In the name of God, the Creator, the Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen!
“The greatest disease in the World today is not TB or leprosy or HIV; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love.”[1]
This is one of my favourite quotes from Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The only cure for despair and hopelessness is love. I think those words resonate well with what Jesus is doing in the gospel passage this morning. We are told that when he got out of the boat at the country of the Gerasenes, opposite Galilee, he was met by a man of the city who had demons.[2]
This miserable man is not one among many who cry out for healing, rather he is the ultimate outcast. As a resident in a land where the raising of pigs seems basic to the local custom and diet, he is an outsider to the “chosen” people of God, and his home in the tombs becomes a perpetual source of uncleanness. As a demoniac, he is homeless even among his own people.
Oppressed by too many demons to count, he has lost himself in the harsh discordant mixture of their voices and has ceased being a self, an individual or even a person. Thus, he spends his days raving alone in the wilderness, a danger to himself and others, separated from his community and even himself. But what is interesting about this man is that he acknowledges Jesus.
When he sees Jesus, he falls before him and shouts, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”.[3] So there is some element in the man’s mind that knows who Jesus is and what he can do. But that phrase “what have you to do with me” and “do not torment me” raises a question: Was it the man or the evil spirit talking? If it was the man talking, then the words of a psalm prescribed for today are fitting. It is the well-known Psalm 42:
As the deer longs for the water-brooks,
so longs my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, it is thirsty for the living God;
when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
My soul is heavy within me;
therefore I will remember you …
I will say to the God of my strength,
“Why have you forgotten me?
and why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me?”
My enemies mock me to my face; All day long they mock me
and say to me, “Where now is your God?”
Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?
and why are you so disquieted within me?
So, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.[4]
Whatever the case, Jesus was able to cast the evil spirit out of the man, and the man decides to sit at his feet, clothed and in his right mind,[5] according to Luke’s Gospel.
Now the man is restored to his senses. The one who had been excluded from the people because of his uncleanness is now cleansed and welcomed by God. So, what is next? How should he adjust back to community life? Where would he go? It is one thing to be sick and get healed and go on with life, but quite another to be restored from having been an outcast for a long time. Realising these questions in his mind, maybe it is the reason why the man begged to go with Jesus, but Jesus sends him away, saying, “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” The Gospel says that the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.[6] “The only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love”, says Mother Teresa.
This man experienced the unconditional love of God and was now able to spread the news about Jesus. I can just imagine him singing one of the Sesotho choruses: Ha le lakatsa ho tseba ka moo ke pholositsweng … The translation to the full chorus goes something like this:
If you desire to know
about my salvation,
Listen, let me explain to you,
And show you the way.
Jesus is my Savior.
He has prepared a place for me.
I love Him because He first loved me.
He gave me new life.
I imagine the man using these words.
God, through the mouth of the prophet, as per the passage in the first reading this morning, says this:
I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name. I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices; a people who provoke me to my face continually …; who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat swine’s flesh, with broth of abominable things in their vessels; who say, “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you.”
As the wine is found in the cluster, and they say, “Do not destroy it, for there is a blessing in it,” so I will do for my servants’ sake, and not destroy them all.
These words are manifested in the gospel encounter this morning. Through the ministry of Jesus and the witness of the man, the word of the Kingdom of God reached even to nations outside the Israelites. I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me, says the prophet, I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here I am, here I am.’[7]
Maybe the encounter from the gospel passages this morning was God’s way of reaching out to people who were lost in their own ways. People who were far from God. So, God restores the man to life as a way of saying to them, Here I am. And that is the unconditional love. Therefore, our call is to reveal God to the lost. To take the healing and liberating love of God to broken and desolate regions, to those whose lives are bound by evil forces they cannot control. To be baptized is to commit to going to the opposite side with Jesus.[8]
Amen!
[1] St Teresa of Calcutta
[2] Luke 8: 26-27
[3] Luke 8: 28
[4] Luke 8: 28
[5] Luke 8: 35b
[6] Luke 8: 38-39
[7] Isaiah 65:1 (NIV)
[8] Elaine A. Heath, “Luke 8:26-39: Theological Perspective”, in Feasting on the Word: Pentecost and season after Pentecost 1 (Year C Volume 3), edited by David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. (Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 170.