Jews would not keep herds of pigs.  The territory into which Jesus takes his disciples now is Gentile territory; more, it’s culturally Greek.  Greek thought owed nothing to and had no allegiance to God’s Word or God’s way.  We may think of Greek thought, science, art and architecture as the foundation for Western civilization; Greek culture has always been heavily influenced by the ways of peoples to the east of Greece.  Greece is a meeting place, a blending place, of east and west.  Regarding the family, regarding marriage, regarding the body, regarding religion—in all these things, Greek and Jew did not think alike.  It was God’s Word that made the separating difference, God’s Word which called a people out from the ways of this world, saying be holy for I am holy (Lv 11:44, 45; 19:2, 20:7, etc.).

There, across the lake from Capernaum, the disciples were in what they could only regard as a hopeless place.  But isn’t that just where Jesus, and his message, ought to be?  Isn’t that where Jesus, and his message, might do the most good?  Jesus told people, early on, that “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick,” and that he had not come “to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17).  There were many, perhaps especially in Jewish territory, who supposed themselves healthy and righteous.  They would listen politely, of course, but patience had its limit.

Jesus wants to take his disciples into idolatrous places, where decent people would never go, among those with whom decent, self-respecting people have nothing to do.  It doesn’t take very long to see why: “When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town.  For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs” (8:27).   Have you ever met a demon-possessed man?  I think I’ve seen a few.  I hear about them on the news often enough.  The disciples could have told Jesus, even before going into that place, that it would be thick with demons—how would it be otherwise, among those swine-eating Gentiles?  You know their kind.  Oh, if only the disciples could be back home: warm, fed, dry, and comfortable.  There the deranged man was, for all of them to see—terrible, horrible, fearful.  He caused fear wherever he roamed.  But, Luke tells us, the man’s roaming seems mostly to have been confined to the tombs, the graveyard.  Wandering naked among the dead!  Lord in heaven, what a dreadful sight!  Dirty, hair disheveled, nails dark with filth: a total loss, a total waste of humanity.  Not an object of pity or compassion but an object of horror.  An object.  A thing, not a man.

Naked among the dead.  What sort of life is that?  It’s a life entirely exposed, a life demonstrating, forcefully, the truth of what human life without God is and can only be.  Naked among the dead.  No shelter.  No protection.  No future.  No hope.  The saddest part, I think, is that so many don’t even realize it.  But why would they?  How could anyone acknowledge and admit that such was the essence of his or her life, exposed and alone among those who could not tell anyone the way to life?  No, in that place, the lost build doughty castles of insulating lies.

This object of terror, that caused people to run away in pulse-pounding dread, “When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet” (8:28).  Strange behavior for a deranged, violent lunatic.  Unless the object—the man, that is, the human being—wasn’t actually a deranged, violent lunatic, after all.  We can be afraid of so many things, until we actually encounter these things, get some experience, some knowledge, some wisdom.  Oh, don’t mistake me—this man, naked among the dead, was a mess, a total mess—looked terrible, smelled terrible.  He could be violent.  He made people afraid.  He was overrun with demons, just filthy with them, run through the mill by them.  He could be a terror to those in the area, and was, more than often enough.  But he wasn’t a hopeless loss.  We know that because of what happens right here: he sees Jesus and falls down at his feet.

The demon-infested man shouted “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!’” (8:28).  Oh, why are you here now?  Thank God you’re here now, at last.  Please leave!  Leave me alone!  “Tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without.”  We know the song.  The man, what was still there of him, may not have known who Jesus was, but the demons know, the impure spirits know: what’s ruining the man’s life, keeping him from Christ’s life—this knows.  Maybe there’s something that’s got a hold of you, in you, embedded.  The only cure, beloved, is Christ, and Christ is the one thing that what’s embedded deep down near the root does not want, is going to kick and scream about.  What rejects Jesus, denies Jesus, laughs at Jesus, is the sin in each and every human being.  Jesus enrages and terrifies sin because sin knows that Jesus is its sure doom.

What we need to be mindful of, in this part of the Jesus story, is that the disciples have seen Jesus perform great works of power, and they were in no doubt that what Jesus was teaching and preaching was directly from God, but they had not yet figured out, they could not yet understand let alone accept, that Jesus was not just from God but was God, the power of God, with them, power for life, power for living.  We can applaud and even accept the ethical teaching of Jesus and still be dead in sin.  It’s not the ethics of Jesus that defeats sin, it is the life of Jesus, offered up for us, offered up for all who will receive him.  Jesus knows this blasted wretch before him will receive him because, despite the terror of the demons at the sight of Jesus, at the sound of his voice, the man casts himself down before Jesus.  Amen!  There is hope!

The man isn’t free of the demons, though.  They still speak with him, through him.  “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  I beg you, don’t torture me!”  Both demons and the ruined man are convinced that God means not only to destroy them but to torture them.  Now, how does torture square with what we know of God?  Yet Scripture itself assures us that, at the Judgment, over which Christ will preside, there will be those sent away to eternal torment.  Is it God torturing them, eternally?

No.  It’s the truth, beloved, the truth they could have known, ought to have known, but never wanted to, ever preferring lies instead.  Lies can help us do all kinds of things, whatever we want.  The high castle they built for themselves becomes their prison forever.  It’s that undeniable certainty of the real truth, the only truth, God’s truth, and that they’ve forever shut themselves out from it by their own desires, choices, values, stubbornness, pride, and hard hearts.  Oh, all these had served them amply in the time of their earthly life, but all that this could bring them in relation to God’s life was condemnation and exclusion.  God did not exclude them.  They excluded themselves willingly, and forever after they will know the cost.

Jesus brought his disciples with him, in company with him, over to the hopeless side of the lake to show them this.  It’s not as if Jesus had no idea what was coming, over on this side.  Now, he was commanding “the impure spirit to come out of the man” (8:29).  This is what Jesus does: impurity must depart.  Oh, we’re “fully human” with these demons, alright, and God wants us to be fully His.  God means to purify His people, and He shall.  He has the power to do it.  His people, being cleansed and knowing they have been cleansed, will no longer live for the demons.  Will they live each day flawlessly?  Beloved, in this life, we cannot.  And we can walk with wisdom, prayerfully.  We can walk with the Lord in the light of His Word.  We can help one another up when we stumble—not if, but when.  To help one another up is a most Christ-like thing.  We do not condone the habit of stumbling or call it God’s blessing.  We do not condemn.

Luke tells us a little more about the ruined wretch, ruled by his demons: “Many times [they] had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon[s] into solitary places” (8:29).  Yes, that sounds familiar, too familiar, so familiar.

Knowing there’s a, um . . . problem we’re dealing with, we try to lock it up, lock it away, keep it down, out of sight, out of the light.  Yes, of course we do.  We don’t want to let it run amok.  We try to restrain it, contain it.   Oh, we’ll build elaborate constructions to try to contain it, like the dome over what’s left of Chernobyl.  Well, they built over it, but what about beneath?  But the man, the demons, keep breaking the chains—oh, it’s fierce, strong, hungry, angry.  The demons always want what they want.  They won’t take no for an answer, which is why the only answer we can give them, time after time, every time, is Jesus Christ.  Against their strength, their hunger, their fury that we obey them always immediately without questions, argument, or fight, our answer can only be Jesus Christ: keep reaching out for him.  Keep praying, keep your nose, your eyes, your heart, planted in this book.

Did you hear where the demons always drove the wretched ruin who was once a man (and might be again)?  “[S]olitary places”: no relationships, no healing . . . alone, without help, a place of helplessness and hopelessness.  Beloved, you know as well as I that, when sin takes the reins, the first place a person leaves is church.  We notice.  We call.  No answer.  We e-mail, text; we message.  No response.  Now, I should add that the places they go are solitary, spiritually, but they find company, the company of those devoted to the same sin.  Sin, though, never brings us closer to anyone.  Sin, no matter in whose company, always isolates us.

The demons, knowing their doom is sure because Jesus is there and they are not stronger, “they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss” (8:31).  Is that back whence they came?  But Luke doesn’t tell us they were pleading not to be sent back.  It’s as if they hadn’t come from any Abyss.  But they don’t want to be sent into the Abyss: the deep dark hole, the holding tank.  Like almost any disease, any living organism, what these demons want is light, air, freedom, food.  They want to feed.  They live to feed.  Like any cancer or parasite, though, without intervention, the demons will consume their host—destruction and death are certain.  And this is what demons exist to do.  Are you really going to tell me you hadn’t noticed?

I’ve always wondered about what happens next.  The demons want Jesus to send them into the herd of pigs; he permits them, and the pigs—demon-driven, I have to conclude—promptly rush off a cliff and perish.  So, how did the demons avoid the Abyss, then?  Aren’t they dead, too?  Hmm.  Are they?  Hold that thought for a moment.  Let’s consider this: who is witnessing what is happening?  Well, there are the pig herders, watching helplessly as their livelihood plunges to its death.  They don’t even know how to begin to process what they’re witnessing.  There is the man out of whom the legion of demons has come: he knows there’s been a change, can feel it, hasn’t felt like this in . . . years, maybe never before.  And he’s watching as what had been overmastering him for even the larger part of his life submits to the power of the Word of Jesus, and perishes.  Then there are the apostles, who never seem quite to know what’s going to happen next, when Jesus is around.  They’re in a hopeless land, among the unclean.

We can get to wondering what this clean/unclean distinction is really about, after all.  Here we see it.  It’s not really a matter of washing our hands and avoiding shellfish.  It’s the way to maintain a healthy soul.  The unclean spirits go into the unclean animals and what then immediately, necessarily follows?  The animals rush to their own destruction.  This is the path of the unclean.  What is unclean will destroy life.  What is unclean exists to destroy life and delights in doing so.  And we say we’ve never encountered anything like it, but we have.  We too often make the mistake of taking common grace for saving grace.  We don’t want to see and remember that there is a difference.

Well, news spreads about what happened when Jesus came by.  People come out to see, see for themselves.  What do they see?  Well, I can tell you what they don’t see.  They don’t see the deranged mess they had all known for years.  He’s gone and some other guy is there, sitting, clothed, washed, looking like a new man.

And he was “in his right mind”: you better believe he was.  Jesus comes to get our minds right, so let’s never be surprised that there’s so much resistance and argument, protest.  Another thing they didn’t see anywhere was their herds of pigs.  “[A]nd they were afraid” (8:35).  Is that so surprising?  In less than an hour, Jesus has turned their world upside down.  What they knew about reality, what they knew about the world, what they knew about life was all undone by one man, the stranger from the other side of the lake.  This isn’t possible!  This can’t be possible!  And there is Jesus, and there is the restored man, looking at each other, smiling.

“Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear” (8:37).  Afraid?  Of Jesus?  You better believe it.  “In the last analysis,” writes theologian Louis Berkhof, “atheism results from the perverted moral state of man and from his desire to escape God.”[1]

Perverted moral state.  Well . . . yes.  Escape God?  Why?  Because God means change: change for God, change God’s way.  We often speak about change and talk about wanting it—on our terms.  We want just one or two changes, specific changes, but the thing about change is that it is unpredictable.  Once one thing changes, what’s to keep another thing from changing?  How to control change, how to direct it the way we want?  But beloved, we have the spiritual maturity to know that it is God who will direct as He sees fit for His purposes His way, and yes, we will have to change, too.  God will do it.

[1] Louis Berkhof [1873-1957].  Systematic Theology.  2^nd ed.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1941.  22.