"Repossessed" - Pentecost 2C

Saint Luke 8:26-39

One does not have to live very long before one hears about or knows a person who is suffering from the dreaded disease of Altzheimers.  It is a cross-cultural disease that involves not only family but friends as they enter into what Patti Davis called in her book about her father President Ronald Reagan’s struggle with the disease The Long Goodbye.  

 Slowly, little by little, we lose people we love.  They are there physically but we know that they are not with us completely.  

 We’ve all met patients who suffer from this malady who are sweeter than sweet much like the way they lived most of their lives.  On the other hand we also have met people who weren’t easy to get along in the best of times who become unbelievably difficult after being afflicted.

 The sister of the woman who lived upstairs of us was the perfect example.  Challenging at best when she was well when she became afflicted she was a real handful.  Once, after she was placed in extended care, she became so agitated that she threw a potted plant, sent to her by a friend whom she was angry with, out of her third floor window.  Thankfully when it crashed down on the busy boulevard below it struck neither a passing car or pedestrian.

 From the other side of the world comes another story.

 Michael Joyce lives in Franktown, New Zealand with his wife Linda who is lovingly caring for him as he battles this dreaded disease.  So great was the love she shown to him in his care that, even though they were married for 38 years, he asked her if she would marry him.  She said yes.

“Michael had clearly forgotten we were already married but I absolutely went along with him and said I would be delighted to be his wife. In spite of his confused mind, he obviously knows and feels this is something he really wants to do … to Michael it will be our Wedding Ceremony and to our friends and myself, a truly precious memorable occasion.”1

  For the people of that impossible to pronounce gentile village Jesus arrival was memorable but not the least bit precious.

They had become accustomed to the naked guy running around in the cemetery.  While it may not have been a safe place for him it made their community a safer place for them.  If they chained him up in there at least they wouldn’t have to deal with him on a day to day basis.  They could handle his occasional outbursts and occasionally he would break out but sooner or later they would have him chained up in the cemetery once again.

 Until this one day he storms out and approached this foreigner who is fresh off the boat.  We know the man is Jesus but the possessed man gives him a more exalted title in the form of a question.  The man is playing Jeopardy at a very high stakes level when he asks:  “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of God Most High? Please, I beg you, oh, don’t torment me!”2

 It is not Jesus’ intention to torment the man who is exhibiting more symptoms in one human being than a psychiatrist would see in her or his entire year.  The diagnosis might read: Alzheimers, Self-destructive and anti-social behaviors.  Homelessness.  Inappropriate dress.  Paranoia.  Uncontrollable outbursts of anger.

 The man calls himself “Legion” which is a good name because a legion of soldiers would be about 5,000 in number and it must seem that he has at least that many things wrong with him. 

 In our day he wouldn’t be imprisoned in the cemetery but sent to the drug store with a fistful of prescriptions that might put him into a drug induced stupor.  The result would be the same - separation from the community.
 Jesus may not torment the man but he is about the upset an entire  community by restoring the man to health.  He does so by sending the demons within him into a herd of pigs who plunge themselves into the lake and drown.
 
Note that it is not the healing ... to which the community’s attention ]is drawn but the destruction.  Upon finding the one whom they had devoted themselves to excluding they don’t throw a welcome home party for the man nor a thank you party for Jesus but they become fearful to the point that Jesus and Legion feel they have to leave town.
 Jesus is leaving the same way he came, by boat, and the man wants to go with him. 
 Maybe it is loyalty to Jesus?  Maybe he doesn’t know what to do with his new found freedom and hopes Jesus will show him?  Maybe he doesn’t think he will be accepted as a new man by his neighbors, friends or even his family? 
 Jesus tells him he can’t come with but must stay as a sign and symbol of what God has done for him.  And so he does but not exactly.  He makes his witness to the power of God into a confession that this same power lies in Jesus.
 Luke is very subtle here.  His writing about the newly healed man is so sophisticated that on first, second, or even third reading we might miss it but he says: “So the man went away and told the marvelous story of what Jesus had done for him, all over the town.”3
 The change is that Jesus’ charge is to tell people about the power God and the man witnesses to the power of Jesus, which to him are one in the same.
 That is our witness too. In Jesus God is breaking into our lives.
 The promise is that Jesus will meet us in our darkest tombs, but He also comes with the promise that our lives will not stay the same. That is good news for the naked, tormented guy, but perhaps we should consider what this means for us.

I think it means that God’s love is not limited by our limitations.  It is like the love Michael Joyce had for his beloved Linda.

On their wedding morning, Linda Joyce said she wasn’t sure he would remember, but he woke up and told his betrothed, “Today’s the day!” 

The beaming couple, originally from Scotland, exchanged vows [on a] Saturday at a scenic lake near their home as friends looked on and ducks waddled by in the background. When the ceremony was over, bagpipes began to play ... and the newlyweds danced.

“There’s been a lot of sadness and a lot of frustration,” Linda Joyce said. “And despite all the fogginess, today has been pure joy.”4

  We can have this pure joy when we remember that  God’s love is not dependent on us.  God, in Jesus, sees in all of us, as a beautiful person even when we are behaving in not so beautiful ways.
 It means that the love of God does not come and go but is there amidst all of the fogginess of life.
 And finally, while Jesus may not be able to cure our ills as fully and completely as he did for the man who called himself Legion he is surrounding us with a community in which we are  free to show what God has done for us - even amid all our trials - in the love of Jesus Christ who makes us one.
 That may be the best and most lasting gift of all. 
 Don’t you think?

__________

1.  Allison Klein, "Husband with Alzheimer's Forgot He Was Married to His Wife of 38 Years. He Proposed, and They Married Again.," The Washington Post, January 25, 2018, , accessed June 22, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/01/25/husband-with-alzheimers-forgot-he-was-married-to-his-wife-of-38-years-he-proposed-and-they-married-again/utm_term=.2b1543580eae.

2.  St.  Luke 8:28b.  (TLB) [TLB = The Living Bible]

3.  St.  Luke 8:39b.  (PHILLIPS) [J.B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York: Macmillan, 1958).

4.  Klein, loc.cit.