Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Today's scripture reading is from Mark, chapter 5, verses 1 through 20.

Mark 5:1–20

Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the sea to the region of Garasenes.

And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him.

He lived among the tombs, and no one could restrain him anymore, even with a chain, for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke into pieces, and no one had the strength to subdue him.

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him, and he shouted at the top of his voice, What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High?

I adjure you by God, do not torment me.

For he had said to him, Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.

Then Jesus asked him, What is your name?

He replied, My name is Legion, for we are many.

He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region.

Now there on the hillside was a herd of swine, and they were feeding, and the unclean spirits begged him, send us into the swine, let us enter them.

So he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, stampeded down the steep bank into the sea and were drowned in the sea.

The swine herds ran off and told it in the city and in the country.

Then people came to see what it was that had happened.

They came to Jesus and saw the man possessed by demons sitting there, clothed and in his right mind.

And every man who had I'm sorry, and every man who had had the legion, and they became frightened.

Those who had seen what had happened to the man possessed by demons and to the swine reported it.

Then they began to beg Jesus to leave the neighborhood.

As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him.

But Jesus refused and said, Go home to your people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and what mercy has been shown to you.

And he went away and began to proclaim in the Dracopolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone was amazed.

May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church?

So this morning we are starting a new sermon series on things like demons and zombies and ghosts.

Do those things appear in the Bible?

Do they not appear in the Bible?

What does the Bible have to say about them?

Today we are asking the question: are demons real?

I feel like I need like some Scooby-Doo sound effects or something like that.

Um, okay, so if we look at some background, we'll see that the group, the Greek word for, or sorry, the Greek root for the word daemon is deo.

It means to tear apart, to divide, so to tear apart oneself, to feel divided within oneself, or to tear apart or divide one's community or nation.

In wider Greek mythology, the meaning of demons, it's somewhat varied, but for some background context, it can refer to the souls of the dead that keep watch over human affairs.

It could be evil actors directed by Zeus who would carry out the evil things Zeus wanted to see happen.

Sometimes they were intermediaries between gods and humans.

So, like not quite gods, but not quite humans.

For Josephus, now he was a historian who lived around the time that Jesus lived, he was a Jewish historian.

He said that demons were the ghosts or souls of the dead that could either protect or torment humans.

And in the New Testament, like in the story we heard today from Mark's gospel, demons are viewed as evil or unclean spirits with the capacity to harm and torment people.

They're viewed as like agents of Satan, who by this time Satan was viewed as like the personification of evil.

If you begin, like in Genesis, like early on, Satan is like just the adversary, but over the course of time he becomes personified as evil, and then the demons are Satan's actors, or they helped Satan carry out Satan's aims.

I think it's the most times I've said Satan in one sentence in my life, at least to Brentwood.

Okay, according to the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, which I've learned existed before AI, this is amazing.

Uh, in the New Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, demons represented the way, quote, ancients expressed their understanding of evil as a transcendent power.

So ancient folks trying to understand evil, this reality of evil as something beyond themselves, like transcendent kind of meaning, it's it's beyond themselves.

And so they're like evils in this world, things that kind of afflict them.

And so they're trying to make sense of these things, these evil forces that attach themselves to them, that overcome them, that threaten to tear them apart, that divide them, that torment things that are beyond their control, they're trying to make sense of what all of this is.

All of which brings us back to the original question: are demons real?

Are they real?

Okay, there's a lot of unpacking we probably should do.

Um on the one hand, it's it's common for like modern folk to write off much of this as like being like full of like superstition and magic.

And it is true that in the ancient world there were things that would happen that they didn't have good explanations for, they didn't have access to the same modern day scientific understandings we might have today.

So there were certain afflictions that sometimes would be labeled as like demonic because people were trying to make sense of what's happening.

Uh, an example was epilepsy.

Sometimes that was viewed as being possessed by a demon.

We have modern understandings now that help us understand better.

Um, sometimes someone would foam at the mouth, and and we might recognize that today as somebody maybe has been poisoned, or maybe something that happened.

In the ancient world, people trying to make sense of things they couldn't quite understand, they would attribute those kinds of things to like demonic forces.

Um so it's hard to like go back 2,000 years and try to understand the terms exactly the same way that we might understand them today, um, because there are a lot of things that we understand that the ancients didn't understand.

Yet at the same time, there are still things in our world that are beyond our control, that can feel very overwhelming, that can feel very evil.

Things that overcome us, that afflict us, that get attached to us, that threaten to tear us apart or divide us, dare I say, that torment us.

Our society here in the United States, it continues to be divided and torn, divided and torn apart by things like race, class, religion.

There are forces at work in our world that socially condition people before they even know it.

Children are not born racist.

They're not.

But they are immersed in racist power structures as they grow up.

Children are not born sexist, but they are immersed in patriarchal power structures as they grow up.

So many folks in the United States have to navigate unfair power structures basically their whole lives, structures that threaten to divide them, to tear them apart at every turn.

And sometimes it's all you can do just to survive.

Whether demonic or not, those are real forces at work in our world today.

And at the same time, you've got folks who bend over backwards to try to prop up these power structures, to try to see them keep going.

They don't want to see them go away, who somehow think making America great means conserving instead of subverting these power structures.

Even as they too are destroyed by these power structures, even as they too are divided and torn apart by them.

Nothing destroys the soul more than reveling in death.

To celebrate death, to celebrate violence, to livestream death, to livestream violence.

That is fatal to the soul.

As Jesus says, according to the Gospel of John, the thief comes, a personification of the devil being called the thief.

The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy.

It's what the devil does, according to the New Testament.

But Jesus says, I have come that you might have life.

Not death, but life to the full.

Okay, so let's take a closer look at this story that we heard earlier from the Gospel of Mark.

Okay, this story is swimming in symbolism.

It's a fascinating little story.

Jesus comes to the area of the Garrisones and he encounters a man who is torn apart, divided, tormented by demons.

He's living in the tombs among the dead.

He's ostracized.

He's shut off from his family, from his friends, from his community.

He's all alone.

Everybody wants to stay away from him.

They're afraid of him.

He has violent outbursts.

Jesus asks him his name.

And the man replies, My name is Legion, for we are many.

So what is a legion?

In this first century context, a legion was 2,000 or 3,000 Roman soldiers and 120 Roman cavalry.

To get the full sense of what's going on in this little story, you need to know that about 50 years before Jesus was born, those who were living in this area, it's kind of like the uh decop, I can't pronounce it, it's like area of ten cities.

Those who were living in this area were subjected to occupying Roman imperial forces who took over.

These folks were subjected to the colonial rule of Rome.

And you know, interestingly enough, guess what the logo was for the Roman legion that was stationed in and around the area of Palestine?

A wild boar.

That is to say, a pig.

So there's all kinds of symbolism going on here with pigs in this story.

Okay, one is that for Jewish folk, pigs are viewed as like unclean, they're not kosher.

Um, and a lot of those who were in Roman society would make fun of Jewish folk for not eating pigs.

Uh, there are even jokes about this.

Um, for the Jewish people, pigs were viewed as unclean and unkosher, yet the Roman Legion, its very logo was a pig, a wild boar.

So as a storyteller here, Mark is trying to be very careful and provocative about the truths he's trying to name.

In this story, Mark equates the violent occupying forces of Rome with the demons that cause harm to people.

The violent occupying forces of Rome, my name is Legion, for we are many, is the name of the demon or demons.

In Mark's story, these are the forces that divide people, that tear them apart, that torment them, that lead to affliction.

So, like a large swine herd would have been about 300 pigs.

2,000 pigs is like over the top huge.

This is a symbolic story of what Mark is trying to do.

How many soldiers were in a Roman legion?

2,000.

2,000.

How many pigs in this story?

2,000.

Mark's being a little over the top here.

Symbolic.

Making a direct connection between the demons that torment with the Roman occupying forces whose calling card is violence.

When Jesus performs an exorcism, and this is like the like the kind of healings that Jesus does or miracles that Jesus does, exorcisms is at the top of the list.

And Jesus' very first miracle in Mark's gospel was an exorcism.

It's like Jesus encountered demon possession at every turn in his ministry.

And whenever Jesus performed this exorcism, all the demons go out of this man and they go into the pigs, all 2,000 of them, into the pigs, and the pigs are then, it's kind of a sad story for the pigs, honestly, in some ways.

The pigs are driven off the cliff and into the sea.

And this man is freed from these demons.

They leave him.

It raises a whole host of questions.

If Mark was telling a purely literal story, there would not be a herd of more than 300 pigs.

Much less like 2,000 pigs.

In this story, Mark is giving expression to what a lot of these ancient folks living in this area were wanting.

And that is for the Roman occupying violent forces to leave them alone, to get out of their lives, to quit oppressing them.

Mark is making the point that societies rooted in oppressive power structures lead to harm, destruction, and affliction.

And this is what Mark calls demonic.

As the New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan writes, quote, in the first century mind, there was a connection between demon possession and colonial oppression.

Part of the reason that Jesus encountered so many demonic forces, so to speak, in his ministry is because of the colonial oppression of Rome.

Which, if you haven't noticed, when there are oppressive, violent power structures, that does a number on people's mental health and their well-being.

When people face oppression at every turn, when folk have to navigate unfair power structures, it can lead to a number of feelings, not the least of which could feel as if one is overcome, exhausted.

It's no surprise that Jesus encounters many of those who feel that way.

In the New Testament, actually I'm gonna say something here.

I was gonna say it during the offering, I'll say it here.

This past week, an immigrant who had been working at Missouri State University was arrested by ICE.

This story has hit the news.

He was beloved, is beloved.

He did everything right in terms of all the documentation, everything you're supposed to do.

He got two degrees at Missouri State, he's been an excellent employee.

He was rounded up by ICE.

And I appreciated the message that went out from Missouri State's president.

One of the things he mentioned is that because of what is going on in this particular situation, obviously, this is just a microcosm of many other stories around our country right now.

President Williams said that there are mental health resources for students and faculty and staff to access.

And I appreciated that he sent that out.

At the same time, I asked the question: shouldn't we create a world in which we don't need to have to access those resources so frequently for these kinds of reasons?

If Jesus was encountering folks who had been hurt, disturbed, afflicted by the Roman colonizing forces, and he sought to set them free from that.

If we encounter those kinds of things because of policies in our society, let's not just stop at mental health and wellness.

That is important, no doubt about it, and I appreciate that those resources have been offered.

But let's not just stop there.

Let's change the policies that lead us to need them so much in the first place.

Let's exercise those demons.

In the New Testament, demons, evil forces, they're synonymous.

They're associated with the kinds of things that cause harm.

The things that harm human beings, that harm societies, the things that tear us apart, that divide us, that keep us from living into all that God wants for us.

It's the thief that comes to steal and kill and destroy, but Jesus comes to give life, to set us free from everything that harms us, to heal us from the divisions that try to define us, to liberate us from the structures of violence that threaten to destroy us.

Jesus comes to set us free.

So are demons real?

I mean, no doubt there are forces in our world that try to bring harm to us.

That's a real thing.

We may use the word demons, we may not.

But those forces were around back in the ancient world.

They're still around today.

The names and definitions may change or ebb and flow over the years.

But there are legions of things that afflict us today.

Like the man left to live in the tombs all by himself.

Some of us can feel lonely and left out.

But Jesus sees us, asks us our name, and invites us into the beloved community where you are loved beyond your wildest imagination.

Maybe it feels like addiction has got the best of you.

Stuff you wish you could overcome, but you feel like you can't.

Love sees you and restores you and never gives up on you.

Maybe you feel like your life is a mess, or that the structures of violence in our world will never change.

Know that the liberating, healing love of God is with us.

Meeting us in the tombs where we feel forgotten, helping us overcome everything we are afraid to face, reminding us that even though it can feel like our afflictions are insurmountable, that all hope is lost, it is precisely in those moments that Christ's love finds us, meets us, and promises to make all things new.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.