First Sunday after Trinity

Readings: Isaiah 65. 1-9; Psalm 22. 19-28; Galatians 3. 23-29; Luke 8. 26-39 (view all)

A few months ago, my wife and I began reading the Harry Potter books to our daughter Evie. One of the things I’d forgotten about the early books in the series, is the dramatic relationship between Harry and the Dursleys, the relatives who are bringing him up when we first meet him.

To them, Harry is an inconvenience to be kept hidden and swept under the carpet. He is kept in the cupboard under the stairs and forced to hide away when guests visit in case he causes a scene.

But this is of course what always ends up happening! We’ve just begun the third book where at the beginning Harry accidentally causes his aunt to blow up like a balloon until she fills the dining room, and later has to be carefully deflated by the Ministry of Magic. 

The horrible way in which the Dursleys treat Harry, and the ways in which they get their just desserts, are of course a source of great humour. However, in today’s gospel reading we encounter someone else who is being swept under the carpet in a far more serious and dehumanising way.

What can we learn from Jesus’ encounter with this man, and the responses of those in the passage, to help us to live as followers of Jesus today? 

This man, again whose name we never learn, is clearly a huge inconvenience to the people of the city that Jesus is visiting. In his gospel, Luke presents him in about as desperate circumstances as you can imagine, held captive by a legion of demons who have made his life impossible. 

Unlike the girl we met a few Sunday’s ago — whose demonic possession presented a good money-making opportunity to her owners — the reality of this man’s captivity is that he is reduced to about as degrading an existence as you can imagine. We’re told that, ‘For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.’ The people of the town had taken to chaining him up, shackled and guarded, and yet they were still not able to contain him. 

It is an impossible situation — until Jesus arrives and changes everything, setting him free and restoring his humanity. His life is transformed, and the town is freed from the impossible situation which has been hanging over them all.

But the townspeople are not happy. 

Surely they should be pleased with what has happened — and yet we’re told that instead it is them who are now held captive, ‘seized with great fear.’

Why? Perhaps because their real concern is the loss of their pigs, whom Jesus had sent the demons into. To them, this man had become a necessary inconvenience, someone to feel sorry for, but to avoid wasting too much time, effort and money on — and now Jesus has come and healed him at the cost of a whole herd of valuable livestock. 

Or perhaps, we should be more generous to them. Maybe they are simply terrified by the idea that such a transformation could happen. Maybe their lives are comfortable enough already that the last thing they need is Jesus coming around and turning everything upside down. 

And so Jesus does what they ask and withdraws away from them.

When we encounter someone else in an impossible situation, we too can find ourselves paralysed, ‘seized’ by either fear or indifference. It can be easy to lose sight of the person, because we’re too pre-occupied with the pigs. If we are really honest with ourselves, perhaps there are times in our lives when we too beg Jesus to withdraw, because we aren’t ready for the transformation which inviting him in will bring — I certainly know that at times this has been true of me. 

And yet, for the man who meets Jesus, it changes everything. It is hard to imagine a more dramatic transformation, from the beginning picture of him stalking the tombs, naked and insane — to afterwards, when he is sitting at Jesus’ feet, ‘clothed and in his right mind.’ Jesus sets him free and gives him back his humanity, gives hi