The Demon Jesus Didn't Cast Out. 01/21/2024

Preached at Chapel by the Sea in Clearwater Beach, FL

January 21, 2024

[Summarize or read Where the Wild Things Are]

Max, the king of all wild things, was lonely and wanted to be where

someone loved him best of all.

Will you pray with me: Lord may the words of my mouth and the

meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you, through Jesus Christ, who

is our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Once upon a time, a man had lived within the village of Gerasene,

surrounded by family and friends, people he loved, and who loved and

cared for him. He had grown up there, running through the streets and

alleys, chasing balls and cracking jokes. He had learned a trade and

established a thriving business. He relished in the beauty of the created

world, a beauty that was inescapable in that village by the seashore.

But all that was before he met Legion. Or more accurately, before Legion

invaded his body. In the blink of an eye, the life he knew disappeared.

The demons often seized him, throwing him to the ground or driving him

into the wilderness. He found shelter in a graveyard and lived there among

the tombs, lonely and disconnected from any meaningful relationship.

Threatened by his strange and unexplainable behavior, the fearful

townspeople hired guards to make sure that he was restrained at all times,

bound by chains.

And that’s how he lived, if you could call it living. He lived among the dead;

he was dead to his townspeople, his family and friends; and he may well

have wished he were in fact dead. At least all the other bodies in this

graveyard were resting in peace.

Meanwhile, Jesus' climbs into a boat and sets sail headed, as Luke points

out, to “the opposite side of the sea.” His boat makes landfall at that very

cemetery. And as Jesus steps off of the boat, he comes face to face with

the Gerasene man. Jesus came all the way to where the man stood,

shackled and trembling, among the tombs.

Immediately, the demons recognizes Jesus, and resumes their torture of

the man. Jesus asks the demons for their name, and after they beg not to

be cast into the abyss, Jesus sends Legion out of the man and into a herd

of pigs.

The man who had been thrown to the ground at Jesus' feet now sits at his

feet like a disciple. The man's mind, once scrambled, is restored. The

man's body, once plagued by seizures, is healthy again. Once naked, the

man is now clothed. Once isolated from his community, now the man

returns to his hometown to tell the good news.

When Jesus shows up, this place of loneliness, captivity, and death is

suddenly transformed into the place where the Gerasene man discovers

the Someone who loves him best of all. And it’s clear that his life will never

be the same.

Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t cast the demons into the abyss. He doesn’t

send them off to some far-away place where they no longer haunt our

world. The demons are still with us; they just have different names. And

even though we don’t often talk about it in these terms, we all battle our

own demons. The Wild Things within and around us are alive and well.

They still “roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth and roll their

terrible eyes and show their terrible claws.”

The demons of our world are all those things that drive us away from

relationship, away from community, and toward destructive behavior. We

face demons of addiction and isolation. We face demons of prejudice and

discrimination. We face demons of hatred and distrust, physical and

emotional abuse, hypocrisy, division, and deeply ingrained social and

economic systems that privilege some while enslaving others.

These demons, and others, threaten to steal our life away. These Wild

Things drive us into the wilderness and dash us against the rocks. They

bind us in chains, steal our joy, and destroy our relationships. The demons

are still with us, they just have different names.

And we need someone to sail through night and day and in and out of

weeks and almost over a year to where our wild things are. We need

someone to stand face-to-face with us as we roar our terrible roars and

gnash our terrible teeth and roll our terrible eyes, and show our terrible

claws. We need someone to stare into yellow eyes of our demons, without

blinking once, and to say, “BE STILL!”

And then, from the other side of the sea, comes Jesus. And he makes

landfall, right here – right where we stand, shackled and trembling. And he

calls us by name and casts out these demons that haunt our lives. When

Jesus is present, all our places of loneliness and death can be transformed

into places where we discover that Someone loves us best of all – places

of hope and of new life, places where we are restored to a right relationship

with God and with each other.

It seems like Luke is heading for a happily-ever-after ending. But there’s

another demon in the story. A demon Jesus didn’t cast out.

We read elsewhere in Luke’s gospel of demons that are difficult to cast out.

In one instance, Jesus calls together the twelve disciples and gives them

authority over all demons and disease. He sends them out, full of energy

and passion, to proclaim the reign of God and to heal the sick. A few weeks

later, while Jesus is teaching a large crowd, a man from the back shouts

out: "Teacher, please look at my son. He is possessed by a demon that

torments him, repeatedly dashing him against rocks...I begged your

disciples to cast it out, but they could not."

Why couldn’t they cast it out? What happened to the power Jesus had

given them? What can be done with these difficult demons?

Maybe we can find an answer back in the story of the Gerasene man. The

townspeople saw how the demon-possessed man had been made whole

again. Jesus had cast out the demon that constantly seized him. But the

crowd immediately asked Jesus to leave them. [Look again at verse 35]

Luke says, quite literally, that they were seized with a great fear. They were

possessed by the demon of fear. Their fear seized them, in exactly the

same way that the demon had once seized the Gerasene man.

The fear of the townspeople was the demon Jesus didn't cast out.

And the demon of fear still threatens to seize us and our world.

Our world is a world of change and vulnerability. And we often push back in

fear. We fear that our world is heading toward chaos. We fear that there will

not be a place for us. We fear those who are different from us. We fear that

we will hear a bad report from the doctor, that our retirement account will

not hold up, that our children will struggle. We fear that the churches we

have known and loved will not survive the rapid cultural change all around

us. We fear that everything we have filled our lives with will not have lasting

meaning. We fear that asking questions about our faith and our world might

lead us away from God rather than closer.

So we buckle down. We resist change. We convince ourselves that there

are many things we can control. We insulate ourselves against threatening

situations, people and ideas. We avoid relationships that would stretch our

thinking or our worldview. We don’t ask the questions. We double down on

the ways we have always done things.

The demon of fear is alive and well in our world.

But the demon that seized the hearts of those townspeople in the

Gerasene countryside, that demon of fear was more than simply a fear of

the demonic or the chaotic. More than a fear of change or of the unknown.

If we read carefully, the fear that seized the people was actually a fear of

the divine. A fear of God's disruptive and transformative work in our lives.

It may seem strange to talk about a fear of the divine, of God's work in our

lives and in our world. But the fear seizes the townspeople in those

moments after they see that Jesus cast out the demons and healed the

man. Jesus disturbed their status quo, the rules of their world, which up to

this point seems so set, so certain. God's movement through Jesus to

transform the world was threatening to them and can be threatening to us. I

don't know your fears, but I do know mine. And sometimes my fears fall

squarely in this category: fear of encountering the divine, fear of the radical

transformation that Jesus calls us to, fear of where God might lead me if I

allowed the Spirit to take control.

In scripture, when God is about to show up and do something amazing or

powerful in the lives of God’s people, often an angelic messenger will come

before, saying: “Do not fear. Do not be afraid.” We find the words often on

the lips of Jesus himself, as he invites his followers to the challenges of

discipleship. Some version of “do not fear” occurs as many as 365 times

throughout the Bible.

Whether it's fear of the demons in our lives, fear of the chaos in our world,

or fear of God’s presence and power in the midst of it all. Fear exists. And

fear can seize us, just as it did those first-century townspeople.

So why didn't Jesus just finish the job and cast out the demon of fear? The

answer lies in the conclusion of Luke’s account.

As Jesus prepares to sail back across the sea, the Gerasene man stands

with one foot in the boat and one foot on the dry ground, and begs to go

with Jesus. But Jesus sends him back into the town, to the same people

who had disowned him, who had sent him into exile, who had bound him

with chains to ensure their own safety. Why on earth would Jesus do this?

I believe Jesus realized the power of the Gerasene's testimony. I believe

Jesus knew that only the healed Gerasene man, a man who had lived in

fear and incited fear in others, could cast out the demon of fear that had

seized his community.

Healed from our demons, we want to remain in that that place where we

can revel in knowing that the most important Someone loves us best of all.

We want to rest at Jesus’ feet, to climb in the boat and sail back over a year

and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of our very

own rooms where we find supper waiting.

But maybe that’s just the storybook ending, and not the scriptural ending.

Maybe we, like the Gerasene man, once possessed but now healed, once

seized by our demons but now of a sound mind, have been given the

power to overcome fear and bring transformation and reconciliation to our

community. Maybe we are sent by Jesus into our communities to be agents

of love and grace and transformation.

Maybe Jesus is inviting us to stand face-to-face with the demons of fear

that divide and tear down and hold back. And to stare into all their yellow

eyes without blinking once, and to say “Be Still!” To rid our churches and

our communities and our world from the demon of fear – the demon that

Jesus didn't cast out.

So, may we all go boldly from this place, and in the power of God’s love,

finish the job.