St. Luke 8:26-39. At that time, as Jesus arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, there met him a man from the city who had demons; for a long time he had worn no clothes and he lived not in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not torment me.” For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him; he was kept under guard, and bound with chains and fetters, but he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the desert.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them leave. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When the herdsmen saw what happened, they fled, and told it in the city and in the country. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. And those who had seen it told them how he who had been possessed with demons was healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gadarenes asked him to depart from them; for they were seized with great fear; so he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but he sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him. (Antiochian.org)
Introduction – the context of the story
Our Lord had just come across the water with his disciples. They had faced one kind of fear when they were on the water: a fear of the chaos of a storm. A great wind had come up while Jesus slept, and the disciples panicked. They woke Jesus up and he calmed the wind and rebuked them for their lack of faith.
When they got to the other side, they faced a new kind of fear: the fear of ghosts. The demons in this man at Gardenese had driven him into the graveyard to play on men’s superstitions about ghosts. In different parts of the Gospels, the disciples had shown themselves to be subject to this superstition. But the Lord identified the demoniac for what he was: not a ghost haunting the cemetery, but a man possessed by a legion of demons.
There are three main points I would have us learn here.
The first has to do with fear.
Fear is a strong instinct, and it is one that the powers of the air and marketers of this world like to use to manipulate us. Fear is a strong instinct, but for we who have given our lives to Christ and to His peace and to His power, it is not a rational one. Do we fear for our bodies? Why, when Our Lord Himself said that we should be more concerned with the state of our souls? Why, when He has given us proof of the resurrection of His sons and daughters into new bodies in the world to come? Do we fear for the health of others? Why? Do we believe that we love them more than God does?
There are dangers in this world, and we need to be aware of them; but fear does not help us see and react to these dangers more effectively. Quite the opposite. The only laudable fear that Scripture speaks of is the fear of God – and this is the fear that brings His peace and power to bear in the most difficult of times.
We should not fear the storms. God can bring calm to us even when the winds blow around us. Remember, he did that for St. Peter when he became overcome on the water.
Nor should we fear the ghosts. What power could a ghost have other than the power we give it to threaten our peace? Moreover, as St. John Chrysostom points out, they are not the disembodied spirits of the dead, but illusions created to scare and control us.
We should not even fear the demons. They have no hold over the righteous, and God has granted His Church His power over them.
We should only fear the Lord and that should lead us to peace and calm as we learn to trust in His great power and his love for us.
The second has to do with how this man got there in the first place.
How did that man end up running through the graveyard naked?
Such things don’t just happen. The monastic tradition gives us a very useful way of understanding how thoughts acquire power over us. There is a progression. It begins with temptation. A thought presents itself. At this point, it is not yet ours. We have not chosen it; it has merely appeared. Thoughts do that. But if we begin to entertain it, turn it over in our minds, and feed it, temptation can become fascination. Because of our concupiscence, this is the dangerous point at which temptation begins to become ours: we start consenting to it, feeding it, and taking pleasure in it. If we continue to give it our attention, fascination can become obsession. The thought begins to dominate our attention. We see the world through it. We begin interpreting events according to it. We return to it again and again. And if that process continues, it can become possession.
Sometimes Christians use that word to refer specifically to demonic possession, and that is real. The Gospel before us makes that very clear. But the spiritual principle is broader. Long before demons become directly involved, something destructive has already happened: we no longer possess the thought; the thought possesses us. It begins to govern our attention, our emotions, our interpretation of events, and eventually our actions. Whether or not a demon ever becomes involved, that kind of possession is already destructive because it takes away our freedom to respond to the actual needs of the moment in peace and love.
And importantly, it is not only evil thoughts that can lead us down this road from temptation to possession. A bad thought may begin with the remembrance of wrongs. Someone hurts us. We remember it. We rehearse it. We justify our anger. We imagine conversations. We gather evidence. Eventually, the person who wronged us occupies far more of our interior life than he ever should have been allowed to. But the process can begin with something good as well. Take the protection of children. A parent should protect his children. That is good. It is part of the duty of love; but this good desire can become disordered. Concern can become anxiety, then anxiety can become fixation, then fixation can become a need to control every environment, every person, every danger, and every possible outcome. And eventually, the parent who began with the perfectly good desire to protect his children can become a curse to himself, to his children, and to everyone around him.
The same thing can happen with health, with work, with justice, and, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann powerfully points out, it can even happen with church and religion.
We are trained by our faith to love the good and hate what is evil. That is good. But without discernment, peace, and humility, even that zeal can become distorted. The problem is not that the original good has become evil, but that it has been detached from its proper place under love, humility, discernment, and trust in God. The desire for justice can become hatred of the unjust. Concern for truth can become an obsession with error. Love for the Church can become contempt for everyone we think is harming her. The good desire to protect others can become the need to control them and keep them from making mistakes.
This is especially dangerous now because so much of our media environment is designed to feed precisely this process. It learns what gets our attention and then gives us more of it. It knows what frightens us, angers us, flatters us, confirms us, and keeps us coming back.
The real danger for Christians is not simply that the world will tempt us with things we already know are evil; we recognize that as a problem and those thoughts are on our radar. The greater danger is that it takes our good desires—our concern for our children, for justice, for truth, for the Church—and feeds them until they become distorted. Without discernment and peace, our feelings can open us to manipulation that moves us from temptation to fascination, from fascination to obsession, and from obsession to a kind of possession. And before we know it, the very thing we thought we were controlling is now controlling us.
That is one of the ways people end up metaphorically running crazy through the graveyards. But the Gospel does not leave the man in the graveyard—and it does not leave us there either.
The third and concluding point is to remind you that this is the place where miracles happen.
Look again at the man in the Gospel. When Christ first encounters him, he is naked. He is violent. He is isolated from everyone who loves him. He lives among the tombs. He is controlled by powers that have robbed him of his freedom and his humanity.
And then Christ comes.
Later, the people find that same man **sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind**. That is one of the most beautiful images of salvation in the Gospels. The man who lived among the dead has been restored to life. The man who could not live with other people has been restored to communion. The man who had lost control of himself has been restored to peace. The man whose dignity had been stripped away is clothed again. The man whose mind had been ruled by alien powers is now in his right mind.
And where is this former madman? At the feet of Jesus. That is what Christ does. And this is what His body, the Church, is for. The Church is where God works to bring peace to our souls, to our families, to our community, and to our world. The Church is where God roots out the demons and obsessions that have all but ruined our lives. The Church is where God brings joy to those who have been oppressed by the wickedness of a fallen world. The Church is where those who have been scattered are gathered, where those who have been enslaved are restored to freedom, and where those whose thoughts have run wild learn once again to sit peacefully at the feet of Jesus.
We have all seen it happen. It has happened for many of us. We are here because we know this to be a place of peace and power.
Conclusion: Give your life to Christ
But God will not force His miracles on us.
Remember in the story that the demoniacs were not the only ones possessed: there was a whole town nearby that loved their swine and the money those pigs made them so much that they could neither rejoice in the healing of their brother nor embrace the one God who brought healing into their midst; much less see the demons in their own hearts and seek his mercy themselves.
Instead, they ran Christ out of town.
Think of the contrast. One man had been living among the tombs, naked and insane, possessed by a legion. And now he is sitting peacefully at the feet of Christ, clothed and in his right mind. The supposedly sane people look at this miracle—and ask Christ to leave. They had not been possessed by a legion, but something possessed them nonetheless. Their attachment to what they had—their livelihood, their expectations, their familiar way of life—had become strong enough that when Christ disrupted it in order to save their brother, they preferred the herd to the miracle.
We all need healing. We are all tempted by obsession. We all have thoughts, fears, desires, wounds, and even good concerns that can begin to control us if we do not continually return them to Christ. We need to let go of—and renounce—“the devil and all his works, and all his worship, and all his angels, and all his pomp,” as we did when we joined the Church.
And then we must do what we promised next. We must unite ourselves to Christ. Completely. So that, as St. Paul puts it “it is no longer we who live, but Christ Who lives in us; and so that the life we now live in the flesh we live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved us and gave Himself for us.” (Galatians 2:20)
This is the way out of fear. This is the way out of obsession. This is the way out of madness. This is the way out of the tombs.
And this is the way back to ourselves: clothed, in our right minds, and sitting peacefully at the feet of Jesus.
This is the only Way to perfect peace and joy.