After Thoughts: Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 8:26-39

There are many ways to approach the text of the Bible and one of my favorites is ‘relationship.’ Reading the Old and New Testaments through this lens helps to bring understanding about God’s relationship to His creation (especially we human creatures) along with insight into our relationships with one another. Luke 8, from whence this past Sunday’s Gospel lesson comes, is rich in lessons about relationship.

The first three verses are about the people who are with Jesus. This is pretty cool – he obviously didn’t need co-workers, he could have done it all himself, but he worked in a team. Then in verse 19, he turns relationship upside down – it’s not about biology or genetics or culture or race or any of those earthly things. Crazy stuff!!

Keep reading and in verse 25, right after he’s calmed the storm, the disciples are so confused. They’re wondering – who is this guy who even has control over winds and waves? They still don’t really know who Jesus is. And yet they follow, seeking relationship, searching for understanding.

And then in verse 28, a demon knows exactly who he is! “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?” The disciples, who have been with Jesus, some since the very beginning, and have seen all that he has done, still didn’t know who he was and yet here is a crazy man full of demons who calls him by name? And it gets weirder because Jesus then wants to know this man’s name. The Son of the Most High God wants to know this weirdo?

After the man is healed, Jesus restores him to relationship with his own family, just like in the previous chapter, Jesus had restored the dead man to his widowed mother. It’s all about relationship. Jesus bringing new life in dead places so that we can love and care for one another.
 
Jesus tells the man, who is desperate to follow him, to return to his home instead and to tell everyone what God has done for him. The story ends with the man proclaiming throughout the city what Jesus has done for him. In the NRSV, the RSV, the KJV, and the NIV, it is the same. Jesus says to tell what God had done. The man goes and tells what Jesus has done. He got it. Jesus and God are one and the same. Even the disciples hadn’t got there yet.

God longs to know us by name. Jesus even ventures into creepy, dark, dead places to reach out and ask – what is your name? It starts with this relationship between Creator and Created. “Hi, God. It’s me. Jennie.” Then through that relationship, God lights my darkness, heals my hurt, brings life to my dead places, and sends me forth to share what He has done. The best way I know to do that is to reach out to all I meet and to ask – what is your name? In that knowing of my neighbor, in the intimacy of relationship, I am able to move beyond the conventional confines of who my family is, to overcome fear of those who are different, and to drive out the demons of anger, violence, and bigotry that seek to possess us.