First Lutheran Church, Detroit Lakes, MN
Pentecost 2 | 06.19.2022 | Luke 8:26-39
This gospel text today…This is a bizarre little tale. Jesus has a strange and eerie encounter with a man who was demonically possessed, and not just by one demon, but many – a legion of demons, and he was erratic, and often found hanging out by the tombs, by the cemetery. I mean…creepy and hard-to-explain stuff.
Now, I used to try to ignore these demonic possession stories in the Bible, not only because they just always seem really hocus pocus to me, but also because I saw them as pretty shallow stories.
Sure, they’re creepy and maybe even kind of entertaining, but there’s actually not much to them: Jesus runs into a person who’s possessed. Jesus utilizes his power. Jesus beats demons. End of story. Cool. Next.
But over time I’ve found there’s so much more to them when you dive into the details.
On that note, here’s my setup – this might be an odd place to start, but, bear with me: Margaret and I re-watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy recently (it took us like two months to do so, because we usually end up having a really limited amount of free time after the kids go to bed because one of us falls asleep after about 14 minutes. By one of us, I mean Margaret.).
Nevertheless, there is this scene in the first movie where Gandalf the Grey, a wizard, fights this big, strange demonic beast, and one of the ways Gandalf overpowers the beast is he slams his wizard’s staff on the ground and famously says, “You shall not pass!” And the bridge underneath the demon crumbles and the demon falls into the abyss below…
…and as I was watching this scene, I thought to myself, “How strange. Gandalf beats the demon because he conveniently has a magic staff. There’s no explanation on where the magic in the staff comes from. He just slams it. Evil goes buh-bye. That’s it; it’s just…magic.”
And that’s kind of how I have viewed Jesus with these biblical encounters with the demonic. They’ve been kind of these weird stories of magic…BUT…for whatever reason, I read it differently this week. I contrasted today’s gospel story with Gandalf’s victory in LOTR, and, friends, there’s quite a contrast.
Look specifically at how Jesus defeats the demonic here in Luke. He doesn’t use a wizard’s staff that magically expels the demon. Jesus does something else to gain power over it.
With that, I’ll reread some of the text:
27 As [Jesus] stepped out on shore, a man from the city who had demons met him…30 Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. 31 [The demons] begged [Jesus] not to order them to go back into the abyss.
32 Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. [*Let me emphasize that: “[And Jesus] gave [the demons] permission.] 33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned…
Did you catch what Jesus did to expel the demons? The demons asked Jesus to allow them to enter a heard of swine, and Jesus accommodated their request. He gave them permission…and then they were gone.
Wait…what? How odd! Jesus and the demonic squaring off, a biblical confrontation of good and evil, and what happens???
No wizard’s staff. No hand-to-hand combat. No violence directly between Jesus and the demonic. No magic. No. Rather, the method for gaining power over and expelling demons for Jesus was… seemingly …to be hospitable to them. They asked a favor, and Jesus accommodated. He, in effect, entered into a peace treaty with them. THAT action was the act that immediately preceded the evil being driven out.
It’s pretty mind-bending! So, this isn’t just a story, as I have pigeon-holed it, of “Jesus magically beats demons” like Gandalf with an enchanted staff. No. There’s a peculiar method to his exorcism here, and it’s quite different than the epic battles we see in LOTR or scenes from The Exorcist: instead, the method of Jesus is that he uses hospitality as part of his process to gain power over and defeat evil.
It says later in the text, “Those who had seen it told…how the one who had been possessed by demons had been HEALED” (Lk 8:36).
I think that’s a possible lesson here: hospitality, civility, peace, love…can heal the world from evil…so much so, that the Son of Man even offers measures of it to the demonic. (*…it isn’t failing to amaze me!…They asked a favor of Jesus and Jesus’ response was not, ‘YOU DON’T ASK ANYTHING OF ME’ and then proceed with brute force; no. They ask a favor and he says, Okay. It’s his hospitality that precedes his power over evil.
With that as a takeaway, then there are at least two MAJOR implications for you and me.
#1: If Jesus uses hospitality and compassion to effectively gain power over and defeat evil, then it can be and must be a way WE gain power over and defeat evil.
Gandalf’s power source was this mysterious magic and staff. Our Savior’s power source is his love. His power is his willingness to be hospitable in the most inhospitable of circumstances. And it can be our power, too. Evil can “rob” us of a lot, but if it fails to rob us of our compassion and our love…well, then, to paraphrase one theologian, then even legions of evil will fall to their knees.[1]
And finally, implication #2: If Jesus is hospitable even to demons, then Jesus is most certainly hospitable to imperfect people like you and me.
So, remember this story, and don’t ever underestimate the hospitality, the compassion, and the love that Jesus is capable of.
Amen.
[1] Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009), 27.
pastorjoeskogmo 
What a concept! I will keep this for reference!