Anglican Diocese of Perth

Northern Region

Bishop Farran's Sermons 2004

Parish of Lesmurdie, Sunday June 20th 2004.
(Based on Luke 8:22-9:6)

We think of the pig pejoratively. Mothers mention the pig to vent their frustration either at the condition of tidiness of a teenager's room, or the lack of manners when eating at the dining table. Colloquial talk speaks of >pigging out' insinuating overeating, gluttony - one of the seven deadly sins. The pig was associated in the earliest Christian centuries with more than just one of these deadly sins. The pig symbolised lust, greed, sloth, gluttony - almost all the sins of the flesh. To be labelled a pig was very disgraceful.

I must say that I am surprised that after the phenomenon of the Babe movies we still speak of the pig in such a disparaging way. It seemed as if Babe would reverse all the accumulated verbal slime that we had put on pigs, and that we would view the pig in a more refined, clever and delicate way. However, that has not been the case, even though there was a reported short drop in the sales of bacon immediately after the movie Babe was released.

We come to the gospel extract this morning with these thoughts about the pig in our minds. However, there is more to attend to than just the understanding of the pig as an unclean animal for the Hebrews. Although it is important to remember that the Jews were forbidden to keep pigs or to eat pork., for that lies as background to this incident.

Another significant piece of data to appreciate in the account of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac is that mantra of real estate agents, location, location, location. This healing happens in Gentile territory. Hence, the herd of swine.

This is the only piece of ministry that in Luke's Gospel Jesus undertakes in Gentile territory. This has not just a geographical importance, but also a theological importance. For the story is saying in Luke's version of the good news about Jesus that salvation (wholeness) is for everyone. More significantly, this incident is making the point of the universal scope of Jesus' power - that it is not confined to Jewish territory, but is effective everywhere.

One ancient theological view that lies behind the story in the Hebrew Scriptures of the healing of the Syrian official, Naaman, was that the power of a god was limited to the land of that god. In this world-view, the god of Israel only had power over the land of Israel. Hence, the strange request after Naaman is healed by the prophet Elisha that he be allowed to take back to Syria two mules' load of soil from Israel. Naaman intended to use this soil as a kind of prayer mat upon which he would be able successfully to connect with the god of Israel since there was this immediate link between the god and the land.

The focus of this story is the power of Jesus. The healing of the demoniac on Gentile territory establishes the universality of the power of Jesus, and its inclusiveness. There is a further point. In order to appreciate this, we must note that the section of Luke's gospel that immediately precedes this miracle is the stilling of the storm at sea.

There is a link between these two miracle stories - Jesus brings order to chaos within nature and within human beings. The same power is exercised to establish harmony. However, the more self-evident point that Luke wishes to make is that if the unclean spirits which had entered the unclean animals thought that by driving the herd of swine into the Lake they could escape Jesus' power or damage his mission, they were mistaken. The one who cast them out also controls the sea.


Luke is making the point that Jesus' power is universal in outreach and scope, and that this power is about order, integration and harmony. In other words, God in Jesus works to ensure the kind of harmony that secures human life and particularly the quality of human life. The power of Jesus works to ensure integration, what the other gospel writer John termed fulness of life'.

Each of the gospels illustrate the power of Jesus. This power is contrasted with the various other expressions of power that were current at that time. For instance, Jesus remonstrated with his disciples about how they exercised power. He taught that they were to be self-giving as they used their power, and were never to imitate the use of power by the Gentile rulers. We might update that reference by citing how current political leaders use or abuse their power.

The gospels contain a revelation about the power of God and how God uses power. We cannot simply credit our normal understanding of power or the practice of power to God. We must discern the way Jesus used power, and what were the goals of his use of power, in order to appreciate the power of God. Otherwise we might misconstrue this notion of power by thinking that God is like George Bush to the m degree.

Rather Jesus discloses that the power of God is not some assertiveness that demands recognition, but rather a self-giving that is self-effacing, that expends itself on behalf of the other. This we see in the crucifixion of Jesus where Jesus gives his all on our behalf in order to convince us that nothing will prevent him loving us - not even the grotesque pain, indignity and horrific suffering of crucifixion. This kind of self-giving, self-expending love does attract us morally, for we naturally sense its integrity. Further, we recognise that such love simply desires our good, and delights in us for who we are. Such love is assuring and affirming, maybe the only assuring and affirming love that we might possibly experience.

This is God's response using the power that is most native to God - the power of self-giving and self-expending. It is the final moral statement that God can make to us, as God appreciates the cost to us of being in the Creation. Within the complete spectrum of human history there are some who suffer a greater cost in being human than others do. The one and only historical response that God is able to make to this accumulated human suffering and misery -as typified in the demoniac- is the life of Jesus and the self-giving and self-expending of that life.

The most exquisite book written on this theme is by W. H. Vanstone Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense. Bill Vanstone wrote the book when he was about sixty. His was a brilliant mind, but he chose not to go into university life, but to work as a parish priest on new housing estates in Britain. It was out of that experience, grounded in the rough and tumble of urban life, that Bill Vanstone wrote his most amazing insights into the nature of God.

Vanstone uses this illustration of the self-giving of God to the Creation. AA doctor tells of an operation which, as a young student, he observed in a London hospital. It was the first time that this particular brain operation had been carried out in this country. It was performed by one of our leading surgeons upon a young man of great promise for whom, after an accident, there seemed no other remedy. It was an operation of the greatest delicacy, in which a small error would have had fatal consequences. In the outcome the operation was a triumph: but it involved seven hours of intense and uninterrupted concentration on the part of the surgeon. When it was over, a nurse had to take him by the hand, and lead him from the operating theatre like a blind man or a child.

Vanstone suggests that this is a good image for the self-giving of God so ultimately given in the crucifixion of Jesus. This is the cost to God of the way that God has chosen to use God's power. This was the paradox that Saint Paul kept on celebrating, that the weakness of God is stronger than the strength of humankind. And because of the inherited notions of power neither Jews nor Greeks could understand God's use of power in Jesus.

The use of power by Jesus is the kind of power that the Church talks about and with which the church seeks to live and express. We are all asked by God to use our power in self-giving. As indeed, was the healed demoniac. Remember the story, the man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with (Jesus); but Jesus sent him away. Go back home,' he said, and tell them what God has done for you'. The man went all over the town proclaiming what Jesus had done for him. (Luke 8:38-39)

Luke ends this incident with a paradigm of what conversion means: the responsibility to evangelize. The man simply tells his story and the power of the story does the work of evangelization. Luke you will notice always appends to encounters with Jesus the change in those who encountered Jesus. The change is either ethical with new behaviours or some expression of discipleship as in telling about the impact of the encounter or in praising God for the encounter.

Those who make a public commitment to turn to Christ as in Confirmation become themselves signs of the difference that the power of Jesus can make in bringing us fullness of life. There is an implicit responsibility to tell others about the good outcome from Christian believing.

This is one further message for us all. Each of us has a powerful story to tell, not for self-aggrandisement, but to disclose the power of God and to suggest its availability for others. I have been greatly privileged in my position as a bishop to have heard many, many such stories. I only wish that we shared our stories much more than we do, in unself-conscious ways. This would give us all the wider assurance that God still exercises through Jesus the same kind of power that the Gerasene demoniac encountered to his great relief and healing..