Inner Demons
based on Luke 8:26-39
by Rev. Frank Schaefer

In today’s gospel we meet a strange person, a demon possessed man who lives among the tombs in the country of the Gerasenes. He is the outsider, the crazy one, the one who hurts himself, the one who is tied up in chains and breaks those chains. He is tormented by evil and inner demons. He’s the one to avoid, the one mothers warn their children about.

But the truth is, that this man, called the demoniac, was probably not the only ones with inner demons; many in our society battle inner demons. The demons of addiction, violence, greed or envy. In our bible account this morning we are meeting others who were also battling inner demons; although we have to dig a little to expose them.

Point 1:
In order to really understand the full story we need to start with the pigs. Yes, you heard me right, the pigs. I would like to ask this question: what in God’s name were pigs doing in the Jewish town of Gerasa? Last time I checked the eating of pork was an abomination unto God in the law of Moses (as it is to this very day in the Jewish community).

After I did a little digging, I found that the Gerasine community was located in a pretty metropolitan area, called Decapolis, which was thriving on international trades.

The Gerasenes were engaging in the farming of pigs—an animal considered unclean in their own tradition. Now, I don’t blame them; as a German I cannot imagine living without Pork and Sauerkraut; pork is very tasty. Or maybe they were only raising the pigs for the export of pork.
So let’s give these Jewish people of Gerasa the benefit of the doubt and let’s assume that they were true to God’s commands for them and for the most part didn’t actually eat the pork they were producing.

Even so, there remains a problem, an ethical problem. If they truly believed that it was a sin to eat pork, then they still participated in a bad deed to others. Greed got the better of them; they were more concerned about making a quick buck then to spread the Good News.

We can certainly say that the Gerasines were full of arrogance, a judgmental attitude and total indifference to their neighbors. If they had loved their neighbors, they certainly would not have sold them something that they believed to be an abomination unto God. This community engaged in a religious hypocrisy that was probably ten times as bad as the hypocrisy of the Pharisees Jesus condemned so often.

I can hear them saying to themselves: “o these Gentiles are going to hell anyhow, so what difference does it make if we sell them the unclean meat.”
So, this community of the Gerasines were part of a religious community gone astray, there existed an unspoken agreement among the community members to carry on with their lives as though everything was kosher—nobody mentioned the sin that was like the proverbial elephant in the middle of the room.
The Gerasine community committed enormous sins which they were rationalizing away, pushing away, and pretending it wasn’t there.

What happens in such a community, in order to

1) preserve a sense of personal and communal righteousness and

2) as a way to externalize (push away) the problem is that someone gets scape-goated.

The demoniac was just the right person to fit the bill. He was a little strange to begin with; he was different, maybe a little crazy; he was on the margin of this community, just the right target. This man is not a bad man, he may have been ill…but somehow all the demons of his family, his neighborhood, his town, have been dumped on him.

He is made to carry the prejudice, the greed, the envy, the violence, the hypocrisy of the town and its people. And everyday subconsciously the townspeople can pat themselves on the back and tell themselves that they are good people. “I am glad that I am not bad like that demoniac out in the tombs.”

Point 2:
In light of this we can now understand why the people of the town were afraid after Jesus had healed the demoniac. Instead of being happy about a wonderful healing of one of theirs, they asked Jesus to leave the area.
Why? Because now they had to deal with their own problems, their hypocrisy and sins and could no longer project them onto the mad demoniac. No one to blame but themselves!

In order to fully understand the significance of their fear and anger, we need to look at the conversation Jesus had with the demons. Jesus addresses what he thought was one demon in the man and they respond, our name is legion, for we are many. A Roman legion was made up of one thousand soldiers, so that gives us an indication of the extent of demonization that was going on by these town people.

What happens next is very significant: the demons ask Jesus not to send them back into the abyss. Why would Jesus even negotiate with demons. I thought we weren’t supposed to bargain with the devil? What looks like a negotiating on Jesus’ part with the demons turns out to be not so.
Jesus never had the intention to send them into the abyss. Jesus ordered the demons to go where they belonged in the first place: the pigs.
That’s where the problems and the sins of the Gerasines started and that’s where the demonization, the externalization, and the projection needed to be directed back to. Jesus directly addresses the heart of the problem of this community. The demons enter into the herd of pigs and the pigs stampede over the cliff and drown in the lake. Problem solved. The community is seized with fear, because they realize that God had seen right through their hypocrisy, had seen their sin and had stopped them in their tracks.

Point 3:
The lesson that’s in here and that we can and should learn this morning is that externalization and scape-goating is not a solution to our sins and problems.
Last Sunday, we had the men from the Bowery mission here and we heard testimony after testimony on how “bad” these people were before they found God.

It is easy for us to look at them and feel better about ourselves. I was so glad that Jackie Black in the second service got up and said. “the truth is that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And she continued: “yes, these men may have messed up in a bad way, but we all have sins, “and then she asked us point-blank: “so, what is your sin?”
What are your demons? What are my demons?

This morning God gives us a choice to recognize our own demons and to start overcoming them in his power. But the first step is to recognize that we do need to be honest with ourselves and that we need to stop externalizing our problems, our sins.

I remember how many years ago I was part of a prayer group in church, made up of couples that were facing marital problems. I was amazed to see the externalization that was going on in this group: instead of honestly addressing their own problems and faults, these people prayed and prayed to God to break what they perceived was a curse put on them by Satanists. Somehow they believed that local Satanists had banded together to put curses on Christian couples in order to destroy good Christian families.

Talk about externalizing an inner problem. Do you think that these folks would have benefited from a seminar on marriage conflicts instead of praying fervently against the Satanists?

Let me set the record straight: it is not easy to deal with our own inner demons. It is easier to project them on to somebody else, our own demons of addiction, gluttony, selfishness, envy, pride, materialism, violence, or whatever else they may be.

So how do we overcome our inner demons?

The first step is to be honest with ourselves and to recognize our faults and shortcomings. There is a tremendous healing already in this first step. Initially, it may be painful to admit to ourselves that we are indeed sinful and that we have caused others pain, but once we get past the initial shock, we feel that now that we’re honest with ourselves we can start working to get to the root of our inner struggles.
Such as… our hurts, pains, our struggles, the unresolved stuff, baggage from your family or origin….our addictive behaviors and inappropriate desires, such as the desire to strike out, to inflict damage…or our desire for more and more to gratify our egos.
Owning up to our demons is important on two fronts:

1) Only if we know and are fully aware of our weaknesses do we have a better chance to avoid the temptations and the sin that so easily entangles us.
2) There is an unprecedented and refreshing freedom found in acknowledging that we are not perfect. We often tend to shine our halos and pretend to the world that we are the perfect church with perfect Christians, think about it; that is exactly where the Gerasines went wrong. Now think about how much less pressure there is on us when we can just acknowledge to everybody: I’m a sinner, but I’m a pardoned sinner? It’s like a burden off your shoulders: now I can relax and just be myself. So what? I am a sinner; I sin. But I also ask for forgiveness and try to make right the things I messed up. I may be a sinner, but I’m a pardoned sinner. That puts God’s grace right into the spotlight, doesn’t it? For it is all about God’s utterly amazing grace, God’s unconditional love and God’s continual care for us.

Finally, we need to work through our issues and our sins with all the means of faith Jesus has provided for us:
Confession and pardon (what a powerful means of healing that God has provided us through Christ)--elaborate
Certain issues can only be overcome with the help of a confidant, or a pastor, or, in some cases a counselor. We are called to help one another in our struggles and to pray for one another

When we start facing our demons with honesty, when we start using the means of grace God has provided for us, the result will be a healing in the order of the Gerasene demoniac. We, too, will be able to proclaim throughout the city how much Jesus has done for us. Amen.