A Fresh Perspective

This text is a religious text in a sacred book. Religious texts are metaphorical texts. All of them. That doesn’t mean there are no memories or historical echoes – there surely are. However, historical references or allusions are secondary to the main purpose of sacred texts. I don’t know (and the scholars don’t know either) exactly what pre-modern people in the days of an enchanted universe believed about demonic possession. Maybe it was then like it is now. Maybe there were a number of different views. Who knows? This text has relevance to us as a proclamation of the transforming power of God. I said last week that the kingdom of God – (which I like to call the kin-dom of God, because it’s really about relationships) – the kin-dom of God has to do with the dynamic power of love at work in our world to transform us individually and to transform the systems, organizations, and institutions of society. In today’s Gospel reading we see the power of the kingdom, which is the power o...

When Jesus sets forth his agenda in terms of Isaiah 61 in his synagogue sermon in Nazareth, one of the key aspects of his work is to liberate the oppressed. This story provides a beautiful picture into what that involves. Here is a lost, tortured, battered soul. We are not shown his descent into this state, so we do not know how he became so tortured, so demonized, so broken and lost. He does not know who he is. He is violent, unpredictable, and alone. I suspect that if one could profile all those who have joined terrorist groups over the years one might something similar. He lives among the tombs, which is to say that he lives in the realm of death. That is, he lives in a state of life-diminishment, a state of dehumanization, a state of alienation and oppression. It would be a grave mistake for us to think that this was all his own doing. We do not know the travesties and tragedies he suffered through. We know nothing about his life growing up, what events transpired or e...