The Greatest Fear: Sermon Luke 8:26-39

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

Do you like to be scared? I know that it is a few months left until Halloween, but I think that all of us like to have our spines tingled every now and then with a spooky story. We have our share of spooky places here locally, we have all heard, I am sure, of the tales from the Hanna Ward bridge and not too far from here in Adams, Tennessee the tales of the Bell Witch. These are the kind of stories we hear around a campfire or at home with all the lights off. Hollywood has always found new ways to scare us and it seems in the last few years a new horror movies comes out each week and each one more disturbing and disgusting than the last. The days of Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff are long gone and movie makers today want to shock us with disturbing images, perhaps the world that we live in has become so scary in and of itself that the horror movies of today have to be much more graphic in order to scare us.

There is no doubt about it that fear sells, almost as well as sex does. After 9/11 and the subsequent Anthrax letters sent to NBC and members of Congress some of us were even scared to open the mail. We bought gas masks, duct tape, and rubber gloves and that was just to open the Publisher’s Clearing House envelope. Commercials scare us into buying everything from security systems to pepper spray and handguns. Sometimes it’s good to be a little scared because it prepares us for the harshness that is in the world. We no longer live in a day or time when we can leave our doors unlocked at night. Instead we lock ourselves up tighter than Fort Knox in order to sleep soundly. We are scared of lots of things; vampires, ghosts, goblins, spiders, snakes, rats, other creepy crawly things. But what are we really scared of, the unknown, change, the future these tend to be our biggest fears.

Today’s gospel story is frightening in a sense. Here we have one encounter that Jesus has with a demon-possessed man. We are told that the man is crazed, tormented by demons. He runs around naked and has been banished by the people to the cemetery outside of town. This sounds like Hollywood gold to me. The people tried to tie the man down for his own protection and for theirs, but the demon gave him superhuman strength and he broke free of the chains and run wild. However, the people were not frightened of him; they instead became accustom to his presence.

Jesus asks him his name and the demon replies “Legion” for many demons had entered the man. Now depending on what time in Roman history you are referring to a Roman legion contained anywhere from 4,000 to 16,000 men. So this man had thousands of demons dwelling within him. This would raise the neck hairs of even the strongest man, but the people where not afraid of the many demons.

Jesus commands the demons to come out back to the Abyss, but they beg Jesus to allow them to enter a herd of pigs nearby. Jesus agrees and they go into the pigs and the pigs rush off of the cliff and into the lake to drown. The people come to see the commotion and see the man who had become the town looney, the crazy man was calm and sane sitting at the feet of Jesus and that made the people afraid. They were so afraid that they begged Jesus to depart from them and to never return. The people were afraid of the holy power of Jesus.

The demons and the people of the town were afraid of the same thing, the power of holiness within Jesus. The fear of the demons is understandable. They knew who they were dealing with and called Jesus by title “Son of the Most High God”. They knew they were in trouble and they begged Jesus not to cast them back into Hell, but instead into the pigs, considered unclean by the Jewish people. They wanted to bargain with Jesus but Jesus knew the outcome, that the pigs would drown themselves in demonic madness. Jesus saw the evil in the situation and took a stand against it. We can see why the demons feared the holy power of Jesus.

The people’s reaction, however, is surprising. The feared the change that Jesus had brought to their community even though the change was a positive one. I can imagine the pig herders were a little upset, but is the freedom of one man not worth a couple hundred pigs. However, the people did not seem to care about the man instead they were worried more about the pigs. Jesus had upset the status quo, the normal business of the day, they went about our lives and the crazy possessed man stayed in the graveyard, everybody’s happy right? But Jesus freed the man from the bondage of demonic possession, Jesus saw the evil in the situation and changed it and now the evil was gone, but the people’s fears grew. The people feared Jesus’ holiness.

Why? Why did those people fear the holiness of Jesus? Holiness is powerful, much more powerful than evil. Any time Jesus encountered demons he could command them with a word. There was no fighting or discussion; the demons obeyed Jesus because of the pure power of his holiness. So why fear this power? Holiness by its very nature brings good, so why fear it? Holiness brings change and it was the change that the people feared. They had grown accustom to the evil that surrounded them. The people thought that if they left the evil alone that it would not bother them. Just don’t go near the naked, crazy man and he won’t bother you. Jesus changed what they were accustomed to and the man who was once crazed was now free. What if the demons come back? What if I am next? They were at least contained in a specific space and we knew where they were, but now. They feared the change and the uncertainty that the power of holiness brought, even though it was for the good of all the community. They feared Jesus so much that they begged him to leave and the scariest part of this story is that we often act in the same way as these people did.

So often our society rejects the power of holiness and embraces or at the very least embraces the evil that surrounds us. So often the horrors of the world do not shock us when we watch the news, but it takes a selfish, heroic, and holy act to shock and awe our society. We have become numb to the evil around us, even to the point that we don’t believe it exists. We blame bad childhoods or bad circumstances as the reasons for these horrid acts. It was said that the young man who opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech had mental problems, a bad childhood, etc. This might all be true, however we cannot deny the fact that there was great evil in this man. The horrors of Darfur, Sudan, the killings fields of the Khmer Rouge in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the genocide of the Holocaust these are evil acts and we cannot, we must not deny that they are evil. There are other acts of evil that we might not even notice in our every day lives. Racism, sexism, economic injustice, people without healthcare, the elderly choosing between food and medicine these are acts of evil.

We have to stand up against evil. We cannot fear the power of holiness because we have been called to use it. Jesus referred to his followers (which includes us) as the salt and light of the world. This means that we are called to be beacons in a world filled with darkness. We have been given the power to be holy through the Holy Spirit and with that comes great power. We must not fear this power but use it to speak out against evil in the world. Our parents and grandparents spoke out and acted out against the evils of Hitler and the Third Reich. We have to follow their example. Our denomination has been at the forefront of many battles against social evil. The Methodist Church led the way for the abolition of slavery in the 1800s and many Methodist pastors and laity led the fight for civil rights for all. Now we face evil in our day and time. We must rise to the occasion without fear and use the power that we have been blessed with.

As Jesus found out, speaking and acting against evil does not always earn you praise and reward. As I have said holiness brings change, not only to the world but to ourselves and sometimes change is resisted sometimes angrily. Let us look back to the story. There are two outcomes. One the man is set free, justice is restored, and his life and sanity are restored. The evil is defeat with good and this man has a chance to lead a normal, happy life. He is so changed by his encounter with Jesus that he wants to become a disciple and follow Jesus. Instead, Jesus tells him to stay there and tell all the people what God has done for him. This is a good outcome. One person is saved.

However, there is also a bad outcome. The people of the town are so bothered by the act of holiness that they reject Jesus and ask him to leave and not come back. They are so frightened by Jesus that they reject the man that can save them. They did not understand that their status quo, the life they were accustomed was unjust and harmful to others. They were oblivious to it until Jesus changed it and they reacted harshly to that change. We have to be ready for both outcomes when we act out against evil in the world. We might change one life and have the community around us reject us, but one redeemed and restored person is worth the reaction of anger.

We cannot become accustom to evil and we cannot fear the power of holiness. Instead we must work toward personal and social holiness. It does not happen overnight, it is a lifelong pursuit. John Wesley called this moving on to perfection, you can also call it living life and growing as a Christian. We are the salt and the light of the world and it is up to us to stand up and speak out against evil. And we can make a difference in a broken world, if we let go of our fears and let God work through us.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.