Not Just a Healing Story - Luke 8:26-39 (Mark 5:1-20)

I bet I’ve said this before, but there are weeks when preaching feels like being a competitor on the cooking show “Chopped." You look at what you have to work with, the contents of your ingredient basket, and then have to figure out what to make. Here’s what I found in the basket this week: an epic heat wave, more gun violence and this time at an Episcopal Church, Juneteenth, when federal troops arrived in Galveston, TX in 1865 to take control and ensure that all enslaved people be freed; the January 6 hearings, a pandemic that just keeps going, Father’s Day, and of course, the main ingredient this morning, the Gerasene demoniac. And the clock starts now.

Looking at that basket, one option would be to make a pretty safe dish. It’s perfectly acceptable to offer a familiar interpretation of the story we just heard. That recipe comes with some really wonderful Gospel-based stuff. We could point out that Jesus made the long trip to the land of the Gerasenes, Gentile territory where no rabbis had any business going, in order to heal just one man. This has a kind of lost sheep ring to it - that God cares for each of us so deeply that God will go to great lengths to reach each one of us. That is a story of grace. We could also point out that the poor man possessed by demons must have suffered from profound mental illness. Jesus cast out the man’s affliction and we find him clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. That is a story of healing. Or we could focus on how Jesus took the man out of his terrible isolation among the tombs and gave him back to his community. That is a story of restoration. Each of these interpretations has the power to nourish us.

But with everything else in the ingredient basket this week, I wonder if a more daring dish is called for. Chefs on Chopped know the classic recipes, and then innovate and even take a few risks. Perhaps that’s how we should read today’s story. This means using our imaginations to think with the biblical story in order to hear some good news for today. And once you start thinking and interpreting that way, it becomes clear that Luke’s story is actually much more radical than just a story about grace or healing or community.

I owe the following modern-day interpretation to Otis Moss III, the pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ (Festival of Homiletics 2022). For context, that was the Obamas’ church when he decided to run for president. Moss tells the story of how the church and his own family received racially motivated death threats for a year during the campaign. And it’s important to note that the following interpretation comes from the pastor of a UCC church, a denomination with an outstanding slogan - “God is still speaking.” I really wish we had thought of that. They are also known for this one: “Our faith is over 2,000 years old, but our thinking is not.” In other words, biblical texts are not just stories that happened long ago. They have revelation and insight to offer us for what’s going on today.

So here is Moss’s read on the man living among the tombs in the land of the Gerasenes. Mark’s version mentions that he has been howling at the moon at night and causing self-harm. Read - a homeless man with mental health issues whom the people tried to incarcerate with shackles. That sounds familiar. But nothing could bind him because of his strength, so he is seen as a threat. “Rabbi,” he says to Jesus first thing, “do not torture me.” One might assume from this greeting that he had had encounters with religious leaders in the past, and not with good results. Jesus asks him his name, a humanizing move. The man doesn’t answer but his issues do. “Legion,” is the reply.

We should pause here, because that word is quite specific. A legion was a Roman military term. It was an occupying force, used here to describe what is happening to this man. Perhaps Roman policies had subjugated him with devastating results.  He needs to be released from those occupying policies in order to be the person Jesus can already see, with his full humanity restored. The demons, the legion, then begin to negotiate because they know they have met their match in Jesus. They ask to go into a large herd of pigs, even to their peril, in what Moss humorously calls an act of pigocide.

Which raises another question, what are pigs doing in Palestine? Some folks might be involved in an illicit trade that is unclean but lucrative. We begin to see that Jesus is working on two levels here - healing the man who’s been at the mercy of an oppressive system, and repairing unjust commerce, all in one brilliant move.

Strangely, the people are terrified after the man is healed. They were not when he was breaking chains and howling at the moon, but now that he’s restored to his right mind, he’s perceived as a threat. Probably because he can now rationally call out the system that kept him in captivity. They want him and Jesus gone. The man wants to go with Jesus, to become a disciple. But Jesus sends him home, to witness to what God has done. His fearful community needs to hear the good news of his full and restored humanity. And they need to hear his witness to the system that had cast him into the tombs in the first place. I’m grateful to Rev. Moss for his brilliant read of this text.

As we read this ancient story in light of the world we’re living in, the Christian message takes on a particular kind of urgency. The Gospel offers healing to individuals through grace, restoration, and community. The Gospel also speaks to the broken systems wreaking havoc on people’s lives - whether we’re talking about a culture obsessed with guns or complicit in mass incarceration and systemic racism or any of the other troubling ingredients in our basket these days. Jesus works in both directions, and calls us to do the same.

If your basket of ingredients feels heavy these days, I hope that you hear a word of comfort in today’s Gospel, that healing and restoration are at hand. May we also hear a word of call and strength for the ministry we share. We join Jesus in his work of lifting up the dignity of every human being. And we join him in the work of repairing the brokenness in our world, too. The ingredients in our baskets may be challenging these days, but what we have to offer in Jesus’ name is Gospel food - ancient, but also deeply nourishing here and now.