Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the lake, to the region of the Gerasenes. 2 As soon as Jesus got out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the tombs. 3 This man lived among the tombs, and no one was ever strong enough to restrain him, even with a chain. 4 He had been secured many times with leg irons and chains, but he broke the chains and smashed the leg irons. No one was tough enough to control him. 5 Night and day in the tombs and the hills, he would howl and cut himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from far away, he ran and knelt before him, 7 shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!” 8 He said this because Jesus had already commanded him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!” 9 Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He responded, “Legion is my name, because we are many.” (CEB)
“We Are Legion,” Mark 5:1-9
If
you were there for Good Friday, you knew a small piece of the story of the
woman I spoke of to begin my message, Pastor Kate Braestrup, the chaplain of
Maine’s state search and rescue. I
return to her memoir Here If You Need Me today, to retell this particular story. She writes:
What are the odds of this? On an ordinary weekday morning, a young woman
named Christina left her dorm room at St. Mary’s College in Waterford,
Maine. She was planning to drive to
Portland for a dental appointment and then to meet her mother for lunch.
A man was waiting in the parking lot—not
for her, particularly, but for any one of the two thousand or so female
undergraduates that might have appeared in that time and place…He forced her
into her vehicle, made her drive him to a remote area, then dragged her into
the woods and took her life.
After Christina’s body was found, a
state police detective telephoned the offices of the Department of Probation
and Parole. She asked for a list of
their clients in the area whose records and profiles suggested a capacity for
violent assault. Probation and parole
provided a list of more than three hundred names.
And
writing about this horrific tale years later, Pastor Kate reflects on the three
hundred names by simply quoting Mark 5:9, when Jesus healed a Gerasene man
possessed by them: “’We are Legion,’ the demons sneered, “’for we are many.””
We
are Legion, sneered the Gerasene demoniac, for we are many. Evil is, and can no longer be seen as, a
single devil with horns and a pitchfork, or Heath Ledger under Joker makeup
with a plan to see the world burn, no, evil has many names, many voices, many
faces.
Pastor
Kate continues:
Within three days, the murderer was in
custody…”Why did they let me out?” the murderer asked Detective Sergeant (Anna)
Love. “They should have kept me in jail,
where I couldn’t hurt anyone.” The
Gerasene demoniac sought refuge among the tombs of a graveyard. Perhaps he, too, sought refuge from his own
potential for evil; what harm could he do, what sins could he commit,
surrounded by those who were already dead?
Pastor
Kate pauses the story here for the moment, and it’s here that I want us to pick
up. Because there is another dimension
to the Gerasene demoniac’s self-imposed flight to the graveyard: it is not, as
is so often for demons who are sent out, into the desert, where one truly is
alone. This demon is still around a
community, it just happens to be a community of the dead.
And
that action alone speaks volumes about not only the demon’s nature, but it’s
crime as well.
There’s
a specific meaning attached to the demon’s name, Legion. Today, we know the word ‘legion’ as simply
connoting a large group or horde. But in
ancient Israel under Roman authority, it was the basic unit of the Roman
military, like a regiment or brigade is today.
So
a legion, a brigade of Roman legionnaires, would have represented a group of
legionnaires numbering up to 5,000 in all.
These 5,000 would be divided up into centuries of 100, under the command
of a centurion, which is how we get the modern meaning of the word “century”
today.
But
none of that matters right now. Jesus is
still faced with a man whose body has been invaded by so many demons that there
are, literally, thousands. It’s a
dramatic standoff.
And
it is supposed to be—if we were to continue into the story, we would see, of
course, Jesus emerging over the demons by exorcising them from the man and
casting them into a herd of thousands of pigs, who then leap en masse over a
cliff and drown. And I wish I could make
this sermon about bacon. But I can’t.
This
story has anti-imperialist undertones—the “legion” of demons, representing the
Roman military, are cast by Jesus into a herd of ritually unclean animals and
killed. It is the Gospel’s way of saying
that the Roman Empire, and its occupation of Israel, was dirty. Unclean.
But
it’s more than that.
It’s
more than that to us, today, for whom the idea of a Roman legion is a thing for
history books.
For
us, a legion can, quite simply mean to us today, a great many of people.
And
it is here that the demon’s true crime lies.
The
demon tries to claim the name of the multiple, of the plural, of the more than
one.
We
are Legion, sneered the Gerasene demoniac, for we are many.
And
to our modern ears, that line should send chills down our spines. A demon, what we would tend to associate with
evil itself, is claiming to be many.
Evil
is many.
And
therein is the true sin of the demon, its true delusion, its true lie. Good can be many as well.
I
can imagine that some of y’all sitting there and listening to today’s Scripture
text, were maybe thinking to yourselves, “Wow, this really is an unusual
passage for Pastor Eric to elect to preach on for the Sunday after Easter. Is he maybe a few beans short of a full
burrito right now?”
And
that’s fair. Not just today, but
probably always. I am always a bean or
two short!
But
I get it. The Revised Common Lectionary’s
recommended Gospel reading for today is the story of Doubting Thomas needing to
actually be able to touch the Risen Christ in order to believe in the Good News—it’s
a post-Resurrection tale. Here, we are
rewinding all the way back to closer to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and
picking up there. It’s an odd one-off.
But
it’s a message that needs to be underlined: in the wake of the Resurrection, in
the joy and confusion and fear and madness of the initial news of the empty
tomb, it is, I think, crucial to remember that the empty tomb brought the
disciples back together again, around it.
The disciples, who had been on the lam, hiding, ever since Jesus’
arrest, have gathered together.
What
we do on Sundays is in mirror image to what they do—six days out of the week,
we are going about our lives on our own, sometimes swinging by church for a
Bible study or a potluck, or hanging out with someone at their home or at
Starbuck’s, but in today’s day and age, with the pronounced division of living
between household to household, we muddle about on our own.
Except
for today. And we gather together. And except for last Sunday, when, like the
disciples, we gathered around the empty tomb to be asked that soul-searing,
mind-boggling, accusatory, reassuring, ridiculous-sounding question, “Why do
you look for the living among the dead?”
And
standing in precise mirror image to this gathering is another gathering, of the
demons within this man, who do the exact same thing the disciples did…they
bring themselves to the land of the dead.
The lonely demoniac, the evil many, seeks spiritual community not in
among the living, but among the dead.
Just like us at first, before hearing of the Good News of the
Resurrection.
And
hearing that Good News changes everything.
The disciples can believe once more.
The church can be born, in the Pentecost story of Acts 2. So we can worship the Risen Christ today.
It
is the greatest reversal possible, and that is why this story made, in my eyes,
such a wonderful post-Easter text! It
takes death and evil and isolation and reverses all three for a community who
reads this story and sees an agent of evil claiming its name as the many, as
the more than one.
And
that reversal continues to this day.
Pastor Kate wrote later in her book about what she saw as this murdered
girl whose body they discovered, as this girl’s restoration in this world:
It was in the image of those dear and
decent men…moving with swift and loving purpose toward her body where it lay
between the trees, bearing with them parenthood and friendship, grief and
anger, order and care, and bearing beneath their badges their undefended
hearts.
“We are Legion,” the demon sneers. No. WE
are legion.
The
reclamation of that name Legion, that name that represents the “many,” that is
our post-Resurrection mission as Christians—to reclaim that name on behalf of
the many who believe. Of the many for
whom Christ says there is forgiveness for sins.
Of the many who lived and died so that the church could light the world
the way it has for two millennia. Of the
many who long to believe in something, anything, greater than themselves. And of the many that is us, here, today.
We
are Legion, sneered the Gerasene demoniac.
No. You, me, all of us, we are
Legion. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
April
7, 2013
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