Sermon 6.22.25: The Demons of Empire

Pentecost 2C, Luke 8:26-39

This has got to be one of the wildest stories in the Gospels. This man possessed by many demons, exiled from the city - living, shackled, naked, and unwell, among the dead. A herd of swine. (And what are pigs even doing here, anyway? We know that the Jewish people didn’t eat them.) Jesus consenting to casting the demons into that herd of swine rather than into the abyss, the pigs running themselves off a cliff into the sea to drown. And the response of the townsfolk to seeing this man healed and clothed and in his right mind - not rejoicing, but fear! They were so afraid, in fact, they immediately ran Jesus off!

There is, to put it mildly, a LOT happening here. And more, still, than meets the eye. Much more, in fact:

So, Gerasa, where this story takes place - it’s 30 miles from the Sea of Galilee. So just how, exactly, did Jesus arrive and depart by boat? And those pigs who ran off the cliff to drown - how did that work here?

This story is example A#1 of scripture we shouldn’t try to read literally. I’d argue that’s very often the case, and I think here it is especially the case. A literal reading of this story might lead us to dismiss it altogether - might underline a sense that this book we read together is a bunch of bunk (if that’s something we’re tempted to think) - but I think if we read it as an allegory, it has something very profound, and extremely relevant, to say to us.

So it’s worth going over carefully, and noting a lot of little details that are easy to miss as modern readers. First, Gerasa is in a region known as the Decapolis - 10 cities marked by their acculturation to Greek and Roman culture - this was an outpost of the Roman Empire. Not very Jewish at all, really - there were temples to foreign gods, adherence to Roman customs - Roman imperialism is alive and well here. Hence the swine. The Jews didn’t eat them, but they were a dietary staple for the occupying Roman soldiers.

And so it begins to become clear that this isn’t a miracle story at all - it’s rife with not-so-subtle subtext and packed with symbolism that, to its contemporary audience, would have been plainly obvious. No, this is political commentary. It’s resistance satire. As John Dominic Crossan insists, this is a story that blatantly mocks “Roman imperialism and demonic possession,” and points to the devastating effects of imperialism on the subjects of its cruelty.

Suddenly, this hits a whole lot closer to home, right?

So, back to the top: Jesus and his disciples arrive in Gerasa, which is part of the Decapolis, that outpost of the Roman Empire, and were met there by this man who lived - if you can call it living - among the dead, naked, bleeding, often shackled, half-crazed, possessed. Unable to control the forces in control of him, he shouts at the top of his voice for Jesus to leave him alone. And as he rightly identifies Jesus with the “Most High God,” one wonders whether it’s specifically this interaction with wholeness in the midst of his brokenness - coming so close to the freedom that still feels so far away - that would be the source of torment for him, that is the reason he asks to be left alone. Perhaps looking at what COULD be would be too devastating, given his reality. “What have you to do with me,” he asks Jesus - he seems resigned to his suffering.

And in response, Jesus asks his name. In an effort to cut through the demons that possessed him to his humanity, perhaps. But it is the demons who answer: “We are Legion.”

Now, for Luke’s audience, the Latin word “legion” meant one thing and one thing only: a Roman legion - a division of about 4 to 6 thousand imperial soldiers. So, immediately, Luke’s audience would have understood this reference to the Roman occupation. The first hearers of this story would have understood this coded language and recognized the symbolism and the subversion at work. (We might think, for instance, of the way that spirituals functioned for enslaved African-Americans, conveying deeper messages of God’s liberation of them from their very real chains disguised as worship songs so as to fly under the radar of their enslavers.)

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So what happens next in our story? The demons beg Jesus not to send them BACK into the abyss. See, they come from chaos, they are agents of chaos - they’re well acquainted with the abyss. But while Legion is an agent of chaos, Jesus is an agent of grace and mercy. And so, instead of banishing them to the abyss, he grants their request to go into the swine instead. But the violence and oppression of Empire always turns out to be uncontrollable - even to itself. It ends up twisted around, turned inward. It festers. It rots. And ultimately, it self-destructs. The demon-possessed swine run themselves off a cliff to drown, meeting their self-destructive end - the chaos that Legion wrought finds them, anyway.

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Now, I don’t know about you, but it is, for me, much easier to find myself in this story read this way - as political satire, commentary on empire. In her discussion of the passage, Diana Butler Bass encourages us to ask, “What has living under empire done to me? To others? Have we, suffering under today’s pyramid of wealth and power, been consigned to living among the dead (‘Let the dead bury their dead’ as Jesus says elsewhere), stripped of our humanity, wrought with madness?” What happens to us when we become acculturated to Empire?

Perhaps this afflicted man was exiled to the tombs on the outskirts of town because he reminded the townsfolk not only of their subjugation to the occupation powers, but also of their complicity in it. This was in the Decapolis - which is to say, these were folks who had chosen enculturation into and collaboration with empire, in at least some respects. This tortured man is a shocking mirror, reflecting to the townsfolk the reality of a shared fate under imperial occupation. This encounter with Jesus reveals that truth — reveals the cost of empire to all — reveals what those demons do to us, to our communities, to our ability to care for each other, and to our humanity.

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“What’s your name?”, Jesus asks the demon.

“AR-15 – for we are many and easy to get.”

“What’s your name?”, Jesus asks.

“White supremacy, for you think we aren’t here, but here we are.”

“What’s your name?”, Jesus asks.

“Prescription Opioids,” they say, “for you will let us come in and we will never come out.”

“What’s your name?”, Jesus asks.

“Fear. Fear of ostracism if I speak up for immigrants. Fear of less for me if we start giving away handouts. Fear that, if we recognize the humanity of trans people, I might discover I don’t even know my own self. Fear that, if our military isn’t the most lethal and powerful in the world, the violence done on my behalf abroad might find me at home. Fear that, if I slow down enough to feel, if I pay real attention to what’s going on within and around me, the pain and the grief might be more than I can bear.”

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Whereas the man had been seized by the demon, the townsfolk are now seized with fear. Possessed by it. And no wonder. They are also victims of empire, tortured by despair that this is how life will always be, acculturated to chaos and to violence. Numb to pain and to joy, going along to get along, heads down, don’t make waves, fear is just the way we live. For those who’ve lived in chaos and torment, everything feels like a threat. Even the thought of liberation. Banish the reminders of our shared condition to the outskirts.

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In Jesus and the Disinherited, African-American mystic and theologian Howard Thurman compares the contemporaries of Jesus under Roman occupation to his own contemporaries under white supremacy and talks about the fear it produces as a coping mechanism for life under empire and the threat of violence. It’s a fear, he says, that produces a “psychic tendency to be small” and to turn away from participation in a larger, common life. The man with the demons isn’t the only one suffering in this story - it’s just that his suffering is the most visible, which is why the townsfolk want him kept out of their sight, and also why they are so afraid when he is healed. His new lack of fear, now in his right mind - it’s a disruption of the status quo that could attract the violent attentions of empire.

And this, ultimately, is why the healed man can’t go with Jesus. His community needs him. They need to see his transformation and know his story. They need to look at him, and to know that healing is possible, that there is a power bigger than empire and a hope for a life liberated from it. As Thurman notes, the awareness that one is a child of God stabilizes the self, leading to courage and power.

“Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you,” Jesus tells the man. “Tell everyone. Tell your neighbors that God is going to throw Caesar’s army into the sea. Tell them they belong to me, not to Rome. Tell them that life and healing are possible and chaos isn’t, ultimately, in charge.”

Diana Butler Bass writes that, upon hearing this tale, its first audience must have roared with a “laughter of righteous hope and hearty approval, and cheered God’s triumph.” And you know what that reminded me of when I read it this week? I thought of Juneteenth, and I though of Pride. I thought of the celebration, the nevertheless, the witness of life and love and liberation, even among the oppressive, death-dealing impulses of empire. Healing is possible. Life is all around - it is found in one another - and we are not children of chaos, but of light. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

He’s come to give us back our true names, our true identities as belonging to the God of life and love, and to remind us that chaos isn’t ultimately in charge, and even in the midst of it, life is possible, nevertheless.