Pentecost 4
Luke 8:26-39

Dear friends in Christ,
If you’re able to come to brunch this morning and then view the DVD we made of our trip to Tanzania, you’ll see one section where we go to the most remote place on earth I’ve ever been, the Chamsisili preaching point that is part of our partner congregation, Mtera Lutheran. I’m guessing it was 10 miles or so from Mtera Village, but it was way back in the African bush, along way off the main road. The people there live in mud huts that resemble nothing comparable to around here. There’s no electricity, no running water, no natural gas service, no septic or sewer systems, no shopping mall, nothing like that at all. This little preaching point, really just a small group of Christian believers, has no church building. They meet under a tree. They speak a tribal language, He He. Very few even know the national language of Tanzania, which is Swahili. One man had a deformity from birth, his legs being turned around at the knees and he had to use makeshift tree branches for crutches. I was introduced to the two wives of one man in the village, first time that’s ever happened to me. I think all of us in our group felt pretty out of place, at the edge of our comfort zone, in this very different setting.
After meeting the people under the tree at the preaching point, we learned that there was a sick woman in one of the huts, and Pastor Lufyagila invited us to go in and pray for her, along with the evangelist that served Chamsisili. We entered this small, dark, hot, stuffy hut, and saw the woman in need, with a few others. We gathered around to pray for her healing. Now when I pray for someone’s health and well being, I normally pray for the healing power of God to be present. If the person is in the hospital, I’ll often pray for the doctors and medical team, that they might provide the best possible care that will promote healing. I’ll pray that the person might have strength and hope and comfort during this time of illness and will recover quickly from the illness.
When Pastor Lufyagila and the evangelist began to pray for this woman, in her language, it was immediately clear to me that this was a different kind of prayer, one that I would not have prayed. I couldn’t understand their words, but I knew this had to be some kind of prayer for deliverance from the demon that was causing this woman’s illness. It was a raw, loud, emotional, lengthy and intense prayer. I later asked Kirby Smith in our group, who had learned some Swahili, what that prayer was about. He didn’t understand it all, but it was a prayer that had something to do with driving the devil out of this woman.
As I later thought about what I had experienced and what it meant to me, a couple things came immediately to mind. First, I understood why such a prayer was spoken, necessary, and appropriate in that cultural context. Medical care as we know it here is non-existent in much of Tanzania. There was no way this woman was going to a doctor, a clinic, and certainly not a hospital. There was no diagnosis, no treatment for whatever it was she had. All they knew was that something bad was in this woman, and they prayed it might be driven out. That’s all they knew. It was the only way to pray, given the remote location and the lack of understanding of health care. Although strange for us, I get why such a prayer needed to be said,
And the second thing I thought was this must have been something like what was going on in the time of Jesus, when he cast out demons from people and restored them to health. There were no vaccinations, no penicillin, no surgery, no cat scans, no understanding of human anatomy and psychology to diagnose what was going on. Jesus cast out that which was causing the distress. That was how life was restored
We see this in today’s gospel lesson, where Jesus casts out demons from a man in the country of the Gerasenes. Chamsisili, for us, was a very foreign, strange, and unsettling place. I felt like we were pioneers, like what the Wild West must have been like when this country was being settled. We were way out on the edge, glad to have had the experience, but not a place we would every really want to live.
For Jesus, this region of the Gerasenes, was a similar kind of place, out on the edge. It was a scary, uncomfortable, even a dark kind of place. Where he goes is not a place a faithful Jew would travel to as a destination.
In the verses preceding our lesson, we know that Jesus went with his disciples out on the Sea of Galilee. A terrible storm swept across the lake, and Jesus calmed the storm. And although it doesn’t say this, it may well be that the storm had blown the disciples off course which is why they ended up landing in the region of the Gerasenes. This is gentile territory, pagan territory, beyond the boundaries of the Jews. We know this because there is a herd of swine feeding, an unclean animal in Jewish law.
Jesus is out on the fringe, an uncomfortable and scary place. This is further evidenced by whom he meets there, a man on the fringe, who had lost his ability to think rationally, a man we’d call insane. He was shackled in chains and made to live in a graveyard, presumably so he would not harm himself or others. He was named “Legion” because his personality had been fragmented in so many parts. He was full of demons that controlled his life and kept him from being part of his community.
This is a dark place for Jesus to be. This is not the synagogue or Nazareth or a wedding feast. This would be way beyond a normal Jew’s comfort zone. The question we must ask is, what can we learn from Jesus today, that might help us when we find ourselves in places we’d rather not be?
One thing we learn is that Jesus is not afraid of the dark places and is, in fact, present in them. That’s why I find this story, so strange to our modern ears, a great comfort. When our life’s journey takes us to a scary, unsettled place, we can know for certain that Jesus is there with us. He didn’t stay in the comfortable places of Nazareth or Bethany or Jerusalem or Cana, but he went out to a place of craziness and death, and ministered to a sick man there. The fact that he was there, on the fringe, is perhaps the most important message of all in this text. There is no darkness so deep that will keep Jesus away.
In Tanzania, the pastors command a great deal of respect from the people. And I have a lot of admiration for the kind of ministry the pastors and young evangelists do in serving these preaching points. I asked Pastor Lufyagila, through our translator, about how these preaching points get started. And he said that one day each week he walks around the neighboring villages, trying to find people who haven’t heard the gospel and who would be receptive to listening to the story of Jesus. How different that is from here, where we mainly function with the idea that people will find us and come to us in our churches. The presence of Pastor Lufyagila and our translator, Pastor Kaponda, was huge that day at Chamsisili. Much like Jesus, they went out to this fringe, remote place and shared their ministry of presence. In the same way, Jesus goes to the fringe. And sometimes that’s where we are living in our lives, physically, spiritually, or emotionally. We’re hurting, maybe feeling as lost as the Gerasene demoniac, wondering if any cares or can help. We learn from this lesson that Jesus goes there and is with us to minister to us, no matter how bad things may have become.
Another thing we learn from this text is that Jesus has the power to heal, if God wills it in that situation. This lesson really shows the universal and awesome power of Christ. He has power over the demons, not just in his home country, but in gentile territory as well. The demons, when they realize they are in the presence of God, beg Jesus to send them into the herd of swine. Maybe they thought that by entering the pigs, an unclean animal in the eyes of the Jews, they would be beyond the reach of Jesus. But no, Jesus could reach them there. And so they run headlong into the sea, maybe thinking that there they would be secure from the power of Jesus. But no, Jesus is the master even of the waves of the sea. The demons can run, but they cannot hide from the life-giving, light-shining power of Jesus.
I don’t know why one person is fortunate to be able to heal and recover from illness, and another does not. But I do not question Christ’s ability to heal, if it be his will in a given situation. The message of the lesson is that Christ’s power is not bound. It leaps over the boundaries of geography, theology, and nature. There is an awesome power there, a power to heal even when everyone else has given up. In the Tanzanian villages the people may not know much about medicines that heal. But, as evidenced by the prayer I heard, they really know and believe in the power of God to heal, which was a good reminder to me.
One final word from this lesson. What are we to do when Christ’s healing presence touches our lives? This man, now in his right mind and fully clothed, begged that he might go with Jesus, become his disciple, travel with him so as always to be in his presence. But that’s not what Jesus tells him to do. “Return to your home,” says Jesus, “And declare how much God has done for you.” The movement here is from healing to witness. Jesus wanted this man to go back to the people that had driven him into the tombs, and tell them he was a changed man. He was to declare to them the good news that there is a power at work in the world even greater than the powers of death and confusion.
There have been times when I have been ministering to people on the fringes, in the dark places of life, and I have wondered what can possibly be done or said to help. The answer is right before us in today’s lesson. No situation is beyond hope in the eyes of God. There is no region immune from Jesus’ power. Jesus works the edges of our secure world, reaching out to those who, for whatever reason, are living on the periphery. He is light to our darkness. He heals. That is the message we have been given to share. That’s what we have to say to those living in dark and difficult places.
I have no way of knowing if the woman we prayed for at Chamsisili recovered from her illness. But it certainly made me aware of how cultural differences and understandings even affect the way we pray. Here, with all the advances of modern science and medicine, we pray for healing. There, where they have little of that, they pray for deliverance. Either way, God hears our prayer, and is able to work His will. Let us leave this place with confidence that God is always with us, even, and perhaps especially, when we are in the dark places of life. Amen