“Of Demons and Idols”
Luke 8:26-39
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
6/26/16
The man is a
mess. Like a troll he lives among the tombs, a danger to himself and others.
When a seizure hits, he breaks his chains and runs screaming into the
wilderness.
Demon. Mental
illness. Call it what you will. I can’t imagine how it feels to live as host to
some vile parasite. Each sunrise must come as an assault and each sunset as a
nightmare.
For all of
that, by the end of the story, the tables have turned. Hearing the report from
the swineherds, the Gerasenes rush to the lakeshore to investigate. Sure
enough, like slabs of fatback floating in a stewpot, their hogs float limply in
the water. And the once-unhinged man sits before them clothed, calm, and aware.
Let’s stand on
that steep slope with the Gerasenes. Downhill, the water is littered with new
death – too new to reek, too new to make sense. So, we cannot realize how our
community up there on the hill has just become brighter, richer, and more
complete because one of our own has been restored. We have all been restored,
and we see nothing but ruin.
Just as the
man has suffered from seizures, we now suffer a seizure of our own. The Gerasenes,
says Luke, are “seized with great fear.”
Fear. Is there
anything more dangerous, pervasive, and cherished than fear? In human history,
only Love itself inspired more determination, ingenuity, and chaos than fear. Unfortunately,
fear usually breeds a kind of regressive progress. From the chipping of flint, to
the forging of steel, to the splitting of atoms, fear has revealed that its
greatest impact comes when human beings fear their neighbors. That makes fear
much more than a demon. It’s an idol. And it begets idols.
For their part, demons are somewhat limited. They’re kind of
like old alley cats – opportunistic hunters of weaker species. They have no
need to subdue the entire neighborhood. That one half-eaten chipmunk will do.
For the moment. And like cats, demons often run for cover when someone approaches.
Idols are
different. Idols pose as friends and comrades, but they gather strength and momentum
by deception. They are possessed by a rapacious appetite, a hunger that only
grows when fed. And idols will do whatever necessary to preserve any advantage
they gain. That’s why wealth and power make such popular idols. They masquerade
as blessing while thriving on fear.
Jesus rids one
man of his demon, and in doing so he reveals to the Gerasenes their own beloved
idol, an idol so powerfully subversive that the people don’t realize they live
under its influence. When Jesus reveals the future as the dawn of new possibility
and wholeness, the Gerasenes retreat.
Go away, they tell Jesus. We want
things like they used to be. If this guy had a bum deal under the old arrangements,
it wasn’t our fault. And we had our hogs.
In fairness to the Gerasenes, a
livelihood can be difficult to establish and devastating to lose. Still, Jesus does
more than drown hogs. He breathes new life in to the world. He establishes a
new reality. His very presence proclaims the arrival of a future that renders
the past over and done. Now of course, our histories will always shape and define
us, but the past no longer controls us. As people of faith, we give thanks for
our past while knowing that we cannot return to it. And the future, for all
about it that seems more frightful than hopeful, is the realm of forgiveness
and wonder, a territory in which God is already active.
A covetous desire for the past becomes
a powerful idol. To succumb to this idol is to judge everything else – all
current neighbors, all current moments, all current circumstances – according to
a set of memories that we have sanitized, memories that we have whitewashed the
past of its demons in order to uphold an illusion of purity and simplicity. To idolize
the past is to lose awareness of the moment in which we live, to lose gratitude
for the people with whom we occupy this moment, and to lose commitment to work here
and now with vision and hope for people whose own present moments we will never
experience.
Go away, the Gerasenes tell Jesus. You’ve
messed things up, and now we have to try to re-create the past.
And with that, Jesus, like the
demon itself, gets exorcised from the land of the Gerasenes. So he and his
disciples walk down the hill, climb into their boat, and launch into the water.
As they row – the corpses of hogs bobbing and rolling in their wake – it looks
like everyone loses.
Remember the man, though. He runs after Jesus and begs to go
with him. And why wouldn’t he? Who else would he want to be with? Jesus opens
up a new future for him. He wants to leave his past behind.
Turning the man away, Jesus says, No.
You need to stay. Since I’m not welcome here, you have to speak for me. Tell
your story to anyone who will listen.
Do you see the distinction? When
the past is something to preserve as if it were still a reality in which to
live, it becomes an idol. Human beings will kill for that idol.
The past also confers upon us an
identity, an identity that directs us toward a future beyond our control. William
Faulkner was famous for saying, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”1
While I don’t know about Faulkner’s personal spirituality, his words can help
us understand how the past bears witness to God’s active presence in the world
and in our own lives.
A past immersed in God-memories can
exorcise the demons that chafe us with their paralyzing irritations – the grudges
we hold, the jealousies we harbor, the superficial certainties and raptures we
crave.
A past immersed in God-memories can also liberate us from
the idols that deplete us of the energies we need for claiming and sharing our
stories, and for living as people freed to bless the creation with compassion,
justice, and peace.
Much ink is
being spilled about the decline of the Church. And the numbers are worrisome –
especially when we idolize the past.
What if we
think of the cultural shifts around us as the aftermath of the healing of a
demoniac? The healing of one who has lived in isolation, his mind a tempest of
fear?
It seems to me
that in many ways the Church has been acting like the Gerasenes – a community
that fears God’s new day because it looks so different from a past that feels
so near and so desirable.
What if we
begin to think of the Church as one being healed? Healed of being possessed by
idols and demons of what was. Healed not just from what has held us, but healed
us from what awaits transformed hearts and minds.
Jesus leaves
us on shores that are both familiar and alien to us. Stay right here, he says, and
keep telling your story.
When we claim
the past as the narrative of God’s organic presence in the world, and the
future as a gift of God’s grace, the Gospel ceases to be a theological system to
be defended, but a brand new way of life to be lived, and celebrated, and
shared.
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