"And they asked Jesus to Leave"
There is a small piece of land which has its very far northwest boundary located on the southeast portion of the Sea of Galilee. This is where today's story from the Bible takes place.
One drives down from Tiberias, today a resort town on the western side of the lake, not far from where Jesus first recruited His fishermen disciples. The road takes you past Deganya, Israel's first kibbutz. As you drive around the tip you arrive at a place that has been set aside by the Israeli government as a memorial to an Israeli citizen.
This is the ancient, Old Testament land of Gilead (as in the hymn, "There is a balm in Gilead"). If you drive further south, the road takes one through the Muslim cities of Irbid and Al Mafraq. In Jesus's day, this was land called Decapolis by the Romans. Dr. Jim Fleming, who lectured at our church earlier this year told us that we modern readers of the Bible tend to know only little villages like Nazareth, Cana or Capernaum. To the civilized urban people of Jesus's day, these were only little villages and were considered to be of little importance. See if you have ever heard of any of the cities that were considered significant in Jesus's day: Machaerus, Ptolemais Sebaste, Scythopolis and Gadera, to name a few. Do any of these sound familiar? Jesus and His friends may have been on their way to the last one I mentioned, Gadera.
Civilization had brought much to the Gadarenes. They had much to be proud of.. They had first-class baths (people still make use of the natural cold and hot springs that are to be found there). They produced philosophers including Theodorus, the founder of the first school of rhetorics (a subject still taught in universities as little as a hundred years ago) and the mathematician Philo who calculated a highly accurate figure for pi. Many Jews lived there. Galilean artisans, men from Jesus's home town, built the big synagogue, the ruins of which can be seen today. So Jesus's trip to Gadara was not a trip to the wilds, but rather a trip to the big city.
Gadera was civilized. But it had similarities to the Greek city of Philippi that I described in my sermon two weeks ago. Both places were occupied by Rome and were places where people could use ignorance and superstition to make a living. In Philippi it was two men who used a teenage girl. In Gadera, it was a witch named Philinna, not mentioned in the Bible but who appears in the archeological evidence. She was a contemporary of Jesus who, for a fee, would provide charms against the heat and headaches, charms made from a recipe of blood of boars, wolves, lions and - believe it or not - young women -- another example of young women being used by the powerful! Sounds pretty ugly to me - and pretty superstitious. The other parallel to Philippi was that Gadera was occupied by powerful but superstitious Roman legionnaires.
As soon as Jesus stepped ashore He was met by what the Bible calls a "man from the city", a man who was possessed by a legion of devils. This was a man who was kept locked up much of the time because he was considered insane and clearly a danger to the citizenry. The man apparently was something of a Hudini (spelling?), and scared the daylights out of people running around town and country in his birthday suit. Town, country and cemeteries too! They didn't bury people underground in Gadera-land. They had mausoleums and that's where the poor fellow slept.
So, imagine, it could be a bit of an adventure to take a day off and gather up the family and go visit your relatives' graves. You never knew who would pop up and scare people half to death.
Now, you would think that Jesus would be scared half to death, too. I would have been. To recap, Jesus and his trusty band of Galileans decide to go to town for a bit of evangelism. They land on shore and a naked, crazy man who has a graveyard smell accosts them. He's everything that a small-town, conservative fellow from Galilee, like Jesus would dislike. The madman lives in unclean Roman territory, lives in unclean tombs, is naked and is shouting at the top of his lungs.
Jesus exorcises (in old time parlance, "throws out") the demons from the madman. Notice that they tell the Lord that they are named "Legion", a clear reference to the hated Romans who occupy the body of the Jews's beloved country. The devils go, where else, into a herd of pigs - animals that would only be kept to feed the Roman legionnaires. And the devils are so foul that even pigs can't stand them. The animals commit suicide by running over a cliff.
This, though, is not a story about throwing out devils. (repeat) It's actually a story about healing in the midst of fear and corruption. And it's a story about evangelism. Jesus did what He often does - He saw past the devils to the real man who lived within. (repeat) He sees past all the things that possess us, that keep our better humanity from expressing itself. He could have struck the madman dead. But he saw the man within. Beneath it all was a gentle gregarious soul who would be just perfect for Jesus's mission.
You see, Jesus wasn't on His way to Gadera for culture, dinner and a show. Gadera was a superstitious place where a person, a fear mongerer, could set themselves up in business as a witch and prey on people's ignorance and superstition. He went to Gadera to deliver them from that â€" and to deliver the good news of God's redemptive love â€" that's evangelism. To accomplish this, He needed two things. He needed to help people throw off the fears that possessed them. And He needed to leave behind someone who would be a witness, a local person. He knew that he wasn't going to be among them forever. He needed someone to leave behind.
How do you "throw out" fear?
Is there fear that needs to be "thrown out?"
Are we, too, possessed by fear?
I contend that you can't hear the voice of God if you are possessed by fear. God doesn't want us to be possessed by fear and manipulated by fear mongerers. He knows that a maturing relationship with Him will only take place when people take the time to deal with their fears so that the agitation of fear can be replaced with thoughtful reflection about God. A prayer uttered in fear is sort of OK. God gets lots of those. But you can't grow in your love of God if you're possessed by fear. Growth requires nurture. You can't make someone love you by making them fear you. You can't grow in your loving relationship if you are afraid all the time.
Sometimes it's hard to hear the voice of God because we live in a culture of fear. Fear, it seems, is used to further a number of agendas. Last week, I watched CNN with the sound off and kept count of how frightening the stories were. There were 22 little stories running across the bottom of the screen. 19 of the 22 stories were frightening. Murders, trials of scary people who may get off, flawed engine parts in planes, flawed air bags in cars, people getting fat, bad diet pills, and Americans getting killed in America and everywhere else. All during this was a constant orange thing in the middle letting me know what the Terrorism level was.
I did the same thing with MSNBC and FOX. Same results. Is it any wonder that we are uneasy all the time?
Incredible as it may seem, murders and other forms of violent crime are generally down in our country. Yet polls show that for many of us the world seems a very unsafe place.
I also kept track of the commercials. There were manipulative messages everywhere. "You are getting fat and are going to end up alone and lonely. Buy our diet pill or get an exercise machine." "You are getting old and unattractive. Buy a new car." "Thieves are planning to steal your VCR. Get a house alarm."
Then I took a look at the televangelists. Same thing. Fear fear fear.
Yes, some fears are quite rational. Women are brought up to know that there are always predators out there and that they can't let their guard down anywhere. African-Americans know that the Klan is largely gone, but that there are equally frightening people out there who would love for the Klan days to come back. They're not all that distant in time anyway. (In the 1920's the Klan used to burn crosses on the land that is now the Monmouth Race Track.) Some fears are rational. We apparently came close a number of times to nuclear annihilation during the cold war.
But I'm not talking about rational fears. I'm talking about the way that fears are used to manipulate us. Everett Shostrom and Dan Montgomery ground breaking book, The Manipulators, people who exploit others "as things" and who undercut true spontaneity as well as the ability to express…directly and creatively." (p. 28) Some people make a living doing this so that they can sell a product, a political agenda or a point of view. It works. The product is sold or the politician is elected. But there is a price to be paid. We become more and more afraid. And we lose spontaneity and creative _expression. We lose dialog and thoughtful reflection. These are important to the spirit of our country and they are also important to our country's spirituality.
You don't have to be possessed by fear. The same Jesus who threw out the demons is a Good Shepherd who is looking for you and wants to be part of your life - not because you are afraid, but because He loves you. It's not about you. It's about Him - and what He wants you to become. He sees through all the demons that possess you. He knows the real you.
And His knowledge helps define you as a worthwhile, thoughtful human being.
Can't stop smoking? You don't need to be so afraid that you run to the snake oil salesmen. There are things you can do to stop smoking. More importantly, deep down past your media-imposed identity as a smoker, you are first and foremost one of His children.
Maybe We are becoming an obese nation, but that's not why marriages are failing. Can't lose weight? Don't run to the store to buy a product. See your doctor. And while you are in the waiting room, think about how Jesus sees through the terrible self-image you have of yourself. He sees the real person that you are. He wants you to throw off that fearful, soul crushing self-image.
Terrorism? They want us to be afraid. Remember that we are made of the same stuff that won WWII and endured the Civil War before that. Terrorism on our shores is not new. Wall Street was blown up shortly before WWI. Pancho Villa invaded the southwest. Insidious plots? Anarchists killed President McKinley. Nothing that we are facing is new â€" except for the introduction of the electronic media which brings these things into our living rooms and makes it possible for the news and our fears to be manipulated.
God doesn't want you to be manipulated by fear. He has ideas about how you could better spend your time.
Put aside your fears and you might hear His still voice telling you to help with Vacation Bible School or to join a Volunteers in Mission team that will build a church or school in Mexico. You may hear His voice asking you to stay at home and be a witness to His love. That's what He did that day on the shores of Gadera. Jesus saw through all the layers, all the fears, all the possessions of a man considered by all to be the lowest of the low, a man chained down by his demons in the midst of high civilization, to the man who lived within. And then He gave him a job to be a witness to Jesus and His teachings.
We read in this story that people came out of town and country and found Jesus with the madman, who by then had put on clothes and was speaking rationally. They were filled with fear and asked Jesus to leave. (repeat)
They kept the witch, but they asked Jesus to leave. The witch relieved their headaches and preyed on their fears. Jesus removed their demons. The people couldn't live with that (repeat.) Any doctor will tell you that there are times when people don't want to be healed. Jesus sometimes asked first. There's great fear of the unknown. Don't we have a saying that "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't?" They asked Jesus to leave. He did. But He left a changed man behind. In the coming days, the gregarious man, one of their own, would go to the city and tell the people he knew what had happened to him. The next time the disciples returned to this part of the world, they would find a community of believers ready to accept them.
This tells us something that recent research confirms about effective evangelism. Evangelism that depends on fear and manipulation doesn't really work. H. Eddie Fox and George E. Morris, in their book Faith-Sharing, report that research shows that manipulative evangelism has a low rate of success and even among those who are won to the gospel, 85% drop off in the following year..
But when someone shares their faith in a non manipulative simple way, when the person doing the sharing is not a stranger, but a trusted friend or acquaintance, 99%, I'll say it again, 99% of those who hear the message, 99% eventually adopt that faith and only 4% fall away later. Think of how you came to be the seeker that you are today. Did you start your spiritual journey and relationship with God because of fear? Or was there someone, your parents or someone else who was older and admired by you, who shared with you what they believed.
Don't be afraid to tell people what you believe.
Honestly be for the people you know what that special faith-sharing person was to you in your life. Try it. It works.
..
Who am I?
I am one who lives within a culture that is possessed by fear.
Who is God?
I can't know all of God, but I don't think that He wants me to be afraid all the time.
Where is the Church?
Our church teaches us not to be manipulated by fear but rather to love God, and to be courageous, intentional and thoughtful in our growing relationship with God.
Where does God want me to be?
In relationship with Him, with love, not fear, in our hearts.