The Legion of Demons

Reading: Luke 8:26-39
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin on June 20th 2010

When you fly into this country from abroad, if you are a non-American, there are a series of questions you have to answer on a form on the plane. Some of them are fairly straightforward, such as “Why are you coming to our country?”

Others are a little peculiar. There are some questions along the lines of, “Are you an international terrorist coming to our country to overthrow the government?” Seriously! Can you imagine Abdub Miklabbawah, a crazed international terrorist actually sitting there and thinking, “Oh yes. I am an international terrorist. I must check this box, otherwise I will be in trouble”.

Then there’s the one you get asked sometimes by inspectors whose command of English isn’t what it should be. “Are you carrying anything in your luggage that somebody has placed there without your knowledge?” Go figure that one out!

Whenever you answer questions, you have to sort out what the questioner is actually looking for. A question that often appears on psychological tests is: "Do you sometimes hear voices?" The correct answer, unless you are totally deaf, is yes, you do, especially when people are talking to you. But obviously, that is not the right answer, because from the point of the view of the test, a simple’ ‘yes’ without any explanation might suggest that you are insane.

Voices in the head. Demons. Madness. That’s what our reading from Luke’s gospel was about this morning. A man said to be possessed by a legion of demons, living like a wild animal, unclothed and uncontrollable, making a home in the local graveyard. He sounds like a character in some low budget horror movie. He’s certainly bad news and the local people are afraid of him. But Jesus looks on the man with compassion.

Jesus asks the man his name and the man replies, "Legion." A legion was literally six thousand soldiers. This poor man had a mob of screaming demons clawing at him from all sides, pulling him this way and that, and confusing him to the point that he had totally lost his identity. He no longer knew who he was.

Demons. In our modern scientific age is it reasonable to believe in the existence of demons? When we read of people like this man in our story, would we not today put their problems down to some form of psychological imbalance and attempt to treat them with drugs or some form of therapy? Is this, like a Stephen King novel, an account of fiction rather than revelation?

I suggest to you this morning that we should not dismiss these biblical stories so easily. Maybe we don’t believe in demons and angels and the saints and a whole lot of other things, in the way that theologians of the Middle Ages did. But to deny the existence of evil and to refuse to name it for what it is, opens some dangerous doors.

A demon in the Bible appears as the personification of a force or a power that renders a person unable to live the life they are capable of. To see a demon in that way is to see that we live in a world full of demons. Demonic forces are all those forces that seek to destroy, cheapen and steal the spark of God’s love from our lives.

You can easily observe the effects of the demons upon this poor man called Legion. We’ve noted one of them already. The demons steal away his identity. He is no longer known by his name, but by his problem. He is the madman. He is the Demoniac. He’s the crazy one who lives amongst the tombs.

He is no longer recognizable as some ones child, or even as a human being. He is not treated as an individual who has been created by God in his mother’s womb before the beginning of time and who has the potential to change the world. He is just a beast, a monster.

Notice also how possessive the demons are. Notice how every time the man is restrained, he escapes and returns to his graveyard. These demons want him all to themselves. They tolerate no other influences, no other voices. Their future depends on being able to feed from his shattered life. He is theirs and they have no desire to share. They do all they can to keep him away from any who could help him.

Notice also how well the demons twist the facts. They recognize Jesus' power over them. They make the man say, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me." They accuse Jesus of being the tormenter, when in fact it was they who were tormenting the man. That’s how demons are. They make healing seem like sickness and sickness seem like health.

So where are these demons today? All around us and sometimes within us. Think for a moment of the word we use to describe the Prince of all demons, namely the Devil. Just take away that first letter, drop the “D” and what you have left is the word evil. Anybody who denies the real, brooding and often overwhelming force of evil in today’s world must be living on another planet.
There are things that are good, there are things that are bad. There are things that have no moral or ethical dimension to them at all and there are many things that fall into gray areas. And alongside all of those there are things that are completely and demonstratively evil.

One can think of the images of the death camps of Nazi Germany, or can read of horrific acts of child abuse and exploitation, of acts so destructive and beyond the definition of any sane persons assessment of right and wrong that they can only be described as demonic. But not all demons are so obvious. Sometimes they parade as angels of light and only reveal their true nature when their darkness has captured the soul.

Take drugs as an example. I think it is a safe bet to say that there is not one person in this room who has never been on drugs. Now let me be clear here, I’m not talking about the illicit, illegal kind of drugs, I mean those things that the doctor prescribes or that you buy from the pharmacy to relieve aches and pains.

I’m talking about medicine, things we take to cure us of an ailment or to escape from pain. Such drugs we welcome and we thank God for. But we know there are the other kind of drugs, the kind the kids in school are more knowledgeable about than their parents. Sometimes they are taken to escape or relieve pain or sometimes just to get a high or a buzz.

Do you know what is so attractive about those illegal drugs? They work. They do what their pushers promise. That stressed out kid smokes some cannabis and suddenly life’s not so complicated. That kid who can’t stay awake takes some amphetamines and now they can keep going, going, going like they were the energizer bunny. That party goer takes some Ecstasy and they’re in love with the world and everything’s beautiful as they dance the night away.

Now I’m not saying that every child who experiments with drugs is going to end up a crack-cocaine-heroine junky and go to an early grave, but some of them will. And the high that such drugs offer soon diminishes, and if that is what a person is looking for, then it’s easy to see how what they thought was a bit of fun ends up as a horrible addiction.

What are the signs of addiction? Remarkably similar to the symptoms of the posessed man in the cemetery who encounters Jesus. The person loses their identity, not only to themselves, but also to those around them. They are no longer Jimmy or Rosie, but become the junkie or the crackhead – the madman.

Addicted drug users, like the demoniac, find they need to be alone with their habit and away from those who would seek to help them break it. The drugs take control and their cravings can become insatiable. Like the demons whom accuse Jesus of being the tormenter they make healing seem like sickness and sickness seem like health.

I’m using users of illicit drugs only as an example. Drugs come in many forms. Alcohol. Gambling. Shopping, Pornography. Promiscuity. Money. Power. Oh yes.. and we mustn’t forget the Pharisees favorite drug …….. religion.

We live in an age when we would be far healthier if we could recover a biblical understanding of demons. In the category of demons maybe we should include such things as cancer, despair, AIDS, road rage, the fear of failure, terrorism, obsessive-compulsiveness, racial prejudice, abusiveness, tuberculosis, and greed and so much more.

All such demons compete for the mastery of our lives. If we let them gain control, they drive us into outrageous behavior and isolate us among the tombs of death and deadness. They destroy our friendships. They alienate us from our families. They become so powerful that eventually they even take over our identity.

Jesus separated the demons from the person. He did not, like the villagers, call him a Demoniac. He addressed the demons and called them out by name. He restored the man’s identity. In today’s terms He would not say to Mary, “Mary, you are a hopeless anorexic”. He would say to Mary "It appears as though anorexia is trying to take over your life." That gives Mary the opportunity to see how it is that anorexia creeps into her life and to explore ways in which she might be able to hold anorexia at arm's length.

The overwhelming positive note in the passage; the most important point of all, is that Jesus is greater than all the demons. For all the power that demons have, there is a power far greater than all of theirs put together. Even though a hundred demons may come at us at once, they can be sent packing through faith in Jesus Christ. It is for us to confront the demons in our society and within ourselves with prayer and devotion and the desire to be followers of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is much in life that would seek to take us under it’s control. Christ came to set us free. The account of Jesus casting evil out of a man possessed by a legion of demons is a powerful picture of the ability of Jesus to renew even the most hopeless of lives. The gospel that is entrusted to our care is a gospel that proclaims freedom, deliverance and hope.

In a world where demons are legion may we seek to live lives that reflect the freedom that Christ died to give us. To God’s name be the Glory! For Jesus is greater than all the demons.

Rev Adrian Pratt