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"Confronting Demons"

Sermon by Dr. Greg Knox Jones
on Luke 8:26-39
given June 24, 2007

Randy finally mustered the courage to give me a call, but his voice cracked when he asked if he could come by the church that afternoon to talk.  When he arrived he was visibly shaken.  He sat down in my office and began to sob.  Through his tears, the story spilled out.  His wife had taken their two children and moved out of the house.  She had warned him several times that she was going to leave if he did not get a handle on his drinking. This time it was not merely a threat.  He knew his drinking was a problem, but he could not stop himself.  Whenever life became too stressful, he would take the edge off with a few drinks.

One Saturday afternoon, his wife was shopping and he was supposed to be watching their four year-old.  After a couple of drinks, Randy fell asleep on the sofa and the four year-old wandered out into the yard.  The child was playing by himself about six feet from the curb, when his mother wheeled into the driveway.  Thank goodness nothing had happened.  But would they be as lucky if it happened again? 

Randy carries a demon within him that is ripping his family apart.  He desperately wants to rid himself of this demon, but it clings to his insides and nestles ever deeper into his soul.

All of us carry demons within us, and they not only tear at the fabric of our own characters, but they inflict pain on others.  These dark spirits go by many names: an explosive temper, jealousy, a voice that tells us we are worthless, lust, greed, untamed ambition, lies.

Sometimes we keep these evil impulses under wraps, other times they flare and people are scorched.  What can we do to free ourselves from them?  We need a powerful force that can help us defeat the demons that possess us and help us replace them with virtues.

This morning’s reading from the Gospel of Luke relates an episode during the ministry of Jesus when he encountered a man who was possessed by formidable demons.  Jesus and his disciples have sailed across the Sea of Galilee to its eastern shore and the moment Jesus steps out of the boat he is confronted by a man who experiences enormous internal torment.  This man has been such a destructive force in his community that he has been banished from the village.  He lives in the cemetery among the tombs because extreme measures to control him - guards, chains and shackles - have proven unsuccessful.  Powerful demons dominate this man’s life.  His character has been completely distorted and his ties with his neighbors shattered.

Jesus quickly seizes control of the situation.  He demonstrates his power over the dark forces by requiring them to divulge their name. “Legion,” is the reply.  Since a Roman legion consisted of 5,000 soldiers, the name indicates that the man is possessed by many evil spirits.

Immediately the demons recognize the power of Jesus, and they beg him not to send them into the abyss.  This is “the place of the dead in the underworld, to which the tombs lead and from which evil was said to originate.”(1)  The demons bargain with Jesus and ask him to send them into a large herd of swine feeding on a nearby hillside.  The evil spirits enter the swine and the herd rushes down the steep bank into the lake and are drowned.  No longer dominated by dark forces, the man’s health and wholeness return, and he begins to rebuild his life.

The story ends by telling us that the men who cared for the swine dashed into town to tell people what had taken place.  The skeptical townspeople wanted to see for themselves, so they ventured out to see the man.  What they found was that this tormented individual, who had been so uncontrollable, was now in his right mind.  And they had a puzzling reaction to this remarkable healing.  They turned to Jesus and said, “Get out of here!”

A strange reaction.  What is the point of this story? 

Coming from an ancient era, the story sounds primitive to our post-enlightenment mentality.  We are highly skeptical of talking demons and the notion that evil spirits could be sent from a human being into a herd of animals stretches believability a bit too far.  On the other hand, we know that evil is very real and that people can be dominated by internal powers that rage out of control.

We live in an age that relies on psychological language to explain the internal turmoil people experience.  Such terminology is often very helpful in understanding a person’s problem.  However, there are also times when theological language can deepen our understanding of a person’s troubles. Envy, hostility, addiction, racism, a desire for revenge; these are evil powers that exert mighty influences over our lives.  If we do not take their destructive power seriously, we may not be able to tame them.

Studies have shown that Alcoholics Anonymous is the most successful program for helping people who are addicted.  It is no coincidence that a chief component of the AA program is the belief in a spiritual power that is greater than ourselves.

Drug treatment programs have notoriously poor success rates.  Yet those deemed most effective include a spiritual component.  These programs recognize that most people cannot overcome their addiction on their own.  They cannot muster enough strength by themselves.  They need help from a greater power.

So, while our passage comes to us from an era when people understood illness and evil in ways that sound unenlightened, it has a few things to teach us.  If we are tormented by a demon within - and at one time or another all of us are - here are some things we can do. 

First, we must resist the temptation to do nothing.  We must struggle against inertia.  We must ignore that voice that says, “Don’t mess with the status quo; let things continue as they are.  We’ve learned to live with it so far, change might bring something worse.” 

Some scholars think this is why the townspeople want Jesus to clear out after he heals the man.  They have become so accustomed to the way things have always been, that the radical change within this man frightens them.  When he was tormented, they knew what to expect and how to deal with him.  Now that he has had his demons removed, he will return to their midst and there is no telling what change he might bring to their lives.

You may know people who stride a similar path.  They are so accustomed to their demon, and so leery of what change will bring, that they find countless excuses for doing nothing to rid themselves of it.

If you have a demon festering in your soul, do not surrender to that sort of thinking.  Resist the temptation to do nothing.

Second, face it, name it and describe it in all its fullness.  The first thing Jesus did was to identify the demons within the man.  This is what demonstrated his power over them.  And this is what we must do to deal with our demons.  We must face them squarely and name them.

What do they do at an AA meeting?  A person stands up and announces to everyone present: “I am an alcoholic” or “I’m an addict.”  That is a critical component of healing.  We must realize that a demon still exerts control over us as long as we attempt to ignore or deny its existence.  However, once we can face it, name it and describe it, we begin to diminish its grip over us.

The third thing we need to do is to seek healing in all its fullness: physical, emotional and spiritual.  Physical healing may include medication, diet and exercise.  Emotional healing would include talk therapy.  Spiritual healing includes prayer, worship and nurturing loving bonds with other people of faith.

The word salvation comes from the same root as the word “salve,” which means a healing ointment.  Some people speak of salvation as if it only concerns what happens to us after we die.  But in fact, the biblical notion of salvation has as much to do with this life as it does afterlife.  Healing comes from God and it is something we can experience throughout our lives.  It takes different forms, but one of the chief biblical notions is that healing takes place when we are liberated from things that bind us.  The foundational story of the Old Testament is the exodus from Egypt.  The people were held in captivity and through Moses, God broke the chains that bound them.

Early in the Gospel of Luke, we are told that Jesus went into the synagogue and he read Scripture.  And he chose to read words from Isaiah that he believed best defined his ministry.  He read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to let the oppressed go free.”

God wants to set us free from the things that hold us captive, whether it is a social system that keeps people poor or an internal demon that causes us to behave in ways that are destructive to ourselves or others.  God seeks to liberate us and to transform us into healthy, whole people.

A friend of mine preached in a drug rehabilitation center on an Easter Sunday afternoon.  The people were in the midst of a 90-day program to get clean and sober.  Most of them had been so dominated by their demons that they had lost everything, including the support of their family and friends.  Charlie says there were school dropouts and college grads, street hoods and business people, men and women, black, white and Hispanic.  He notes that addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer. (2)

But the people in that program were being freed from the stifling power of their demons.  They turned to God for the courage to admit they had a demon, for the strength to resist temptation and for the faith to believe that God could make them whole again. 

God wants us to live rich, joyful and loving lives.  However, sometimes our personal demons keep us from experiencing the abundant life God intends.  When you experience turmoil within, I hope you will be honest with yourself and ask: “Is there a demon within me that needs confronting?”  And then I hope you will have the courage to take the path that leads to a new life.

NOTES

1. Sharon Ringe, Luke, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), p.120.
   

2. Charles A. Summers, “Not Even Death,” First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, April 8, 2007.

    

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