Sermons
December 10, 2023 (2nd Sunday of Advent)
Silent Night
Luke 8:26-39
Years ago I helped plan a workshop on church accessibility presented by the council of churches in Portland. One thing we included was a program developed by the Catholic archdiocese there. It was called “Welcome to My World,” and it was intended to help us who are able-bodied (temporarily, as the disabled folks who helped us organize the workshop liked to point out) understand what it’s like to live with various disabilities.
To simulate loss of a limb, for instance, we would put people in shirts that had one arm tied off so they couldn’t put it on properly, and then ask them to do some everyday task that usually requires two functioning arms. Or we’d blindfold people and have them try to find their way through some kind of course.
At that workshop, the archdiocese debuted a new simulation, meant to help folks understand what it might be like to live with a mental illness like schizophrenia. It was fairly intense, so they typically didn’t allow children to go through it as a result.
What they would do is have someone sit down to study, or fill out a job application, or some such. While they were trying to do that, someone would come up on each side of them and begin speaking into their ears using an empty paper towel roller. They would say things like, “God hates you.” “You’re going to hell.” “What makes you think you could do that job?” Maybe instead of these horrible statements, the person would be subjected to somebody singing or just talking and being incessantly noisy. (A friend of mine who actually has schizophrenia once described what it was like in her head as an old-school analog radio that was tuned improperly, so stations faded in and out and there was constant static.)
I went through it as we prepared for the workshop, and it was very disconcerting.
As I read the story of this Gerasene man, I remembered that simulation, and it helped me imagine, in a small way, what he was dealing with.
In the ancient world, without our modern understanding of medicine and psychology, people would have thought conditions like mental illness or epilepsy were caused by demon possession. And without medications and other treatments for such conditions, ancient people would have found them very frightening indeed.
The man in today’s story was in bad shape. I’m obviously not familiar enough with psychology or mental illness to be able to speculate what exactly his specific diagnosis could be if he were living today, and quite honestly it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he was very, very ill.
Whatever he had, it had destroyed his personality. We don’t know his actual name; let’s imagine it was Felix, a good Roman name (this was a Gentile area, so he wouldn’t have had a Hebrew name like Simon or Samuel or Baruch). But when Jesus asked him his name, he didn’t say, “Felix.” Felix, or whatever his name was, was gone, or at least so totally outnumbered that he couldn’t speak for himself.
Instead of a name, he gave a number: “Legion.” A legion was a heavy infantry battalion in the Roman army, and it was usually made up of around 6,000 men. Six thousand!
But “Legion” didn’t just mean that the man had been reduced to nothing but a number by his illness. That legion would have been trained and arrayed for battle, and their goal would have been Felix’s destruction. And they were succeeding, until Jesus came along.
These days most people, in the developed world, at least, don’t believe in demon possession. A lot of the conditions that might have been attributed to demons in Jesus’ time can be treated now.
It doesn’t always happen quickly—my friend I mentioned a moment ago and her doctors spent two years trying different medications before they found what worked for her. A co-worker I had years ago suffered from epilepsy, and medications only partially controlled it; he had to have brain surgery before he could be freed from his frequent seizures. Our modern treatments can work, but it often takes time.
But the demons that affect many of us are not diagnosable mental illness. They’re the regrets and worries that our brain insists on turning over and over when we find ourselves awake at 3 a.m. They’re traumatic experiences and memories that continue to hurt. They’re our own insecurities and fears, keeping us from being the people God created us to be. They’re the anxieties that run through our minds when we’re trying to get quiet like hamsters on a wheel: “How am I going to pay for…?” “Who are we going to get to deal with…?”
And there’s good news.
If Jesus can send a legion of demons packing and leave a man “clothed and in his right mind,” surely he can bring healing to our guilts, traumas, regrets, and fears.
Now I don’t mean for you to hear me saying that if we have guilts, traumas, regrets, and fears, all we need to do is pray and everything will be fine. Yes, of course prayer is an important part of spiritual and emotional healing. But it’s not the only part.
In this area just as in many others, Jesus’ healing is made available through others—through therapists, pastors, spiritual directors, friends, and sometimes even strangers. In other words, we just might have a hand in bringing about healing in someone’s life.
Sometimes it’s just by listening. Other times we might have useful advice, or, depending on our relationship, we might be able to push a person to get up and do what they need to do to get well.
I read an article in The Washington Post a couple weeks ago, in which a woman named Billy Lezra described how, when she was about to take her own life, she was saved by a tourist who asked her to take her picture in front of a local landmark. Billy was in the process of ingesting enough “liquid courage” to be able to go through with the plan she had made when they came along. And somehow, that interruption of her misery and hopelessness was enough to make her rethink what she was about to do. Instead, she called for and got help.[1]
We can imagine, as believers, that that tourist was Jesus’ hands and heart, helping bring healing to a woman struggling with what would have been a fatal illness. She came along at just the right moment, and turned Billy toward more people who could act as Jesus’ hands and heart to bring her hope instead of hopelessness, peace instead of whatever inner turmoil was destroying her.
Can you imagine healing coming through something so simple?
If you can, then perhaps you can remember times when you were healed, restored, maybe even saved by some simple kindness that was offered to you.
And if you can remember that, I suspect you can similarly picture yourself offering a kindness that shines Jesus’ light into the trouble someone else might be living in, to help quiet the turmoil in their heart and soul, so they, like the man formerly known as Legion, could sit, live, and sleep in heavenly peace.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/11/19/billy-lezra-suicide-prevention-photograph/