PENTECOST 4, C – June 20, 2010

SCRIPTURES – Isaiah 65:1-9; Galatians 3:23 – 4:7; Luke 8:26-39 

When we hear accounts of Jesus casting out demons, or doing some other great miracle, it’s easy to wonder: How could the Jewish people of His day ultimately have rejected Him? Why didn’t they accept Him as their Messiah and Savior? “I spread out my hands all the day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices; a people who provoke me to my face continually,” God says through Isaiah. How true this was of the people of Jesus day! How could this be? How can we be sure that we do not become like them? 

Let us learn from the man out of whom Jesus cast many demons. “Return to your home,” Jesus tells him, “and declare how much God has done for you.” Does he do this? Not exactly. “And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.” His focus is on Jesus. The man gives Him all the credit! 

This is how it must be if you want to be a true and faithful child of God. Jesus is God. We believe this, don’t we? But, consider this the opposite way: God is Jesus. To say this is to name God, identity Him, and point to where He is found. This is what we are to do. 

Jesus and His works are less visible today, and this might seem to be a problem. I mean, if you ran into someone like the demon possessed man in today’s Gospel reading, who lived in tombs and ran around naked, you would be nervous and afraid; and you should be.

       Police are warned that a person who is running around naked – and not because he is drunk, or making some political statement, or carrying out some foolish stunt – is one of the most dangerous person’s an officer could meet.

Such people are dangerous because they are out of their minds and may do anything. Jesus does not run away or fear this man, however. It’s the other way around: the man fears Him. The demons who fill him know who Jesus is: their mighty Judge. And so, the man falls before Him in fear. When he is freed of them, he knows who to thank and praise: Jesus. He is God, God present as his Savior!  

Today, such people are helped by being placed under psychiatric care and treated with drugs that can suppress the voices they hear and the wild impulses they have. Jesus is usually not thanked, even though He is the One who has given us minds to develop medicines, along with the things of which the drugs are made. He is the healer; but, because He seems so far removed from the scene, man usually gets the credit. 

That is the problem, the heart of the matter: who gets the credit? We want credit, even for believing in God. Keeping God generic and nameless allows us to think that any faith saves. “As long as you have faith, that’s all that matters” – this is what our society often says. It is your faith – you – that saves. This is not what Christ says, and it is not what we must say. It is not faith that saves, but the God to which faith clings. This God is Jesus. This is what the formerly demon possessed man confessed to the people of his town. “He went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.” 

It’s not easy to say and believe this. Jesus is a challenging God. Did you notice, for instance, that when He cast the demons out of the man, they did not come out immediately? Luke 8 says: “When [the man] 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 beg you, do not torment me.” For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.” Jesus had commanded them to come out, but they did not do so immediately. First, they spoke to Him. He then questioned the demons and listened to their request to be allowed to enter into pigs before ultimately casting them out of the man. Jesus had a conversation with them. Maybe this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but if you were that tormented man, you would have been wondering why Jesus was taking so long to help you. 

This is where it is so important that we put the focus upon Christ as Savior, and not upon our faith. When trials and sufferings persist; when, like the demon possessed man, you must put up with terrible things and God seems slow to help; this is especially when we are tempted and our faith is challenged. “Why isn’t God listening to me? Why isn’t He helping me?” We can easily find the answer in our own unworthiness and weakness of faith. This is easy, because we are weak, we are sinful. It’s easy, especially in times of distress, to feel bad about yourself, and then think that you must first straighten yourself out before God will help you. 

Put your focus on Christ, and how He helped the demon-possessed man. There could hardly be found anyone more unworthy of His help than that man. First of all, he was not a Jew, but a foreigner who lived outside of the borders of Israel. Israel’s God, Jesus’ God, was not his God. Christ’s disciples would have had no problem with turning away from him. Then, the man ran around naked and filthy, and lived in tombs, places of death and uncleanness. Finally, he was filled with demons, unclean spirits who were enemies of God and who sought to defile everything that He had made. How unclean and unworthy was this poor man! And yet, Jesus comes to him and helps him. He does so because He has come for the sinful, the unclean, the defiled, those in whom there is nothing good and so who can take credit for nothing. Such are the ones Christ seeks. 

We honor Jesus and give Him glory when we come to him with our sins and unworthiness, when we name Him as God, the God who save seeks and sinners. That Jesus was a great man who did great miracles is undeniable. This could hardly be denied by the people of His day, even His opponents. It was really not the miracles that they had a problem, however; it was His claim that He could do them because He was God. He stated this indirectly to the demon-possessed man He healed when He told him, “declare how much God has done for you.” As it was Jesus who had done it, the man proclaimed not just God but Jesus. He gave God a name, an identity. He proclaimed Jesus as God, as God present in the flesh to help and heal. He gave Jesus the glory, and this is what we all are to do. 

Today is Father’s Day. Let us not only thank and honor our earthly fathers this day, but our eternal Father in heaven. Just think: we can rejoice in our almighty Creator, call upon Him, and be certain that He hears us and will help us. Why? Because He is not only our God and Creator, but in Jesus He is our Father! “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith,” says Galatians 3. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” In Baptism we have put on Christ and become like Christ. Our guilt and unworthiness are taken away, and so we receive from God, not the condemnation we deserve because of them, but His great love. He loves you even more than your earthly father loves you! Give thanks to God this day for your baptism into Christ. Give thanks that in Baptism He took you – probably as an infant, when you did not choose Him and did not know Him, when you had nothing to offer Him but your sinful nature – and made you His own child. Just as a baby cannot take credit for choosing his parents, so we cannot take any credit for being God’s children. He chose to be our Father and make us His children in Christ. The glory and honor are His. The eternal blessing is ours.