I want to acknowledge my debt to Tom Harpur and his book Water into Wine in this sermon. Many of the references and illustrations come from that helpful book and I'll admit I needed help in preaching about the topic today.
Demonology isn't something we talk about much less study anymore. But we can't escape talking about demon possession after reading a text like today's gospel lesson about the Gerasene demoniac.
Think "demon possession" is a relic of a pre-scientific age when mental and physical illnesses were attributed to evil spirits? The fact is we live in a culture that suffers from a "legion" of possessing spirits, as toxic and traumatic as those that came raging forth from the Geresene demoniac.
The spew from one of our most destructive demons is even now washing up in greasy globs all along the coastlines in the Gulf of Mexico.
We are possessed by a greed that puts profits before protecting people and the planet.
We are possessed by an insatiable desire for "more stuff" — and the cost of that "stuff" is increasingly deadly.
When Jesus banished the evil spirits from the Gerasene demoniac, he filled the man with a new identity and a new mission. Long before Saul became Paul on the Damascus Road, Jesus had sent a missionary to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles. Because the healed man felt God's power and presence so fully in the person of Jesus, he became a new person in Christ.
The text of Mark, the oldest gospel, and the one upon which Matthew and Luke are based, presents Jesus primarily as an exorcist, driving out demons from people on every side. The first chapter of Mark, verse 39, sets this out most clearly: "And he went throughout the Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons."
Only the crudest of literalism down the ages has, with often terrifying results, interpreted this as an actual expulsion of statanic forces. What is pictured or symbolized by these demonic influences are precisely the same drives, influences, complexes, obsessions and compulsions that we have in mind when we speak metaphorcally of a perons's inner "demons" distracting, wasting or paralysing his or her life. As spiritual beings enmeshed in matter, with all the weaknesses that flesh is heir to, we are often too eaily caught up in currents and forces that threaten to take control or turn us into courses of thought or action which disrupt our inner harmony and spill over into our behaviour towards others. Without healing, these forces can at times break out into antisocial or even criminal behavior. History is full of the horrors made possible when individuals or even whole nations succumb like a herd to the grip of the lower animal instincts within us all. Anybody who has never faced the reality of the shadow in their own life and psyche would do well to read Carl Jung's slim volume The Undiscovered Self which says that a mere change in the neuronal workings in the minds of a few key leaders could easily plunge the world into a nuclear night.
The story of the demoniac who said his name was Legion, "for we are many," vividly told in chapter eight of Luke, illustrates in a powerful way just how encountering the Christ can transform an individual--or an entire society.
The chief points of the story are these: the man was utterly out of control; he lived among tombs, which is to that, like many religionists today, he surrounded himself with the bones of the past; he was a danger even to himself -- "he was always howling and bruising himself with stones." Significantly, Jesus cofronts him with a blunt question: "What is your name?" We know that, in many cultures, naming something was often thought of in the ancient world as the first step in gaining mastery over either an object or, indeed, another person. The fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin is an illustration of the same idea. The elaborate tale, which originated in Germany, comes to a happy conclusion when the queen discovers the dwarf's name and so wins release from a promise made under duress to give him her first-born child. The sick man in our story is also compelled to face his illness, to put a name on it before he can be healed. What is revealing in the symbolism of what follows is that the dispossessed evil spirits are made to come out and depart from the man beside a body of water, and that they should ask to be freed to enter animals considerd to be gross and unclean. "And the unclean spirits came out an entered the swine; and the herd . . . rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea."
It is worth observing in passing that while Luke says "a large herd of swine"--Mark expressly says there were "about two thousand" pigs in the great herd that dashed themselves down into the sea. In the Eleusianian mysteries, according to Freke and Gandy's The Jesus Mysetries, a crowd of some two thousand initiates on one occasion were required to bathe in the sea with a herd of swine. The purpose of the ritual was to transfer any taint of animality and evil from the initiates over to the pigs. The pigs were then sacrificed by being driven over a cliff into the waters. The neophytes were at once declared pure and totally renewed.
Water itself signifies the watery domain of the physical or material body, as do the pigs. The realm of the human is to be ruled by the Christ Spirit; the activities of primodrial lusts and instincts were relegated to their true abode. It is significant to recall at this point that in the final Egyptian tableau of judgment in the Hall of Judment, any person who failed to pass the high ethical standards requried was immediately delivered over to the Typhonian beast -- a composite of pig, crocodile and hippopotamus. This signified rejection for that moment or cycle as the soul was forced to descend back into the body of the animal to gain further experience before ultimate deliverance or "salvation."
There are at least two high points in Mark's account here. The first is when the swineherds run off and return with a crowd from the "city." They came to Jesus "and saw the demonicac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind." The healing was complete. The second is the ending where the former demoniac begs to be allowed to remain with Jesus but "Jesus refused, and said to him, 'Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.' And he went away and began to proclaim . . . how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed." There is a great truth there. Nobody who has come to the realization of the Christ within, and who has expereienced the power of that inner consciousness to drive out the "demons" and restore true healing, can refrain from making it known--certainly not by pious preaching to or cajoling of others, but by a quiet and radiant wintess day by day. There is nothing at all wrong--and indeed much that is right--in being eager and able, when called upon, to give "a reason for the hope that is in you."
What is being said in this brief story is that we must find our true spiritual core and allow it to overflow within. Otherwise its place will eventually be taken over by other "spirits" -- the spirit of raw ambition, of lust for material possessions, the spirit of false and misleading doctrines, of cynicism or even despair. Right now in the Western world the old gods are being driven out. And they need to go. The burning issue is what will rush in to fill their place. It's a personal issue, but it is also societal, and ultimately global as well. It has particular relevance for the churches.
Our PC(USA) General Assembly begins two weeks from now. Let's pray that the commissioners may find a unity of spirit through the indwelling Christ. May all other spirits be driven out of that body so they are free to move within the matrix of the Holy Spirit. May the spirit of competition be cast out of that body and may the spirit of unity be allowed free reign.
We are no different from that Gerasene demoniac. We are all possessed by demons. Maybe your demon comes in a bottle. Maybe your demon comes on a card table or a food table or a one-armed bandit. Maybe your demon comes in a shopping mall or a porn site. This is a culture haunted by demon possession. Well, listen, Jesus casts outs demons. Let's name our demons and submit them to the same treatment as Jesus gave to the demons in our story today. By the power of the Christ within, let us cast them out and thus restore our soul to greater health and harmony. That would be a memorable Father's Day gift both to ourselves and to those we love.
