Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, June 22nd, 2025
Many of you know that my husband John lives with dementia. Over the past six years his condition has progressed, such that although he is still physically very strong and active, his mind has become increasingly confused and chaotic. This means that his behavior is also increasingly chaotic – moving furniture around, stripping the sheets and blankets from the bed, tearing up paper and sometimes even clothing. He is not angry when he does this – he simply has work to do, and his mind is unable to focus or control that work.
It sometimes feels like he has a demon, or many demons, like the man that Jesus encounters in the country of the Gerasenes. I am not rationalizing or explaining away the ancient experience of demons, but I am trying to draw connections in my own life, in our own experience. This man in our gospel story is tormented by forces that are beyond his control, that seem to have, power to drive him to chaotic and destructive behavior, and as such they seem to have intention, and agency. These forces seem personal.
I do not know whether there are actually such things as demonic beings, but I do know that this experience and the effect are real: the pain and tragedy of what is happening to this human being is real, leaving him naked and living among the dead, exiled from home and family and all those who love him.
It can be terrifying to be confronted with such chaos. We do not know what to do with it; all we know is that it is unsettling and threatening everything around us, and that something needs to be done. We try to control the chaos, force it into submission. I understand why this man’s community tried to keep him under guard and bound him with chains, because I do the same thing at home, not literally with chains, but with misbegotten tools of frustration and physical control. I know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by changes in a person I know and love, and to feel the weight of being responsible for their well-being in the face of frightening changes.
I constantly find myself reacting, trying to control or at least contain my husband’s behavior, even though such reactions are usually futile. My response is instinctive, born of fear and a sense of helplessness. I cannot heal my husband. I cannot fix what is wrong, and every instinct tells me not to give in to the chaos that is being created. I rail against it, I fight it with every bone in my body, to keep it from turning my entire household upside down. But I only make it worse by fighting against it, and I end up feeling like a bully, and sometimes, that’s what I am.
That is what we humans tend to do when faced with these demons, the forces of chaos and destruction in ourselves and in our society. Our ingrained response is to try to shackle those who are most damaged, bring them forcibly into line, because we don’t know what else to do. It is not just in our personal relationships that we do this. We do this as a society as well. Look at our prison system – we cannot imagine any other way to deal with people who commit crimes than to corral them in cages with very little concern for real rehabilitation. Those who are corralled are the very people who, though they have committed crimes, are actually the ones most damaged by demons of poverty, abuse, crime, and discrimination. And we have succeeded not in expelling our demons, but in feeding them.
We are no better at dealing with forces of chaos and violence on a global scale, either. We are good at making threats, and at bombing and shooting and starving our enemies, and we are quite inept at making peace born of justice and respect. We are good at sending the police out to quell protest,
whether or not it is violent. We don’t really know any other way.
But Jesus models another way to meet our demons. While we react out of our own sense of being threatened, Jesus responds deeply to this man, to the chaos and pain that he is experiencing. While react out of concern for our own safety, Jesus faces the danger head-on in order to transform it. While we focus on the symptoms of chaos, Jesus probes its source. “What is your name?” he asks. “Legion,” the man replies – pointing to the glut of demonic forces that are tearing him apart, but also hinting at the Roman empire’s brutalization of the regions under their control.
Jesus does not shackle the person with the demon – he confronts the evil, inquires as to its identity, and brings healing. No longer naked, violent, ostracized, the man sits quietly with Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. He has been returned to himself, and to his community. Jesus has not just healed this man’s immediate suffering, but has restored the bonds between him and his community. This is healing on a systemic level, restoring this man’s sense of belonging and purpose and mending fractured relationships.
In this story we are confronted with a stark distinction between the ways of humans and the ways of God. I hear a call to recognize our own broken ways of confronting chaos and pain, and to turn to Jesus for help. I hear a call to remember that the demons in our communities, like Legion, also arise from our own version of empire: economic inequality, racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, all flowing from a social system founded on the pursuit of power and comfort and advantage.
Mostly I hear a call to examine my own life, my own relationships, the ways in which I try to contain chaos at the expense of the dignity of others, not least of all my own husband. I hear this call not because I am evil, but because I am not God, and I need God if I am to be an agent of healing rather than coercion. We all do.
I cannot control by force all the chaos that my husband’s dementia entails. Not all the pain and suffering in the world can be driven out, like demons into a herd of swine. At least not by us. We ask, what have you to do with us, Son of Most High God? You do not hide your face, as the psalmist wrote, from those who cry out to you. You are the one who brings us back to ourselves; you strengthen us to meet the chaos with hope and love.
Blessed are you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God: with you, we can face the chaos, not trying to put it in chains, but asking it to name itself, bringing it out into the open where it can be cleansed and healed. Blessed are you, Jesus, who banishes our demons and brings us back to love.
