Luke 8:26-39
Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
I didn’t plan to make today all about Juneteenth, really. Back in May, when I realized that June 19th – this newly minted National Holiday – fell on a Sunday, I thought it would be meaningful and fun to collect our Mission Sunday offering for the month in honor of the occasion. And this week I asked Jeannie if we could sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – the Black national anthem - in honor of the day. And then I saw that we’d be reading that bit from Galatians, which promises that, baptized into Christ Jesus, we are no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, but that we are all ONE, thanks to faith, thanks to the grace of our creator, and thanks to our shared humanity as children of God, too.
So I thought perhaps the stars and the lectionary and the calendar might have aligned in such a way that maybe there’s supposed to be more said and wondered about and learned, here, on this Juneteenth, after all.
I’m guessing I’m not the only one who just started learning about Juneteenth, as something worth commemorating, within the last few years or so. It was only declared a national holiday last year, but within the last 2-3 years, Juneteenth started showing up on my Google calendar, much to my surprise. It just showed up, like Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Arbor Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Flag Day, Father’s Day.
And not only was I surprised and curious about that, once I looked into it, I was a little embarrassed that I’d never been taught or told about it before, since it’s been celebrated by Black people in our country since it happened in 1865.
The short story is that June 19th – Juneteenth – marks the day in 1865 when Union soldiers finally announced to enslaved people in Texas, that they were free. What’s sad and significant and worth celebrating about Juneteenth, is that this announcement finally came to those enslaved children of God in Texas – the last state in the country to hear the news – which didn’t happen until more than two months after the end of the Civil War, which the traitorous Confederacy and those longing to keep their right to own people lost, of course. And the announcement of Juneteenth’s liberation came to enslaved Texans more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which would have otherwise, at least symbolically, granted them their freedom.
So the significance of the Juneteenth holiday is that it means to mark for our country an even fuller, more comprehensive “Independence Day,” than what the 4th of July, ever could have meant for the millions of enslaved Americans who were owned and terrorized and treated as property for so many generations. Maybe you’ve heard what Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave and Black abolitionist had to say to white people about the 4th of July holiday, back in 1852:
So, if we buy what Paul is selling in Galatians, and I hope we do – that our baptism and our faith and the abundance of God’s grace makes us one in Christ Jesus, and that we are no longer bound by the labels and limits and institutions of this world; no longer male or female (remember last week’s sermon about Pride and Pronouns?) … no longer male or female … no longer Gentile or Jew … and no longer slave or free … than the freedom and liberation of Juneteenth is quite a day worth celebrating for all of us, not just our Black neighbors, friends, brothers, sisters, and fellow citizens.
Which brings me to Jesus and this strange story from Luke’s Gospel. It’s especially strange when we take it at face value and try to make 21st Century sense out of this moment when Jesus exorcises a host of demons from a possessed man, sends those demons into a herd of pigs, who are then driven madly into a lake where they drown because, apparently, even though fat floats, these pigs couldn’t swim.
Well, I learned a while ago that some smarter people than me believe this story – like so many stories in Scripture – might have more meaning if we read it literately, rather than just literally. (It’s hard to take this story literally, anyway, when we’re given the impression that Jesus arrives in a boat, on the shores of Gerasa, which was a town 25-30 miles inland from any significant body of water.)
Anyway, these wise scholars point out that the occupying Roman army had a history of terrorizing the Jews in the region of Gerasa, so that when that possessed man names his demon “Legion,” a word used by Rome to quantify its military might, and when that “Legion” of demons gets cast into some unholy, unclean, symbolically sinful swine as far as Jews were concerned, and then drowned, anyone listening to this story in First Century Palestine, would have connected that demonic “Legion” to the “Legions” of the oppressive Roman Empire and realized that Rome just got owned by that Jew, from Nazareth, named Jesus.
The moral and message of the story, then, would have been one of hope and vindication and justice and joy that the Kingdom of God, in Jesus, was more powerful even than the empires of this world. And, of course, that God, in Jesus, always stands for and stands with the outcasts, the outsider, and the oppressed in this world.
So I see a lot of common ground between what Jesus is up to with the possessed man and the Gerasenes and what happened for the enslaved people in our own country a few generations ago: as always, Jesus’ message is one of good news for the poor, freedom for the oppressed and release for the captives. Happy Juneteenth!
Sadly, the other common ground we can find in this story is that not everyone gets that, or wants that, or is willing and able to hear that message of good news.
In Gerasa, it was the swineherds and the townspeople who missed the point. The swineherds were probably mad that their valuable property – all of that livestock – was lost and gone forever. This is, of course, what upset so many slave holders, and the Confederacy, in general, back in the 1860’s, too.
And who knows what made the average bear in Gerasa so afraid that day – that a miracle had happened?; that a possessed man had been made well?; that an outcast had been welcomed in?; that they were being asked to look at him and at themselves and their past treatment of him differently because of what Jesus had done?
Maybe all of that is the kind of thing that made so many – and still makes so many – uncomfortable and unwilling to acknowledge the beauty and fullness of what Juneteenth represents. Maybe all of that is why it took so long for the last enslaved people in our country to get news of their liberation … because their enslavers couldn’t see their humanity or if they could, they refused to acknowledge or atone for how they had oppressed them so sinfully. Maybe it’s why there were armed white people protesting and terrorizing a Juneteenth celebration in Tennessee, just yesterday.
In that same speech about the Fourth of July, by Frederick Douglass, he also says simply, “Oppression makes a wise man mad.” And maybe that’s what was up with that guy who was possessed and cast out and living in the tombs of Gerasa back in Jesus’ day.
“Oppression makes a wise man mad.” I think Jesus would concur. And I think this miracle with the possessed man, the exorcised demons and the drowned pigs is a picture of God’s judgement against oppression of any kind. I think it is a picture of God’s call for justice in an unfair world. And I think it’s an invitation, on a day like Juneteenth, to celebrate that justice when it comes, to work toward more of it however we’re able, and to hope for that kind of liberty and justice for all – and mean it, every day.
Amen
NOTES:
You can read the entirety of Frederick Douglass’ speech HERE.
There’s a great chapter about Juneteenth in Clint Smith’s book How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.
