Rector's Sermon - Sunday, June 20, 2004

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
1 Kings 19:8-15a	43	Galatians 3:23-29	Luke 8:26-39

    This week's Gospel continues a series of stories about Jesus' healing the sick as he and the disciples traveled around the shore of Galilee. Today’s Gospel serves to complement last week's story about the woman who barged into the Pharisee’s dinner party. It is a man of the city, rather than a woman, who needs healing and a new life. The setting is not a Jewish town, but a gentile one. Even if one did not recognize the geographical names, the reference to surrounding swineherds would make it obvious. There would be no market at all for swine in Jewish towns.

    While the woman was a threat to the good order of the Pharisee’s dinner party, the man's violent behavior seems to have been a threat to the order of the entire town. Neither the woman nor the man had a name. Society had stripped them of their personal identities and now they were only seen as stereotypes. Both of them were desperate and Jesus seemed to be their last hope. The man came upon Jesus with the same shocking surprise as the woman who had thrown herself at Jesus' feet. Yet Jesus did not flinch or retreat in either case. Jesus confronted the man's demons and drove them out. Like the woman to whom Jesus pronounced forgiveness, the man was declared free to rejoin and be clothed in the privileges of his society again.

    For Luke, the primary importance of this story was that it validated the church's mission in reaching out to non-Jews and including them in fellowship. Jesus clearly showed by his example that the healing power of the Gospel was meant equally for all. The new community of God that Jesus had inaugurated was to be composed of Jew and non-Jew, male and female, the well and the sick.

    The other central significance of this story for Luke is a little subtler. Luke knew that the ministry of reconciliation and forgiveness is often hard work. Those who knew the woman of the city as a notorious sinner would find it difficult to treat the woman with respect. Even the woman herself would probably have to constantly remind herself that she was now a new person. There would still be those who scorned or avoided her. In the man’s case, the acceptance of him into his family again would take time and effort by all. It would take months, if not years, before most people relinquished their fear of him. There had been painful adjustments made by his family because of his past behavior, and now there would be all sorts of re-adjustments.

    A direct consequence of the healing was that the demons went into a herd of swine and then the whole herd ran into the sea and was drowned. Naturally the owners of the swine were upset. Luke has a habit of repeating lessons for emphasis, so it is not surprising that in the later book of Acts, Luke tells the story of a servant girl from whom Paul exercised a troublesome spirit. In the process the girl, who was a soothsayer, lost the ability to tell fortunes, hence her masters were infuriated. What Luke is observing is that not everyone will embrace the Gospel as freeing and liberating. Those who benefit from an entrenched system that controls and holds people in bondage as well as those who have adapted or acquiesced to a system of oppression will not welcome further change. Once you have learned to live with demonic forces, it becomes a challenge to learn how to live without them. Hence, people who take the Gospel seriously, may upset others more than what might be anticipated.

    The legitimacy of proclaiming the Gospel to non-Jews and their inclusion as members in the early church, and the arduous process and consequences of healing and reconciliation are so paramount for Luke that other considerations do not really play a part. There is always some bright student in Sunday school who speaks up for the farmer who owned the swineherd. Was it fair that the poor farmer should suffer the lost of his entire herd? Wasn't it cruel to send the demons into the swine? Why were the poor swine punished? Lastly, what about the consequence of all those dead swine whose bloated bodies would surely pollute the lake and contaminate the village's water supply? For Jesus to be against farmers, cruel to animals and a polluter, is a formidable indictment. The real problem for us is getting caught up in details of a particular story rather than understanding why the story was told. Jesus did not justify cruelty to animals, or to farmers, or give license to polluters. These are important issues for us, but we need to be guided by other stories of Biblical witness, and not by incidental and tangential details of this one. Luke wasn’t as concerned with delving into the implications of how Jesus healed as with testifying that Jesus has the wondrous power to promote healing. The final word is that the Gospel gives to us in our day as it did to the early disciples in their day, the strength and perception to be engaged in the hard and difficult process of reconciliation.

    And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.