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. However, one day in particular does stand out in my memory. It was shortly after we had moved to Muncie, Indiana. My wife, Susan, was still teaching in Wabash, Indiana. I was in Muncie with our son, Chris, and our daughter, Megan. It was the first day of school for them. Chris was ten, and so he pretty much took care of himself. He knew what to do. Things were going okay for Megan, who was eight, until it came time to fix her hair. Susan had shown me what to do to make pigtails, but seeing it done and doing it was an entirely different matter. Finally, we all got off to Westview School for that first day. Let's just say that Megan's hair left a lot to be desired. When I picked her up later that afternoon, she was very excited and ran up to greet me and to tell me about her new teacher. I was shocked when Megan said to me. "My teacher said that she really liked my hair." I could hardly keep from laughing as I replied, "She must be some teacher!"
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.
It all begins when Jesus arrives from the district of the Gerasenes. We're not exactly sure just where this village is. There's no real scholarly agreement on the exact location of the town, but wherever it is, Jesus has just arrived by boat on the Sea of Galilee. No sooner has Jesus stepped ashore than he's met with this man possessed by demons. By the time Jesus meets him, the man has been ill for a very long time. From all signs, the man was quite a case. The man had come to the point of no longer being able to live like a normal person in the village. For one thing, he lived in a graveyard, and ran around naked, yelling and screaming. To protect him from himself, and to protect the villagers from what he might do to them, the man had to be bound in chains and fetters. The man was so violent and strong that even the chains were not able to hold him. He could burst right out of them.
To put it mildly, the man was not prepared for a visit by Jesus and he asked him, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?" (Luke 8:28). Or was it the demons who said that? It's not all that clear who's speaking. Most likely, it's the demons shouting through the man's voice, so in control are they of the man's interior being. It's apparent that the demons are threatened by the very presence of Jesus. The demons feel that Jesus is out to get them. "Don't torture me," they scream. The reason they say this is because Jesus had already commanded these unclean spirits to come out of the man.
Jesus stands out as the one person in the story who is prepared for whatever happens. Jesus knows the way to get the upper hand in this explosive situation. Once you know the name of the demons, you have them under your control. Jesus says to this demon-possessed man, "What is your name?" (Luke 8:30). The NRSV has the demonic reply, "Legion." I prefer another militarily descriptive word that William Barclay uses in his own personal translation: "My name is ‘A Regiment' "1 (Luke 8:30 Barclay). At the time of the Emperor Augustus, a regiment was made up of 6,000 troops.
A Catholic nun tells me about the time she came home from the grocery in Detroit, Michigan. Her apartment was in a rather rundown part of the city. As she was getting her groceries out of her car, this tiny, tiny, lady looked up and saw a gang of rough rogues headed toward her with what she felt was the intention to steal her groceries and make off with them. As they approached her, she looked them in the eye, and in a strong, confident voice, said, "Now, Tyrone, help me up the steps with these groceries!" One of the boys replied, "How did you know my name is Tyrone?" The nun exclaimed, "Ah, everyone in Detroit knows who you are. Now you and your friends help me up the stairs with these groceries!" which they did instantly. When the nun was asked how she knew that the boy's name was Tyrone, she laughed and replied, "With that many boys on the streets of Detroit, I just knew that one of them had to be a ‘Tyrone.' " Just by saying that name, she cast out her fear and their hatred. Just as Jesus did with the troubled man.
When the demons heard Jesus calling them by name, they were terrified and begged him not to send them to the abyss. The abyss is another name for hell or the place where nobody wants to go, not even demons.
Now, it just so happened that there was a herd of pigs nearby. The demons make the suggestion to Jesus that they be driven into the pigs instead of the abyss. Without so much as a hesitation, Jesus agrees. At their request, Jesus drives the demons out of the man's mind and into the herd of pigs. The Gospel of Mark says that there were 2,000 pigs. Luke is content to reduce the number to a more manageable "herd." Luke leaves the exact figure to our own imaginations. But, by driving the demons into the pigs, in an ironic twist, the demons get precisely what they were trying to avoid. When the demons took over the pigs, the pigs stampeded over the hill. They ran headlong into the deep blue sea and were drowned in the abyss.
Some people, when they read this story, become worried about the fate of the pigs. Other people become concerned about the loss of income to the pigs' owners. Still others are concerned about what this action says about Jesus. They don't think it reflects very well on him. But those kinds of questions push the meaning of the story too far. If you have to have an answer to those kinds of questions, I suppose, you might say that Jesus felt that the sanity of one man was worth the loss of all those pigs and whatever income they might have brought for the owner. But, as I say, that's not something Luke's story is interested in.
The incident did, however, create quite a reaction with the townspeople, especially those in charge of the herd. The herdsmen were certainly not prepared for what happened. They immediately ran away and told everyone else. Then the townspeople came out to see for themselves, and from their reaction, we see that they also were not prepared for what they ran into. They were not prepared to see this previously insane and violent man, whom they feared so much as to put him in chains, now sitting quietly and in his right mind listening to every word Jesus had to say.
So startled were the townspeople that they asked Jesus to go away, immediately, and to leave them alone. All their lives, they had been dealing with this sick man. They may not have handled things the best way, but at least they felt they knew what to do while he was sick. Now that Jesus had come and stirred things up and healed him, they didn't know what to make of it, nor what to do about it. Of course, they could have rejoiced with the man and thanked Jesus for what he had done for him. But then, to have done that, they would have had to have been a lot more healthy themselves. They would have had to have been a lot better off in mind and body and spirit than they obviously were. Sick themselves, they could not deal with this new healthy one in their midst. Their natural response was to reject this new foreign element that had come into their lives, much as the body sometimes is inclined to reject a transplanted organ. They simply were not prepared to handle the man's being well. It required too much change on their part.
Family counselors see it from time to time. Sadly, if a family is too dysfunctional, when one family member begins to gain some measure of freedom and health, it often shakes the other family members up. Rather than undergo the change required of themselves, they unwittingly ignore or even refute that anything good is taking place in the person receiving counseling.
As for Jesus, rather than stay in what is evidently a hopeless environment, Jesus went away as they requested. He moves on to a town that will give a better reception to his ministry.
In gratitude for his new found peace of mind, the man healed of the unclean spirits begs Jesus to let him go with him. Jesus says, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you" (Luke 8:39). And that's exactly what the man did.
So what happens when we're not prepared for what happens? In the movies, it all tends to end happily ever after, the so-called Hollywood ending. At least in Cheaper By The Dozen the ending is a little more realistic. This father comes to his senses when he realizes what an impact fulfilling his dream has had on the rest of the family. Fulfilling his and his wife's dream has almost cost them their marriage and their family. That was the one thing he was not prepared for. He was not prepared for what his actions did to the rest of the ones he loved. At the end of the movie, like the demon-possessed man in Luke's story, Coach/Dad is now in his right mind. He now knows he prefers the name "Dad" to the name "Coach."
Sometimes, we're only prepared for what happens when we realize that we're not as well prepared as we thought we were. Then at other times, things turn out better than we may have expected. It certainly did that day for the man whose name was "A Regiment" when he met Jesus.
It even happened for one dad who was stumped with fixing his eight-year-old daughter's pigtails on the first day of school.
1. William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1975).