(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “What God Has Done For You”, originally shared on June 15, 2022. It was the 221st video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
How do you tell others what God has done for
you? Do you have a dramatic back story? Do you need one? Is any condition in life
too extreme for God’s transformation? Today, we’re going to find out.
The Farmer John meat packing plant in Vernon
is closing. About 1,800 to 2,000 people will be losing their jobs. That’s a lot
of people who are not happy about being out of work.
There are a lot of unhappy people who were
dependent on the meat industry in the story of the healing of the Gerasene
demonic.
Jesus and the disciples had gone on a trip
across the Sea of Galilee. His home base was Capernaum on the sea’s western
shore and Gerasene was probably almost directly across from it, and a little south.
Gerasene was a non-Jewish, that is “pagan” or “Gentile”, territory, as you
might guess as you hear this story, given the prominence of a large herd of
swine, an unclean animal to the Jews .
Then this happens in Luke 8:27,
27 As he stepped out on shore, a man
from the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had not worn any
clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.
The greeting party that met Jesus and his
disciples was a naked man who used to live in the city but now lived in the
graveyard.
Most of us will read this and see lots of
red flags. This is not normal.
The people of Jesus days would see that he
was not being supported by his family. That he was not wearing clothing, a
thing that distinguished human beings from animals. Oh, and he had demons.
In our culture, demons are something we see
in the movies. It’s surprising how many people believe in demons but do not
believe in God. William Peter Blatty in The Exorcist has a character
say, “God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The
devil does a lot of commercials.”
In our text today,
we see that God talks a lot, and that the demons believe in God. The question
of who is doing the most commercials depends entirely upon whether you are a
Christian or not. We see things as we are.
In addition to everything
else that the man had lost, he had no agency, he had lost the power to speak
for himself. We see this in Luke 8:28-30,
28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out
and fell down before him, shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of
the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me,” 29 for
Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many
times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and
shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the
wilds.) 30 Jesus then asked him, “What is your
name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. 31 They
begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
The man was a mess.
Everything that made him human in the eyes of the world had been taken away
from him.
Jesus had commanded
the unclean spirit to come out of the man, the unclean spirit who had was in
fact many demons, and they immediately recognized Jesus for who he was, and
they begged him not to send them back to the abyss. So, Jesus agreed and sent
them where they wished, the unclean spirit into the unclean animals, and to
extermination, as we see in Luke 8:32-33,
32 Now there on the hillside a large
herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them
enter these. So he gave them permission. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and
entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and
was drowned.
What just happened? A
large heard of swine was gone. Jesus had chosen the restoration of one man over
the prosperity the pig owners. He had chosen a miracle for the possessed man
over the food supply of the region. He had made a miracle.
A miracle does not
suspend the laws of the universe. A miracle restores the universe to what it
was created to be.
Look at what
happened to the man, and how the non-believers responded in Luke 8:34-37,
34 When the swineherds saw what had
happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. 35 Then people came out to see what had
happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons
had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they
became frightened. 36 Those who had seen it told
them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37 Then
the whole throng of people of the surrounding region of the
Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great
fear. So he got into the boat and returned.
The people from the city found the man from
who the demons had gone, “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his
right mind.”
I studied in Israel for a semester when I
was in college. Our chief guide, a graduate student who was an alumnus of my
college, took our group to this location and read this text to us. He wept when
he read it, and when he was finished he said, “This man was me.”
He spoke about how he had suffered with
mental illness in his life and had had a mental breakdown. He said he believed
that Jesus had come to him and healed him and when he had done it, Jesus had
left him, “clothed and in his right mind.”
Our guide said that Jesus had restored him
to himself and to his family and to his community, and he had now taken up his
studies again.
How did the demon-possessed man’s community
respond?
They became frightened, and everybody from
that surrounding region asked Jesus to leave them, “for they were seized with
great fear.”
Why? They were non-believers in Christ, but
they did believe in the supernatural forces of evil. Maybe they were afraid
because they feared the spirit world. Jesus had power there. Maybe they were afraid
that he could turn it against them? They could have asked Jesus to stay and
hear the good news and be freed from their fear, but they sent him away. They
let their fears keep them from their blessing.
The property owners were already mad; Jesus
had killed their livelihood as well as some of the city’s food supply. They missed
the blessing of eternity because of their needs in this world.
Jesus left, as they requested, but he didn’t
leave them without a chance at salvation.
We see this in Luke 8:38-39,
38 The man from whom the demons had gone out
begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Return
to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away,
proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
What are we, living
in 2022, to make of this?
We see things as the
baptized people of God. Most of the world outside the church fears the
supernational power of evil. People in the church may or may not believe in
supernatural evil, but they do not fear it. In our baptism, sin, death, and the
power of these forces are overcome by God’s grace.
There is a vestigial
exorcism in the service of Holy Baptism used by the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America in the current hymnbook, “Evangelical Lutheran Worship”, in the
“Profession of Faith” section (on page 229) where the sponsors answer for the
child or the adult answers for him/herself:
Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?
Response: I renounce them.
Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against
God?
Response: I renounce them.
Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?
Response: I renounce them.
These words are
followed by a trinitarian reading/recitation of the Apostles Creed.
“I believe…”
And the service ends
with the words, “__Name__, child of God, you have been sealed by
the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”
The grace of God
comes to the demon-possessed man through the power of God. We see that power
for us on the cross. We belong to God. We have been sealed by the Holy Spirit.
The man with the
demons had a cool story to tell.
How can we declare
how much God has done for us?
What commercials are
you producing through your proclamation and your daily living?
Do we see people in
need on the street corners and in homeless encampments? How do we serve them?
Who are the lost in our lives?
Remember last week’s
assignment?
I asked that we use
the name “Jesus” in a sentence with someone who is not a member of your church.
To just let it come up in normal conversation. How hard was that? Did you do
it?
I’m going to give you the same assignment
this week. 😊
We may not have a
dramatic story like the demoniac who Jesus restored to his right mind, or maybe
some of us do. But we all have stories that are true to our lives. The story of
“How I Became a Christian” or, “Why I Continue to Be a Christian” are stories
we know and can share with the people close to us. Even just letting people
know that you gather with others to worship God in response to what God has done
for you in your Baptism, that’s a story.
These are the
stories that you can proclaim right now to tell others what God has done for
you.
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