Sermon Text: Luke 8:26-39

“26 Jesus and his followers sailed on across the lake. They sailed to the area where the Gerasene people live, across from Galilee. 27 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man from that town came to him. This man had demons inside him. For a long time he had worn no clothes. He did not live in a house but in the caves where the dead are buried.

28-29 The demon inside the man had often seized him, and he had been put in jail with his hands and feet in chains. But he would always break the chains. The demon inside him would force him to go out to the places where no one lived. Jesus commanded the evil spirit to come out of the man. When the man saw Jesus, he fell down before him, shouting loudly, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Please, don’t punish me!”

30 Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”

The man answered, “Legion.”[a] (He said his name was “Legion” because many demons had gone into him.) 31 The demons begged Jesus not to send them into the bottomless pit.[b] 32 On that hill there was a big herd of pigs eating. The demons begged Jesus to allow them to go into the pigs. So he allowed them to do this. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and went into the pigs. The herd of pigs ran down the hill into the lake, and all were drowned.

34 The men who were caring for the pigs ran away and told the story in the fields and in the town. 35 People went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man sitting there at the feet of Jesus. The man had clothes on and was in his right mind again; the demons were gone. This made the people afraid. 36 The men who saw these things happen told the others all about how Jesus made the man well. 37 All those who lived in the area around Gerasa asked Jesus to go away because they were afraid.

So Jesus got into the boat to go back to Galilee. 38 The man he had healed begged to go with him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Go back home and tell people what God did for you.”

So the man went all over town telling what Jesus had done for him.” (ERV)

Our world right now is filled with uncertainty. Even as some of the things that have been restricting our daily lives begin to lift, there are still many things we don’t know. Will the virus continue to decline? Will I still have a job when all of this is over? Is it really safe to start living life in a (somewhat) normal way again? 

Many of us have been living without being able to see and embrace the people we love and care about the most for months. Even if all else in our lives is actually going alright, we might be the loneliest we have ever felt right now.

This is a very strange and troubling time that we live in right now, but I hope we can be encouraged by what these verses in Luke 8:26-39 tell us about who Jesus is. 

In these verses, we see a savior who is concerned for people; who cares about everyone - even someone in a ridiculously bad situation. 

After sailing across the Sea of Galilee in a storm, Jesus leaves the boat and encounters a man who we are told is possessed by demons. I don’t know exactly what that means or what that really looks like, but we are told, among other things, that he is naked and lives in a graveyard. 

This is a homeless man who probably has no connections with any friends or family. He is surely very dirty and unkept. If most of us were to encounter someone like this - naked, dirty, unshaved, living in a graveyard, and babbling something about Jesus coming to torment him - we would probably run the other way, maybe even fearing for our lives!

But what does Jesus do? 

Verse 30 tells us that Jesus asks the man for his name. 

Rather than running the other way, or even just trying to pass by while pretending not to notice this man (who, by every account, would be terrifying to meet in a stormy graveyard!), Jesus asks him his name. 

I don’t think that this means that Jesus is simply braver, or perhaps even just more polite, than us. Jesus is the very son of God - he clearly has nothing to fear - but I don’t think that is the point. 

Jesus came to the world to establish the kingdom of God. With that in mind, we might expect to see Jesus meeting with kings and emperors, or maybe even gathering up armies to defeat them and to prove that he is God in the flesh!

But he never does that. Not only does Jesus do none of those things - but he stops to talk to crazy people. He stops to dignify perhaps the least dignified person any of us could possibly imagine. What business does the King of Kings have stopping to do this? 

Simply put, Jesus’ kingdom is not like earthly kingdoms. 

And that doesn’t mean that Jesus simply stops by to give this man some pocket change. 

Jesus begins by asking the man for his name. 

The man answers that his name is “Legion,” because so many demons lived in him. He was (literally) so possessed by darkness that it changed the way he understood his very identity. 

That sounds crazy, at first read! But maybe we can relate with this man, if we stop to think about it. 

I assume none of us have ever begun to base our identity on literal demons, of course. Even so, who among us, at some time or another, has not started to base our identity on our jobs? Or on our style? Or on our accomplishments? Or on an important relationship? Or on our kids? Or on how much money or how many things we own? Or even on our biggest struggles, temptations, failures, and sins?

While none of us has likely ever thought to go by a different name as a result, I think we can all somewhat relate to this man, when we really think about it.  

Jesus, of course, knew that this man’s name was not really “Legion,” just as much as he knows that the worthless things that we so often think define us are not really what we are called to be.  We also know that Jesus would have already known the man’s real name, too, just as much as he knows that we are made to find our identity in God.

But Jesus asks the man his name anyway. What we see in this moment is a glimpse of a God who is not satisfied with simply knowing about people. We see a God, here, who wants to actually know people. He wants to know who we think we are, even though he knows that we often think incorrectly. 

But what we see here is not just a God who wants to know people personally; rather, we see a God who wants to transform and to restore people. He wants to make his creation whole, he wants to once again make his creation the way he intended for it to be from the start. 

It’s really interesting to me that, when Jesus asks the man his name and hears this horribly sad answer, Jesus does not rebuke the man. 

Jesus would have had every right to stand there and tell the man that he is betraying the very God in whose image he was made by identifying with demons. He could have told the man how wrong and perverse it is to let himself be ruled so deeply by evil. He could have shamed the man and told him that he should simply try harder to follow God, to go to the synagogue more often, to pray more, and to try to get rid of the demons that possessed him on his own. He could have told the man that, if he had made better choices in his life, then maybe the demons wouldn’t be there in the first place. 

But verses 32-33 tell us that Jesus simply sent the demons out of this man, and into a herd of pigs. Jesus didn’t ask. Jesus didn’t accuse. Jesus didn’t shame. 

Jesus showed compassion. 

Jesus loved.

After they were cast out of the man and into the pigs, the demons drove the pigs off a cliff, killing them all. Having seen this, along with the man who was once possessed by the demons, who was now fully dressed again and in his right mind, the people from the area were afraid. They were so afraid, in fact, that they told Jesus to leave. The fact that fear, and not awe or worship, was the takeaway from this moment for those people is certainly a sermon of its own, for another day!

Nonetheless, they tell Jesus to leave, and he does. But as Jesus gets into the boat to go back to Galilee, the man - now freed from his demonic possession and from his old, awful identity - begs to go with Jesus. Jesus tells him that, instead of going with him, he should go and tell everyone there about what God did for him.

And the man does exactly that. 

After years of a life identified by possession, after years of an identity tied up in evil and ensnarement, this man is deeply and entirely transformed. He is completely changed. 

He was not changed because he simply decided to become a better person. He was not changed because someone gave him a lecture. He was not changed by Jesus coming and merely telling him to try to get rid of the demons on his own. 

He was changed, because it was Jesus who did the changing. 

He was changed because he encountered the grace of God.

He was changed because he experienced the compassion of Jesus. 

He was changed because Jesus cared enough to love him.

Jesus cared enough to engage with, to have compassion on, and to love a homeless, naked, smelly, scary, demon possessed man.

What could ever make us believe, then, that Jesus would not care enough to engage with us? What could ever make us think that Jesus will not have compassion on us? What could ever, as Paul asks in Romans 8:35, 

“...separate us from Christ’s love? Can trouble or problems or persecution separate us from his love? If we have no food or clothes or face danger or even death, will that separate us from his love?” (ERV)

Praise God that the answer is a resounding, “Nothing!”

Whether you are someone who needs to give your life to God for the very first time, or whether you are a follower of Christ who simply needs to remember that God cares deeply about and loves you, even in this time of darkness and loneliness; never let the enemy deceive you into believing that you are alone. 

Praise God that we serve a God who not only cares for us; we serve a God who genuinely loves all his people and all his creation. 

May we all encounter the love and compassion of our king Jesus this week, finding all our peace, rest, and hope in him!