Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Mark 5:1-17
July 11, 2004
After listing the title for this sermon in Steeple Notes, I discovered I had preached the same text under the same title in the late nineties. On that occasion, I took an entirely different bent, slanting the sermon toward a discussion of exorcism. Truth be told, there are but a handful of lines from that prior effort recycled in this text.
Given our preparations for the Pig Roast and the mouth-watering promise of succulent pork, let’s back our way into this morning’s story with a bizarre picture of half-crazed pigs rushing down a steep bank to their death by drowning.
As one who has never farmed and, therefore, has never had more than a passing acquaintance with livestock, all I know about pigs is pork….and bacon….and ham….and ribs. Although when I wore the clothes of a six year old and fancied myself to be Christopher Robin, I knew that Piglet was Pooh’s little friend. And by that time I had learned that three little pigs could, assuming that one of them was knowledgeable in the building trades, outwit one very big and very bad wolf. Subsequently I discovered comic books that featured Porky Pig and Petunia Pig. And the one wedding (among my 1600) that I would have loved to have performed….but wasn’t asked to perform….was that incredible ceremony that united Kermit T. Frog and Miss Piggy. I’ll never forget the preacher’s pronouncement of marriage:
And because you share a love so big,
I now pronounce you frog and pig.
The other day, at a multi-generational picnic, I was given a barefoot baby to hold. So what did I do with the baby’s toes? You guessed it.
This little piggy went to market,
This little piggy stayed home,
This little piggy had roast beef,
This little piggy had none,
And this little piggy cried wee, wee, wee, wee all the way home.
People who know more about pigs than I do tell me that, insofar as such things can be measured, pigs are very intelligent. Not that one would guess it by appearances. But a look at most college dorm rooms would suggest that intellect and squalor are not as antithetical as one might think.
Sticking with pigs just a little longer, it is important to note that (at the time of their demise) the pigs in this morning’s text are not in their right minds. They are being driven by demons who have been sent their way by Jesus. I suppose if these suddenly-crazed pigs were your pigs, you’d have a whole different slant on the story. I mean, there goes your livelihood tumbling over the seawall….everything you have….everything you expected to leave to your children. Which may explain why the esteemed George Buttrick once featured the pigs’ owner in a memorable sermon entitled, “My God, My Pigs.”
But few in the first century would have shared that worry. In part, because the story was circulated among the Jews. And, for the Jews, the pig is an unclean animal. Jews don’t raise pigs, butcher pigs or eat pigs. Although once, while walking past the meat counter of a supermarket in downtown Jerusalem, I saw something strangely familiar shrink-wrapped in cellophane. Turning to Kris, I said: “Is that what I think it is?” To which she answered: “It looks like a pork chop to me.” So we looked more closely at the label where, just above the price and the poundage, we read: “White steak.”
To Jews, pigs are unclean. So when the prodigal son runs through daddy’s money in a far country and takes the only job he can find….slopping pigs….nothing could have been more degrading or insulting, given that he has now abused his father’s faith as well as his father’s finances.
So a Jew, hearing this story, wouldn’t have shed a single tear for a single pig….and might actually have cheered the death of two thousand pigs. What’s more, the mere existence of a herd of pigs nearby tells us that we are not in Jewish territory, but pagan territory. We are in Transjordania….the land across the Jordan River….across the Sea of Galilee….across from everything that was familiar, similar and secure….and across from where any self-respecting Jew wanted to be, or thought that a self-respecting Savior ought to be. Which is why nobody cared about a massive case of swine-icide. Because even if they liked pigs, which they didn’t, these pigs weren’t their pigs.
But just as most Gospel stories have nuances and subtleties that take years to unravel, so (too) does this one. You will recall that the demons, which Jesus drives out of the man and into the pigs, are multiple. That’s what their name implies. And what is their name? You heard it, but may not have caught it. So I’ll repeat it. “Legion” is their name. Which is a military term, drawn from the Latin word meaning a division of Roman soldiers. How many soldiers? Six thousand soldiers.
And the word translated “herd”….as in “a herd of pigs”….is not a word ever associated with pigs at all. Rather, it is a word associated with military recruits. And the phrase “he (Jesus) dismissed them”….or “he gave them leave”….is a military command that tells the troops they are now free to go.
The Jews were a subjugated people, living in an occupied country. Subjugated by whom? Occupied by whom? You know “whom” as well as I do. By Romans, that’s who. So at a hidden level….which may have been a primary level once upon a time….we have a legion of demons occupying a man (rather than a country), driven out by Jesus, and dismissed to die in the sea.
Good riddance, demons.
Good riddance, Romans.
Which recalls the last time the Jews received deliverance from domination.
When?
At the start of the Exodus.
Where?
In Egypt.
How?
When Pharaoh’s army was drowned in the sea.
Thanks to whom?
Moses.
And what did the demons (named “Legion”) say to Jesus when he confronted them and told them to vacate? I’ll tell you what they said. They said: “Do not send us out of the country.” But that’s exactly what Jesus did. He sent them packing to the point of drowning. Sort of like Moses. Which, as interpretations go, may be a stretch for you. But I’ll lay odds that, at least on some level, that’s how a first-century Jew would have heard the story.
But that’s not how we hear the story. Because our country is not occupied, don’t you see. Which means that the word “deliverance” is understood more personally than nationally. Demons are insiders, wreaking their havoc mentally and emotionally. When I said (earlier) that the pigs plunging over the seawall were not in their right minds, the fact of the matter is that neither are we….in our right minds, I mean. So let’s go back and retell the story from that perspective….the perspective of mental or emotional illness.
We start with a man who is said to be demon-possessed. He is a man who can’t be chained, fettered or subdued. He is a man who is a threat to himself as much as he is a threat to others. He lives (naked) among the tombs….tombs which, for a ritualistic Jew, were as unclean a place to hang out as pigs were an unclean food to eat. Everything about this man screams “separated.”
Which is not entirely strange to us. For until recently….when the pendulum shifted from separating the mentally ill to mainstreaming the mentally ill (about which there still swirls a great debate)….we warehoused the mentally ill in greater-than-desirable numbers in less-than-desirable places. And prior to a consideration of humane treatment for them, it was not uncommon to make cruel sport of them.
I wonder how many of you know the origin of the word “bedlam”….“bedlam” as in “all hell breaking loose.”
That classroom was sheer bedlam.
The big sale at Macy’s was nothing short of bedlam.
It seems that the very first hospital in Great Britain for the mentally ill was on the outskirts of London. Its name was The Star of Bethlehem. And given that many of the patients were chained to the beds and walls, their loud and wild screams could be heard throughout the surrounding countryside. It seems that wealthy Londoners actually went out to hear those patients as a form of entertainment….describing that they were going to the Star of Bethlehem to see “bedlam.”
Eventually, the sport went out of it. But separation remained part of it. Years ago, I actually heard people say: “We couldn’t control her, so we had to send her away.” And in Wayne County, where I spent the first fifteen years of my ministry, “away” was commonly known as Elouise (out where Merriman Road meets Michigan Avenue). There were years after visiting people there that I remember thinking that prison might have been preferable. So however this healing in Mark 5 happened, it began when Jesus was willing to meet a man with an unclean spirit in an unclean place. And if you want to stop there and preach yourself a sermon about what constitutes acceptable and respectable locations for ministry, be my guest. But I have to move on.
Do I believe that demons still possess people? I frankly don’t know. What I do know is that it occasionally looks and feels that way. In an effort to explain actions that come across as abnormal or irrational, I have heard some of you say: “I don’t know what got into me”….or “I don’t know where that came from.” But what do you mean? Do you really believe that something “got into you”….that you were overwhelmed from the outside? Or do you believe that you were blindsided from the inside?
All the time I hear people say: “What you just saw wasn’t me.” So who was it? Was it someone else? Or something else? Or was it a part of your personality you didn’t know was there, or couldn’t bring yourself to admit was there?
I don’t know. For purposes of our story, this man thinks he is possessed. The people steering clear of his craziness believe him to be possessed. And Jesus treats him as if he were possessed. But concerning his diagnosis, I like the way William Barclay puts it.
The man needed deliverance. Whether that deliverance was from a literal demonic possession or from an all-powerful delusion does not matter. It is good to know that the Lord can deliver us from imaginary dangers as well as from real ones. For the imaginary ones are often harder to face.
But I love the moniker attached to the malady. “What ails me has a name,” says the voice coming out of the man. “That name is Legion.” When self applied, it is a name that suggests that I am many….multiple….more than one. It is also a name that suggests that I am split…. divided….torn….perhaps even schizoid. Some people feel that way, you know. Some people hear conflicting voices. Some people experience multiple personalities. Some people feel as if a civil war is being fought within their skin.
· A quiet business man, reacting to a career’s worth of slights and injustices, suddenly unleashes a verbal rage upon a colleague that catches everyone by surprise, including himself. His name is Legion.
· A fed-up mother says to her teenage daughter: “How hostile and mean you are. Every word that comes out of your mouth is spiteful. How do they stand you at school?” To which her daughter replies: “It would probably surprise you to learn that I am quite a different person at school.” Her name is Legion.
· A crusading preacher mobilizes an entire community to enact an anti-pornography ordinance. Which is why everyone is surprised when he is arrested on charges of photographing young boys in compromising positions. His name? Rev. Legion.
· A psychologist is talking with his counselee. “Does everyone in your house get along?” he asks. To which his client answers: “I live alone….and no, we don’t.” His name is Legion.
How else do you describe addiction, if not with the language of possession? In the beginning, you retain control over the substance. But eventually things flip flop and the substance gains control over you. Which is why most of the people who tell you they can quit whenever they want to, can’t. I never saw any demons hovering over my father or my sister. But each of them, in their own way, was possessed. There are so many ways that people are troubled.
But, praise God, there are so many ways that troubled people are healed. I can neither count nor explain them. But I believe that Jesus can work through any and all of them. When it comes to healing, prayer is no more in competition with Prozac than salvation is in competition with psychotherapy. There isn’t a person in this congregation who would tell somebody: “If you just had a little more faith in Jesus, you could stop taking your insulin.” But there may be people in this congregation who would tell a loved one: “If you just had a little more faith in Jesus, you could stop taking your Lithium.” That’s because there is still a tendency….even among religious people….to view sugar diabetes one way and manic depression another way.
Even today, were I to go down to our local hospital….our highly-esteemed and widely-respected local hospital….with a list of four parishioners I believe to be in residence there, I will be readily supplied with room numbers for three of those parishioners. But if the fourth is on Nine South (the mental health unit), there will be no acknowledgement that any such individual exists. Even in our finest healing institutions, we look at some diseases one way and others diseases another way. Which is why it cannot be said strongly enough in places like the church that chronic depression is no more a sign of spiritual weakness than is colon cancer.
Our text concerns a healing story that features an exorcism. But few of us would tie Jesus’ hands to this (or any other) methodology. Wondrous are the ways in which Jesus heals today.
People come to me and say: “Can you recommend a Christian psychologist?” Which always leads me to inquire as to their desire.
Do they want someone who is a member of the church?
Sometimes.
Do they want someone who will pray with them at the close of a session?
Sometimes.
Do they want someone who believes that cure and conversion are two sides of the same coin?
Sometimes.
Do they want someone who will take sides with the believing spouse, teaming up with them against the non-believing spouse?
Sometimes.
But most of the time they are saying: “Bill, can you direct me to someone who understands the language of faith….someone who is not uncomfortable with (or critical of) the language of faith….someone who understands that faith is more likely to be a part of someone’s solution than a part of someone’s problem?” And I know some wonderful professionals who believe exactly that. I have long admired them….often referred to them….and, in one or two valleys of my life, readily employed them. When it comes to the healing professions, Jesus has never lacked for friends.
Had I had more time, I would have read you the story that led into this one. It’s about a boat full of disciples who find themselves storm-tossed at sea. And Jesus, who slept through the worst of it, was (when awakened) able to calm things down.
I wonder why I didn’t preach that story instead of this one? Unless it’s because I, like many of you, have never had reason to be frightened by the storms outs
Note: In addition to the customary commentaries on the Gospel of Mark (including the helpful work of William Barclay), I am indebted to a heretofore unread commentary on Mark’s Gospel entitled Binding the Strong Man by Ched Myers. My pastoral colleague, Jeff Nelson, steered me in the direction of this book. Concerning Myers’ exegesis, Walter Wink writes: “This is, quite simply, the most important commentary on a book of scripture since Ba
