This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 6/22/25, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Luke 8:26-39. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text.)
In our reading this morning from Luke, I find a lot to be curious about. Why did Jesus decide to visit the land of the Gerasenes? (This is the only time that Luke’s gospel records Jesus doing ministry outside of Israel.) Why do the demons beg to be cast into the herd of pigs, and why does Jesus allow it? Why doesn’t Jesus let the man who was healed join him as a disciple? What happened when he returned to his city and shared the good news? (I’m a little surprised we don’t run into him again in the Book of Acts.)
There’s a lot to wonder about here. One thing this story makes clear is that real healing always comes at a cost. It disrupts. It exposes our attachments. Healing forces a choice between transformation and control.
As I have contemplated this passage from Luke this week, the most urgent question that has arisen for me is, is about the reaction of the people to the man who was healed. It says that great crowds of people came out to see him, and that they were “seized with great fear.” Why fear? Wouldn’t they have been curious, excited, joyful? A man had been utterly consumed by this legion of demons, yet the people’s reaction to his liberation was to ask Jesus to leave the region!
Dangerous Healing
What was it about this healing that so disturbed the Gerasenes? One commentary I read suggested that these pagan Gerasenes must have assumed that Jesus was a powerful sorcerer, or maybe even a god. Perhaps their worldview encouraged them to view anyone so powerful as a threat. Sure, he had just healed the man with the demons – but what might he do next? What if his next magic trick wasn’t quite so benign?
This explanation doesn’t quite hold water for me. Sure, maybe the people might be intimidated by Jesus. But you’d think they’d see if he could do some more healing before he left. No doubt there were other sick people in the region who could have used help. But that’s not where their heads were at. They wanted Jesus gone, and fast.
The only way I can make sense of the fearful reaction of the Gerasenes is to consider the pigs. When the legion of demons came out of that poor man, they rushed into the large herd of pigs that was feeding on the hillside. Despite all their words about not wanting to be cast into the abyss, what was the first thing those evil spirits did when they got control of the herd? They stampeded down the bank and drowned in the lake. It seems the demons had a date with the abyss; their self-destructiveness was uncontrollable.
This, I think, is what so disturbed the crowds of people who came to see this healed man, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. It wasn’t the healing that bothered them; it was the destruction of the local economy. Those demons must have wiped at least one farmer out! If Jesus stuck around and continued to heal people, who knows what might happen next? Would the next round of healings burn the wheat fields?
Pigs or People?
Reading this passage from Luke, I can only conclude that the Gerasenes valued those pigs more than they did the man who was healed. Sure, it’s nice that he’s doing better, they thought, but was healing him really worth the cost? Maybe it would have been better if the legion of evil spirits had stayed inside this poor man. At least there they were only hurting that one man, not impacting the whole community. Is it better to sacrifice the life of one man rather than have the whole social order upended? It seems like the Gerasenes thought so.
It would be easy to judge the Gerasenes for their hardness of heart. How could they sacrifice this man’s life – handing him over to evil forces destroying his mind, body, and spirit – just to keep the economy humming along and the social order intact? For those of us reading the story, maybe it seems obvious that this is a monstrous attitude. Forget about the pigs, save the people! Bring everyone out to be healed by Jesus, whatever the consequences! Right?
We might say that. We may even think we believe it. But our actions speak louder than words. We live in a society that is built upon legions of demons that possess us. The homeless encampments that disfigure our city; sure, we wish they weren’t there, but what would be the cost to create a society where everyone could afford a safe place to live, and everyone who suffered from addiction and mental illness could find active, loving support?
Sure, we abstractly wish the best for those folks living in encampments, in tents, and in their cars by the sides of the road. But not so much that we’re willing to bring them into our homes. We wish the world weren’t this way, but not so much that we’re ready to deal with what real healing would look like, what it would demand of us. In some ways, we are very much like the Gerasenes. If Jesus were to appear on our shores and begin casting out the evil spirits that oppress our neighbors, would we welcome the holy disorder that would ensue? Or would we buy Jesus a bus ticket to Portland, and hope he didn’t come back?
Of course, we shouldn’t imagine that all the evil spirits are among the homeless. Far from it. Some of the most powerful demonic forces reside among the prosperous, the powerful, the comfortable. The very fact that we are choosing order and security over disruption and healing shows that we are all, to some degree, in the grips of the demonic. Yet as friends and followers of Jesus, we are invited into a path of liberation that brings justice, peace, and joy.
Healing is Hard
If I’m being honest, though, I have to admit that that liberation feels distant sometimes. Most of us are so loaded up with hopes and fears that we bounce from one thing to the next, just trying to maintain our balance. We face our legion of evil spirits daily, worrying about the future, lamenting the past, fleeing the present.
What does healing look like for us, for all of us here? How will our lives need to change for healing to flow out from Berkeley Friends Church into the whole East Bay? How must our lives and relationships change to welcome the healing that Jesus wants to channel through us?
Our reading this morning leaves us with no doubt: Healing is hard. True healing disrupts as much as it restores. The transformation that Jesus brings ripples out from those who are being healed to touch the whole fabric of society. When we get healed, we’ll find ourselves in a new kind of trouble. Holy trouble.
This holy trouble can be psychologically harder than being full of evil spirits. This is why we willingly stay in bondage: it’s easier. This demon-possessed society knows how to handle people who are filled with a legion of evil spirits. It doesn’t know how to deal with people who are free.
Healed people, people who have been truly liberated by the power of the Holy Spirit, simply don’t compute. When we’re living in freedom, we don’t fit easily into the social order as it exists. The system is too sick, and those who have been freed by Jesus are too healthy. This kind of health, this kind of peace and vitality strikes fear into the heart of our broken world.
As well it should. Wherever Jesus is, wherever his healing presence is received, radical change has arrived. Established patterns are broken down. Evil spirits are cast out, and the unclean swine of our exploitative economic system are run into the sea.
We’re still afraid to embrace this disruption, but it is the way to life. The kingdom of God is for those who hear the word of God and do it. It is a community where the evil spirits of this society have no foothold. The kingdom of God is a shared life where we sit together at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in our right minds.
Do not be afraid. Do not worry. Receive the healing. Release the legion of burdens that weigh down on you. Go out into this city of ours, and declare how much God has done for you.
The healing will be with us. God’s power will go forth from us. Our lives will become a holy disruption that builds a new economy of love.
Powerful message, Micah. Reading is easier for me than listening. I can stop and ponder what your message means in my life. And I, also, have wondered how the demon-processed man was treated when he went back to his village. Was he as well received as the woman at the well, once she recognized Jesus as the Messiah? As you said, deliverance is not always comfortable. But he ran to Jesus, so some part of him longed to be set free.