A Sermon for June 22, 2025

June 22, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott


Luke 8: 26-39


Today’s Gospel is a study in opposites, opposites which give us unified insights into Jesus. The action in today’s Gospel takes place after Jesus calms the wind and the waves, leaving the disciples in the boat to ask each other, “Who is this man that that he commands even the winds and the water and they obey him?” (verse 25).

Then they sail on to the other side of the lake. They step out into foreign territory, and one Gospel commentator notes that it’s the only time in Luke that Jesus goes to the land of Gentiles. A strange welcoming committee greets them: a naked man possessed by demons who lives in the graveyard. In more ways than one, Jesus is in a place that is the opposite of life. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.

In this Gospel, we see that no one is beyond the reach of God’s healing and restoration to life, even when all human interventions have failed. The townspeople have tried to help the man by keeping him chained so that he won’t hurt himself, but this doesn’t work; the man gets free and goes into the wilderness, a place of even greater fear and death than the tombs. So how do the townspeople react when they see the man clothed and in his right mind? Do they bring out other people who need restoration to health?

No. They ask Jesus to leave. We might shake our heads at their lost opportunity, but before we condemn them too loudly, perhaps we should consider how often we, too, ask Jesus to leave. Or, to put it a different way, what modern demons drive us to distraction and keep us from hearing Jesus?

Who among us hasn't spent an anxious night worrying about things we couldn't control (finances, our loved ones, our health)? Perhaps we fall into a sinister pattern of sleepless nights being haunted by the world's worries, the health of the community/planet. Most of us have probably gone through periods where we come perilously close to wrecking our relationships with our loved ones because of our obsessive worries about them.

If only our inner demons could be driven out into a swine herd, or whatever the modern equivalent would be. If only we could be free from those wretches of worry that wake us at night and won't let us sleep for fear of all that could go wrong.

Christians have thousands of years of thought and practice in dealing with the demons that torment us. For some, it's prayer. Others of us turn those demons into art. It might be working with the poor and the destitute. Maybe we meditate to still our minds. We might need a healing service or a laying on of hands. We also shouldn't discount the powers of modern medicine, which offers us a powerful arsenal in our attempts to manage our brains: therapists, medications, mind-body practices, and so on.

During my last two weeks of chaplaincy training at the Asheville VA Hospital, we’ve been told that we’re not to respond in certain ways when people suggest that God sent them their afflictions, either to teach them something or to punish them. That will be hard for me, since I think that many people have gotten really crummy theology about a destructive vengeful God, and it’s an idea that makes it hard to heal the shame from bad decisions. The Jesus of today’s Gospel would be much more useful, and we have so many examples of this Jesus who wants to restore us to health. By driving out the demons, Jesus not only restores the man to health, but restores him to community too.

Of course, this good news isn’t good for everyone. We might take a moment to see the world through the eyes of the swineherd who has just lost his livelihood—or for the swine, who drown. The first audience for the Gospel of Luke would not have felt sympathy—they are swine, after all. First century audiences would have seen them as unclean and thoroughly expendable.

But this detail shows that salvation can be disruptive. When we wonder why good news—God’s good news or any good news-- is so hard for people to accept, we might remember these swineherds. What are they supposed to do now? They do what people have often done when threatened. They go to the town, not to spread the good news, but to sound the alarm about this stranger. The townspeople come, not to find out for themselves, but to get rid of this disruptive presence.

It probably doesn’t surprise us that the formerly possessed man wants to come with Jesus. We may feel surprised that Jesus sends him back to the community—the community that has just rejected Jesus! Jesus says, ““Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.”

Throughout much of Christian history, the Church has focused on the Great Commission that tells us to go to all lands and make disciples. Throughout much of Christian history, people have interpreted this passage as meaning that we need to go to lands where people have never heard of Jesus. Today’s Gospel tells us that our mission field might be much closer than that. We may not need to go very far away from home. It is the opposite from what many of us have been taught, certainly the opposite from what I’ve been taught, which may explain why some of my sermons circle back to this idea..

The formerly homeless, formerly demon possessed man returns to his community, healed and whole and free from demons. He returns proclaiming to all what Jesus has done for him. He is a living testimony, and we can be too.

Much like the demon possessed man across from Galilee, our world is also full of a Legion of demons, forces opposite of life giving, forces that seek to separate us from God. These demons take up valuable space in our head, all the voices that come to us from our childhood, from popular culture, from our experiences in school, from politics, from certain family members. In the larger world too, we see a variety of demons, so many people who seem possessed by so much evil.

Let us be steadfast in our resolve to drive out those demonic forces, the ones that possess us, the ones that possess society. We must proceed with care, remembering that evil has real power to disrupt and wreak havoc—it was true in the time of Jesus, and it’s equally true now.

Like Jesus, we are likely to find ourselves stepping out into a land that resembles the one on the other side of the lake from Galilee, a land of tombs inhabited by naked ones possessed with a Legion of demons. But know this truth: know that we are clothed, as Paul says, with Christ himself. Jesus calls us to be the ones who speak the truth of God’s love for all of creation, the ones who can create community, the ones who will drive the demons of despair into the sea.

In these uncertain times, our mission is more important than ever. Drown out the shouting of the demons and their demands. Listen for the voice of Jesus. Tell the good news of what God has done—and what God will continue to do, the making of all things new. Remember what the Psalmist declares: “For dominion belongs to the Lord, who rules over the nations.” (Psalm 22: 28).