Pentecost 3
Then the whole population of the Gerasene District was overcome by fear & asked Jesus to go away.
Years ago, in the late seventies when I was an undergraduate I went with what seemed like half the student population of Glasgow to see a film which threatened to shock and frighten the nation. It was a scary, scary film & those with a sensitive disposition or who were susceptible were warned about going to see it. Given those warnings & the surrounding publicity accompanying the film, which had shocked & horrified people when it opened the previous weekend you can imagine we were desperate to see it. It was in the days when students still got a Wednesday off or very light unless of course you were a medic. So there I was with thousands and I mean thousands of other denim clad idiots waiting to be scared witless outside the La Scala cinema in Sauchiehall Street which is now Waterstones Bookshop. The atmosphere was more hilarious than horror, carnival than creepy so in we all went. The film was the Exorcist. We all, through fear or stupidity or whatever, laughed our way through it with the really brave shouting the odd comment out to disturb the flow of things. That kind of thing did happen, honestly. Anyway we watched it, this film about demonic possession & we all left the place thinking what a great bit of nonsense because the idea of demonic possession was of course ludicrous. I saw the film the other night & it meant something quite different this time around. Whether that was do to age, or common sense or the fact I wasn’t with a whole pile of late teenagers in a cinema all exercising the same bravado to rally the troops, I do not know. I was scared this time in a way I wasn’t 30 years ago. It made me think of the story from our scriptures today.
The story of Jesus from this section of the gospel of Luke records his visit to the gentile world on the edge of Israel. It is a story that examines a number of themes not the least of which is the battle between good & evil & our response to it. Here is Jesus exercising his ministry in a very limited way because he has landed on what could possibly be described as the wrong side of the lake. He is in gentile territory, in itself a very rare occurrence & he is called upon to minister in a way which, while not so rare was not the dominant feature of his ministry. He was met by this poor man who was tormented with demons, which had so obviously driven him to distraction he was unable to live with the rest of his community. He was considered dangerous & so the community, his own people had banished him to the place of the dead, the cemetery. They were frightened not just of him but the possibility they also would be overtaken by this horde called Legion. We think of Legion & the disciplined might of Rome. They thought of Legion & saw oppression, power & loss of control. Legion meant something quite sinister & frightening for them.
Evil, on this occasion, recognises who Jesus is, recognises the challenge in this man of God, who is the way of good & confronts him. The resultant exchange is witnessed therefore not by the townspeople but the herdsmen looking after the pigs. They naturally enough would be panic stricken at seeing their pigs sacrificed in this way & must have thought the world had collapsed. I suppose economically it had. The Legion departs from the man into the swine & he is left bewildered but in his right mind & fully clothed for the first time. Later we discover he asked to be allowed to follow Jesus but Jesus told him to go to his own people & witness to the power of God in this gentile area. The townsfolk fearful of what was going on asked Jesus to leave. He was told to go because he frightened an already very frightened people. Instead of rejoicing & setting a great feast up to celebrate they asked Jesus, the one who so obviously had overcome evil, who brought healing to this man, who brought an end to their fear of what this character might do, to leave. It is a strange story. In any other telling of the conflict there would have been a very happy ending because good had triumphed but this story is told for a very different purpose. This story contains within it one of the major themes of our culture – the conflict between good & evil.
In the old cowboy films, there was often a small town which had been dominated by some gunslinger who would throw his weight about. This resulted in a whole community living with fear & hatred. They would be people held prisoner although they ostensibly were free by some force or evil, which terrorises them & forces them into shunning goodness when they know this is the way forward. It is an old motif- the guy in black terrorising a group of people who are so afraid of him they learn to live with their shoddy compromise. The story of the Beauty & the Beast popularised by Disney in the film of the same name points to something similar & in legend we have the story of St. George slaying the dragon which has been holding a community to ransom. It is a recurring theme in many cultures & for those brought up on Roy Rodgers & Trigger we know the goodie always wears white & always wins. We all need to believe that in the end the goodies will overcome otherwise we would never keep up the fight & so in art, in cinema, in literature & in music we find the engagement of good & bad being played out. In the ancient near east one of the great creation narratives which influenced our own story of the creation was the Chronicle of Marduk where one character triumphs over another & brings order out of chaos. So we find this conflict played out over & over again in the cycle of the world.
What is the purpose of this strange story which Luke gives us with its dramatic main event & really shoddy ending? It is something which society has failed to learn in each & every century. We compromise with evil at our own peril. They lived with evil on the basis that it didn’t directly assault them & as long as they were fine then it was, so to speak, none of their business. They may have been afraid; they might even have been very moral people but as long as the evil did not challenge them directly they could ignore it: it was after all safely held at a distance. As long as the man didn’t come near them they would be free or so they thought. They were as much prisoners of this evil as the man altho’ they did not know it. You see none of us are free if we compromise with evil because one day it will come for us. Evil is the antithesis of Christ’s goodness & if you compromise with it to buy time that is all you are doing because it will one day decide to destroy you. I often make reference to the great Martin Niemoller who, on speaking of his role in Nazi Germany before the Second World War made the great statement, “When they came for the communists, I remained silent. When they came for the trade unionists I remained silent, when they came for the Jews I never said a word. When they came for me there was no one left to speak.” I make no apology for reminding you of these words because humanity, having heard them, has not acted upon them. He didn’t challenge the evil of his day because he was not directly involved but one day the beast, the Mob, Legion (the demon or evil called nazism) came for him & there was no one left to challenge it.
This is something we all have to learn. If we are so afraid even of challenging evil then there is no hope for us. These people from this episode in Luke’s gospel were not bad people, just fearful of something they could not understand or resolve. Fear held them back from confronting this demon which tortured the man & ultimately them. Maybe it is cowardice which stops us challenging the wrongs in our world, I hope to God it is not indifference. I also know that the day we reject the way of Christ who brought wholeness to the tormented souls of this world despite the danger to himself we have compromised with evil. Jesus unsettled that little community, their shoddy compromise with evil, their tacit acceptance of the status quo & in doing so he showed them God does not compromise on this. There is still much evil in this world & we live with it. The evil might not be in the form of demons torturing some poor demented soul. It might not be something obvious which cries out wickedness, pain & hurt. It most certainly will not be the caricatured evil of the film Exorcist with the strange manifestations of evil as portrayed by Hollywood but it is there & whenever the community compromises with it at the price of even one soul then we have failed God & ourselves.
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