The Love that Restores - Luke 8:26–39
This morning we hear one of the more haunting and mysterious stories in the Gospels, but as with many of the stories in Mark’s Gospel we need to look beneath the literal to explore the symbolic value of the story: Jesus steps out of a boat, into a foreign land, the country of the Gerasenes. It is a place on the “other side,” both literally and symbolically. This is Gentile territory, Roman territory, empire territory. And no sooner has Jesus arrived than he is met by a man in torment.
This man is naked. He lives not in a house, but among the tombs, the place of the dead. He is unclean, chained, howling, torn apart from himself and his community. Luke tells us he has been this way for a long time. When Jesus asks him his name, he replies: “Legion”, “for we are many.”
The first thing to note is that “Legion” is a loaded word. A Roman legion was a military unit of several thousand armed soldiers, the very symbol of imperial occupation and power. So here is a man, in a Roman-occupied land, whose very self has been occupied. And when Jesus heals him, the demons — the “Legion” — are cast into a herd of pigs. The pigs run into the lake and drown. The local economy takes a hit. And the people, instead of rejoicing, are terrified. They ask Jesus to leave.
It’s a strange story. But under the surface, it is full of wisdom for our time — and full of hope for our hearts.
Some Biblical scholars suggest that when Luke uses the word Legion, it’s no accident. It’s a political word. Luke wants us to hear Roman boots marching through the text.
Judith Jones makes some very interesting observations about the story of the Gerasene demoniac, especially when we remember that Luke’s Gospel was probably written around 80–90 AD.
She notes that when the man confronts Jesus, Luke uses a Greek verb that he also uses elsewhere to describe armies meeting in battle (Luke 14:31). When the demon “seizes” the man, Luke uses a word that appears elsewhere in Acts when Christians are arrested and brought to trial (see Acts 6:12 and 19:29). In addition, the words Luke uses for chains, binding, and guarding are the same as those he later uses in Acts to describe how the disciples are imprisoned. In other words, the language Luke chooses here paints a vivid picture of what it feels like to live under the control of a brutal occupying power.
There’s also a further disturbing historical backdrop to this story. The region of the Gerasenes was the site of a terrible massacre. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, around the year 68 CE, during the Jewish revolt, the Roman general Vespasian sent his soldiers to recapture the city of Gerasa. They killed a thousand young men, imprisoned their families, burned the city, and then attacked villages throughout the area. Many of the people buried in the Gerasene tombs would have been victims of this Roman violence.
Jones also points out a striking symbolic detail: one of the emblems of the Tenth Roman Legion (Legio X Fretensis) was a pig. This was the same legion that helped destroy Jerusalem, led the reconquest of Palestine, and was later stationed in Jerusalem. So when the demons in the story name themselves “Legion” and then enter a herd of pigs, it would have felt like a powerful image to people in that region — it’s message clear – that the way and the spirit of Jesus comes to cast out the systems of domination and to create a different kind of society.
And so some scholars suggest that the man’s suffering isn’t just personal, it’s symbolic of what happens when people are crushed under systems of power. When their identity is stripped. When they are robbed of voice and dignity. This man becomes a symbol of what occupation does to the soul, whether it’s Roman military occupation in the first century, or military occupation in the 21st century, or the soul-numbing forces of meaningless secular consumerism, systemic racism, war and poverty.
And yet in the story, Jesus does not turn away from the demon possessed man who comes to meet him as many of us would be inclined to do today. He steps ashore. He sees the man and asks his name. And in that moment, Jesus does what the forces of empire never does: he seeks to restore the human being. Not control him. Not manage him. Not exile him. But heal him.
In the story this healing has consequences. The demons are sent into pigs, unclean animals to Jewish ears, but also valuable assets in Gentile commerce. And when the pigs drown, the town suffers economic loss. David D. M. King, a Lukan scholar, draws our attention to this. He says that throughout Luke’s Gospel, the message of Jesus consistently challenges and disrupts economic systems, not to punish people, but to declare that people are more important than profit.
In today’s passage, the healing of a human being comes at a cost — and the town doesn’t want to pay it. They ask Jesus to leave. I wonder if that’s still true today? Healing, whether of people, communities, or the planet often requires us to let go of what we’ve grown comfortable with. And it can feel costly. But the story of Jesus healing this fragmented deranged man tells us that the value of a human life is greater than any system’s bottom line.
Now let’s look at this story not just politically, but psychologically too. In the field of Voice Dialogue Therapy, we learn that every one of us has a crowd of inner voices, parts of ourselves that speak with different needs, different wounds, different energies. It is why often we can feel divided within ourselves, feeling ourselves being pulled in more than one direction. Some of our inner voices we embrace, the helper, the achiever, the good one. Other voices we exile or hide — anger, grief, fear, shame. And like the man in the story, those exiled voices don’t just disappear. They cry out from the tombs of our subconscious. They may sabotage us, at times possess us and overwhelm us, not because they are evil, but because they have been hidden, denied and left unacknowledged.
When Jesus says, “What is your name?” he is doing what healing always begins with: naming, facing, listening and integrating.
The man’s name is Legion, but that’s not who he really is. That’s the crowd of forces that have swallowed his true self. After the healing, we see him again: clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. He is himself again.
The demons in this story are not just moral failings. They are what happens when a soul is disconnected, from itself, from others, from love. And that disconnection, left untreated, can become destructive, to self, to others and to society. But the work of Jesus, and perhaps our work too, is to reconnect, to help reweave the torn fabric of the human soul.
And so the story ends on a beautiful note. The man, now healed, begs to go with Jesus. But Jesus sends him back home reconnecting him with his own community - “Return and tell how much God has done for you.”
Writing on this passage in 2019 Judith Jones asks - “How many people in our world are haunted by a traumatic past and tortured by memories? How many live unsheltered and inadequately clothed because of social and economic forces that they cannot overcome, no matter how hard they struggle? How many are imprisoned, regarded as barely human, excluded, cast out? How many are enslaved by addictions no longer knowing where the addiction ends, and their own selves begin? Where do the governing authorities separate people from their families, denying them the opportunity to seek better lives? Where do occupying armies still brutalize entire communities and hold them captive to fear?”
In closing, the story of the Gerasene demoniac is not just about demons. It’s about the many ways we become divided and broken, by systems, by trauma, by the voices within. It’s about the courage it takes to face what we’ve hidden. And it’s about the sacred power of presence, the healing that comes when someone sees us, names our truth, and calls us back to ourselves. It is about the reminder that the Way of Jesus comes to challenge and cast out every power whether internal or external, spiritual, social or political that prevents people from living fully and freely as human beings created in God’s image.
But, as Judith Jones writes, like the townsfolk in the story, many among us resist that news, finding deliverance from Legion too frightening, too demanding, too costly.
This morning we hear one of the more haunting and mysterious stories in the Gospels, but as with many of the stories in Mark’s Gospel we need to look beneath the literal to explore the symbolic value of the story: Jesus steps out of a boat, into a foreign land, the country of the Gerasenes. It is a place on the “other side,” both literally and symbolically. This is Gentile territory, Roman territory, empire territory. And no sooner has Jesus arrived than he is met by a man in torment.
This man is naked. He lives not in a house, but among the tombs, the place of the dead. He is unclean, chained, howling, torn apart from himself and his community. Luke tells us he has been this way for a long time. When Jesus asks him his name, he replies: “Legion”, “for we are many.”
The first thing to note is that “Legion” is a loaded word. A Roman legion was a military unit of several thousand armed soldiers, the very symbol of imperial occupation and power. So here is a man, in a Roman-occupied land, whose very self has been occupied. And when Jesus heals him, the demons — the “Legion” — are cast into a herd of pigs. The pigs run into the lake and drown. The local economy takes a hit. And the people, instead of rejoicing, are terrified. They ask Jesus to leave.
It’s a strange story. But under the surface, it is full of wisdom for our time — and full of hope for our hearts.
Some Biblical scholars suggest that when Luke uses the word Legion, it’s no accident. It’s a political word. Luke wants us to hear Roman boots marching through the text.
Judith Jones makes some very interesting observations about the story of the Gerasene demoniac, especially when we remember that Luke’s Gospel was probably written around 80–90 AD.
She notes that when the man confronts Jesus, Luke uses a Greek verb that he also uses elsewhere to describe armies meeting in battle (Luke 14:31). When the demon “seizes” the man, Luke uses a word that appears elsewhere in Acts when Christians are arrested and brought to trial (see Acts 6:12 and 19:29). In addition, the words Luke uses for chains, binding, and guarding are the same as those he later uses in Acts to describe how the disciples are imprisoned. In other words, the language Luke chooses here paints a vivid picture of what it feels like to live under the control of a brutal occupying power.
There’s also a further disturbing historical backdrop to this story. The region of the Gerasenes was the site of a terrible massacre. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, around the year 68 CE, during the Jewish revolt, the Roman general Vespasian sent his soldiers to recapture the city of Gerasa. They killed a thousand young men, imprisoned their families, burned the city, and then attacked villages throughout the area. Many of the people buried in the Gerasene tombs would have been victims of this Roman violence.
Jones also points out a striking symbolic detail: one of the emblems of the Tenth Roman Legion (Legio X Fretensis) was a pig. This was the same legion that helped destroy Jerusalem, led the reconquest of Palestine, and was later stationed in Jerusalem. So when the demons in the story name themselves “Legion” and then enter a herd of pigs, it would have felt like a powerful image to people in that region — it’s message clear – that the way and the spirit of Jesus comes to cast out the systems of domination and to create a different kind of society.
And so some scholars suggest that the man’s suffering isn’t just personal, it’s symbolic of what happens when people are crushed under systems of power. When their identity is stripped. When they are robbed of voice and dignity. This man becomes a symbol of what occupation does to the soul, whether it’s Roman military occupation in the first century, or military occupation in the 21st century, or the soul-numbing forces of meaningless secular consumerism, systemic racism, war and poverty.
And yet in the story, Jesus does not turn away from the demon possessed man who comes to meet him as many of us would be inclined to do today. He steps ashore. He sees the man and asks his name. And in that moment, Jesus does what the forces of empire never does: he seeks to restore the human being. Not control him. Not manage him. Not exile him. But heal him.
In the story this healing has consequences. The demons are sent into pigs, unclean animals to Jewish ears, but also valuable assets in Gentile commerce. And when the pigs drown, the town suffers economic loss. David D. M. King, a Lukan scholar, draws our attention to this. He says that throughout Luke’s Gospel, the message of Jesus consistently challenges and disrupts economic systems, not to punish people, but to declare that people are more important than profit.
In today’s passage, the healing of a human being comes at a cost — and the town doesn’t want to pay it. They ask Jesus to leave. I wonder if that’s still true today? Healing, whether of people, communities, or the planet often requires us to let go of what we’ve grown comfortable with. And it can feel costly. But the story of Jesus healing this fragmented deranged man tells us that the value of a human life is greater than any system’s bottom line.
Now let’s look at this story not just politically, but psychologically too. In the field of Voice Dialogue Therapy, we learn that every one of us has a crowd of inner voices, parts of ourselves that speak with different needs, different wounds, different energies. It is why often we can feel divided within ourselves, feeling ourselves being pulled in more than one direction. Some of our inner voices we embrace, the helper, the achiever, the good one. Other voices we exile or hide — anger, grief, fear, shame. And like the man in the story, those exiled voices don’t just disappear. They cry out from the tombs of our subconscious. They may sabotage us, at times possess us and overwhelm us, not because they are evil, but because they have been hidden, denied and left unacknowledged.
When Jesus says, “What is your name?” he is doing what healing always begins with: naming, facing, listening and integrating.
The man’s name is Legion, but that’s not who he really is. That’s the crowd of forces that have swallowed his true self. After the healing, we see him again: clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. He is himself again.
The demons in this story are not just moral failings. They are what happens when a soul is disconnected, from itself, from others, from love. And that disconnection, left untreated, can become destructive, to self, to others and to society. But the work of Jesus, and perhaps our work too, is to reconnect, to help reweave the torn fabric of the human soul.
And so the story ends on a beautiful note. The man, now healed, begs to go with Jesus. But Jesus sends him back home reconnecting him with his own community - “Return and tell how much God has done for you.”
Writing on this passage in 2019 Judith Jones asks - “How many people in our world are haunted by a traumatic past and tortured by memories? How many live unsheltered and inadequately clothed because of social and economic forces that they cannot overcome, no matter how hard they struggle? How many are imprisoned, regarded as barely human, excluded, cast out? How many are enslaved by addictions no longer knowing where the addiction ends, and their own selves begin? Where do the governing authorities separate people from their families, denying them the opportunity to seek better lives? Where do occupying armies still brutalize entire communities and hold them captive to fear?”
In closing, the story of the Gerasene demoniac is not just about demons. It’s about the many ways we become divided and broken, by systems, by trauma, by the voices within. It’s about the courage it takes to face what we’ve hidden. And it’s about the sacred power of presence, the healing that comes when someone sees us, names our truth, and calls us back to ourselves. It is about the reminder that the Way of Jesus comes to challenge and cast out every power whether internal or external, spiritual, social or political that prevents people from living fully and freely as human beings created in God’s image.
But, as Judith Jones writes, like the townsfolk in the story, many among us resist that news, finding deliverance from Legion too frightening, too demanding, too costly.
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