By Nanette Sawyer
Gospel Reading: Luke 8:26-39
For Sunday, June 23, 2013: Year C—Ordinary 12
Even more than Twitter, Jesus changes everything. He upsets the socio-economic situation, brings outsiders to the inside of communities, and gets himself run out of town doing it. I think about how women who were effective healers during times of witch craze were often targeted. After all, if someone can heal, maybe they can also make people sick.
What are the townspeople in this story afraid of more: Jesus taking away their livelihoods, changing the social economic situation by (killing) allowing the pigs to die, or, his apparent capacity to control demons? If a person can cast out demons, maybe they can send demons into you, too. Was this what the townspeople feared when Jesus sent demons into pigs? As for the demons themselves—oddly it's their fears that take centerstage.
Who Do You Love More?
Did Jesus think this whole scenario through? Why did he allow the demons to negotiate their own futures? Why not just send them to the abyss, as they feared? And by the way, did they end up in the abyss anyway after dying by drowning? We know from other texts that demons live in “waterless regions.” It seems tragic that the pigs had to die, but on the other hand, I too would choose saving one man instead of saving a herd of pigs.
But is saving the one man enough? The story doesn’t tell us everything we need to know. (And that is the way of the Bible.) It doesn't tell us, for example, how the swineherds will be redeemed and saved, now that they’ve lost their livelihoods, through no fault of their own. It doesn’t seem fair and seems kind of random, that they were the ones to sacrifice their income in order that the man (and the world) be rid of a whole lot of demons. Doesn’t Jesus love the swineherds, too? Or is their sacrifice relatively small compared to the relief of the man who is healed and restored to his community and his home?
Anything but the Abyss!
I find it fascinating that the demons don’t want to be sent into the abyss. I guess I tend to think that demons come out of the abyss. Or that they dwell there—that it’s their neighborhood. But I think of an abyss as a deep place that does have a bottom, and perhaps that’s wrong.
Some definitions of the abyss say that it is a bottomless pit. Think about that for a moment. Think about falling into an opening and then falling and falling and falling and falling. I can understand why I would be afraid of this, and why John Calvin would be, too. Apparently he was somewhat obsessed with fears of the abyss.
But why would a demon fear this so much that they would beg Jesus not to send them there? This also gives me a much bigger thought: demons have fears. I’m so aware of demons creating fear that I’ve never really thought about them having fears. Perhaps fear is the vulnerability of a demon. Perhaps that is why they create so much fear all around them.
Empathizing with Demons
To think about this weakness in “demons” makes them more relatable. Being afraid is something I can relate to.
Maybe in this sense, the demons are not so different from us. Maybe the demons and the man inhabited by demons turn out to be very similar characters in this story and in the story of life. Our fears can drive us, causing us to act unreasonably and anti-socially; causing us to take away the livelihoods of others; causing us to create chaos and fear; causing us to throw ourselves at Jesus’s feet asking, what are you going to do with me?
The Hardest Question
Are we the demons Jesus has to negotiate with so that we might stop creating suffering in the world?
How do you read?
Nanette Sawyer is the founding pastor of Grace Commons (formerly known as Wicker Park Grace), an emerging faith community that began in an art gallery on the west side of Chicago. She currently serves both Grace Commons and St. James Presbyterian Church as solo pastor. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), she has blogged at The Christian Century’s lectionary blog, the Emergent Village Blog at Patheos, and at nanettesawyer.com. She has a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and an MDiv from McCormick Theological Studies, where she has also taught as adjunct faculty. She is the author of Hospitality: The Sacred Art.
