Don Friesen
Typographical errors find their way into church bulletins on a regular basis. One of my favourite local bloopers was the announcement, some 25 years ago, about the OMC Women meeting for their final windup at the Corkscrew Restaurant! In another church's bulletin a line that should have read, "Time for Silent Prayer and Meditation" came out as "Time for Silent Prayer and Medication". And in another bulletin the insert featured the Scripture lesson for the day, a passage from Mark, chapter 1, which reads, "And Jesus went throughout all of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and casting out demons" (Mark 1:39), only it appeared in the bulletin as: "Jesus went throughout all of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and sorting out lemons".
Truth be told, I'd rather talk about lemons than demons! I know something about lemons, especially the cars featured regularly in the Lemon-aid books. I think I've owned every one of them! I have some experience in sorting out lemons from cars of good quality. If Jesus had spent more time sorting out lemons than casting out demons, I would have great potential as a Christian disciple. Some of Jesus' best disciples were lemons!
I'd rather talk about sorting lemons than casting out demons because demons belong to another world. They belong to a primitive belief system, rather like belief in a flat earth. We're past that! We no longer describe social or psychological disorders in this way. We prefer talk of dysfunction to talk of demons. We have little need for exorcisms; we have pharmaceuticals and counselling and science.
The Story: Its Cast
Some say that the archaic world-view of the Bible has little relevance today, and I confess that the frequent reference to demons in the Gospels makes me uncomfortable. I prefer talk of lemons to talk of demons. I would prefer to ignore the Gospel lesson for today, were it not that the story is so strange and dramatic!
Let me introduce you to the cast of characters in this melodramatic story. There's Jesus, who for some reason wanted to cross the lake into the Decapolis, a federation of Greek cities in Palestine. There's the disciples, along for the ride and the first to register confusion when called for, and still freshly perplexed by a nasty storm at sea. And there is the man who greets Jesus as he steps off the boat. Often Jesus was met by large crowds, but this time only one guy, and a guy – a naked guy – who lives out at the cemetery!
So there's Jesus, the twelve disciples, the naked cemetery guy, and 5,000 demons! The demons live in the naked cemetery guy who is always screaming or shouting! When Jesus asked his name, the naked guy answered, "Legion," which may be Luke's indulgence in a little political humour. A legion was a Roman military unit of 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers, one of the most feared military outfits in ancient times. The term, "legion," is, on the one hand, a figurative expression for many, and on the other hand a possible reference to Rome's demonic military presence everywhere! The naked cemetery guy felt as if there was an entire regiment of demons inside him that could be as fearful and destructive as any rampaging Roman army!
So far the cast of this dramatic story includes Jesus, the twelve disciples, the naked cemetery guy, 5,000 demons, and these are joined by a few thousand pigs! Luke simply calls them a "large herd of swine," but Mark numbers them at about 2,000! (Mark 5:13) Incidentally, the Roman legion stationed in Palestine had a boar on its standard. In addition to the swine, there are the swineherds who get anxious when their pigs go missing, and then there are the townsfolk and their rural neighbours, and though we don't meet them, I can sense other stakeholders in the shadowy wings, like the Palestinian Pork Producers, and the Palestinian Animal Rights people.
Demons, Swine, and the Sea
This is a great story! The naked cemetery guy who met Jesus was stark raving bonkers! For those of you unable to follow demonic language, he may have been suffering from a dissociative identity disorder. His fellow citizens, unhampered by modern superstitions, thought he was demon-possessed! They just knew him as Crazy Pete who lived at the cemetery, and who often had to be restrained by shackles and chains! Crazy Pete often had to be kept under guard, because he would break his chains and head out to the wilderness, the natural habitat of crazies! The wilderness in the Scriptures represents the realm of chaos and evil, the place where demons howl, temptations tempt, and death is ever near.
The townsfolk knew enough to make a wide detour around the cemetery, but Jesus engaged its lone living resident, and there was something about Jesus that made the platoon of demons within this man tremble and shake. The conversation was soon taken over by the demons. They were uncomfortable in Jesus' presence, and suggested they trade their human abode for temporary residence in the pigs grazing nearby! Jesus' request for their name signifies a threat to their power. It put the fear into them, and they "begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss." (Luke 8:31) In the language of Jewish mythology, the abyss was the place in which the powers of evil were destined to be imprisoned at the end of time. (Revelation 20:1-3) Popular belief held that while waiting for their ultimate banishment Satan and his demons wandered the earth in search of a dwelling place, their residences of choice tombs, deserted places, and vulnerable people.
The demons were so terrified of the Abyss that they suggested to Jesus they move over to the pigs! They preferred pigs to the abyss, though the pigs would have preferred a second opinion! Once infected with the demons – the first known case of devilled ham – the huge and hapless herd of hogs hurtled headlong down the hill and into the sea! The panicked pigs plummeted into the bay of pigs and drowned!
Now, a first-century Jew hearing this story would be delighted! A double-whammy! Pigs were considered unclean animals, and in the Ancient Near East the sea represented another of the forces of chaos. The succession of details in this story compounds the sense of chaos and evil! I imagine that first-century people loved this story. It's dramatic! It's got a bizarre cast of characters! And in the end a poetic justice prevails, the unclean finding its rightful home in chaos!
Add a few Red Herrings to this Dramatic Story
I love the story as well, but the bizarre cast of characters also includes a few red herrings. People are easily distracted by several things in this story. The pigs, for one. Many treatments of this story express concern for the pigs. How could Jesus kill those pigs? Well, he didn't; it was the demons' choice to move on. The transfer request came from them! The pigs are what the military would call "collateral damage," and anyway, I don't have much sympathy for pigs. I have little trouble believing that pigs can be demon-possessed. When I was about six or so our family bought a pig, a baby pig. We were not what you call a big pork producer; we had but one pig on our marginal mixed farm, but that pig left me with post-traumatic stress disorder. It continually ran away, and no matter how much higher we would build his pen each time, he would climb the wall, disappear again, run all over the countryside, and we would scour the countryside looking for him. Would that there would have been a sea nearby for him to hurtle into, but this was in Saskatchewan, and that little pig tormented me with his recurring Houdini act. For some reason I felt very responsible for that pig, and that pig was determined to undo me. Like many neighbours of pig farms would prefer their neighbour's pigs disappear, so I was much relieved when that possessed little pig went to Pork Chop Heaven!
Commentators often express concern for the economic loss suffered by the pig farmers in the story. However, I have read the story numerous times, in all three Synoptic Gospels, and there is no indication that this was a concern of those in the story! Our quickness to express concern for the economic loss may reveal the control economic demons have over us.
Another red herring in the story is a political one. One interpretation of this story says that the demons in the story represent Roman soldiers, and the naked cemetery guy represents people who were conquered by the Roman Empire. The story is intended to give hope to those under Roman occupation. I don't know. I can see that Luke may have indulged in a few amusing political asides, but anything more is asking too much of this story.
There is another distraction in this story. While the demons are central to the story, our reaction to them can be a red herring in itself. C.S. Lewis said that we make two mistakes in considering demons: we either discount and dismiss them, or we become fascinated, if not pre-occupied with them. We either reject the reality of evil out of hand, or we see the devil behind every tree and under every rock, and are reduced to rebuking the devil ten to twenty times a day. Both extremes trivialize the meaning of evil and diminish our ability to struggle against malevolent forces greater than ourselves.
How Does one Adequately Describe Torment?
Earlier I amused myself with this story, but I take the reality of evil seriously. Speaking of demons may be a quaint way to describe the torment some people endure, but I find it no less enlightening than any modern analysis. How does one adequately describe the torment some individuals experience? What can adequately describe the torment of a shackled man living in a cemetery, a naked, raving, ranting lunatic who wanted to disappear into the wilderness? Into complete chaos?
I remember reading the autobiography of William Kurelek, the Canadian painter whose inner torment led to an unsuccessful suicide attempt, admission to a psychiatric hospital in England, and electric shock treatments. Kurelek expressed his torment in a painting called "The Maze," which shows a maze inside his skull, cloven in half, a white rat knotted up in the middle of the maze, a dung heap seen through the nose of the skull, "the human race a cloud of flies crawling over it to suck out a living." (Someone with me: The Autobiography of William Kurelek, 1980, page 19) Kurelek painted over another painting which showed two giant women in labour spawning the teaming masses that make up the cannon fodder of the world's warring armies. Under the dead, wormy rat in the painting is a pile of human excrement. A weeping child is wiping his bottom using Shakespeare for toilet paper. Kurelek's graphic pictorial descriptions make the pig story in Luke's Gospel seem rather tame.
The other day Philip Janzen and I were talking about the literary classics he's reading, and I was reminded of another pig story, William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), the story of civilized and well-brought-up little British boys who degenerated into savagery, worshipping an old decaying pig's head surrounded with worms and flies. The boys, believing that this Lord of the Flies demanded a sacrifice, projected their fears onto "Piggy," an overweight, freckled boy who was trying to keep perspective in the midst of this terrifying chaos.
How does one adequately describe the frenzied forces that twist some lives out of any recognizable human form? The Old Testament provides at least one description, a story of sustained torment in the book of Job, in which Satan, the Prince of Darkness and Demons, creates utter havoc in this undeserving man's life. Satan had been roaming the earth, seeking whom he might devour, and with no swine in sight decided to pick on Job! Satan is allowed to torment Job, but not to take his life, and Job responds:
Scott Peck recounts, in his book, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (1983), how, like any child of his age, he did not believe in the existence of the devil. However, priding himself on being an open-minded scientist, he felt that he had to examine any evidence that might challenge his beliefs, modern though they may be. His conclusion, formed in clinical practice, was that the devil does exist. Whether or not we share Peck's conclusion, it is certainly difficult to dismiss the existence of evil. What drives young people to enter schools and other public buildings and go on shooting rampages. Explain it psychologically, if you wish, but the intensity of these violent acts is way beyond the pale of civilized human behaviour! What adequately accounts for the horrendous torment caused by people like Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, or the unspeakable murderous activity of our own much-vaunted pig farmer, Robert Pickton?
Some say that our culture is so infected with evil, if not demons, that there aren't enough pigs around to restore us to our rightful minds! In a culture where a lot of people are already living like pigs, a culture so depraved that it could benefit from an exorcism or two, we may well ask: how many pigs does it take to restore such a culture to wholeness?
We prefer not to talk of demonic possession in polite company, but surely there is a dimension of evil in the genocides that have swept across our world in the last century! Some individuals are captive to the power of evil. Some communities are captive to the power of evil. The language of demons is the biblical way of describing the powerful hold things have over us. The language of "possession" is very descriptive of the addictive hold that drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, and other powers have over us. How does one explain a whole raft of dehumanizing and destructive behaviours that disrupt lives, fracture relationships, set race against race, male against female, and disseminate hatred in spades? These are powerful forces to be reckoned with, powers that take away our control and leave us at the mercy of powers outside ourselves.
Clothed, and in our Right Mind
Luke's story of Jesus' foray into the region of the Decapolis ends with good news, however. The crazy, naked, screaming cemetery guy was restored to wholeness! There's a wonderful line in verse 35, after the townsfolk have come out to see what happened; it reads: "and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind". (Luke 8:35) The man was no longer frenzied, crazy, screaming or naked! He was sitting at the feet of Jesus, "clothed and in his right mind". What more could you ask for?
There's a puzzling aftermath to the story, regarding the reaction of the townsfolk who, for whatever reason, asked Jesus to leave! (Luke 8:37) The man himself wanted to leave with Jesus, but Jesus said, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." (Luke 8:39) Which is exactly what the formerly-naked cemetery guy did! He left the cemetery, "proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. (Luke 8:39) Which, repeated twice, must be the point of the story!
The point of the story – the amazing things God has done – is reinforced by the context of this story. This story is one of a series of stories indicating Jesus' power. This story is preceded by the story of Jesus calming the sea (Luke 8:22-25), demonstrating Jesus' power over the elements. When Jesus calmed the stormy sea, his disciples asked, "Who ...is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?" (Luke 8:25) The locus of primordial chaos is no match for Jesus' authority! Two pictures of tranquillity. A storm gives way to calm waters. A frenzied constellation of demons gives way to inner peace. And following our story, Jesus goes on to demonstrate his power over disease and death. (Luke 8:40-56)
There's a spirit in Jesus, Luke is saying, that is more powerful than any second-rate demonic power. There's a power afoot in Jesus that is attested to in our reading from Galatians, where the Apostle Paul tells us that even the formidable barriers of racism and gender and economic disparity are no match for the holy spirit resident in Jesus. "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female...." (Galatians 3:28)
Walter Wink writes, "The victory of faith over the powers lies, not in immunity to their wrath, but in emancipation from their delusions...." (Engaging the Powers, pages 102-103) Christ freed us from their power. The New Testament tells us that the victory over Satan and his demons is certain! Christ defeated them at the cross and at the resurrection! And we look forward to the day when Christ will destroy all forces of evil. However we imagine the powers that oppress people, Jesus came to liberate us, to "set the captive free!
These stories, whatever their origin, are the myths of our identity. For the formerly-naked cemetery guy, liberation meant restoration of reason, will, personality, relationships, and life. It meant a return to a right mind. It meant reintegration, and restoration to lucidity and life. It means that our fears and failures need not overwhelm us. Jesus restores us to sanity.
William Kurelek's mental anguish came to an end with his conversion to Christianity. A wonderful priest persuaded him that it was safe to become a Catholic in our scientific age, and with his new-found faith, says Kurelek, "The whole of my life was moving towards sanity and wholesomeness...." His faith made him "a happier, more glad-to-be-alive person." (Autobiography, page 157)
Kurelek's paintings have been compared to those of the fifteenth-century Hieronymus Bosch (1453-1516), who was obsessed with the imminent destruction of humanity, but Kurelek's testimony ends on a more hopeful note. "The purpose (of our existence)," he writes, "is a happy one: the population of heaven with souls who want to share existence with (God) for all eternity. For me, getting in with that crowd is all that matters really. We see only the underside as yet of the tapestry God weaves and so we can't make out the whole pattern of the human predicament. What I am sure of, however, is that I am not really alone any more in ...my journey through this tragic, puzzling, yet wonderful world. There is someone with me and always has been." (Autobiography, page 176) Thanks be to God!
(Martin Luther, "A Mighty Fortress Is our God," Hymnal: A Worship Book, #165)
"Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? ...why was I not buried like a stillborn child, like an infant that never sees the light? ... There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. ... "Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, ... who rejoice exceedingly, and are glad when they find the grave? Why is light given to one who cannot see the way, whom God has fenced in? ... Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me." (Job 3:11, 17, 20-25)
Demons "R" Us?
Though this world, with devils filled,
should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us." Amen!
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.