Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul,
and why are you so disquieted within me?
Put your trust in God;
For I will yet give thanks to him,
who is the help of my countenance, and my God. (Psalm 42:6-7)
My name is Legion. My story is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels …
Matthew (8:28-34), Mark (5:1-10), and Luke (8:26-39). Found naked and raging by the Master, I am now clothed and in my right mind. I preach to others what was done for me through Jesus, Son of the Most High God. It was not always so.
I once lived in the tombs outside the Gentile city of Gennesaret, along the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Only the unclean live among the dead.
I had the strength of many, and the local people feared me. I was convulsed in the spirit, and raged at the world. When they could, my neighbors put me under guard and bound me in chains. But they couldn’t heal me, or contain me. Yet while I broke their chains, I couldn’t break the chains of my demons. They were many.
A Roman legion has 6,000 men. My name suggests that as many demons possessed me. So I tore off my clothes, and dwelt among the dead … always alone, separated …
a dead man walking.
I remember … just after a great storm on the Sea of Galilee … a rabbi stepped ashore with some disciples. Outwardly they looked bedraggled after their ordeal, and inwardly they must have been awe-struck and a bit fearful, questioning: “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?”
Within Legion, there were no such doubts. When we approached Jesus, he met us directly. He had no fear. I fell down before him. They shouted at the top of my voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me” … for Jesus had demanded that the unclean spirit come out of me.
Then he asked the spirit, “What is your name?” The spirit answered, “Legion, for we are many.” That was true. Even demons must speak truly when confronted by The Truth. It is accepted in our time that knowing a demon’s name gives one power over its evil force. In your time also, if you can put a name on a disease or disorder, you are on the way to curing it.
Speaking aside, it is curious to me that my demons … being from the spirit world … know who Jesus is – Son of the Most High God – while you and his other disciples … being from the human world … are still asking, “Who is this?”
My friends in Jesus, you must know that demons are always destructive … not just to victims like me, but also to themselves … even when they get their own way. My spiritual legions beg Jesus not to order them back into the abyss … a place of demonic confinement, hostile to God but ultimately under His control. Demons, it seems, are not fond of their own company.
They beg Jesus to let them enter instead a herd of swine feeding nearby on the hillside. They get their wish! After entering the swine, the herd “rushes down the steep bank into the lake, and are drowned.” The unclean … swine and spirits … are destroyed.
According to the dietary laws of my Jewish neighbors, pigs are unclean animals, unfit to eat and therefore worthless. Pigs have often been sacrificed in Greek and Roman rituals, and I suspect that Jews associate them with apostasy, and symbolic of Roman religious and political corruption.
There is a long tradition in folklore that demons cannot survive in water. Luke the physician writes in his Gospel (chapter 11, verse 24) about unclean spirits looking for “waterless regions” as resting places. In your colonial New England, sixteen centuries after my lifetime in Galilee, women accused of being “witches” are drowned … among other fatal remedies. Even the baptismal rite of our Master uses water to cleanse our souls from all uncleanness, drowned in the waters of baptism … “to die to sin and rise to newness of life in Christ Jesus.”
Yet, in your time, you are despoiling the water that cleanses and the land that nourishes this earth … over which God’s Spirit brooded in the beginning … this “fragile island home.” It is demonic. And like demons, you are seeding your own oblivion. Witness air masks on your children in Singapore, Tokyo, and Beijing.
I know you must think me quaint, perhaps ignorant, in my story of demons … and my rescue and restoration at the command of Jesus. Demons are out of style in your time. You may label them differently … calling them “neuroses.” But signs of personal possession abound in your world too; drugs, sex, money, power, alcohol, gambling, gaudy consumption … all addictions of dizzying gradation. One could say “legion.” Who can set the captives free?
I know the One who commands. So do you. “Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee.”
Now, you may rightly point out that belief in demons risks veering into a radical dualism … where God and demon are pitted against one another in a more or less equal contest.
But as followers of the Christ, our faith gives us “eyes to see and ears to hear” what is Truth. There is only one Creator, one Ruler of the universe, one God of all, who was before the beginning, “is now and ever shall be” … revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit … Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. To Him all powers in heaven and earth must bow and obey … in this world and the world to come.
Evil powers, while dangerous, are not autonomous powers … capable of overthrowing God’s reign. Evil is a parasite. It can only corrupt. It cannot create.
If pressed by Christ, even demons acknowledge his power and obey his command … even if we frequently don’t. Witness the flight of my legion! Yours too!
A caution. Focusing on demons can tempt us to characterize all psychological and social problems as spiritual warfare. Totally blaming our problems on the devil gives him more credit that he deserves, and credits him with more power than he has. It may take the focus off us … our responsibility and accountability for our actions. The cartoon, Pogo, famously said: “I have met the enemy, and he is us.”
If made in God’s image, it’s time we live into it.
Saint Francis of Assisi observed: “It’s no use walking anywhere to preach, unless our walking is our preaching.”
On the other hand, my friends, I would also argue that affirming the existence of demonic forces keeps us alert … mindful that there is more to life than meets the eye. There is spiritual warfare. Well-intended public and private social initiatives will fail if they do not heed the spiritual dimension of reality. God is a partner in history … to us individually and to the nation. It matters that I am a God-fearing individual, and a member of a nation living “under God.”
Whether or not you believe in my Legion, the essence of my story is my cure in Jesus. When I threw myself at his feet, God’s power was released. I was too! I learned that God’s power manifests itself most dramatically when I surrender mine. I was released from captivity. The demons were gone. I was restored. Others found me sitting at the feet of Jesus, “clothed and in my right mind.”
I learned also that change upsets the status quo. The herders lost their swine, and my neighbors became fearful of what other changes this rabbi might effect. They wanted him gone. The preferred the known risk of demons to the unknown risk of change. Freedom is risky behavior!
It’s similar to former drinking buddies, who fear nothing more than a friend turned reformed alcoholic. They and their demons lose an ally. Worse, their condition is exposed. Their bottle is at risk. The reformer, too, will know loss. He won’t be applauded by his old friends. He’ll have to make new ones.
It is not enough to expel the demons, because if I be without Christ, they will return sevenfold. I must grow strong in the company of my Lord and of his body, the Church. Alone, I’m easy pickin’s for all sorts and conditions of demons. They seek strength in Legion. I must seek strength in the Lord and his holy fellowship. Jesus is the plumb line, “and in him there is plenteous redemption.”
I begin by sitting at the feet of Jesus. Lord, will you walk with me … and make your will mine? We stand. “And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me
I am his own.” And so are you, my friends. “And the joys we share, as we tarry there, no other has ever known.” (Old Spiritual)
Like Paul of Tarsus, known persecutor and heralded evangelist of Christ, “I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creations, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:37-39)
This is my message. Be not fearful. Jesus is Lord. He releases us from bondage. He restoreth our souls … from all demons. I have become Legion in Christ!
And all God’s children cry, “Amen!”