We, Too, Are Many: Mark 5:1-20 - Third Sunday after Epiphany
Elizabeth and I lived in Gettysburg during our seminary years. It was a really fun place to live, for the most part. We thoroughly enjoyed all the shops and restaurants, and we were never hard up for something to do on a weekend.
The one thing I disliked was the Ghost Tours.
We took one out of curiosity, and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing for how stupid it was. One thing I don’t understand, is that if you’re a ghost and you’re invisible, and you can move through walls, why would you stay in the same place for 160 years?
If I were a ghost, I’d float onto the next plane to Hawaii. I wouldn’t stay in some dank basement to be gawked at by tourists.
Many residents of Gettysburg felt that the Ghost Tours were disrespectful to those who died during those three days in July 1863. I’m inclined to agree. As a person of faith, I can’t imagine God abandoning those poor souls to languish in the depths of their suffering.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples have just sailed across the Sea of Galilee. When they reach the shore, they encounter a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. People tried to restrain him with chains, but the demonic powers within him were so strong that he broke them. Night and day, he howled and beat himself with stones.
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When Jesus asks him his name, he says, “Legion, for we are many.”
We moderns would assume that he may have been suffering a terrible mental health condition rather than an actual demonic possession. Whether he was or he wasn’t doesn’t matter. It makes sense to say that he was under the control of a legion of demons, given what he was suffering. You could say that depression, anxiety, addiction, cancer, dementia, and a whole host of mental or body ailments are demons. You could say some people are demon possessed because they are vicious, greedy, and cruel. War is hell. So are genocides, famines, and shootings.
If you ask people why they don’t believe in God, the reality of evil may be the biggest reason why.
Yet what we see in today’s Gospel is that Jesus does not abandon poor souls like this man to be imprisoned by evil, be it the evil of six thousand demons or a mental health condition, or the community that left him for dead.
Jesus will go on to suffer everything this man suffered, and more. He will be condemned, chained up, beaten, and ultimately crucified. He will descend into hell. But God raises him from the dead. Evil’s destructive power is broken.
Evil shutters in the presence of Jesus—because Jesus has full authority over all the powers, both human and supernatural, which are opposed to God. Whenever God’s Word is spoken, whenever people pray, the power of evil is broken. Love, patience, mercy, forgiveness, selflessness, generosity—these are the instruments that defeat evil.
That may be hard to believe, because you can’t put out a forest fire with a garden hose. But do you remember how the man said, “my name is Legion, for we are many?” Are we not many? Are we not the Body of the risen Christ? Are we not a major force for good when we believe God’s promises and do God’s work?
I can tell you from my own experience that I have felt the prayers of God’s people as power that holds me up and keeps me going. I can also tell you that the work we do as a congregation has literally saved lives.
We remember people like Dr. Martin Luther King because he was a man of faith. The civil rights movement began in the church, and people of faith changed the world. They pursued a vision of peace and justice revealed in the Scriptures, and not with bombs or bullets.
You will have to contend against evil until the day you see Jesus face-to-face. But the only the way the devil can win is if you become so discouraged that you give up praying, that you give up gathering with the people of God, that you give up doing good. Why should you do that?
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Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash |
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