Experiencing Healing

In Luke’s Gospel we heard, “people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.”

A man possessed by demons had fallen down before Jesus.  He had been bound with chains and shackles and was afraid that Jesus, like others before him, was going to torture him.  He was powerless and in bondage.  He saw Jesus and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  I beg you, do not torment me.”  He was obviously scared because “Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.”  Jesus then asked him his name.  The man said, “‘Legion’, for many demons had entered him.”

Jesus had many gifts.  One of those gifts was the ability to heal.  The New Testament scholar, Marcus Borg writes in his book, “The Heart of Christianity,” that Jesus was also a Jewish mystic, a wisdom teacher, a social prophet, and a movement initiator.”   Borg discusses the historical life of Jesus, what he refers to as the “pre-Easter” Jesus as opposed to the “Christ of Faith,” which is about our understanding of Jesus after the Resurrection.

It is helpful to summarize briefly how Borg understands the historical life of Jesus.  He notes that Jesus’ life included five distinct traits:

First, he was a Jewish mystic.  Like the formative figures in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, he often went off alone to pray.  “Stories about Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and the classical prophets portray them as people for whom God was an experiential reality.”  Jesus was like these.  He fasted, prayed constantly, and spoke of God in intimate terms.

Second, he was a wisdom teacher.  Jesus spoke of “dying to and old identity and being born into a new identity.  This “new identity and a new way of being was a life radically centered in God, in the Spirit of God Jesus knew in his own experience.”

Third, he was a social prophet.  Jesus spoke strongly about the injustices of the dominant political and economic systems of his day.  He was critical of wealth being for the few at the expense of poverty for the many.  He was a “prophet of the Kingdom of God – of what life would be like on earth if God were king and the kings and emperors of this world were not.”

Fourth, he was a movement initiator.  Jesus advocated an inclusive society that incorporated the marginalized and outcast.  He reached out to women, widows and orphans, and dined with gentiles and sinners.  The “most visible public activity” of this movement “was its inclusive meal practice.”

Fifth, Jesus was a healer.  Jesus’ healing encompassed “a wide range of phenomena.  Physical healing,… psychological healing, inner healing, healing of memories,…and also healing of societies and institutions.”  Driving the demons, the unclean spirit, out of the man demonstrated the level of Jesus’ care for those in desperate situations.  The name “Legion” that the man gave to himself means “many.”

To summarize, Jesus was a mystic, a wisdom teacher, a social prophet, a movement initiator, and a healer. Throughout his life he had an experiential relationship with God.

Why did Luke focus on the story of Jesus driving the unclean spirit, demons, out of the man’s body?  The Rev. Dr. Susanna Metz, a priest in the Diocese of Exeter, England, writes about this question in her quarterly journal, Tuesday Morning, she says, “We need to look for the underlying message and not worry about whether Jesus sent something calling itself Legion into a herd of pigs. It may not have happened exactly like that.

“Jesus truly cared for the poor and hurt of the world. Jesus was showing that God’s love included outsiders, like the gentiles.  Jesus showed that God’s power was mightier than the power of evil.”

Then, pointing out that there are some things we cannot fully understand, she says, “There are some things we have to give over to faith and the presence of mystery in our human lives, and that’s OK.  We should allow awe and wonder to fill our souls and direct our gaze toward the Almighty, who thankfully, loves us with an unconquerable love.”

Here at All Saints’ Memorial Church we have this magnificent sacred space where we can come and be still.  In our worship we can “allow awe and wonder to fill our souls” and experience the majesty and grandeur of God.  We can, as Dr. Metz says, “listen for God’s voice in the silence and in the gentle breeze.  The voice will be there.  We can imitate Jesus and open our eyes and hearts to the needs of those who are right there beside us – those we don’t see even as we step around them.  And we can pray that we will live out the pronouncement of Paul: ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’”  Amen.