Where is Your Faith?
Scripture: Luke 8:26-39 Rev. Richard H. Thompson, March 14, 2010

How does God love us?

Sometimes by unnerving us.

Love can do that. Fall in love and you go weak in the knees. When I fell in love with Suzanne I couldn't think of anything else. I did strange things like to go the library on campus at 8:00 in the morning! Because that's when she and I could find nd time to meet. I wrote three letters a week in the summer when we were apart (and I almost never wrote letters).

Love unhinges us from our usual ways of seeing ourselves. Our life assumptions change. We do new things. We get in over our heads. We don't know where it will lead.

Becoming a parent is like this. You hold your new born child in your arms and suddenly what you thought you knew were your priorities, in that moment, shift. Everything changes: sleep, food, money, time, responsibilities, your relationship with your spouse, your appreciation for Saturday morning television. You'll do anything for this little person. You learn the meaning of the word "sacrifice". No one can really prepare for this kind of love. It's just, "unnerving".

This is how it is with God's love.

Luke's gospel gives us this example:

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me"- for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" He said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

Just as Jesus stepped foot on the sand on this non-Jewish side of Lake Galilee somewhere near a town up the slope called Kersa, a man approached. Luke tells us he was from the city, but also that he had "demons". You could tell because he didn't live in a house in his city-meaning he was estranged from his family and community. Instead he lived alone, out among the graves. He was totally out of his mind. An "unnerved" man. And he'd been like that a long time. It seems people in town did what they could to keep him tied up. But somehow he'd always manage to break loose and run back out to the tombstones. Weird. Really weird. Somehow he felt more comfortable among the dead than among the living. The man probably had a name, but we're never told. Instead he'd been given a label--"Crazy Man". "Demoniac." It's what we do. How we adjust, and move on. We label. But I'd like to give this man a name. Maybe the folks around there called him, "Crazy old Sam".

We would all agree that Old Sam was "mentally ill". But we'd probably go further. We'd try to be more specific, and we have lot's of terminology to work with today that they didn't have back in the first century. Maybe we'd say he was "psychotic", or a "paranoid schizophrenic". Those kinds of terms are certainly useful because in their technical meaning they describe his symptoms. The thing is they don't describe the cause. Luke says, "He had demons". That's not just describing symptoms.

Because we all know people who suffer from all sorts of mental illnesses, and we don't even begin to believe they are possessed by demons, let's be clear that not everyone with a mental illness was diagnosed this way in the Bible either. In one case a person is described as suffering from epilepsy, not demon possession. Deafness, the inability to speak, are other examples. But in some cases, Jesus ran into people like Crazy Old Sam.

Here we enter into the unknown territory of the human spirit. Even today we struggle to understand root causes, and what happens in us, and why. Certainly not everyone who is mentally ill is demon possessed. But maybe there's more to Luke's diagnosis than we first think. Years ago psychotherapist Scott Peck concluded from his clinical work that there needed to be a category added to the list of diagnostic terms which he believed fit with behavior he called, "evil". That there was simply no other explanation. He called them "People of the Lie". Against all traditional liberal education, he concluded, there is such a thing as a force or forces of evil which are supra-personal, supra-human which appear to take over humans as individuals, or in some cases, as entire societies.

So let's take Luke's diagnosis, that in this man's case, he had become "occupied", that he was possessed, no longer his own person. The indicators are all there. Whatever it is that was in this man's soul immediately recognized Jesus, "What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me." Evidently evil also finds God's love... unnerving.

Jesus took one look at this man standing next to him on the beach and diagnosed the root cause of his illness. The same way he commanded the wind and the waves to be calm, Jesus also calmed the storm in this human spirit. Jesus is good at that. Maybe we can feel it too when the storm rages in our own souls, and then we hear those words,

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul..."

I've tried to figure out how Jesus casts out this "occupation". He asks, "What is your name?" But I wonder, does he ask the "occupier", or was he asking old Sam buried somewhere underneath all these squatters in his soul? I think he's talking to Sam, because Jesus knows Sam. Because I believe the Lord could see him in there, somewhere among all the chaos, noise, crowding.

Sam reminds me of a country western singer I met who liked to talk about the committee in his head. "Did you notice" he would ask before his concerts, "that I came in here single file?"

Like the Good Shepherd, Jesus went looking for Sam. It's what good friends do. "What is your name?" he asked.

It s an unnerving question to ask. Because to name something is to be totally honest. It's to face what's really going on, what's really there. We have an expression, we call it, "Naming the rhino in the living room". It's tempting to resist naming it because it feels so dangerous. That's its power, our fear. It's one big reason why couples in trouble don't get help before it's too late--they don't want to "name it". So we develop all sorts of ways to avoid and resist. Maybe we pull away. Old Sam hung out with dead people. They don't ask tough questions. We can push people away by acting like a jerk. Another way is to become bored.

One day in 'a class on spiritual direction I could barely stay awake. The more the lecturer spoke, the more I yawned. One of my classmates, an experienced spiritual guide, pointed out to me after class that yawning was a sign of resistance. (Anyone feeling one coming on... ?)

Naming what's going on takes courage. But it's essential. Over the years I've done my share of work with a counselor. I think just about anyone who is a pastor probably has, because if we don't then we leave un-named, the dynamics that run in us. We can get hooked, "pre-occupied" by things people say or do. We can obsess about wanting to be liked, or having a "successful ministry". We can make idols for ourselves and they can become so powerful that they begin to take hold, perhaps even possession, of our souls. But when we name them , we begin to take their power away.

So for example I've got this thing about somebody saying to me, "You pastors only work on Sundays..." I used to bristle right away. Now it takes longer. Why do I bristle? Because I value hard work. Because I was raised that way by my Iowa-born parents. But is there more to it than that? Maybe that I want to prove something. That I'm worthwhile. That I have value. But is that how God thinks of me? Is that how God loves me? Or you? To name this, has helped me to experience, slowly, a kind of transformation in my motivation, of why I work hard, and why it's a good thing to rest. The Bible has a word for this. It's to "sabbath".

I believe Jesus went looking for Sam. That's why he asked him, "What is your name?" And somehow old Sam found the strength, and the courage, to answer, "I'm Legion." In other words, "I'm like a fortress with 5,000 troops crammed inside. Every corner, every cranny and nook of my soul is taken over. Jesus, I don't know who I am any more..."

I wonder how Sam got like this. How long did it take? Did all these occupiers march in at once, or did they come in at once, or did they come in one at a time? Is that how occupation happens? Slowly, subtly, one moves in, then another follows, like bad relatives, 2nd and 3rd cousins, strange nephews and nieces, and their friends, one by one like a party gone bad. The cell phones light up all over the city announcing that here's a wide open place to come party. And they bring whatever and whoever they want with them.

Scott Peck believed psychiatry had to name the fact that it's possible for humans to be taken over by evil, to believe a lie, and then live by it, then to forget that it is a lie, and then to make it the foundation of one's being.

Here's a spiritual principle that Jesus teaches-that our souls are spaces, and empty spaces will always be filled with something.

Who's moving in to your soul? Maybe this gives new meaning to that old phrase, "Invite Jesus into your heart." Because if it's not Jesus, it's going to be something else.

Thank God Jesus has the authority to do evictions. All the occupiers fear Jesus' power to send them packing into the abyss. They spy a herd of pigs, and, this is telling, ask Jesus permission (!) to move over to them, rather than to go to hell. Somehow this seemed fitting. Pigs in the Jewish mind were always associated with pagan worship, so sure, why not? In Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, "Move!"

Here is the first recorded case of swine flu. The pigs panicked and ran headlong down the slope into the lake to drown. That had to been unnerving because Scripture tells us demons hated the water! They ended up in the abyss after all.

God's love is unnerving in so many ways.

When the pig farmers saw what happened they ran off to town, telling everyone along the way this very unsettling news. People came out in droves. Here's what they found: Crazy Old Sam, fully dressed, hair combed, not ranting, not clawing, not.throwing rocks or foaming at the mouth, he was calmly sitting at the feet of Jesus. As Luke put it, "In his right mind." The Greek word means "sensible, thoughtful, serious, teachable". Read, "ready to take in what Jesus had for him". Here's Old Sam, cleaned up, cleaned out, an open soul, ready to be filled with... Jesus.

But here's the thing. All of those people from town and country found this unnerving. Why? Maybe they were afraid of Jesus. Who is this that can work such a total life change in Crazy Old Sam? What kind of person is this Galilean? Maybe they were afraid because they felt threatened. What if Jesus could do that kind of change in them too? Already one of their neighbors had just lost a whole herd of swine. What else might he do?

What if Jesus wants to work this kind of change in me? What if he wants to occupy all the spaces in my soul? What if he wants to leave nothing out? What if he wants every minute, my leisure, my work, my friendships, my family, my money, my philosophy of life, my convictions, my hope, my dreams of success and significance, my house, my car, my clothes, my food and drink, my investments?

It's scary. Unnerving. Jesus has the power, and the authority, and the desire, to change my, and your whole life. The implications are huge. He could put us out of one business, and into another one. God knows where he might take us.

So maybe we're tempted to pray, "Lord, save me, but only a little. Help me, but not too much. Fix this, but leave the rest of it alone."

It's like taking a car to the mechanic with a small oil leak and you come to find out you need a whole new engine.

It's like going to the doctor with a little pain in your side and you come to find out it's way more serious than that.

Or like thinking all you need to do is come to church once in a while, and then you come to find out he wants you and me to be the church!

It's like realizing that Easter was just the beginning.

Maybe we can empathize with those folks who came to see what had happened to Crazy Old Sam. It was too much for them.

So they asked Jesus to leave.

Because God's love is unnerving. But this is how God loves us. And sometimes God's love can feel threatening, or at least uncomfortable. Okay. At least let's take this from what happened that day on the beach-that it's normal, it's okay, to feel unnerved. That we should just get used to it. Learn to live with it. That the one thing we don't want to do, is to ask Jesus to leave.

Because, and this is really unnerving, Jesus did just that. He left.

But not before he had given Sam back his life, his family, his home, his

village. Not before he had filled Sam with God's love, and now a new purpose, to go tell everyone how God had loved him.

Old Sam got a new name that day... "Christian."

It's the same purpose he's given you, and me.

Exactly the same.

Kind of unnerving, isn't it?

What's your name?