Where is the Devil?

"It always makes it easier to fight a
war if you demonize people so that
you're not killing human beings, you're killing the devil."

________

Retired Army Col. Harry Summers

1. What is the problem here?
Where is the devil? Are we created in his image? Or is he created in ours?

2. In what way are we participants?
How do we demonize others?
Our Western religious history is replete with the demonization of other persons or peoples.
In nearly all occasions this was purported to be "God's will."
Whose responsibility is this?

3. How do we turn this to resolution?
For those who have been demonized, how do we return them to the proper relationship in light of our shared faith and humanity?

In today's choice from the lectionary, Luke: 8:26-39, we look at the healing of the Demonaic by Jesus.
Where is the human being in this story?
How does this healing get "fleshed out" in the end?

Luke 8:26-39



8:26 Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.


8:27 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.

8:28 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"--


8:29 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.)


8:30 Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" He said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him.


8:31 They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.


8:32 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.


8:33 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.


8:34 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.


8:35 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.


8:36 Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.


8:37 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.


8:38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying,


8:39 "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.

Walter Morton for Journey Across the Line