The God who heals, releases, and restores

Think of someone you know of who is “not in their right mind” now. I wonder who jumped to mind, and why. Did your mind turn to the news and images of nations trading blows with each other, whose leaders are perhaps not making the choices we would like to see.

Or perhaps your mind turned to the recent riots in Northern Island, with cars being set alight and fireworks used as weapons. Images of people not acting as they would normally, and even the people you would not expect to be involved. Some of those going through the courts are parents who were arrested for encouraging their children to riot.

And what about ourselves. Do we sometimes act in ways we later question, or think in ways that are not true to the real us? Perhaps when we are ill, or anxious, or afraid. When bound up in poor health or bad circumstances, or when oppressed by something or someone. Then we can find ourselves not thinking clearly, not acting normally, not being in our right minds.

In the reading from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 8. 26-39) we meet a man who is not in his right mind. The first thing to say right up front is that it is important to read and understand this passage as if we were the readers for whom it was originally written some 2000 years ago. The text before us today, the story of the man possessed by demons, was written without the medical knowledge that we have today. It uses symbols and storylines that made sense to the people of a particular time, place and culture that is not our own.

Two thousand years ago people did not understand mental illness, epilepsy, or other conditions in the way that we do today. Instead these were bluntly understood by many as people who were possessed by evil spirits. Back then the therapies that we have today were simply not available. People who suffered like the man in our story were bound in chains, or left to live out in the countryside, walking around naked, living in caves prepared as tombs. What we can see however is that here was a man, not in his right mind. He is bound up in both chains and in shame. He is excluded from his home and his community.

And this is a man who had been given the name Legion, a curious name, until you consider its meaning. The land where all this was taking place was under the occupation of the Roman Army. A Legion was an army unit of 6,000 Roman soldiers, in other words it was big. Very big. The fact that this man went by the name of Legion might be saying something about the scale of his illness, or it might be relating his problems to the problems being faced by occupied people. People who were longing for release from oppression, freedom from bondage by a political power and not a demonic power.

And then we have the swine, the poor pigs who perished. To understand this, we must remember that the Jewish audience reading this story would have understood pigs to be unclean. A place therefore that demons might want to go. “If you won’t let us stay in this man” the storyteller recounts, “then if it’s OK with you we’ll live in those pigs”. Jesus gives them permission to do so but their fate is just the same, and the demons are swept away forever.

So, what is the author of this bizarre story trying to tell the readers of their time. Before we can start to apply any lessons to our own time, we need first to be sure, or as sure as we can be, of what the author back then was saying to their hearers. As people told and retold this story what were the important messages, they were keen to press on to their listeners?

Importantly, we see that Jesus is sovereign and has power over all things, the oppressive illness that blights this man and the evil that is associated with it. We see something then of the person of Jesus. We better understand his purpose as one who releases the bonds of oppression, one who brings healing and removes shame, one who restores relationships and one who gives people a home.

If that was the message conveyed by the story two thousand years ago, in a Jewish community far away, then what does that message mean for us, wherever you find yourself today?

We can see the bonds of oppression wherever people are held back from living freely, whether through poverty, illness, or abuse. If that is you today, then the person of Jesus can bring hope.

We see relationships broken and people without a home in the faces of refugees fleeing war, as they travel across countries seeking peace. Should that ever become us then the person of Jesus can bring hope.

And we see people not in their right mind, yes when throwing fireworks at one another, but also when facing stress, grief, or an uncertain future. If that is you today then the person of Jesus can bring hope.

Hope that we are not abandoned to our situation, but that there will be release from it.

When we bring our prayers to Jesus, we can bring our whole selves. All that is great in our lives and all that is not. All that we are thankful for, all that we are longing for.

We are invited to bring them to Jesus in faith and with hope, that like the man in our story today and the people for whom it was first written, that we too healed, released and restored.

Photo by Ankush Minda on Unsplash