Saint Luke 8:26-39
On June 19, 1865 Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galviston, Texas with news. It wasn’t new news but it was news. “Despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued more than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863, a lack of Union troops in the rebel state of Texas made the order difficult to enforce.
Some historians blame the lapse in time on "poor communication in that era, while others believe Texan slave-owners purposely withheld the information.”1
It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that for more than two years men, women, and children lived as slaves “unaware of their freedom until Union troops arrived to control the territory.”2
Imagine that! Living as slaves even though you have been proclaimed to be free. Imagine waiting for more than two years to receive the news.
It’s hard for us with our computers and smart phones to think of waiting more than two minutes to get any kind of news. There is a ping, the automatic response of reaching into your pocket to fetch your phone, and before your very eyes every event in the world is chronicled. Those of us who had to wait until Huntley and Brinkey came on at 5:30 PM to find out was going on or who had to wait for the ten o’clock news or even Ray Rayner in the morning to find out the scores of games than ran past our bed times now can watch the news “on-demand or receive a notice on your phone that tells you immediately whether your favourite team has won or lost.
It also amazes me how long it took me to find out. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the first Juneteenth celebration took place in Texas in 1866 and featured prayer meetings and the singing of spirituals. As Black Texans migrated across the country, they brought Juneteenth traditions with them, leading to its wider observance. Texas designated it a state holiday in 1980, (I didn’t know that!) and Juneteenth became a U.S. federal holiday in 2021.”3
Maybe I didn’t know because it was a holiday predominately celebrated by our African American brothers and sisters? Maybe I didn’t know because, in most states, it was only celebrated, if it was celebrated at all, by proclamation. But, maybe I didn’t know because in the midst of all the bad news, it was a celebration of freedom. Freedom, the ideal for all of God’s children.
Today’s gospel is about that same freedom that came to one of God’s most precious children and the resistance it brought.
We know, from the beginning, that Jesus has clearly strayed out of Jewish territory because this town has a pig farm and quite a large pig farm at that.
The town also has a really hard to pronounce name whose origins are not clear. Hebrew scholar Amy Jill Levine has suggested that the root word of the town’s name “means to “expel,” the place could be dubbed ‘Expelledville’ or ‘Exorcismburg.’”4
The reason that can really be the place’s name is that the story does not begin with Jesus interacting with any of the other residents of this town but goes directly for this troubled man.
The regular folk in the town 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.
Jesus looks at the guy, maybe for the first time in the poor soul's life, with pity, compassion. And I literally think it scares the devil out of the guy. He is not used to people approaching him with kindness, only harm, seeking to put him back in chains once again.
Freaked out the guy screams out a plea that is combined with a confession of faith. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!’”5
He had endured a lot of torture in his enslavement as so he has reason to be wary but Jesus does something so radically different from everybody else that it cuts through his defensiveness. Jesus simply asks “what is your name” and the man’s response tell Jesus and us, everything.
“Legion.” the man replies. “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. 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.
Fearful of what? Fearful that the man will relapse, perhaps? But I think more fearful for the new possibility of life and freedom that Jesus had placed before them.
The man sees Jesus as his escape route. Go with Jesus and he can get away from the people who enslaved him. Go with Jesus and he’ll never have to endure the sideways glances and the pointed fingers of those who when they saw him on the street didn’t see a perfectly presentable citizen but rather said to themselves, “Isn’t this the guy?”
“The townsfolk have the same reaction to Jesus as the demons who tormented the enslaved man.”6
As one paraphrase of scripture puts it “too much change, too fast, and they were scared.”7
No wonder the guy wants to leave town with Jesus! 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 neighbours, friends or even his family?
Jesus tells him he can’t come with but must stay as a sign and symbol of what Jesus had done for him. That was to be the man’s witness, and it is our witness too only sometimes, like the townspeople we choose to remain in bondage to our fears.
All of us here know this truth. When you get into a relationship with someone, for better or worse, you inherit all their relatives. Some of whom you may fall in love with immediately and others, not so much.
I have inherited one who is deathly afraid of all immigrants. She says they are all “bad hombres” who murder, pillage, and eat family pets. The problem is that she doesn’t know any!
Well, actually she does because at St. Luke we have a model of a sailing ship with a banner underneath that reminds every single one of us who come through the doors that, “We are all immigrants!” She knows immigrants just not any who are as white as members of the House of Windsor. She lives in far, far, far, northwest Iowa where – and I am not making this up – at the Mexican restaurant the burritos come with a white sauce.
In a fit of pique, I told her once that the reason she is so afraid is that she doesn’t know any non-white immigrants. “I’ve showered,” I told her once “with more Hispanic Americans than you have ever met in your life.” Attend a state college, belong to a health club in Chicago, and it's bound to happen! Also, what will happen is that one will discover what my “relative” will never know — that they are really nice people.
The people of “Expelledville” never gave the guy or Jesus a chance. And in the end the enslavers became the enslaved.
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.”8
He was free.
When the Union soldiers rolled into Galvaston Texas on June 19, 1865 they brought freedom not just to the slaves but to everyone.
When Jesus rolled into “Exorcismburg” he brought freedom not to the enslaved man but to everyone.
Isn’t it odd that the man who Jesus healed became the freest one in his community while the other seemed caught up in their fear of the new life Jesus offered.
So, to the choice seems to be ours in this story. Live like the man who followed Jesus or live like the townsfolk who didn’t.
I think I’m going to go with the man.
________________
1. “Abolition of Slavery Announced in Texas on ‘Juneteenth’ | June 19, 1865,” History.com, May 28, 2025, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/june-19/abolition-of-slavery-announced-in-texas-juneteenth.
2. “Why Do We Celebrate Juneteenth?,” Encyclopædia Britannica, June 6, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Why-Do-We-Celebrate-Juneteenth.
3. ibid.
4. James C. Howell, “What Can We Say June 22? 2nd after Pentecost,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, June 1, 2025, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.
5. St. John 8:28. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]
6. William H. Willimon, “Jesus Christ Is Lord,” Pulpit Resource, Year C, 53, no. 2 (April 1, 2025): 37–38.
7. St. Luke 8:37–37. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).
8. St. Luke 8:39b. (PHILLIPS)
No comments:
Post a Comment