When I was at Fuller Seminary, I took a course called “Power Encounter” taught by Dr. Charles Kraft. I did so because it was highly recommended by my friend, Emily. One of the key texts for the course was our passage for today, and its parallels in the Gospels according to Mark and Matthew. Here we see an encounter between two powers – the demonic spirits, collectively called Legion, and Jesus, or the Holy Spirit empowering him.

To be quite frank, and I have told Emily this, I did not like the course for two main reasons. First, while the course did correctly identify this encounter as one between two conflicting powers, it failed to reach beneath the surface of the text to uncover what was happening in the encounter. 

Second, Dr. Kraft had his teaching assistants make the students practice exorcism on each other, first attempting to identify our demons and then attempting to cast them out. Apart from my reservations about thinking of every person as probably possessed by a demon, I thought this was too casual an approach to something as potentially dangerous as demon possession. And I refused to participate.

So today, we can set things straight. Don’t worry, I won’t be acting as an exorcist for any of you. But we can go beneath the surface of the text and discover what is really happening in this encounter.

I don’t know about you, but something has always struck me as misplaced in this story. It just does not seem to belong where it is placed in the story. It should come elsewhere, for sure, but not where it actually appears. And it is this misplaced element that actually holds the key to understanding this passage.

Any guesses what this misplaced element might be?

In a nutshell, fear.

Today’s passage forms a single movement with and therefore belongs with the passage that comes before this, in which Jesus stills the stormy waters. In that story we see a genuine cause for fear. The waters of the lake had become stormy and were threatening to pull the boat under. 

In today’s passage too we have a genuine reason for fear. Here was a demon possessed man, who roamed about the cemetery and who repeatedly and violently broke his restraining chains to escape.

Yes, there was sufficient reason for fear. But in our passage the fear does not arise when the man is still possessed, but only after Jesus has restored him and healed him. Twice, Luke tells us about the fear of the people. 

First, the people saw the previously possessed man, now in a sound state of mind, and are afraid. Then, when the eyewitnesses tell the townsfolk how Jesus had cast out the demon, the people are overcome with fear.

Why did they get afraid when they saw the healed man? And why was their fear amplified when they heard about what Jesus had done?

The timing of their fear seems to indicate that they were not afraid of the man when he was demon possessed. He may have been prone to violent outbursts, but the townsfolk were not afraid of him. But something about the healing and the healer terrified them. What? And why?

A big clue that something was truly amiss is in the words uttered by the man. When he sees Jesus approaching, he says, “I beg you, don’t torture me.” Why would he say this? Why would anyone think of torture?

I take my dog, Sherlock, for walks daily. In our neighborhood, as in any neighborhood in India’s cities, there are a number of stray dogs. Some of them are quite territorial. But they are also pack animals. And you can see the territoriality of the animals when there are two or more of them for they sometimes start to bark and also advance upon us.

However, if I just bend down, they scamper away. Why? They have past experiences of having stones thrown at them and associate my action as being a precursor to throwing stones. While I have no such intention, they do not know that. They only associate a movement with the harm inflicted on them in the past. I may be a bad person for reminding them of past traumas. But I have no intention of hurting them in any way.

The thing is we humans also only have our experiences to go by. We expect what we have reason to expect given our past experiences. 

In other words, the man thought that Jesus was there to torture him only because he had previously been subject to torture. So the question arises, “At whose hands was he tortured?”

The Gospels do not address that question directly, only hinting at the possible reason. The man was kept in chains, but not chains strong enough to hold him. This was the Iron Age and surely they could have made strong enough chains to hold him even when he was most agitated. Yet, somehow he is able to escape often, indicating that the weak chains were part of the design.

And where was he tortured? He is wandering among the tombs, naked and without a shelter. It is there that he sees Jesus and concludes that Jesus was going to torture him. Could it be that he was there at the tombs because it was a place he could be away from others – the others who would torture him? Could it be that he was naked because his being exposed would make others – the others who tortured him – think twice about coming close to him?

And when was he tortured? Was he constantly tortured? Unlikely. He was there near the tombs and asked Jesus not to torture him, implying that he was not being tortured then.

And why was he tortured? Ah, there is the all-important question. But before we answer all these questions, let us look at what the demons say.

Jesus asks the man his name. Please note that Jesus does not ask the demons their names. He addresses the man. But it is the demons who answer. They say that their name is Legion and Luke explains that this is because the man was possessed by many demons.

Is it not strange? Is it not strange that, despite there being quite a few townsfolk available, the demons had all gathered to possess a single individual? Now it may be true that misery loves company. But if the intentions of demons is malevolent, and I think we can all agree on that point, then would you not expect them to prefer to ruin more lives than just one? But here all of them have gathered to torment one single individual. Why? Why did they willingly restrict themselves to one person?

I suggest that we have here an extreme case of scapegoating. Let me explain.

The townsfolk had made an agreement with the demons that they would allow the demons to torment this one person and that they would do nothing to exorcise the demons from him. In return, the demons would not torment the townsfolk, leaving them alone.

And when there was any trouble in the town, if there was any crisis, the townsfolk would have someone to blame – the possessed man – because they knew he was possessed. 

They would normally keep him chained in the village. And when there was a crisis, they would torture him to such an extent that he would break his chains and flee, trying to get away from him tormentors. He would flee to the cemetery. But in finding a common enemy – the possessed man – the townsfolk would be able to reconcile. This mechanism is what brings Pontius Pilate and Herod together after both of them find a common enemy in Jesus.

The townsfolk, rather than seek to save the man from the ravages of the demons, had purchased their own safety at his expense, allowing the demons to have their way with him.

More than that, they would torture him in times of crisis, driving him into the desolate places like cemeteries, much like the ritual scapegoat was driven into the desert. There in the cemetery he would wander naked and, according to Mark’s Gospel, inflict harm on himself by cutting himself. Perhaps he was trying to kill himself and end the never ending torment at the hands of the demons and the townsfolk.

On one of these occasions, Jesus shows up. The man, expecting only torture from everyone, expects Jesus also to inflict pain. But Jesus is not there to inflict pain. Indeed, he is not even there by accident! In the previous segment of the Gospel we see Jesus telling his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” He fully intended to be there with the man.

And very likely the demons realized this. Perhaps they realized that Jesus was coming for them and tried to stop him by causing the storm on the lake. Perhaps the storm was their attempt at ensuring this power encounter did not happen.

But to their dismay, Jesus calms the waters and reaches their haunting grounds. The power encounter they hoped to avoid was suddenly thrust upon them. And Jesus drives them from the man, and restores the man to his senses. 

But what happened to the demons? It is easy to think that they were destroyed when the pigs plunged to their deaths. However, the demons are not physical entities. They do not die like mortals. The drowning of the pigs would have had no effect on the demons. The demons would still be alive and raring to become active in ruining someone else’s life.

This is what the townsfolk feared. They knew how destructive these demons were. And they had made a pact with the demons, sacrificing the freedom of the man in exchange for their own. They had agreed that the demons would torment the man and leave them alone.

But Jesus had come along and had annulled that agreement. With the agreement broken, the demons were now free to act as they wished. And the townsfolk feared that the demons would now come after them.

Seeing the man restored and in his right senses, the townsfolk knew that something had gone wrong with their agreement. They knew that the man could only be whole if the demons had gone from him. And they were afraid.

And when they discovered that the man had been healed by Jesus and that Jesus had sent the demons into the pigs, they were even more afraid because they knew that the demons were now not in the pigs anymore, but roaming the region to possess more people.

The townsfolk had had a utilitarian approach to the problem of the demons. Better one person suffer than the entire town. But now they knew that Jesus did not hold their perspective. He was not willing to give the demons any leeway when it came to possessing humans. 

And they were afraid of what he might do next. They were afraid because they knew now that Jesus knew what they had done. They knew that Jesus knew of the horrific pact they had made with the demons. And they knew that Jesus did not approve. And they knew that Jesus must be more powerful than the demons if he had driven them out.

What they did not know was how his disapproval of their pact would be expressed. Would he take his anger out on them? Would he permit some other group of malevolent powers to come and torment them? Would he inflict pain on them just as they had inflicted pain on the man? 

When someone is in a position to harm you and you do not know what their intentions are, it is a scary place to be. And so we can understand the seemingly misplaced fear that the townsfolk had. Jesus had shown himself to be more powerful than the legion of demons. 

But this is the first time Jesus moves into predominantly Gentile territory on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. Till now he had focused primarily on the western parts, which, though influenced by Roman and Greek culture, were still predominantly Jewish. And now for the first time the Gentiles on the eastern parts got to experience Jesus’ ministry.

And it was scary. They did not know him and therefore did not know what his priorities were nor what his agenda was. 

But if, as the eye witnesses reported, the demons begged Jesus not to send them to the abyss, then this man was more powerful than any they had encountered so far.

This healing, that, for the previously possessed man, was a source of comfort and restoration, was, for the townsfolk, an absolutely terrifying miracle. They had made a deal with the devil at the expense of the man. And it had worked out till then. 

But now the best they could expect was for all of them to get possessed by the demons that no longer indwelt the dead pigs. Can you imagine a state where the best one could hope for is demon possession? 

And this is because they did not know Jesus and thought he was like any other exorcist – providing temporary relief and unleashing evils when things didn’t go his way.

If they, however, had bothered to get to know Jesus, it would have been different. They would have realized that Jesus’ fight was with the demons and not with them. They would have realized that he would deliver them from all the demons by the power of his command. 

But because they drove Jesus away, I shudder to think of what happened to them after this terrifying healing.