Demons of Revenge (Reflections on Pentecost 2, Year C 2025)

 

Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. (Luke 8:30)

This is pretty creepy. At least I always get the creeps just a little when I read the story of the Gerasene demoniac, the Gospel reading for Pentecost 2, Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary (Luke 8: 26-39). Here’s a crazy guy with superhuman strength running around naked in a graveyard. The Bible tells us he’s possessed by a whole legion of demons, and in the world of the New Testament a demon[i] was always evil. Folks believed demons could take control of human bodies and cause mental illness or disease. They might even take control of nature and cause natural disasters. I know I’d be afraid of running into a guy full of evil spirits. Wouldn’t you? He’s like something out of a horror movie. Yikes!

I confess when I was a kid I rather enjoyed old horror movies. I even taught a film appreciation class once and discussed the evolution of the genre. I noted how the old gothic horror flicks started to disappear after World War II. Dracula and the wolfman just couldn’t compete with the real, demonic horror of bloody combat, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. The real world had become much scarier than anything Hollywood could put on film—and it still is.

The demons still possess us. Just look at what’s happening in Israel and Gaza (and now a potential war with Iran). The evil savagery of the October 7^th attack and destruction and loss of fifty thousand lives in Gaza, with the potential every day of more dead through famine and disease should fill all conscientious people with terror. We are seeing the real demons of addiction running unchained. The obsessive desire for revenge is just as addictive as alcohol or cocaine.

As we watch these horrors, it’s certainly tempting to fall victim to our own demons of despair and complacency. These are demons which really could use an exorcism. Nothing could be further from the mind of Christ than the absence of hope. The Gospel story is really about the ability to change, to banish the desire for evil, and to come to the feet of Jesus in our right minds.

I think a significant detail of this Bible story is that this tormented creature dwells in the tombs—a detail Luke emphasizes. The possessed Gerasene is in love with the dead and dwells with the morbid pain of loss. It’s like someone who has been wronged or who has survived a trauma but hasn’t really survived it because the fact of past victimhood still defines that person’s life. I had a friend in seminary who talked endlessly about AA and her alcohol recovery. She may not have been drinking, but the demon of her past addiction was as much a part of her current identity as her nights in the bars had been.

I pray for the day when the living memory of the Holocaust and the Nakba will give way to the reality of the current situation in the Holy Land. Could it be possible that young leaders will emerge who will say, “Let’s get beyond avenging past injustices. We are living with occupation and oppression and responding with terrorism. Terrorism only brings about retaliation and more oppression, and that only brings about more acts of terrorism. Enough! Let’s get out of the tombs and end the horror movie.”

There’s a legion of demons out there. There’s addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, you name it. But there’s also an addiction to revenge and the desire to control or to be right. The demons in the Gospel story beg Jesus not to send them into the abyss. They would rather enter the swine and send themselves into the abyss—an arrogant desire for control which is just as self-destructive.

What demons keep us in the land of the dead? Holding grudges? Holding on to outmoded ideas? Never admitting that we could be wrong or that someone else might have a valid point of view? Victimization or self-righteousness can become our identity. We can’t accept that our country or our political party or our religious denomination might be off track. When we get caught in these places there’s never any room for Jesus. Have you ever tried to share your faith with someone who is bathing in their own sense of indignation?

But Jesus is the only way out. Jesus leads with love, and love takes away the fear. When the fear is gone, there’s room for hope. The beauty of this Gospel story is, with the demons gone, the man is restored to his community. Sometimes we have to let some pigs die in order to be reconciled with the world.

 

[i] In case you’re interested (and why wouldn’t you be?) the Greek for this is daimaon. It once referred to any number of spirit beings who could be good or bad, but by the intertestamental period it was almost ubiquitously understood that a demon was Satan’s little helper.