Salvation isn’t safe, it’s subversive
No one in Gerasa was asking for someone to come save them. That’s when Jesus showed up.
Throughout the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth heals numerous people and performs countless miracles. He travels around from place to place, from people to people. In the midst of his travels, the Gospel of Luke informs us that Jesus steps out of a boat, onto dry land, and finds himself in the country of the Gerasenes. He encounters there a demon-possessed man.
We are told that this man is stripped of clothing and bound in chains. Naked and devoid of all dignity, he has been cast out from ordinary society and has been sentenced to live in the tombs, among the dead. When Jesus arrives on shore, the man stumbles forward to meet him and falls at his feet.
“I beg you!” the man cries loudly in anguish. “Do not torment me!”
This man has not come to Jesus in hope of healing. He dares not hope for healing. A victim of the world’s cruelty and scorn, tormented by dark inner forces beyond his control, the man wanders about desperately. Every once and a while, we are told that he breaks free from his shackles. Even though, he knows he is seeking a freedom that lies far beyond his grasp. He can never outrun the powerful forces that dehumanize him and inflict him with such agony.
When this poor man prostrates himself at Jesus’ feet, Jesus asks his name.
“Legion,” the man answers.
This response may, for us, evoke gruesome scenes from horror films where little girls possessed by demons speak in deep, polyphonic voices and their heads spin around at three-hundred-sixty degrees. However, in the context in which this story was written, the man’s answer would have elicited far different imagery in the minds of its hearers.
Gerasa was a Roman occupied territory in the land of Israel. A Roman “Legion” was a unit of thousands of military troops. For the residents of this land, the Legion symbolized an inherent and all-too-real threat.[1] When this story was written, contemporary Jewish hearers likely would been well aware of the recent tragedy at Gerasa. According to the historian Josephus, in 66 C.E., Roman soldiers overtook Gerasa in order to stamp out Jewish rebellion during the First Jewish-Roman War. The men were slaughtered, and woman and children were taken prisoner at the hands of the Roman army. Thus, the name “Legion” would have struck a formidable chord; it symbolized the slaughter and suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of a powerful and oppressive force.
There are several peculiar details in this story. First of all, there is a glaring discrepancy with the story’s location. Gerasa was far enough inland that Jesus would not have been able to reach it by boat. In other versions of this tale, the location is actually changed.[2] Additionally, Jesus does in fact cast the demons out of the man and sends them into a nearby herd of swine. Another odd detail, yet one that solidifies the story’s location, whatever country it may be, is indeed Gentile territory: under the rule of Roman occupation.[3]
Jesus drives the demons into the herd of pigs, and the pigs flee off a bank, tumbling into an adjacent lake. The pigs, considered unclean animals according to Jewish law, are condemned right along with the demons. Perhaps this represents the hope that one day, these hordes of Roman soldiers that terrorize the Jewish people and desecrate their customs would one day be overthrown. Perhaps this represents the hope Jesus promises us all: that he has come to usher in a new era of peace, one that subverts the oppressive reign of tyranny.
Jesus saves the demon-possessed man, and through the symbolic overthrow of the pigs, promises to save the people.
But the people want nothing to do with salvation. They are afraid and only want Jesus to leave, to get right back on his boat and go far away from them!
As William H. Willimon observes, “…salvation is not what we asked for. If we were merely projecting an eternal destiny for ourselves, we could have projected a more benign future than the one that meets us in Jesus!”[4] He’s right. The salvation Jesus promises the world is anything but safe. It’s subversive. The people of Gerasa have just witnessed for themselves the salvific power of Jesus Christ — and they are deeply afraid. They know that to embrace Jesus into their community would put them all at great risk. The demons they live with are all too real — and all too powerful. What would it mean to challenge the authority of the Roman occupying forces? What would mean to place real hope in a Savior that promises: to subvert the existing world order, to be executed by an oppressive government and rise again, to trample sin and death under his feet, to cast out human despair and suffering, and to usher in a new Kingdom of reconciliation and peace?
None of this sounds safe at all!
The demons that inflicted the man from Gerasa took on the name of an all-too-worldly oppressive power: Legion. This story reminds us that there are certainly dark forces existing very much in and of this world. Darkness seeps into the cracks and crevices of this broken world. The story of the Gerasene demoniac reminds us of the bitter truth that darkness is extensive and systemic, existing not just in individuals and in the individual things that we do.
Darkness lives in what this broken world does to us.
And so, at the end of this Lukan tale, an embattled, suffering people aren’t yet ready to embrace the hope for change. They aren’t yet ready to place their trust in the subversive and risky brand of salvation that Jesus offers: the promise that one day, light will outshine the darkness.
Yet, at the very end of the story, the man who has been freed of his afflictions begs to come with Jesus. He has had a foretaste of Jesus’ promise of salvation, and he doesn’t want to go back home. Surprisingly though, Jesus does send the man back to his people after all.
“Return to your home,” says Jesus, “And declare how much God has done for you!”
The man is sent back to be a witness to his community, to be a living example of what is possible so they might believe! Even though it may seem from the outside that Jesus has left for good and that this town has resumed its life of normalized military occupation, there is still hope! There is someone who lives in their midst, who has embraced a freedom that no one and nothing can take away. This person has experienced the might of God’s subversive salvation, and he has been commissioned to proclaim the truth of the gospel for all to hear! Hope is embodied in a familiar face and walks among them.
Hope lives on.
[1] Sharon H. Ringe, “Luke,” Westminster Bible Companion, (Louisville, John Knox Press), p. 119–120.
[2] Evan D. Garner, “June 23, Ordinary 12c (Luke 8:26–39)”, Christian Century, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/june-23-ordinary-12c-luke-826-39.
[3] Sharon H. Ringe, “Luke,” Westminster Bible Companion, (Louisville, John Knox Press), p. 120.
[4] William H. Willimon, Who Will Be Saved? (Nashville: Abingdon), p. 35
