Luke 8:26-39
The
Germans have a way with words. They
string two or three or sometimes more words together to make one new word that
can carry complex meaning. One of those
words that we have taken over is zeitgeist. Literally, it means “time ghost”. Sometimes it would be translated as “the
spirit of the age” but it has the added dimension of meaning the general
atmosphere or prevailing mood or overarching attitude of a historical period.
The
zeitgeist that Jesus faced was one that has its own name, a Latin one. It’s Latin because it was the zeitgeist that
was imposed by the Roman legions everywhere they went. It was called the Pax Romana. In English
that’s “the Roman Peace”. It wasn’t
exactly what we think of as peace, though.
It was the lack of fighting, at least of fighting back on the part of the
subject peoples because they had been beaten into submission. A Roman historian named Tacitus wrote, “To
plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a
desolation and they call it peace.”[1]
The
Romans liked it that way. They
encouraged and sometimes required the worship of the emperor. Behind that was the worship of power and a
total acceptance of brutality. Massacres were normal, as was torture. The effects rippled out through the
population, and created the sort of pervasive fear that they wanted. It was enough to drive someone over the
edge. Neglect and abuse of the subject
population had as one effect the creation of the kind of suffering that can
break someone’s mind, or send their very soul into jeopardy. What does it do to a woman who is turned into
a slave by ISIS and given to one of their soldiers as the spoils of war? What does it do to a twelve-year-old boy in
Africa who is made into a child soldier by being forced to burn his family’s
home to the ground?
When
you read the Bible, keep in mind that its message is good news, and good news
first announced to people who were living in the real and dangerous world. At the end of the gospel of John [21:25], we
read that
“there
are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written
down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be
written.”
That
these stories and these episodes and not others are
recorded is because someone like Luke made a choice and said, this event is one to highlight because
it will be good news that somebody needs to hear.
Luke then tells people living under
the Pax Romana the story of a man who was suffering terribly from demons that
had made a home in his life.[2] Jesus would confront and conquer them, and
that was good news for him, but they were not unique to that man, and their
conquest would be good news for others. What
those demons did was what the Romans were doing to the land and his life had
become was an expression of the suffering that came with occupation.
Consider:
he had been stripped of everything and lived with the dead.
“For a long time he
had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.” [Luke 8:27]
He
was kept a prisoner, and probably told it was for his own protection, but he
didn’t accept it.
“He was kept under
guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be
driven by the demon into the wilds.” [Luke 8:29]
Jesus
saw this and right away said it had to stop.
He confronted the forces that were ripping this man apart and got their
name, which was more than mental illness.
It was connected to the illness of the ways of the world in the deepest
sense, a world fallen into sin and captive to evil.
“Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He
said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to
order them to go back into the abyss.” [Luke 8:30-31]
“Legion? Okay, then, Legion. You oppress the Jews (along with others), so
you can go where you know they won’t follow.”
And off the demons go into a herd of pigs, which then jump into the sea
and are destroyed like the chariots and armies of the Pharaoh long before the
Romans were even on the map.
Again,
this is good news. The zeitgeist itself
cannot stand up to Jesus. Jesus brings
healing to those who are harmed the worst by the ways of the world and the
spirit of their age. So why wasn’t the
aftermath just great rejoicing? The
people’s reaction, at least for some of them, was negative.
“When the swineherds
saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the
country. Then people came out to see what had happened, 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. And they were afraid. Those who
had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been
healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked
Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.” [Luke 8:34-37]
They
may not have wanted the Romans around, but Jesus’ actions threatened their
deep-seated comfortability with the system, even knowing that it was
wrong. They had made their peace with
the zeitgeist (and someone was making money off those pigs, or they wouldn’t
have been there). Get rid of the demons
and others also stand to lose.
The spirit of the age finds its way
into all corners of all people, and it isn’t only in the obvious places and the
most extreme of its victims. Sometimes
it looks attractive. There’s part of a
song by Billy Joel from the 1970’s that paints an interesting picture of a
glitzy life that is at the same time attractive and destructive.
“Now
as we indulge
In
things refined
We
hide our hearts
From
harder times
A
string of pearls
A
foreign car
Oh,
we can only go so far
On
caviar and cabernet.
We drown our doubts
In dry champagne
And soothe our souls
With fine cocaine
I don’t know why I even
care
We’ll get so high
And get nowhere
We’ll have to change our
jaded ways,
But I’ve loved these
days.”[3]
Where’s the good news? It depends.
Where are you in this situation?
Are you being harmed by the ways of the world, like the man living among
the tombs? Are you among those, like the
Romans, who benefits from the way things are done? Is your own name Legion? Or are you one of those who is troubled by
your own involvement but unsure what life would be without the security of at
least knowing what you are dealing with, even if it’s bad?
Jesus didn’t let the newly-healed
man, restored to himself, go with him when he left. He sent him back to live a normal life, but
with this one major change: he was to tell people what God had done for him.
[Luke 8:39] Maybe that is the key to
finding the good news: living the good news.
Live as one who is not constrained by the usual rules of the zeitgeist, whether
it’s the Pax Romana or apartheid or the drug wars or keeping up with the
Kardashians. Live as one who is free
from all the demons that would impose any rule and live only under the ruling
grace of God. Live as one who once was
lost but now is found, was blind but who now sees. Live as someone who knows the power of Jesus to
tell off the demons of our day and send them on their way. Live as someone who has been given a chance
to live, and not among the graves of the dead, but in the midst of a place you
can really call home, fully clothed and in your right mind.
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