From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

In the Gospel reading this Sunday there is the casting out of demons—or more precisely, the driving out of demons into a herd of swine who then hurled themselves over a cliff.

There are some very interesting interpretations of this reading.

For example, the Roman legion that occupied the area had a boar on their banner. So one interpretation is that this represented a kind of metaphorical rejection of Roman occupation. Other interpreters have wondered about the poor fellow who owned the pigs. Does he ever get recompense for his livelihood being driven off the cliff?

I think perhaps, though, it’s best to step back from dwelling too much on the details and extrapolations and, instead, simply look at the story.

Jesus finds a man who is not himself. He has no control over himself for he has been taken by a legion, a multitude, of demons. They have debased and distorted him beyond recognition. Who knows all the forms this took but we can imagine that he’s been driven mad trying to rediscover himself amidst the clamor and chaos of this occupation of his soul.

This man meets Jesus who drives the occupying legion from him. The cacophony is stilled and the man hears clearly again. He hears the still, small voice of God calling his heart to peace and back to himself.

How easy is it for us to get claimed by destructive, angry, cacophonous voices that divide us from one another, from our own self, and from God? There are the obvious ones such as the noise from cable news or social media. But there are also the less obvious ones such as voices of long ago still telling us we’re of little worth. The voices that try to persuade us that we’re something less than what God made us—something less than beloved.

It feels like so much of our world is an angry, occupying force fighting for control—for control of us, of our culture, of our politics, of nations. People are occupied by voices that demand attention, fealty, power, or wealth and they seem at war with others occupied by the same.

We enact these same kinds of violence in small ways in our own lives: we need to be right; we need to be in control; we need to be given what’s ours; we need to be obeyed; we are owed something.

Jesus meets this man and simply lets him be. Jesus lets him be who God made him to be. Evil put the man at war with himself, consuming who he is for the sake of the occupying voices. God calls, too, but he calls with a voice that does not occupy or manipulate. God’s voice opens the man’s eyes, heart, and soul to the truth standing before him.

In driving out the occupying legion in one man’s soul, Jesus calms another storm. We will see him on a boat, bringing peace to stormy waters. He’ll remind the sea that it needn’t rage. He does the same for us. He can bring us back to ourselves—back to the place where he first knew us, back to one breath and one heartbeat at a time.

It’s easy for us to lose ourselves to rage, distraction, or even to a bland indifference. Jesus can drive those forces from us and remind us what it means to be fully alive—not captured or captive—but free to follow where he leads.

This is one possibility in our life of prayer, worship, and service. The more opportunities we take to meet Jesus, the more opportunity he has to be the voice that guides and leads us away from all that would claim us as anything less than his own.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert