Second Sunday after
Pentecost (Proper 7C)
June 23, 2019
Text: Luke 8:26-39
Jesus
releases us from bondage to the devil.
For where Christ enters, Satan is cast out. This is His divine mission of salvation. The New Creation is breaking in.
But
do we even know how crucial this release is for us? Is it not true that even we Christians, even
well-catechized Missouri Synod Lutherans, live for all practical purposes as
though there is no devil, no demons; as though there aren’t real, cosmic, evil
forces out to get us; as though apart from Christ and His release we are not in
bondage to sin, death, and the very devil?
Repent. Christ open your eyes. This is serious business. If we really believed what the Scriptures say
of the devil, we wouldn’t miss an opportunity to be in Church. Luther writes in the Large Catechism, “If you could see how many knives, darts, and
arrows are every moment aimed at you [Ephesians 6:16], you would be glad to
come to the Sacrament as often as possible.”[1]
Satan
is real, and he is powerful. Created
holy in the beginning, Lucifer, which means “Light Bearer,” he is a mighty
angel. But he rebelled. He thought he could be a better god than
God. Full of pride, he set himself
against the one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore he was cast down, along with all
the rebellious angels that followed in his train, including those that make up
Legion in our text. And it is this wicked
angel, Satan, who inhabited the serpent in the Garden, tempting our first parents
and leading them to sin. Now he’s out to
get us, and he spares no effort. He
hates us. He longs to separate us from
Christ and drag us down to hell with him.
His minions delight in our every stammer, stumble, and fall. Christ is our only help, our shelter from
demonic attack, our Mighty Fortress, and our Deliverer. Christ is our safety. When we recognize the danger in the assaults
of the demonic hoard, we are driven to cling to Christ who is for us and
releases us in His saving Word and Sacraments.
The
man in our text is physically possessed by a demon, or more accurately,
thousands of demons, named Legion. A
Roman Legion consisted of 3,000-6,000 men, if that is any indication. Perhaps this man presents a rare case. To be possessed by so many devils at one time
is probably unusual. And, of course,
physical possession is not the only way demons afflict humanity. There is physical possession, but there is
also oppression and affliction, which may better be understood as harassment
from outside the person, though we really don’t know enough about it to make
hard and fast distinctions.
We do
know, however, what the demons do to a person, and we learn it right here in
our text. The demons specialize in lewd
behavior, all that is perverse and coarse and vulgar. The man is naked. He refuses to wear clothing and observe the
normal rules of modesty. Think of our
own culture’s sexual perversion and promiscuity. To maintain that sex outside of marriage or
living together before marriage is sinful is almost laughable in our
culture. We’ve moved on. Sex with whoever, whatever, whenever you want
is thought to be an inalienable right. Pornography,
homosexuality, the all-out assault on marriage and the murderous war against
the fruit of marriage (the human baby), transgenderism, giving children hormone
blockers and subjecting them to mutilating surgical procedures, and stuffing
all of this down our throats as dogma… What do you think is the source of all
of this? It’s demonic. It is all a lie from the father of lies.
Broken
relationships and isolation. The man
dwells in the tombs. He is driven from
normal society. He is alone. Think about how we are driven to isolation in
our culture, and how we are divided from one another. Partisan rancor in our nation is but one
minor symptom. Social networking has
driven us to be anti-social. We prefer
the virtual reality of the online “community” to real community and communion
with people, and the communion of the Church has suffered particularly. We are withdrawing from one another. We sit in the same room with others absorbed
by our individual, glowing, hypnotic screens.
Marriages and families are falling to shambles. Who is to blame? Of course, we must own up to our own
responsibility in this. Repent. But what is the source? The devil.
Violence. Super-human strength, like that of the
demoniac in our text, is unusual, and a mark of physical possession as opposed
to oppression, but unprovoked physical assault is a specialty of the evil one. Mental or emotional illness, though certainly
not always the result of physical possession, is an affliction of the evil
one. The man in our text is mad. Think of our own epidemic of depression and
other mental illnesses, mania, addiction, suicide. Christians are not immune from these kinds of
oppression. And this leaves unexamined
the participation of demons in our physical maladies. Jesus drives out fevers and cleanses leprosy
like they’re demons in His earthly ministry.
We cannot see what those connections look like with our bodily eyes, but
we know they are there.
So
maybe we ought to take the devil seriously.
The devil is stronger than the whole world. But he is no match for our Lord Christ. Even a legion of demons cannot withstand His
Word of command. And notice the
condition of the man after Jesus casts the demons from him into the herd of
pigs. Now the man is sitting calmly at
the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind (Luke 8:35). The violence and madness are at an end. He is clothed, and we may say, not only is
his nakedness and shame covered with fabric, in the salvation Jesus here gives
him, his sin and guilt are covered with the forgiveness and righteousness of
the Savior. And his mind has been
restored. He has received a new mind,
the mind of Christ, a gift from His saving Lord. New Creation has broken in to make whole and
heal, to transform what is darkness into light, what is dead into life.
This
is what Jesus does for you. When Jesus
enters your life, when Jesus enters you
through your ear and by way of your mouth, by means of words and water and
bread and wine, He releases you from bondage to the devil and the hordes of
hell; releases you from their oppression and affliction; clothes you with
Himself, with His blood-bought forgiveness and righteousness and life; heals your
mind, your body, your soul; transforms you and makes you whole. And here you are, sitting at His feet,
hearing His Word. When you are receiving
the gifts of Christ in the Church, in Word and Sacrament, you are clothed and
in your right mind. And the devil cannot
harm you. For where Christ is, Satan and
his minions must flee.
It is
an interesting reaction on the part of the crowds, though, isn’t it? Not that they enjoyed having an extra-strength
lunatic around, breaking chains and probably hurting people, living out among
the dead bodies. But when they find the
man demon-free and healed, and their own herd of pigs having jumped off the
cliff and drowned in the sea, they are incapable of recognizing this miracle as
the Gospel, the good news, that it is.
Instead, they are afraid. They’re
scared to death. Because all they can
see is the threat Jesus represents against their own uncleanness and
comfortable and perversely pleasurable servitude to Satan. Pigs, remember, are unclean to the Jews. This is pagan Gentile country, after all,
this land of the Gerasenes. Now, we
Lutherans like pigs, especially on our plates.
But in our Holy Gospel, the pigs represent all that is unclean, sinful,
and unholy. Jesus permits the demons to
inhabit those things for a time, until the Day of Judgment, the Day of His
return when the devil and his demons will be cast into the eternal fire
prepared for them. And look what the
demons do. They immediately drive the
whole herd to destruction. That’s all
the demons can do. Destroy! They cannot create. The best they can do is perversely imitate
the work of God, and that always with an aim to deceive. But basically they are in the business of
destruction. They can only destroy. They cannot build. They can only tear down. They cannot preserve life. They can only maim and kill. The demons in our text do what is in their
nature. They destroy the herd. And the people blame, not the demons, but
Jesus. They blame Jesus. They beg Jesus to leave them alone. They love their uncleanness and bondage more
than wholeness and freedom in Jesus.
So it
goes in the world. This is why the world
hates Christ and His Christians, why we represent such a threat to them. Here is Jesus, as He says through the Prophet
Isaiah in our Old Testament reading, stretching out His hands to a rebellious
people, saying “Here am I, here am I”
(Is. 65:1; ESV), and they will have nothing to do with Him. Isaiah describes them as sitting in the
tombs, eating pig’s flesh (sounds familiar) (v. 4), saying to God, to our
Savior, Jesus, “Keep to yourself, do not
come near me, for I am too holy for you” (v. 5). Jesus stretches out His hands on the cross to
redeem humanity from our rebellious separation from God, and the world just sits
there in its own rot and death, consuming all that is defiling and defiled,
thinking it is holier than Jesus, when, in fact, it is in the bony grasp
hellish dragon. And Judgment is coming.
But
there is a remnant. “I will bring forth offspring from Jacob,”
God promises, “and from Judah possessors
of my mountains; my chosen shall possess it, and my servants shall dwell there”
(v. 9). That’s not just the Jews. That’s you.
New Israel. The Church. That is your inheritance in Jesus, who died
for your sins on the cross, who is risen from the dead. That is your stake in the New Creation He
brings by His blood and resurrection life.
He releases you from bondage to sin, death, and the devil, for this very
thing, to live forever with Him in the New Heavens and the New Earth, in the
resurrection of your body on the Last Day.
You
are witnesses of these things to the world.
As our Lord sent the man back to the Gerasenes to tell what God had done
for him, so he sends you out from this place into the world to tell what Jesus
has done for you. Now, you know the
devil is out there, gunning for you. You
are not deceived. You know he is
prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter
5:8). But you do not worry. You do not lose heart. You are safe in Jesus. And you always know where to find Him, to
cling to Him for safety. In your
Baptism. In His Word. In His Supper. The devil can have his day in all that is
unholy and unclean. But his day is
quickly coming to an end. Christ Jesus
is coming again. Then the devil’s
judgment will be complete. But Christ is
already here for you in His means of grace.
Where Christ is, the serpent cast out.
Rejoice, all you who are baptized into Christ. Tell the devil to go to hell. You are free.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment