Luke 8:26-39
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
June 22, 2025
One day Jesus proposed to His disciples that they all set sail from the western Galilean shore and “go across to the other side of the lake”. Little did the disciples know, as they headed out toward a foreign land, that Jesus was crossing the sea to deliver a single individual from a maddening mob of demons.
On the way there, a gale-force storm swept down upon them and threatened to capsize their boat and drown them all. But Jesus took charge; and rebuked the howling wind and calmed the raging waves, so that they landed safely at their destination – which turned out not to be all that safe itself. For there to meet them was a terrifying man who “had demons”. He lived among the tombs, ran about naked, exhibited such extraordinary strength that no one could restrain him, and yet was often “driven” by the evil spirits into the wilds. Jesus took charge again, and cast out of the man the demon who called himself Legion, the Roman name for a battalion of 5,000+ soldiers. Jesus calmed the heart of that deeply divided and disturbed man, and returned him to sanity.
I appreciate that some of us don’t believe in the reality of demons, or of angels. (The two do go together; and there’s no ground for believing in angels, but not in demons, apart from sheer wishful thinking.) At any rate, I suspect that many of us view the talk of demons as simply a poetic way of talking about mental illness – something caused, not by spiritual forces, but by unfortunate body chemistry, traumatic experience, drug use or emotional imbalance; and something remedied, not by exorcism, but by counseling or medication.
This story can illumine and inspire those of us who doubt demons exist. For it vividly illustrates how Jesus can bring anyone peace of mind and bless even those struggling with depression, anxiety, fear or compulsions.
Moreover, many of us feel pulled in so many conflicting directions that sometimes we hardly know who we are anymore and which way is up. Thus, we can relate to this man whose inner confusions and warring desires seem to be “legion” – a “maddening mob” of opposing forces. His story can then give us hope that we and those we care about can also find healing in the Jesus of steadfast love and mighty power. This story can encourage us to believe that Jesus will come to us in our confusion, settle us down, center us in His grace and secure for us an enduring degree of serenity.
So we can gain much from this story even if we doubt the reality of demons; but I cannot resist suggesting we might want to doubt our doubts. For, while the vast majority of psychiatrists and psychologists view talk about demons as a dangerous fantasy that undermines the scientific integrity of medical care, dissenting voices in the field of mental healthcare are growing. For example, nine years ago in The Washington Post, Richard Gallagher – a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College – wrote an op-ed piece that challenged his field’s dominant dogma that rejects the possibility of the demonic. Gallagher admitted that the dogma made sense given the association of purported demonization with the delusions of the emotionally disturbed and given the skepticism in many scientists about anything supernatural, but he also told of how his open-minded consideration of all the evidence he found over a long career in the field led him to believe that in rare cases demonization is the only reasonable way to explain certain psychological and behavioral phenomena.
So I invite you to ponder the possibilities even as you consider the reality that a man who’d been out of his mind and out of control ended up “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind”. There’s nothing to account for his dramatic transformation but for Jesus’ having ordered an evil spirit out of him.
What’s even crazier to consider is that the response of the man’s neighbors to his return to sanity was itself insane: They asked Jesus to go away. They wanted Him to “leave them” for two reasons: fear and financial loss.
First, “they were seized with great fear.” Their encountering a power stronger than the power they’d grown familiar with in their troubled neighbor terrified them. It threw them into confusion as it challenged the certainties with which they’d long been comfortable. They were disconcerted by a new power that didn’t fit into their old categories of thought; and that, if real, called into question the assumptions and expectations about which they were previously sure. Jesus’ calming down the disturbed man disturbed them, in their status quo and in their self-confidence. He unsettled their dogmas so that the supposedly “well-adjusted” folks had to adjust their perspective on life and its possibilities, which nearly scared them to death!
The second factor in their wanting the miracle-working Jesus to leave is that He had cost them much money. In that agricultural economy, people measured their wealth in terms of their livestock, and they’d lost a lot of pigs when Jesus let that legion of demons enter that herd of swine. That evil force so frightened the animals that, in a mad panic, they stampeded down the lake’s steep bank, fell into the water and drowned. That was money down the drain so to speak; and, if that’s what Jesus brought about, they wanted no part of Him!
Of course, that’s how many people today feel about Jesus once they realize how He asks us to be as generous as He in actively showing compassion and how dangerous that may be our wallet. For many people today, having Jesus around costs too much.
Finally, there’s one more detail in this story we must note. The man healed by Jesus, quite naturally, desired to stay in contact with Him and wanted to go with Him wherever He was going. The Bible says that the man “begged that he might be with Him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’”
It is a beautiful thing to want to linger in the presence of Jesus and to relish the wonder of Him. But the practice of such adoration can become a spiritualized form of self-centeredness. For Jesus blesses us, not just that we might be blessed, but that we might be His blessing to others, especially as we relate to them what He has done and is doing for us.
Any of us can be such a blessing by telling our stories about how God has blessed us. To be a witness to Him, we don’t have to memorize a sales pitch, or get all theological. We just have to share some of our personal experience of Jesus, and tell it simple and straight. The story will speak for itself, and may get others in touch with their own story, a story in which Jesus just might show up for them – having crossed a wide, storm-tossed sea to reach them and bring them health, wholeness and their best life.
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