Lectionary Reflection for Proper 7C on Luke 8:26-39

To be mad in a deranged world is not madness. It's sanity.
- Akira Kurosawa

Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.
- Thomas Stephen Szasz

INSANITY IN AN INSANE WORLD

In my decades of studying, preaching, and writing about the Bible, I have often had to resist the temptation to get stuck on the words on the page. It is much easier, and often more satisfying, simply to read a passage of the Bible, take the story at face value, and apply it directly to our personal lives. But to do that assumes too much. We unconsciously assume that the biblical writers were operating from the same worldview and set of values that we do. We assume that whichever translation we prefer offers the best, or the only, approach to the original languages. And we make the mistake of thinking that the Bible was written to us and for us.¹ Not only does this approach to the Bible rob us of the richness and wisdom of the Scriptures, it also accounts for the way the Bible is used to justify toxic Christian attitudes and actions, like the rising Christian nationalism in the USA and other nations.²

Thankfully, we do not have to read the Bible on our own. We have scholars who study the original languages, the historical contexts, the literary devices and techniques used by the authors, and the rich tradition of biblical interpretation through Christian history. Sometimes what these scholars uncover can be shockingly surprising and can shift how we engage with the Bible in dramatic ways. This is why I love to read the Bible ’in community’, in the sense that I am always seeking the wisdom and insights of writers, theologians, colleagues, and scholars—some of whom I know personally and some of whom I know only through their writing. When it comes to Luke’s account of the demonised man that Jesus encountered in the region of the Gerasenes, the meaning of the story is completely transformed when we gain a clearer understanding of Luke’s choice of words and symbols.

I don’t mean to imply that any biblical story can have only one “correct” or “preferred” meaning. The Bible has always been intended to speak to us at multiple levels, and there is great value in honouring these different approaches. But sometimes we find a particular perspective that sends ripples through all of the levels of interpretation of a particular passage—and this has been the case for me as I have worked with the Lectionary reading for Proper 7C this week. I’ve always read the healing of the man possessed by the “Legion” of demons as Luke’s declaration of Jesus’ authority over all the forces of chaos and evil, and that the Gospel includes all people. But I have come to believe that Luke also had another agenda; that he was symbolically speaking of Jesus’ way of justice and love as sanity in an insane world possessed by the destructive, dehumanising values of the Roman Empire.

Reading this account in this way does not negate its value as a story of personal healing and salvation. It doesn’t contradict Luke’s emphasis on Jesus’ authority over all that brings chaos and harm to human lives, or his inclusiveness of those who were usually seen as outcasts and unacceptable to God. Rather, it adds another dimension to these layers of meaning and helps us apply them to some of the destructive and dehumanising realities of our time.³

THE CHRIST WHO CONFRONTS EVIL

Before we consider the story which is the focus for Proper 7C in the Lectionary, we need to get a sense of the context in which Luke was writing, and of his narrative arc in this section of his Gospel. While we don’t know for certain exactly when the third Gospel was written, most scholars seem to favour a time after Matthew and Mark and probably between 80 and 90 CE.⁴ This was just a few years after the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, which devastated the Jewish people and dispersed them throughout the known world. It was a turbulent time in the history of Israel, with many Jewish people killed, exiled, or enslaved.⁵ The power and control of the hated Roman Empire permeated every aspect of life for those who lived under its authority, which meant that existence for Rome’s subjects was a kind of insanity that robbed them of their humanity, their culture, their religion, and their autonomy. It was for this world that the writer crafted his carefully researched and structured account of Jesus’ message and mission (Luke 1:1-4).

The story of the demoniac is placed in Luke toward the end of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, before he set his sights on Jerusalem. It forms part of a textual unit running from 8:22-9:6⁶ which includes a number of miracle stories that depict Jesus’ authority over forces of chaos and evil, including violent storms, demons, illness, uncleanness, and death.⁷ Luke’s purpose, as far as we can ascertain, was to show Jesus as the embodiment of God’s authority over human beings and systems, the natural world, and the spiritual realm. Jesus was not only concerned with piety, spiritual salvation, and life after death. He confronted evil of every kind wherever he encountered it, and the salvation he offered was not just spiritual, but was all-encompassing—the word in the Greek (sozo) can be translated as “saved”, “delivered”, “liberated”, “healed”, and “made whole”.⁸ The salvation Jesus proclaimed, as evidenced by the mandate he declared in his home synagogue in Luke 4:14-21, was social, economic, relational, ecological, physical, personal, and spiritual.⁹

Luke’s Gospel is a prophetic document, proclaiming God’s welcome, inclusion, healing, and liberation of all people, but especially those who were outcast, oppressed, and marginalised.¹⁰ As he recounted the actions and preaching of Jesus, Luke presented him and his way as the only path to a life of well-being and fullness in a difficult and unsafe world. Or, to put it in another way, to sanity in an insane world.

MORE THAN AN EXORCISM

With this picture in mind, it seems likely that Luke was speaking about far more than just an individual exorcism. As Judith Jones puts it, “…the story reveals Jesus as one with cosmic authority, able both to calm the chaotic waters and to free people from occupying powers”¹¹ (Emphasis mine).