Galatians 3: 23-29 (New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

Luke 8: 26-39 (Common English Bible)

The story of Jesus and the demon-possessed man is an example of spiritual warfare. Jesus declared war on the Adversary called “satan.” The Bible doesn’t say much about demons. And the Old Testament is practically silent on the subject.

All of us have our own inner demons, but they are not as severe as those the possessed man in Luke’s story had. Our demons include greed, self-centeredness, homophobia and racial prejudice.  

When demons control us we are not ourselves, because we are not in control of our lives. Demons offer a false freedom because they dehumanize and isolate its victims. One example was how the possessed man was treated. He was isolated from his community by having to live in a cemetery. He was also isolated when the townspeople tried to confine him in chains.

Who are the people in our society that we try to restrain in various forms of chains? Are they people like the mentally ill or clients of sheltered workshops? What places would Jesus take us to open our minds and hearts? Would it be people of color, different race, a different religion or LGBTQ community? I'm very glad to hear the Ohio Valley Presbytery at their latest meeting went on record to oppose any form of discrimination against our gay neighbors.

The story in Luke’s gospel reveals the Good News of the wholeness that Jesus’ miracle gave to the possessed man. Jesus seeks out the sick and the oppressed, understands their problem and redirects their anger and restores them to their community.

The demons knew what their fate was supposed to be. They realized they were supposed to enter the abyss, a place where God confines demons. The demons pleaded with Jesus to send their spirits into the pigs instead. Since pigs were unclean animals according to the Jews, it made sense that unclean spirits would seek unclean things. Even though the demons thought they had won when Jesus agreed to their request, the truth was they lost because the pigs entered a natural abyss when they fell off the cliff.

But there was a loss to that healing. The villagers lost their vocation when the pigs died. Pigs were their expensive property they sold to the Roman occupiers for their food. The villagers did not care that the possessed man was healed. They were only concerned about their livinghood.

There are several ways to approach this reading from Luke’s gospel in real time. Trauma or moral injury and the trauma of white racism against African Americans during the Jim Crow era is one. And Jim Crow was a long span of time, from 1877 when Reconstruction ended too soon until LBJ signed the Voting Rights Amendment in 1965.

We are currently learning more about the effects of trauma experiences in war and crime. Possibly the possessed man in Luke’s reading became traumatized by seeing the violence of the Roman soldiers. After all, the demons called themselves “Legion,” a military term for a battalion of 5,000 Roman soldiers. When Jesus asked the name of the demons, the demons replied, “Legion is our name, because we are many.”

Moral injury is just not limited to war. It includes many things like domestic violence and people being traumatized in prison that can lead to suicide.

Can these traumatized people find advocates willing to insist that the state and federal government have decent health services for our veterans and many others who have been possessed by trauma? Unfortunately, Indiana is going backwards, cutting off these essential services. How many traumatized people have to remain in their own personal chains, when politicians make the rich, richer and the poor remain miserable?

In the book, “Jesus and the Disinherited” by the Black author Howard Thurmand, he compares the contemporaries of Jesus under Roman rule, to his own contemporaries living under Jim Crow. Like the Samaritans and Jewish people during the time of Jesus, the African Americans of Thurmond’s time faced discrimination, economic exploitation, state supported violence and being culturally invisible to southern white people. If you’ve ever seen the excellent movie, “Mississippi Burning” you know what I’m talking about.   

This fear produced a tendency to be quiet, to limit movement, to reduce ambition and to stay away from participating in the nation’s common life, like voting.

The villagers in Luke’s gospel had the same mindset when they realized the exorcism of the demons had worked. What would the Roman soldiers say when they realized their pork chops were no longer there? Nothing pleasant I would say. The Black people of Jim Crow had this same fear if they did anything to anger white people. The KKK would burn down their stores and houses and even murder them. This is a hard thing to grasp, but the majority of terrorism within America has been done by white people.

The Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, and this was an authentic letter by Paul, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for you are One in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). With these words Paul brings down the barriers and overturns any divisions within the Galation community. These divisions may reflect the social categories and identities in the dominant cultural view from a Jewish perspective. Paul had been to Galatia in previous years and converted the Galatians about the grace of Christ. Unfortunately, the more conservative Jewish Christians were still observing the rules of Moses’ Law Paul was a heretic for saying the Law wasn’t necessary since we now have Jesus. Needless to say Paul was very angry and this was the first crisis in the early church.

This reading is a commentary on the struggle between Law and Grace. The Law of Moses teaches people about God and brings us face-to-face with sin, but it also keeps us locked in sin. The Law does not provide salvation from sin. Even the Old Testament animal sacrifices could not provide salvation because they had to be repeated. The animal sacrificed had to be perfect, without a blemish, in the eyes of the Priest. The Priest also had to atone for his sins as well as the sins of the people. Only Jesus was the perfect sacrifice.

At the time Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, only sons could receive an inheritance. Daughters got nothing. By contrast, Paul stated that both women and men who have been adopted into God’s family enjoy all the rights and responsibilities of God’s children within the church. Christians who have a negative view of Paul are probably reading those letters in the New Testament not written by Paul like the Pastoral Epistles, which defends patriarchy.

Being whole in life and having meaning in life are not the result of what we own or don’t own or what we have done or not done. Our lives have meaning because we are children of God. God wants us to pursue God’s Kingdom in our lives and when we do this, we will see new ways to respond. AMEN.