Guest Speaker: Jeremy Fackenthal

Sermon Date: 28 May 2006

Sermon Text: Mark 5.1-20

 

I recently had the opportunity to see a production of the musical Ragtime.  This musical is set in the year 1906 and the plot weaves itself through the lives of three groups of people who become intertwined in the chaotic and oppressive systems of the industrial age in New York City.  As the musical opens, the audience is immediately confronted with the chaos of these three groups—the “haves” who are the upper-class society of New Rochelle, NY; and two groups of “have-nots”—the much less fortunate African Americans who live in Harlem and are shunned by the government and by the white society around them, and a group of immigrants, struggling to survive in a foreign land with only the possessions they carried with them across the Atlantic.  As the music and movement of these three groups intertwine, we get a sense of the chaos present in their individual lives and the chaos that arises from the interactions of each group with the others and with the oppressive systems in place during the early 1900s.  As the musical goes on, the characters in it learn to overcome these systems and show each other love and respect, ending in a message of hope.

 

Now let me be clear by saying that I’m not reducing the gospel of Mark to a Broadway musical.  However, it does seem that Jesus has a similar sudden and immediate encounter with the chaos of oppressive systems in this passage.  He had been preaching in Galilee by the sea, and when evening came he got into the boat with his disciples crossed over to the other side.  On the other side of the sea lay the country of the gentiles, and as soon as Jesus reaches the shore he experiences a chaotic encounter with a man tormented by an unclean spirit who has been living in the tombs.  These tombs were actually probably small caves in the side of the cliff going down to the shore.  For a Jew in the ancient world both contact with dead bodies and contact with demons would have made a person ritually unclean.  And so this man with the unclean spirit who lives among the tombs, who has constant contact with dead bodies, was perpetually unclean. 

 

As soon as Jesus steps out of the boat he meets this man—he encounters the unclean demons and the uncleanliness of the tombs.  Now the gospel passage tells us about the condition of the man who is possessed.  He could not be restrained; he broke apart the shackles and chains; night and day the man howled and bruised himself with stones.  Bruised, wearing torn clothes, with unkempt hair this man comes toward Jesus and begs Jesus not to torment him.  But Jesus has already ordered the demon to come out of him.  He asks the demon for its name.  “My name is Legion; for we are many,” the demon says.  Then Jesus sends the unclean spirits into a large herd of swine, two thousand of them, and they rush down the cliff and drown in the sea. 

 

In these few verses, the gospel writer of Mark packs a lot of punch.  On one hand, we get an incredible picture of tormented, demon-possessed man and of two thousand pigs, startled and squealing, rushing down a steep hill and into the sea.  But more than that, we begin to uncover two important statements of Jesus.  First, the swine showed that this really was gentile territory.  No Jew would have been involved in raising or eating swine, since they were considered unclean animals.  And so when the swine, all two thousand rush down the embankment and drown in the sea, Jesus seems to have taken care of two purity issues:  he has removed the unclean spirits from the demon-possessed man, and he has removed the unclean swine from the gentile land.  And by doing so he sent the spirits back home to the bottom of the sea, a place understood as chaos, where the demons emerged.

 

What is maybe even more important than the purity issues, however, is the connotation of the demons’ name:  Legion.  A legion, in the military world of the Roman Empire, was a unit of about six thousand troops.  At this time, all of Palestine, including Galilee, Judea, and the gentile territory, was controlled by the Roman 10^th Legion, which had a picture of a boar’s head as their symbol.  So perhaps what this story shows is also a picture of the oppression and captivity that the people experienced under Roman occupation.  They were captors in their own land, oppressed religiously, economically, and politically by a foreign power.  Just like the gentile man who was possessed and oppressed by the unclean spirits, the people of Palestine were possessed by an oppressive demon they knew as the Roman Empire. 

 

Most of us may not see ourselves as captors of an oppressive system, but we can see others who still experience similar oppression every day.  A minister friend in Indianapolis had the opportunity to travel to two countries in the last year where oppression at the hands of a corrupt government or corrupt business empire is quite severe. 

 

In El Salvador in Central America my friend met another local minister who works among the poor.  When they visited the capital of San Salvador, they saw signs all over the streets for Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonalds, Ace Hardware, and—yes—even Starbucks.  The sad irony, however, is that most of the people of El Salvador would have to save their wages for an entire month to enjoy just one meal at one of these fast-food restaurants.  They work in factories, many of them own by foreign companies, or in the fields, earning low wages under bad conditions.  Certainly these people are also possessed by the demon of oppressive economic and political systems.  Certainly they too need Jesus’ liberating power and Jesus’ authority to send the oppressive demons back home.

 

My friend also had the opportunity to travel to Cairo, Egypt.  When he got back from Cairo he told us the story of the people who live in garbage city.  These people, who have been completely outcast by both the government and society, spend their nights sleeping in shacks and huts among the garbage of Cairo.  They live in the dumps.  They spend their days searching through the piles of garbage, through refuse and through other people’s trash, in order to find enough food to sustain their lives and enough little odds and ends to sell so that they might buy a loaf of bread or some scraps of meat.  Certainly they too are possessed by the demon of an oppressive government that doesn’t even care if they live or die.  Certainly they too need Jesus’ power to remove the oppression and send the demons back home.

 

But as you can see, the story doesn’t end when Jesus sends the spirits into the swine who rush into the sea.  It continues, and the swineherds go into the town to tell the people what has happened.  When they return they see evidence that the demons have left the man.  He is sitting, instead of running about, and he is clothed, instead of draped with torn clothing, and he is in his right mind.  But the people are afraid.  They have seen the power that Jesus had over the demons, and they are afraid of what else he might be able to do.  As Jesus prepares to leave, the man who had the unclean spirits asks to go with him, but Jesus tells him no.  Instead, he sends him back to his home to tell what the Lord has done for him.  He sends him to proclaim the good news that Jesus has removed the unclean spirits, has liberated him from the oppressive demons and sent them back home. 

 

Though most of us are not oppressed, are not under the authority of foreign occupation, and are not the outcast of society, we should still be aware that oppression does exist.  It exists in places like El Salvador and other countries throughout Central American.  It exists in Egypt and in the Sudan in Africa.  And, yes, it even exists here in the United States where the demon of racism continues to be an oppressive force and where poverty still plagues nearly 15% of our population. 

 

Yes, such oppressive systems do exist.  But as this story from Mark’s gospel shows, God has power over these oppressive systems.  Just as Jesus’ authority sent the demons packing and freed the Gerasene man from his possession, we too can show Jesus’ authority over oppressive systems as we work to spread the good news. 

 

Like the world that Jesus encountered when he stepped out of the boat in the land of the gentiles, we too may sometimes feel as though we have stepped into a chaotic world.  But like the man who was freed from the unclean spirits, Jesus sends us as well to go and proclaim. 

 

No, we probably won’t be able to end the oppressive economic or political systems in our world by ourselves.  And no, we may not be able to entirely wipe out racism and poverty by ourselves.  But as a community of believers we can work together to establish God’s power over these oppressive forces by spreading the good news.  Together we can work to show Jesus’ authority by going home and telling how much the Lord has done. 

 

A man who was out of his mind, howling and bruised, possessed by demons, has been freed and now sits clothed and in his right mind.  How much more will God do as we become God’s partners in ending the oppressive forces and proclaiming the good news?