Yes; we still struggle with that
old adam and old eve. We still struggle against temptations that are real. We
still face satan’s minions who want nothing more than to distract us from Jesus’
death and resurrection for us. We still confess our sins, daily, in thought,
word and deed; those remembered and those we didn’t even recognize. “Deliver us
from evil” is always on our lips. Yet, do not despair. It *is* finished. Satan
is defeated. And, remember: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The
old has gone, the new has come.”
So, “go home. Go and tell
everyone how much God has done for you.” The man wants to go with Jesus and be
His disciple. Jesus has other plans for him. “No, you stay here. Go home to
your family and your community and tell them how much God has done for you.” That’s
what you do when Jesus rescues you from the darkness of your demons. You return
home in right mind and spirit, and you declare the praises of Him who brought
you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Go. Tell everyone what God has
done for you.
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