Spiritual Sunday
My friend Sue Schmidt recently alerted me to a homily, by associate rector the Rev. David Henson at Trinity Episcopal Church in Asheville, North Carolina, that highlights a curious moment following one of Jesus’s exorcisms. Rev. Henson draws on To Kill a Mockingbird, Home Alone, and unspecified Harry Potter characters to explain the public’s negative response to the miracle.
Last week’s gospel reading involves a man possessed by devils who identify themselves as “Legion.” He frees them from “the abyss,” giving them permission to enter a herd of swine instead. Perhaps even crazier, however, is the public’s subsequent reaction:
Jesus and his disciples 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.
Unwilling to reveal any Harry Potter spoilers, Rev. Henson doesn’t tell us who he has in mind, but (since this blog is filled with spoilers) I’m guessing Severus Snape is the main character he has in mind. In any event, the homily accentuates how we fear, not the Other, but ourselves.
By Rev. David Henson, Trinity Episcopal Church, Asheville NC
If you have known me for any length of time, you likely know that I am a little obsessed with Harry Potter. It’s not just me, though. My whole family is obsessed. Back in January, we finally made that holy pilgrimage to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, and let’s just say, we were all in Hogwarts heaven.
But it’s not just the fantasy and magic that draws me into the seven-book series by author J.K. Rowling. It is also the novels’ consistent ability to subvert my expectations about who is a hero and who is a villain. In most of the books, the villain is rarely the most menacing character. Not infrequently, a supposed enemy saves the series’ main characters. Or a character assumed to be black-hearted exposes the actual evil that was at work in the story all along, but behind the scenes, unnoticed.
Unfortunately, my children have banned me from revealing who these characters are in Harry Potter, because, you know, spoilers. Thankfully, though, this remarkably effective theme of characters who, while they initially frighten and unsettle us, are in actuality friends and allies can be found in some of our greatest stories: like Boo Radley, the reclusive boogeyman in To Kill a Mockingbird or Old Man Marley, the feared, enigmatic neighbor in that classic film Home Alone. And like the Gerasene demoniac in today’s gospel story.
Like Boo Radley, Old Man Marley, and those characters who shall not be named in Harry Potter, when we first encounter this demon-possessed man, he is truly frightening, unstable, and malevolent. He’s been driven out of town and confined to the borders, living among the tombs in a graveyard. He walks around naked and dirty. The town has attempted to lock him up, to shackle him in chains, to keep watch over him with armed guards, yet he had broken free and overpowered them each and every time. Even the name of his demons is chilling. “I am Legion, for we are many,” he says, a name taken directly from the Roman Army. It calls to mind not only how many demons are inside him but also just how militantly violent they can be.
Up to this point, we have the makings of a classic ghost story, the kind of scary tale you might share around a campfire, of a wild, demonic man living in a spooky graveyard and haunting the good, innocent townsfolk nearby. But I’m convinced, as with Boo Radley, there’s more to this demon-possessed man and more to this story than initially meets the eye.
That’s because the fear in this story is completely out of place. Did you notice? The townspeople are terrified only when they see the Gerasene demoniac has been healed and restored and is sitting next to Jesus calmly and quietly, clothed and in his right mind. They are so scared, they want Jesus to leave immediately.
It seems an odd reaction. Wouldn’t you think the townspeople would be overjoyed, or at least relieved, that this terrifying demon-possessed man will no longer haunt the borders of their community, will no longer skulk naked among the tombs of their loved ones, will no longer be that strong terror who can break through the chains they shackle him with? For me, that misplaced fear is the first clue that maybe this demoniac isn’t the only one in the Gerasene region possessed by something scary.
Maybe Jesus suspects as much. Perhaps he knows that a society’s most obvious sicknesses are almost always symptoms of an even deeper illness, an even more terrifying evil. Perhaps that’s why, unlike most exorcisms, Jesus negotiates with the demons. They beg Jesus not to send them to the abyss but instead into a herd of pigs. And he actually listens to them and does what they request.
It’s a striking, arresting thing to consider that, in this moment, Jesus treats the demons with greater mercy and compassion than the townsfolk have ever treated the demon-possessed man himself.
I suspect the Gerasene people, like many communities with scary outsiders, has come to an uneasy peace with the demoniac because, like many outsiders, he has become a useful, easy target for blame whenever things go wrong— whether it is crops failing, bandits attacking, or epidemic illnesses striking. Not unlike Boo Radley is for the folk of Maycomb, Alabama, the Gerasene demoniac is a convenient and reassuring scapegoat, the collective dumping ground for the town’s evil.
By healing the demoniac, Jesus disrupts this arrangement and destabilizes the town. When the townspeople arrive and see the man without his demons, they realize a few things about their town and about themselves. Because for the first time, they see him as a human being and not a scary boogeyman. For the first time they see him as one of them, not as an outsider or other.
By seeing him as a human being and not a scary boogeyman, the townsfolk finally see their own treatment of the Gerasene demoniac for what it has been. They have rejected, dehumanized, and treated this man worse than an animal, all in the name of their own safety, security, and peace of mind. For years, this abusive treatment has persisted and been justified as a moral and social good. Because they didn’t consider the demoniac to be human, they didn’t believe they were required to treat him as such.
But, in truth, the demoniac wasn’t any less of a human being sitting there in his right mind next to Jesus than he was all those years when he was possessed. He wasn’t any less of God’s child healed than he was sick. His scary condition and awful circumstances didn’t make him any less God’s own beloved.
So when the townspeople come face-to-face with this man, it reveals their own possession by an evil far quieter, yet far more disturbing. Like so many great characters in literature that begin as supposed villains, the Gerasene demoniac — the presumed embodiment of evil in the story — reveals the true evil at work in the region.
In that one terrifying moment, Jesus turns their town upside-down and their understandings of themselves inside-out. The townspeople are revealed for who they really were. It fills them with great and terrible fear because they realize they have been the kind of people, the kind of community, the kind of society that could torture, brutalize, demonize, ostracize someone who troubles and scares them.
If we look around at our own world, it’s easy to see how we too are living in this same Gerasene region today. As a society, we are possessed with a need to demonize, brutalize, and ostracize God’s children in the name of our safety, security, and power. The truth is that folk secretly tend to prefer these pet demons because things are always so much easier when we can blame those we disagree with rather than speak to them.
For the Gerasene people, and for us perhaps, it takes seeing the dehumanized as human for the first time to finally realize their sin. But the people refused to admit it, fragile as they are. Instead, they demand that Jesus leave rather than come to terms with it. They don’t want to face the people they have been revealed to be. In fact, it seizes them with great fear — a word often associated with demon possession itself — and they demand that Jesus leave.
And he does, eventually. But the miracle isn’t finished. The healing is incomplete. It has never been just about the demon-possessed man. Because for Jesus, it isn’t just about a single illness. His miracles rarely are. They are about all of us, the restoration not just of individuals into his kingdom, but whole communities, all of society, all of earth becoming as it is in heaven.
So before Jesus departs, the healed man begs him to take him along. He knows just what these people are capable of. He might have been possessed all those years, but it doesn’t mean he’s forgotten or is any less wounded by his treatment. He remembers the shackles, the armed guards, the abuse, the exile, the shivering nights without clothes or blanket.
It’s a heartbreaking scene, because he is now the terrified one, scared of the everyday, respectable town folk because he knows the truth of them.
But Jesus, having redeemed this man, has a mission for him. To bear witness. To make them see the story from his perspective, not theirs, just like Scout finally does standing on Boo Radley’s porch at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird. So that the Gerasene people won’t forget just what they are capable of and to call them, by his witness, to confession, to repentance, to a better way, to reconciliation, to the way of God, the way of love and welcome, even if at first it all seems a little scary.