Sermon Jul 13, 2025
Vicar Karla Leitzman
Luke 8:26-39
Well, there is certainly a lot going on in today’s gospel story. We’ve got demons and pigs and drowning and boats- oh my! When you hear the word demon, what do you first think of? For me, who really loves the original Exorcist movie from 1973, which is a must watch for me every fall right around Halloween, I will always think of the possessed child who can rotate her head all the way around. It is apparent that she is literally oozing with evil. Even if what you think of isn’t that particular scene, I would wager that your image is equally evil and vile, the antithesis of goodness and happiness.
This story is fairly early in Jesus’ life and ministry as depicted in the book of Luke. Prior to this, we don’t have a lot of stories about his miracles, life, and ministry. So it is because of that it is pretty shocking that this man described here is actually the first person to overtly name Jesus’ divinity. This disheveled, naked, probably terrifying by all accounts, man is the first person to name Jesus’ divine identity. And, truly, what could be more indicative of Jesus’ ministry? That the man, fully divine and fully human, is named first by the outsider and the ostracized.
This man would have been considered the lowest of the low, and his presence exhibits that every society through every space and time, has had people that they don’t really know what to do with so they ignore them. They push them to the sides, the margins, the corners. And here, the ignored, marginalized person is precisely who emerges as the one to listen to. The person who everyone else has clearly tried to stay away from is the first to know who Jesus is.
In this early chapter of Luke, we see Jesus crossing a boundary and traveling to a new country that is not Galilee. This matters because this is Gentile land, not a Jewish stronghold. This means that Jesus and his disciples were now considered to be outsiders, foreigners. And right away when he steps off the boat, not only does this ostracized person see him, but he recognizes him and names him as God’s son. It’s not the leaders, the powerful, those deemed important or powerful by society- no, not by a long shot.
And, did you notice how Jesus doesn’t run away. He doesn’t ignore this person, no, he doesn’t fear him. Instead, he asks his name.
The name “Legion” is loaded to be sure. During this time, a legion would have been a militarized unit of 6,000 Roman soldiers. 6,000 soldiers, of which there were many, whose sole job was to protect the power of the Roman Empire, to put down anyone who subversed that power and might. The demon’s response naming itself, Legion, means the demon is saying there are many of us. Like the legions of Roman soldiers your followers have been brutalized by, we are mighty and do much to pull people away from God’s directives to love and care for others. Protecting power and increasing brutal occupation of foreign lands is our business.
Jesus sees this man for who he is underneath all of the dirt and grim and ways he is marginalized by society. A quote from author Parker Palmer comes to mind, “ The human soul doesn’t have to be advised to be fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed, to be seen, heard, and companioned exactly as it is.” As humans, it is so often in our nature to want to fix problems. To solve issues. We want to listen to someone share a problem and immediately offer a solution to fix it. But, sometimes the greatest power is to be found in the ways we simply answer our call to accompany and really look to see and understand others.
Vicar Judith Jones serves multiple Episcopaleon congregations in Oregon and wrote the following in her commentary on today’s passage:
“How many people in our world are haunted by a traumatic past and tortured by memories? How many live unsheltered and inadequately clothed because of social and economic forces that they cannot overcome, no matter how hard they struggle? How many are imprisoned, regarded as barely human, excluded, cast out? How many are enslaved by addictions no longer knowing where the addiction ends, and their own selves begin? Where do the governing authorities separate people from their families, denying them the opportunity to seek better lives? Where do occupying armies still brutalize entire communities and hold them captive to fear? Jesus comes to challenge and cast out every power that prevents us from living fully and freely as human beings created in God’s image. Jesus claims sovereignty not just over our souls, but over our lives here on earth. Many among us resist that news, finding deliverance from Legion too frightening, too demanding, too costly. But those whom Jesus has healed and freed know that his liberating love is indeed good news, the gospel that he commands us to proclaim throughout our cities and towns. Still today God is at work in Jesus, bringing God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.”
Jesus comes to bring something better than legions of soldiers who brutally keep the status quo, who maintain the power of the ruling empire at any and all costs. Jesus comes to show us there is more to us than the darkest pieces of ourselves that both we hide, and the pieces of ourselves that society tells us we need to put over there, in the margins, in the corners. Those pieces we are ashamed of. The pieces that pull us away from God’s abundance and freely offered grace.
How do we today witness those we define as “other” be the ones who notice things the rest of us don’t? When we put ourselves in the shoes of these “others” what can we see? Public Theologian and writer Nadia Bolz Weber created an online blog a few years ago entitled, “The Corners” which is a somewhat curious title. She was centering the stories of those who are pushed to the furthest corners of society’s margins. In one of her first posts and introductions to her writings, she wrote, “It may feel as though some of us have been relegated to the corners, but here’s the thing: from the corners, I can see the whole room. I love the corners. I always have. It is where I will always choose to sit, because I love outcasts and the girls who talk too loud. I love humor that comes out of lives that have not been easy. I love sober drunks, single dads, sex workers and the guy who lost a leg in the war. These are my people. So here’s what I hope: that what is posted here is water, God willing, for those planted in the corners.”
Friends in Christ, this week and beyond, may we commit ourselves to look for Christ in the corners. To see the face of God in those who the world ignores, who the world wants nothing to do with like the man inflicted by this Legion of demons in today’s stories. Because these corners are the places where Jesus showed us and told us he would always be.