Trinity 7
By Mark Oakley, Sunday 6th July, 2008
Names. They are powerful things. We are anonymous, hide-able, uncontrolled…until we have one. Notice how Jesus in the gospel story just now asked the man, what is your name? Who are you?
Well, who was he? He was a man living by the looks of it in a non-Jewish community southeast of the Sea of Galilee called Gerasa, today known as the archaeological site of Um Qeis in north eastern Jordan near its border with Syria. We know it was a Gentile city because they herded pigs. Now Luke is always interested to show us that Jesus released the captives, and we can see how this man was a captive. We tend to use the word possessed, but perhaps prisoner is better. He was by the look of it mentally ill, in those days, said to be possessed by demons. And we know still today how society finds mental illness threatening, uncontrollable and dangerous. We often laugh our fears away about it. “He’s a nutter, she’s barking”. (One reason people with mental illness are so threatening, of course, is that they often speak truth with an Xray precision). Anyway, the city has pushed him out of the way and he’s living amongst the dead, in the cemetery. This makes you ritually unclean (as does living near pigs) and suspicious. He’s naked, identity less, and has been chained down because he’s obviously a bit of a handful. He says his name is Legion, a legion was 6000 men. He seems to have a lot of inner fighting. But lets not think that he is that different from us when he says he is Legion. Just think how many “you”s jostle about in that self of yours: we can be confident with partners and nervous with employers, principled with our children, corrupt when offered some secret temptation, we can be serious and frivolous, some see us as strong whilst inside I feel chaotic, happy but lonely,loud and quiet, aggressive and easily hurt. Our self knows many selves. What is your name, who are you? It’s a good and difficult question.
Think too in the many ways in which can be possessed, not just by drugs, alcohol, sex and so on, but by our contexts, relationships, jobs and so called acceptable norms which can dehumanise us day by day, shrink us in to less than who we are. Just to whose tune are you living your life actually? We come here to try and prize ourselves back to living a freer life with the source of life but it takes an enormous amount of listening to who we have become and how we are behaving, it takes a lot of silence to speak above all the noise.
Now, whatever happened that day, Jesus releases the captive. He has to go into an unclean, unreligious place in order to meet the man, he meets him on the edges, he can see how the city has conveniently tried to manage what they perceive to be evil by plonking him in a cemetery – but that won’t do. This man is a child of God and needs his dignity back. And so we find, in an unforgettable image, the pigs in the sea (demons have never liked water: remember the witch melting in the wizard of Oz, and all those witches dunked in water in medieval times?). What follows is that the man learns to belong again, to belong, that’s what reinforces our humanity. We need a sense of belonging or we, like those pigs, are at sea too. Jesus has shown that where the city wanted to make the man like a pig, the man is, through love and trust and friendship, now a human being . There he is, we are told, in his right mind, dressed, sitting having a chat. His disease has been cured but his illness has too, that disvalued state of being in which meaning had been lost in his life.
The man now obviously wants to stay with Jesus but no, Jesus, says you don’t stay in this place you’ve got to go and do it yourself now, join me in releasing captives. He tells the man to go and declare God. In fact in the Greek it’s stronger than that because “declare” is in the present imperative, keep on declaring and don’t stop! Declare God because humans can’t be trusted to keep humanity human or even humane. The weak, marginalized and damaged are not looked after but often overlooked, put out of sight or at worst got rid of. Keep declaring God, says Jesus, for humanity’s sake!
And now its over to you followers of this Christ. Over to you to release the captives, the trapped, the fragile and missed out. You’ll be amazed, like I always am, of the things that can happen when you look someone in the eyes as an equal and ask “what’s your name? Who are you? Tell me what’s its like for you, I’m listening.” The wounded begin to heal the wounded. If we can dare to do this, we have begun, begun, to declare God and as we do so some of your demons will begin to drown.
