These illustrations are based on Luke 8:26-39
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Sermon Opener: It Doesn't Have To Be This Way - Luke 8:26-39

The noted author, John Killinger, tells a powerful story about a man who is all-alone in a hotel room in Canada. The man is in a state of deep depression. He is so depressed that he can’t even bring himself to go downstairs to the restaurant to eat.

He is a powerful man usually the chairman of a large shipping company but at this moment, he is absolutely overwhelmed by the pressures and demands of life… and he lies there on a lonely hotel bed far from home wallowing in self-pity.

All of his life, he has been fastidious, worrying about everything, anxious and fretful, always fussing and stewing over every detail. And now, at mid-life, his anxiety has gotten the best of him, even to the extent that it is difficult for him to sleep and to eat.

He worries and broods and agonizes about everything, his business, his investments, his decisions, his family, his health, even, his dogs. Then, on this day in this Canadian hotel, he craters. He hits bottom. Filled with anxiety, completely immobilized, paralyzed by his emotional despair, unable to leave his room, lying on his bed, he moans out loud: “Life isn’t worth living this way, I wish I were dead!”

And then, he wonders, what God would think if he heard him talking this way. Speaking aloud again he says, “God, it’s a joke, isn’t it? Life is nothing but a joke.” Suddenly, it occurs to the man that this is the first time he’s talked to God since he was a little boy. He is silent for a moment and then he begins to pray. He describes it like this: “I just talked out loud about what a mess my life was in and how tired I was and how much I wanted things to be different in my life. And you know what happened next? A voice!! I heard a voice say, ‘It doesn’t have to be that way!’ That’s all.”

He went home and talked to his wife about what happened. He talked to his brother who is a minister and asked him: “Do you think it was God speaking to me?” The brother said: “Of course, because that is the message of God to you and everyone of us. That’s the message of the Bible. That’s why Jesus Christ came into the world to save us, to deliver us, to free us, to change us and to show us that ‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’ A few days later, the man called his brother and said, “You were right. It has really happened. I’ve done it. I’ve had a rebirth. I’m a new man. Christ has turned it around for me.”

Well, the man is still prone to anxiety. He still has to work hard. But, now he has a source of strength. During the week, he often leaves his work-desk and goes to the church near his office. He sits there and prays. He says: “It clears my head. It reminds me of who I am and whose I am. Each time as I sit there in the Sanctuary, I think back to that day in that hotel room in Canada and how depressed and lonely and lost I felt and I hear that voice saying: It doesn’t have to be that way.’”

That is precisely what this story is all about. Christ walks into the tormented life of the Gerasene demoniac, this madman, whose life is coming apart at the seams and He turns it around for him. He gives him a new beginning, a new start, a new birth. At the beginning of the narrative, it sounds like a horror-story. This wild-eyed, adrenalin-filled, madman comes running and shrieking out of the tomb. He is so unbalanced! He is convinced that he is being held captive by a whole legion of demons, who are pulling and jerking him in every direction.

This is an eerie, grim, suspenseful, frightening situation. Jesus and His disciples have just come through a storm on the Sea of Galilee. It is nighttime and having survived that frightening storm they are thrilled to now set foot on solid ground. But, as they get out of the boat, they encounter a different kind of storm… yet another scary experience. They hear strange sounds coming from the tombs… shrieks, growls, screams, moans, the rattling of chains. Then, suddenly, a horrifying sight. A madman with tattered clothes, bruised, dirty, bloody and battered with pieces of chains dangling from his arms and ankles, comes running and screaming directly toward them!

Now, let me ask you something: “What would you have done in that situation?” This was a perilous place, a bloodcurdling moment… a powerful, dangerous, berserk man, charging them. I think I would have run for my life... or jumped back in the boat.

But not Jesus! Jesus stood His ground and faced the madman. Undaunted, unafraid... Jesus stood there and dealt with this wild man. Jesus healed him. He brought peace to his troubled soul. He changed him. He cleansed him. He turned his life around… and you know (don’t you?) that He can do that for you.

Now, let me underscore this and spell it out a bit more by lifting three ideas out of this great story...

1. You Don't Have to Be at War with Yourself.
2. You Don't Have to Be at War with Other People.
3. You Don't Have to Be at War with God.

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What Happens When You're Not Prepared for What Happens - Luke 8:26-39

How do you handle what happens when you're not prepared for what happens? Well, sometimes not all that well.

I would like to call your attention to a movie, Cheaper By The Dozen, starring Steve Martin. There are numerous scenes in this movie that illustrate how one father tries to take care of things while his wife is away. This movie is about a father who has just gotten his dream job of coaching football at his college alma mater. But this job change calls for him, his wife, their twelve children — yes, twelve — to move from their beloved home and community in order for Dad to get his wish fulfilled. No sooner have they settled into their new home, than his wife, who has been writing a book on how to successfully raise twelve children, is off to New York City to clinch a deal to have her book published. She learns that the deal also involves obligatory cross-country tour engagements to promote it. Meanwhile, Coach/Dad is back home trying to handle this tribe and his new job at the university. The truth is, there is just too much going on for anyone to manage all this.

In a last-minute, desperate attempt to salvage everything, Coach/Dad comes up with a plan. He has the football team come over to his house for the briefing sessions and then takes the children who are not already in school to work with him at the university. Trying to work and take care of the kids at both home and school turns out to be another disaster. Things are so messed up, that Coach/Dad finally resorts to lying to his wife on the phone. He tells her that he has everything under control, when actually everything is in utter chaos. Meanwhile, the university officials and local media representatives are raising the same question. Can this man coach two teams, the one at home and the one at the university? There's ample evidence that he cannot.

As I look back on my own fathering days, I don't believe I was ever in over my head as much as this dad was. But then, I didn't have twelve children and a wife on a book tour across the U.S.

We all know what it feels like to be in over our heads. But I think the demon-possessed man in Luke's story probably knew it better than most, for he was literally in over his head.

What happens when you're not prepared for what happens? It can take various forms. In this healing story, we see a variety of reactions...

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Regardless of the Cost?

I recently came across an excellent illustration that manifests the difference between intellectual faith and genuine faith. In the late 1890's, a famous tightrope walker strung a wire across Niagara Falls. As 10,000 people watched, he inched his way along the wire from one side of the falls to the other.

When he got to the other side, the crowd cheered wildly. Finally, the tightrope walker was able to quiet the crowd and shouted to them, 'Do you believe in me?'. The crowd shouted back, 'We believe! We believe!'.

Again he quieted the crowd and shouted to them, 'I'm going back across the tightrope but this time I'm going to carry someone on my back. Do you believe I can do that?'. The crowd yelled back, 'We believe! We believe!'. He quieted the crowd one more time and then asked them, 'Who will be that person?'.

The crowd suddenly became silent. Not a single person was willing to apply the very truth that they professed to believe in--that the tightrope walker could cross the falls with a person on his back.

We may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but does our faith surpass the faith of demons? Are we willing trust our lives with Jesus? Are we willing to follow Him regardless of the cost?

Bryn MacPhail, Surpassing the Faith of Demons

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Return Home and Tell How Much God Has Done for You

As Ted Peters once pointed out, in the English language, it’s curious that the word evil is “live” spelled backwards. And indeed, evil always destroys. Life is diminished if not wiped out where the demons rule. The death of the pigs reflects that. What’s more, in the Ancient Near East, the sea represented one of the forces of chaos that people feared. So it’s a double-whammy: first there is death but second there is death by drowning in the sea, thus piling up and compounding the sense of chaos and evil in this story.

But the sad spectacle of those hapless pigs rushing headlong into the sea also reminds us that the expelling of evil from our world always involves sacrifice. For whatever the reason, God does not simply wave a magic wand to eliminate evil. Rooting out evil takes time, takes effort, and takes above all sacrifice. This should hardly come as any surprise, however, to people who live their lives in the shadow of a cross.

One final point, however: Jesus was chased away by the townsfolk but the healed man remained and according to verse 39, he kept on talking about what Jesus had done. Something about his ongoing witness reminds us that this is also our role: lots of people in this world try to chase Jesus away. Our task is to hang around anyway and to just keep talking, just keep witnessing to Jesus’ work, and just keep hoping that at the end of the day, that witness will bring people back to the very Jesus they once chased away. “Return home and tell how much God has done for you,” Jesus told this man.

He tells the rest of us the exact same thing.

Scott Hoezee, Comments and Observations

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Speaking to Our Day

Does the story of the Gerasene demoniac speak to OUR day as it did its own? Absolutely! To the church which battles the demons of social evil, the message is there is hope in Jesus. To individuals for whom there is an everyday battle ongoing with the demon of depression, the message is there is hope in Jesus. To those who battle the demon of fear, the message is there is hope in Jesus. Those who fight the demon of addiction, the message is there is hope in Jesus. And to those who have so many battles going on against so many demons that their name is LEGION, the message is there is hope in Jesus.

David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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What Have You to Do with Me?

“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the most high God?” the demented man cries out. Again we have a standard question in the demonology of the time. In the Gospels the demons are pictured as being scared stiff of the power of Jesus Christ. They try to get away from Him as fast as they can! This may sound quaint to us, but I would suggest this morning that in a deeper sense it is a question that has been put to Jesus by individuals and societies again and again. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” “Leave us alone. Mind your own business. Keep your hands off my life.” “What have you to do with me?” the demented man asked. The answer is that Jesus has everything to do with him. Jesus had come to cure him and restore him to his right mind. He has authority over even the demonic: “Come out of him, you unclean spirit!” (Mark 5 v.8) He says. And it is done. Just so Jesus has cast unclean spirits out of men and women down through the ages - spirits of greed, lust, hypocrisy, aggression. That is not theory, it is history.

Donald B. Strobe, Collected Works, www.Sermons.com

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Luther's Demons

Martin Luther, believed in demons but he believed in God more. In that great Hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" he writes:

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him.

That hymn, first published in 1529, has been called "the greatest hymn of the greatest man of the greatest period of German history." It has also been dubbed the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation" and with good reason. The Reformation touched off one of the most influential movements in world history. But before this famous Battle Hymn could be written Luther had to battle his personal demons and exorcize them from his own life. Luther felt utterly worthless and incapable of carrying the burdens of priesthood. On occasion Luther even flogged himself in an attempt to keep himself from sin.

He was often, he felt, pursued and tormented by Satan and his cohorts. Until one day, while reading Paul's letter to the Romans, he suddenly understood the meaning of God's grace and how it is appropriated by faith. In that moment he came to understand that he was justified before God through faith and not by his works.

You might say that after this experience Luther was no longer possessed by his demons, he was sitting upright, dressed, and in his right mind.

Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com.

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Legion

When Jesus asked the man his name, he answered, "Legion." A Roman legion was a regiment of 6,000 soldiers. Doubtless this man had seen a Roman legion on the march, and his poor, afflicted mind felt that there was not one demon but a whole regiment inside him. It may well be that the word haunted him because he had seen atrocities carried out by a Roman legion when he was a child.

William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975, p.108.

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Is It A Devil or a Disease?

In polite society we have not wanted to talk much of demons and the demonic.

In our liberal, educated culture, we have believed that sin was due mostly to ignorance and that evil could be eradicated by education. In our psychologically enlightened times we have avoided the more ancient religious and mythological language of devils and evil. We have instead preferred words like repression, impulses, sublimation, drives, complexes, phobias, regression, neuroses, psychoses, manic-depressive, schizophrenic and schizoid -- to name a few.

If we have been suspicious of religious healers and exorcists and spiritual counselors, we have been implicitly trustful of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, counselors and therapy groups. If we have been doubtful of prayer, meditation and conversion, we have been trustful of amphetamines, barbiturates and tranquilizers, not to mention alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana. If in our time witch doctors have disappeared, strangely enough witches have reappeared by the thousands. Even exorcists are making a small comeback after considerable media exposure and hype.

Whether demons and the demonic are widely acknowledged in our time may be debated, but that they were common in Jesus' time we can have no doubt. In his time, when most illness was attributable to sin, it was but a short step to attribute all mental illness or epilepsy to demonic powers actually residing in the person and controlling him or her. Thus to cure a person of seizures or dementia or schizophrenia or melancholia, the healer had to have power not only to name the demon, but power to cast him out, to throw him out of the person's life.

Maurice A. Fetty, The Divine Advocacy, CSS Publishing Company.

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My Real Problem Is That I Don’t Like Myself

Some time ago, a young lawyer came to see his pastor. He was down in the dumps, at his wit’s end. He said: “Everything’s gone wrong. I have lost confidence in my professional ability... my wife has left me. I can’t get along with my children. I’m cut off from my parents and my in-laws. I’m having conflicts with my co-workers. I’ve been drinking heavily. Everybody has left me... and I don’t blame them. I’ve been bitter and hostile. I’ve done so many mean and cruel things... and now I have so many problems (and then he literally said this).... “My troubles are Legion!”

He paused and took a deep breath. Then, he leaned forward and said: “To tell you the truth, I think all those problems and troubles are symptoms. My real problem is that I don’t like myself… and that taints everything I touch and do.”

Well, he was probably right. When you are at war with yourself, it smudges and distorts every relationship. On the other hand, when we feel good about ourselves, we are more loving, more patient, more thoughtful, more gracious... toward everyone we see.

James W. Moore, Collected Sermons, www.eSermons.com

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ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS NOT IN OUR EMAIL
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Sermons Opener - Jesus' Ten Commandments - Luke 8:26-39

From Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" to The Nightmare on Elm Street's "Freddy;" from Friday the Thirteenth's "Jason" to Stephanie Meier's vampire "Voltaire", we are always creating new monsters. Why are we constantly on the lookout for bigger, scarier "bumps in the night?" Why do we keep making up monsters that are so elaborate and extraordinary, so super-powered and immortal?

Maybe we need our monsters to be as unlike ourselves as possible so that we can ignore the presence of the real monsters that possess us . . . from the inside out.

Demonology isn't something we talk about much less study anymore. But we can't escape talking about demon possession after reading a text like today's gospel lesson.

The "Geresene demoniac" is a classic "monster." He is nothing like the "normal" people in his community. He runs around naked. He is "out of his mind." He is strong enough to break out of any chains and shackles. He can escape from any prison that his neighbors build to contain him. He lives in the graveyard. He spends his life ranting and raving among the tombs, living with the dead.

Yet he is NOT a monster. He is just a man. A man possessed by a "legion" of demons, but a human being nonetheless. Once Jesus calls out the unclean spirits from him, the man is restored physically and spiritually to his full humanity. Having been healed by Jesus the man joyfully proclaims "how much Jesus had done for him" to all his neighbors, even "throughout the city."

This is someone who was never "a monster." But he had been a man possessed.

Think "demon possession" is a relic of a pre-scientific age when mental and physical illnesses were attributed to evil spirits? The fact is we live in a culture that suffers from a "legion" of possessing spirits, as toxic and traumatic as those that came raging forth from the Geresene demoniac.

The spew from one of our most destructive demons is even now washing up in greasy globs all along the coastlines in the Gulf of Mexico.

We are possessed by a life style lubricated by more and more oil. We will do anything to keep the grease coming.

We are possessed by a greed that puts profits before protecting people and the planet.

We are possessed by an insatiable desire for "more stuff" — and the cost of that "stuff" is increasingly deadly.

When Jesus banished the evil spirits from the Gerasene demoniac, he filled the man with a new identity and a new mission.

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When Jesus Comes To Town

In a recent lecture the popular author, Christopher Lasch, wonders about the lack of morality and human values in our society. Many liberals today, says Lasch, see public life as an amoral struggle for profit and power and relegate morality to the shadowy realm of private choice and "lifestyles." What we need, says Lasch, is a new sense of fraternalism, a new sense of brotherhood that is neither self-righteous nor exploitative. To bring more peace and wholeness we need to cast out the demons of greed and exploitation and indifference.

When Jesus comes into an area, he not only casts out demons, he changes the economy because he changes people, their goals and values. When Paul preached Christ's gospel in ancient Ephesus, the silversmiths and others, who made religious souvenirs and idols of the goddess, Diana, knew their economy was in trouble if Jesus' religion flourished.

John Newton, author of "Amazing Grace," finally stopped his slave trading when Jesus really got hold of his life. Charles Colson, Richard Nixon's hatchet man, was converted and now devotes his life to prison reform. What would happen to our frenetic age of greed if Jesus really got hold of us drove out our demons.

Maurice A. Fetty, The Divine Advocacy, CSS Publishing Company.

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Two Extremes

C.S Lewis wrote about the confusion about demon possession when he wrote, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about demons (devils). One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased with both errors …with the same delight.”

C.S. Lewis. The Screwtape Letters. (New York: MacMillan. 1971) p. 3

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Losing It

One of my unsung heroes is an unnamed veteran Detroit firefighter. After years and years of doing good and getting no credit for it, saving people's lives and never being thanked for it, he decided he'd had enough. "I was fed up," he told a reporter who interviewed him after the bizarre episode. "I was fed up right to here," he said pointing to the top of his head. "Did you ever feel that way, I mean really fed up?" he asked the reporter.

What the fed-up fireman did the day before was to hop in the biggest fire truck at his station, turn on all the lights and sirens, drive to his house, pick up his wife, pick up his daughter at kindergarten, and take the family on a siren-screaming ride through the city of Detroit.

He finally returned the $200,000 truck to the fire station – sirens still wailing and red lights still flashing – and then, to top things off, he submitted his resignation to the Detroit Fire Department." ("Fed UP?" Sunday Sermons, 31 [3 June 2001], 25).

Jesus didn't know of Murphy's Law. But he did know of Messiah's Law. It's the Christian equivalent of Murphy's Law, our Scripture lesson this morning introduces it to us. It goes like this: No good deed goes unpunished. Or put in more theological terms, if you love, you get hurt.

Leonard Sweet, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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Difficulty in Showing Gratitude

Just because you don't get rewarded or appreciated doesn't mean you aren't appreciated or won't get rewarded in some fashion. You may never know about it.

I know some people would rather die than show their appreciation or say thanks. There is a Peanuts cartoon strip in which Lucy is crying bitter tears over a decision her mother has made. She wails, "You promised me a birthday party, and now you say I can't have one. It's not fair!"

Enter Lucy's brother, Linus, who calls her aside to offer some advice: "You're not using the right strategy," he says. "Why not go up to Mom and say to her, 'I'm sorry, dear mother . . . I admit I've been bad, and you were right to cancel my party, but from now on I shall try to be good.'"

Lucy thinks about it. She even rehearses the little speech to hear what it sounds like coming from her. Then she thinks about it some more. Finally, in the strip's last panel, she cries out, 'I'd rather die!'"

Again, some people would rather die than be in a beholden situation. But even though they can't show it, they're grateful.

Leonard Sweet, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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His name is Michael. I’m Tommy!

One day a young father was shopping in a crowded super-market. His three-year old son was with him. The little boy was riding in the grocery cart... and he was misbehaving terribly and causing all kinds of problems.

Every time the father would put something into the cart, the little boy would grab it and throw it back out. If the cart went close to the shelves, the three-year old boy would just rake stuff off onto the floor. At one point, the little boy crawled out of the cart and ran down the aisle (knocking over every display he could get his hands on) with his father in hot pursuit.

People who were in the store at the time could hear the father saying out loud over and over, “Just be patient, Tommy. It won’t be much longer Tommy.

It’ll be O.K., Tommy. Be calm, Tommy. Hang in there, Tommy.”

Finally, a distinguished looking woman came up to the man and she said: “I just want to compliment you. I’ve been watching you and I want you to know that I admire you and the remarkable patience you have with little Tommy.”

“O, but Lady,” the man said. “You don’t understand.” His name is Michael. I’m Tommy!!!”

Well, that’s a smart man! He was right to start with himself. If we are going to set a problem right, we have to get ourselves set right first.

James W. Moore, www.eSermons.com

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Comfortable with the Presence of Evil

William Bennett wrote a little book a few years ago which he named, "The Death of Outrage." There was a time when society showed outrage at people’s misconduct. But no more. We accept the flaws of others so easily, that we accept their misconduct without hesitation. It is not that we forgive these people -- we simply excuse their behavior. In the words of our Old Testament lesson, we have forgotten how to blush. We have no shame.

What happens when people have no sense of shame? The result is Hitler’s Germany where 6 million Jews and 2 or 3 million others were gassed to death.  The result is Jeffrey Dahmer who killed and ate 15 victims. The result is Columbine School where young boys kill classmates, teachers, and police officers.

What happens when people have no sense of shame? The result is people who do drugs, engage in premarital sex, and engage in shop-lifting and outright theft time after time after time.

What happens when people have no sense of shame? The result is moral Frankenstein monsters who don’t care about the hurt and damage and pain they cause.

A mother, whose teenage son was murdered a couple of years ago in Philadelphia, tells us what happens when people have no shame: "You go to court and the guy is looking at you, like, ’What’s the problem? So what if I killed your son?’" (Newsweek, February 6, 1995, p.22). What happens when people have no sense of shame? We have national and community leaders who are caught in adulterous affairs, yet who look straight into the television camera and declare, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." We have mayors arrested for drug abuse, spouse abuse, or embezzlement, and still they are sometimes re-elected to office later on.

The haunting aspect of Luke’s Gospel is that the people were so comfortable with the presence of evil.

Copyright 2001, Dr. Maynard Pittendreigh, A Naked Man and A Bunch of Crazy Pigs, SermonCentral.com.

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The Demons Within - Opener

Ours is an age that is filled with demons. There is more possession going on in the first decade of this 21st century than has gone on in centuries. And the problem is that we don't want to mention it because demons are part of the mythical past. We in our scientific world do not believe in demons. That is because demons are powers that take away our control and leave us at the mercy of powers outside ourselves.

Now, I realize in saying this that there are those of you who are immediately thinking to yourselves, "Oh-oh! The pastor has just stepped off the deep end (again).

It may come as a surprise but one of the key things we need to deal with is demons in our world. We speak of them all the time.

Drug addiction is a demon. Addicts are always speaking of being possessed by the need for their chemical demons. Heroin, cocaine, crack, meth, call them what you will, but they are still "Legion" in the battle for human souls.

Power is a demon. And it not only affects individuals, people who must have power to prove their worth, be the power guns or political influence or the power of terror, but it also affects nations. Nations seek to control and maintain without a sense for the need of justice and mercy. And when that power rises to a crescendo, we see the results in a Hitler or the Klan, or other groups that thrive on hatred and fear. There are the skeletons of many burned-out churches in our land that testify to the demons of power.

Illness is a demon. With all our scientific expertise, you would think that we would be able to put away this demon, but we haven't. In all likelihood, that was the demon of the story we started with this morning. Mental illness is still just as powerful and divisive as ever. It comes as a curse, and we treat its victims as pariahs to be shunned and isolated. The word cancer can make us squirm with discomfort and fear. We run away rather than offering our support and care. AIDS is just as demonic as any other worldly creature. It ravages individuals while others seek to pretend it will go away if one ignores it long enough.

Greed is a demon, threatening to make us slaves of want. Avarice has always been one of the deadly sins, but today the desire to have and to hold is something that many in our society prize and encourage. Things are often more important than people, more important than faith.

As the scripture passage reminds us, the demons are legion. They enslave the individual, destroy the valuable, and release the very worst in us. The only way we can hope to cope with them is to come face to face with one who can drive the demons out and make us willing to sit at his feet, clothed and in our right minds.

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Demon Possession Then and Now

It is, therefore, an unquestionable truth, that the god and prince of this world still possesses all who know not God. Only the manner wherein he possesses them now differs from that wherein he did it of old time. Then he frequently tormented their bodies as well as souls, and that openly, without any disguise: now he torments their souls only (unless in some rare cases), and that as covertly as possible. The reason of this difference is plain: it was then his aim to drive mankind into superstition; therefore, he wrought as openly as he could. But it is his aim to drive us into infidelity; therefore, he works as privately as he can: for the more secret he is, the more he prevails.

John Wesley, Sermon XXXIII: A Caution Against Bigotry

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Demons In Our Modern World

I was just as naive as I was sincere when I wrote a letter to a missionary in Papua, New Guinea. I was a 19-year-old college student trying to make sense out of the Bible. I was reading the gospels with an ardent desire to believe what I was reading but I kept getting hung up on these stories about demon exorcisms. If the gospels were true then there were real demons in the world and yet I didn't see anyone but quacks and nut cases doing demon exorcisms on TV.

 Someone in my college campus ministry suggested to me that we no longer saw demons in the civilized world but that missionaries in remote parts of the world did. I knew the name of a missionary in the terribly primitive region of Papua, New Guinea so I wrote to him. I wanted him to validate the Biblical stories about demons by telling me that he had heard them speak, that he had witnesses an exorcism. I hope he could tell me some really hair-raising stories.

 It took him several weeks to answer my letter and it took me a few years to understand his response.

 He avoided my request for a description of face-to-face encounters with the demonic. He didn't say anything about hearing them speak or of exorcisms. He did, however, say that there were demons in Papua, New Guinea and that he was shocked that I had not seen anywhere I lived in Memphis, Tennessee. "Do you not see the demons at work in pornography, prostitution, in racial hatred and in poverty?" he asked me.

 At first it seemed to me that he just didn't understand my question...later it became obvious to me that I had not understood his answer. Racism, poverty and the whole abuse of women in the sex industry were certainly obviously present in the city where I lived and I accepted that these things were evil but they were everyday things.... things that were always there and always would be there. I wanted to hear about something more biblical...about a demon speaking to a missionary or some vision of demon possession.... he just wanted to write to me about everyday stuff.

Roger Ray, Mr. Demon In His Pew

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Keep in mind that demonic refers to death comprehended as a moral reality. Hence, for a man to be "possessed of a demon" means concretely that he is a captive of the power of death in one or another of the manifestations which death assumes in history. Physical or mental illnesses are frequent and familiar examples but the moral impairment of a person (as where the conscience has been retarded or intimidated) is an instance of demonic possession, too.

William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, p. 32.

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Left Unattended

One day Jesus told a parable about a man out of whom a devil has been cast. When the job has been completed, he felt perfectly safe and secure. He may have said to himself, "Now that is done. He is gone and my house is at peace. I shall buy new furnishings, put up fresh curtains, and give to the entire place a new look." This was done. Late in the afternoon, largely by force of habit, the devil that had been evicted decided to walk down by his old home to see what had transpired in the meanwhile. To his amazement, he found everything clean, fresh, and rearranged, but empty of occupancy. With a flash of insight, he sized up the situation, called friends and cronies, and, together with them, he reestablished himself in his old setting. Jesus adds, "And the last state of the man was worse than the first." The story illustrated a profound truth about the nature of life. That which is left unattended seems to disintegrate.

In other words, get the devil out but put something in his place.

Howard Thurman, Deep Is the Hunger, p. 50.

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Illustrations for Galatians 3:23-29

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Encouragement

Each of us has a contribution to make, without which we would all be less. Each of us has a unique potential. To have the mind of Christ is to see another's potential. Even more important, it is not to condemn, but to encourage one another as Christ encourages us.

It is a common practice at military academies for the upper classmen to haze the first year students. This is part of the initiation rites. Dwight David Eisenhower, as a second year student at West Point, participated in these activities. One day a plebe, as freshmen were called, bumped into Eisenhower. Such an act was unpardonable, so Eisenhower responded as expected, yelling and screaming at the young cadet. Searching for the most demeaning thing he could utter, Eisenhower said the plebe looked like a barber. With that remark the plebe drew himself up to his full height, squared his shoulders, thrust forth his jaw, and responded that he was a barber. It was as a barber that he had supported his family prior to coming to the Academy.

Devastated, Eisenhower returned to his room. He retold the incident to his roommate, confessing, "I've just done something that was stupid and unforgivable. I just managed to make a man ashamed of the work he did to earn a living." In his autobiography Eisenhower wrote that for him this was a lesson about "the lack of consideration for others." In his room that day, Eisenhower vowed never to demean another individual again. It was a promise he kept through his life, even as Supreme Allied Commander during the Second World War and as the thirty-fourth President of the United States. He became an encourager and it showed in the effectiveness of his leadership.

That is the very heart of the Christian faith.

Ronald Love

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Holding the Promise

There is a time-honored story which you may remember that comes from the French Revolution. King Louis XVI and his queen were condemned to death. They were escorted to the guillotine in a public square in Paris where they were beheaded. The mob was not satisfied. "Bring out the Prince," they cried. "He is next!!" The young boy was terrified. He was only six years old, but he was next in line to be King. In the mind of the crowd, he had to be eliminated.

According to the story, the young prince stood on the platform trembling in his black velvet coat. The mob screamed at him, "Down with Royalty! Eliminate all royalty! Kill the Prince!!" Suddenly a shout came from the crowd: "Don't kill him. Killing him is too good for him. It will only send him to heaven, and that is too good for royalty. I say turn him over to Meg, the Witch. She'll teach him to be a sinner, and when he dies his soul will go to hell. That's what royalty deserves."

So according to the legend, that is exactly what happened. The officials turned the young prince over to the witch. The vile woman tried to teach him foul language, but every time she prompted the Prince to be profane, he would stubbornly stamp his feet and clench his fists and shout: "I will not say it. I will not speak that way. I was born a King, and I will not speak like I live in a gutter."

The story is probably apocryphal, but it speaks to our lesson from the epistle. Paul writes: “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com

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We Are Made of Heavenly Stuff

The Rev. Hal Chorpenning tells about a visit he made to a planetarium. What he discovered there is that you and I are made literally from stardust. Our wonderful human bodies are made of matter that once was a star. He goes on to say, “Perhaps on a scientific level, that isn't terribly exciting, but on a metaphoric level, it's mind‑blowing.

We have the Genesis story of Adam being created from earth, and we have the scientific story of humanity being created from the stars.” Then he reminds us of the words of St. Paul in I Corinthians: "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven." (1 Corinthians 15:46‑48) Those words were written by the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth nearly 2,000 years ago. We’ve heard that we were created from the dust of the earth, but have you ever thought of it being star-dust? You are somebody. Because Christ has come down from heaven, you are now part of his family, the family of God.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com