Isaiah
65: 1–9; Psalm 22: 18–27; Galatians 2: 23–29; Luke 8: 26–39
This
is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker
on Sunday, June 23, 2019.
“PUSH’EM BACK, WAY BACK!”
(Homily text: Luke 8: 26-39)
“Push’em
back, push’em back, way back!”
Perhaps,
with football season just a couple of months away, we’ll be hearing that chant
rise from the Bearcats’ fans[1] at
Detwiler Field.
“Push’em
back” is a good way to regard everything that is connected with Jesus Christ’s
coming[2] among
us, His teaching, His healings, His suffering, death and resurrection. For in
sending our Lord Jesus Christ to take up our humanity, God the Father is
determined to push back the forces that would separate us from Him, and from
one another.
If
we think about the various aspects of Jesus Christ’s life and all that He did,
we can see this plainly. He came to open to us a new way of relating to God,
for example. No longer would it be necessary to observe all of the hundreds of
regulations that are contained in the Law of Moses in order to find favor with
God.
Nor
would it be necessary to be a blood descendant of Abraham to find favor with
God, for Jesus came to bring God’s favor to Jews and to Gentiles, both.
Nor
would it be necessary to be ritually clean in order to find favor
with God. (At this point, we need to remind ourselves about the rules for being
clean – or unclean – in the regard of pious Jews in Jesus’ day….In order to be
able to enter the Temple’s precincts, one could not have a health condition
that prevented entry, such as a skin disease. And there were many other
regulations related to health which prevented entry, as well.) Jesus, the Christ, came to inform us that
God’s sense of cleanliness (or the lack of it) wasn’t a matter of physical,
outward cleanliness, but of an inner disposition toward God.
Nor
would it be necessary to go to the Temple in Jerusalem to enter into God’s
presence, for Jesus Christ came to tell us that God would not be worshiped on
the holy mountain in Jerusalem, but He would be worshiped by those who did so
“in spirit and in truth”, as He said the woman at the well in Jerusalem. (See
John’s Gospel account, chapter four.)
The
things we’ve just enumerated come together in the account of the healing of the
Gerasene demoniac, our Gospel text from Luke, chapter eight, this morning.
To
set the scene, we ought to consider the place and the locale a bit: Luke is
correct in telling us that there is a steep bank in the area where the
afflicted man was living. Indeed, it is on the east side of the Sea of Galilee,
a little south of the area we now know as the Golan Heights. Just for the
record, the area – in Jesus’ day – was Gentile territory. Gerasa is the
biblical name for the ruins that are now called Jerash, which is the
best—preserved Roman city in the world, located north of the capital city of
Jordan, Amman, and located southeast of the Sea of Galilee.
Luke
tells us that this man, who was out-of-his-mind, living in a cemetery, unable
to be controlled, and unable to help himself, was separated from others, and
from God. Moreover, because of his condition, he was being destroyed, slowly
but surely.
Recall
with me what we said at the outset of this homily: God sent Jesus Christ in order to “push’em
back”, to push back the boundaries of everything that separates and destroys
people.
So
it is that Jesus encounters the man. The demons who had taken up residence
within him[3] had
managed to isolate and separate this man from God, and from his family and
those who knew him. Moreover, his condition was slowly destroying him,
physically.
Jesus,
therefore, “pushes back” the forces that alienated this man, expelling the
demons from the man. The legion (there were many, we can discern from this
description of the number of them) then enter into a herd of pigs (an
indication that this is Gentile territory – Jews would not have kept pigs, who
were unclean animals according to the requirements of the Law of Moses).
Jesus,
the Christ, restores the man to his right mind, to his family and
acquaintances, to his former life.
Jesus,
the Christ, comes to restore us to a right and intimate relationship with God.
No longer must we observe all the requirements of the Law of Moses to enter
into the holy place with God. Nor must we be blood descendants of Abraham to do
so, for Christ has opened the way to God to all people everywhere.
Jesus,
the Christ, comes to remake us into God’s image, into a holy people, a people
who are equipped to go out into the world declaring the Good News (Gospel) that
God loves us, and has shown that love in the sending of Jesus to be one of us,
fully human, and yet fully divine.
Jesus,
the Christ, comes to bring healing to relationships with others, to being
restoration of spiritual health where the assaults of the evil one seek to
separate and destroy, to being health and wholeness to our human condition.
As
we enter into this “green season” of Pentecost, and as we focus in on one
aspect of the “Christ event”, it would be good for us to recall that Jesus
Christ came to “push’em back”, to protect and restore to us perfect
relationship with God and with others.
AMEN.
[1] The Bearcat is the mascot of Huntingdon Area
High School.
[2] Theologians use a specific term to refer to
everything connected to Jesus Christ:
They say this is the “Christ event”.
[3] At this point, we need to say something
about demonic possession. It is a phenomenon which is not to be dismissed as
some ancient world view, but is, however, a reality, albeit a rare one. In
Scripture, sometimes it seems clear that a person who was ill was described as
being under the possession or influence of demons, when - in contemporary
understandings - such a person may have had some sort of a mental disorder. The
fact that the demons immediately knew Jesus’ identity, and knew His power to
expel them from the possessed man, leads us to the conclusion that the man was,
in fact, demon-possessed.
