Galatians 3.23-29, Luke 8.26-39
The First Sunday after Trinity, 23 June 2019
Austwick, Keasden
“My name is Legion,” he said. “Because I have an army of demons inside me.”
“The demons began arriving when I was young,” he said. “I was always the odd-one-out in the playground, not sporty, happier to sit out on the edge and read a book - so the name-calling started: I was a wimp, I was queer, I was weird; and the pushing and punching started too: for wimps and weirdos are fair game for everyone else’s punishment. And every time I accepted their hateful words, that I was weird, I was queer; a little demon formed inside me. With every punch, another demon. These demons taught me to hate myself, and drove me even further outside the circle everyone else belonged to - and I longed to belong to, for this was my community, this was my home.”
“His name is Legion,” said the people of Geresa. “He’s the one we make jokes about - which makes us feel better about ourselves. He’s the one we keep at arm’s length - which holds us together as a group because we’re not like him. He’s the one we demonise - we need him here, for we don’t have to face our own demons when we put them onto him.”
Luke’s report of this healing of Jesus is so precious a gift to us today. For it is about our mental health - our mental health as a collection of people. It demonstrates that mental health cannot be thought of or treated as a problem which individuals have, alone; something they have brought on themselves and must face in isolation. No, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac drives home the truth that our mental well-being is a community effort.
This is such an important question for us to face today, for ‘mental distress’ in our society is spiralling upwards, on every scale. [1] The NHS reports that approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year, and in children and young people aged 5-19, 1 in 8 have at least one mental disorder. [2]
These rates are much higher in cultures like ours, societies possessed by the idea that material affluence is the key to fulfilment, that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their family, ethnic or social background. [3] If you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame - says the devil we all know.
And in countries like ours, which has the 7th most unequal incomes in the developed world, [4] consider the "pernicious effects that inequality has: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption". It’s proven that health and social problems of every kind are significantly worse where inequality is high.
If I’m poor, or if I’m feeling poor, living close to others who are unbelievably wealthy, that’s got to be a failing on my part - says the demon who brings us all low.
How Jesus healed the demon-possessed man of Gerasa is vital for us to grasp, for it demonstrates how as a society, as a community, we can be healed; how we can find release from this devilish culture of isolating and blaming others - so prevalent we often don’t notice it, although it involves and damages us all.
Backtrack for a moment to another gospel story reported by Luke. Remember when Jesus returned from the wilderness to his home town Nazareth and announced to the crowd gathered there his intentions for his ministry - and how the crowd, angered by what he’d said, drove him out of the town, intending to throw him off a cliff? [5] It’s a pretty routine story for those times and for ours - for it’s usually the crowd who end up united and empowered at the top of the cliff, having ganged up against an individual, their victim, who they send over the edge to their doom.
See how this differs from the story which we’ve just heard, of when Jesus healed a man who had a crowd of demons in him. In this story it is the individual, the victim, who is left safe at the end - and it is the devilish crowd who go over the cliff. [6]
Jesus’ miracle at Gerasa reverses the normal way that things are done in the world.
Normally, the crowd will remain on top of the cliff as the victim is cast over; instead, in this case, the crowd plunges down and the victim is saved.
Normally, life in the village or society goes on as normal once the crowd have cast out their outsider. In the case of Jesus’ healing at Geresa the result is quite different.[7]
Nothing can be the same again for the people of Geresa, now facing the challenge of how to find a new way to hold themselves together as a community no longer able to name, blame and reject their wimp, their queer, their weirdo, their feckless poor, their loser.
The message this story sends us all is that the way of Jesus is a wholly other way we can all act in community. It calls for us to recognise in ourselves when we are acting like one of the crowd, mimicking its values and devilish behaviour - and invites us to break this behaviour by recognising, affirming and celebrating the humanity in each other person which we ourselves share.
We Christians can contribute to the healing of society: by affirming our gospel values over any other. So, for instance, we reject the creed that material affluence is the key to fulfilment, and celebrate in faith that those who walk with Christ will live abundant lives, regardless of wealth.
Condemn an unemployed woman for laziness and you’re very likely ignoring the reality of the situation which she is in - and you’re adding another demon to her troubled spirit. Uphold her as a sister, seek to understand her as a friend, and you’re both on the road to reconciliation and healing.
As Christians we can confront the lie that a certain notion of health, fitness and beauty is what will bring us recognition and acceptance; with the truth that each and every person is made in God’s image and cared for without prejudice by a God of grace and unconditional love.
Trouble a man with constant messages about his looks, his shape, his image and you’re filling him with demons. Tell him, show him, that he is loved and valued, absolutely just as he is, and you are both beginning to grasp the wonder of abundant life.
To the man they once called Legion, Jesus said: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Like the one he healed in Geresa, every member of our society longs to be ‘clothed and in our right mind’. And we can help to bring this healing, with every opportunity we take to challenge those attitudes which put demons into us all; in every moment we choose to live graciously towards others in response to all that God has done for us.
Notes
See also my earlier talks on this topic, Overcoming Legion in our village, preached at Little Budworth, 2013 and Queen Camel, 2016.
[1] Rates of mental distress almost doubled between people born in 1946 and 1970. In 1977, 22 per cent reported psychiatric morbidity. This had risen to almost a third of the population (31 per cent) by 1986. Oliver James, The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza. Quoted in Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. p.35-36.
[2] McManus, S., Meltzer, H., Brugha, T. S., Bebbington, P. E., & Jenkins, R. (2009). Adult psychiatric morbidity in England, 2007: results of a household survey. The NHS Information Centre for health and social care. Sourced from Mind: Mental health facts and statistics. Mental Health Foundation, What new statistics show about children's mental health. 23 November 2018.
[3] Oliver James, The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza. Quoted in Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? p.36.
[4] The Equality Trust: The Spirit Level.
[5] Luke 4.16-30.
[6] I owe this insight to Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Year C Proper 7, and his notes and quotes from Rene Girard, The Scapegoat’, Chapter 13, ‘The Demons of Geresa’.
[7] Rene Girard, The Scapegoat’. pp. 170-171. Altered.
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