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Luke 8:26-39 |
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What is your name? He said ‘Legion’, for many demons had entered him...
Today’s Gospel presents one of the most spectacular miracles performed by Jesus. The whole episode is so dramatic, vivid and powerful that it may stay in our imagination even after the Service. We are astonished by many details of the episode and its supernatural atmosphere. Some questions came to our mind spontaneously. For example, why are swine singled out by the narrative as the proper ‘vessel’ for the evil spirits? Didn’t God create pigs as good animals? Why did Jesus accept the request from the demons and send them to the pigs, instead of destroying the evil spirits? How did the man become possessed by the dark powers? Maybe the poor man was just mentally ill? Our curiosity may draw our attention to some details of the folklore of this story, while the crucial message can be easily missed.
The miracle that we witness today happens after the moving story about Jesus’ act of forgiveness to an anonymous sinful woman, which we read last week (Luke 7.36-8.3). In both cases - the woman corrupted by sins and the man possessed by evil spirits - Jesus’ powerful acts renewed what was good at the beginning and then destroyed by evil. Jesus saw in the crying, repenting prostitute God’s daughter, a woman in God’s image, although covered by dust of her immorality. Similarly in the case of the man tormented by evil spirits, Jesus saw God’s son lost and perplexed by powers over which the man had no control. While the prostitute was ‘a tool’ in hands of Simon the Pharisee to check out Jesus’ prophetic credentials, the possessed man was a tool in the hands of evil spirits to demonstrates their presence in this world. Both kinds of possessions are challenged by Jesus, both characters are liberated by his authority. The Jewish woman and the pagan man are rescued by Jesus and return to their original life, country and home. What can we learn from both stories? I believe that both stories remind us about a proper way of proclaiming the Good News. We are called to believe that even in the human soul or life most ruined by sin and addiction, there is an original goodness and potential to be renewed by God’s might. It is not easy to convince ourselves that evil-doers are human beings like us, but at least we should not allow ourselves to treat them with disdain.
There is also more profound level of today’s Gospel. Jesus asks a question to the possessed man:
What is your name? He said ‘Legion’, for many demons had entered him...
The man possessed by the evil spirits was internally broken into many pieces. His emotions, imagination, will, reason and memory were in chaos; his possibly shaking body exemplified that inner disorder of cohabitation of many demons. What can we learn from his condition? The way which ascends towards God leads to integrity of body, mind and spirit. The way which descends towards perditions introduces chaos, moral cacophony and a multitude of images, thoughts and intentions, which alienate the individual from the reality, inclines him of her to believe in fantasies, hear multiple voices and whispers. The symptoms of spiritual illness are not, as in Hollywood movies, speaking in foreign languages or swearing at the priest-exorcists. The first symptoms of spiritual illness is a lack of sensitivity to goodness and evil, boredom, lack of interest in compassion, lack of solidarity with those who suffer, a superficial reading of the events of this world and inability to discern the moments and places when God is making an effort to change people’s lives. Hannah Arendt, a Jewish commentator and philosopher in her famous book Eichmann in Jerusalem published in 1963 presented the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal. Modern men and women possessed by evil spirits do not appear on the TV screens naked, do not leave in tombs and do not raise their voices to shout. Still, their actions lead to enormous destruction, suffering and injustice.
We have to ask ourselves very often the question from the Gospel: ‘what is my name?’ and then listen carefully to the answer. Today’s visionary episode does not place us as an audience on the margin of the story providing us with confirmable seats and calling for our applause of Jesus’ miracle. It rather leaves each one of us with the central and penetrating question: ‘what is my name?’ - and then gives us time to answer.
Revd Dr Piotr Ashwin-Siejkowski
Team Vicar, St John the Divine, Richmond/Surrey
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