1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen. In our text from Luke 8:26-39, we see that Jesus comes to people and changes everything. “Before” is long gone. “After” is a whole new world. The message today is entitled, “Before & After,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. I recall getting a postcard in the mail a few years ago. On the front side was a question in a large, colorful font, “They were ready... Are you?” It took me a couple of seconds to figure it out. Then I noticed the tiny pictures lining the top and bottom. There were twelve sets. Each had a “before” and “after” picture of an individual man or woman. Each “before” picture was overweight and unprepared for the summer swim season. They all looked unhappy. But next to the “before” picture was an “after” picture. The “after” pictures were of the same people. But they were hardly recognizable. They were thinner, stronger, happier, and ready for the pool. This postcard was from a fitness company that was starting a ten-week kickboxing, strength-training, and nutrition challenge at a local gym. Apparently, they thought I needed some help.
3. You’ve seen this kind of thing before. “Before” and “after” ads are especially common after the holidays and before summer. There’s something about the comparison of two different images of the same person which grabs our attention. Maybe we like seeing things can change. Maybe it is because all of us, deep down, have things in our lives we would like to change.
4. It is hard to imagine a starker contrast between a “before” and “after” shot than the man in our Gospel reading from Luke 8. Notice how Luke describes the “before” shot. This man was out of his mind. He was dangerous, unfit for society. He was possessed, but not by a single demon. A legion of demons had taken up residence in him. A legion was a unit of Roman soldiers numbering around six thousand. Can you imagine the damage that thousands of demons were inflicting on this poor man? As a result, he wandered among the tombs in isolation, without clothing, home, or community. The town would not tolerate him. They would chain him up and lock him down. But even then, he would break loose and be driven into the wilderness by the demons. The “before” shot of this man is tragic. We can only imagine the pain in his family, the fear of his neighbors, the shame, and the sorrow he experienced.
5. But, while Jesus is outnumbered, he is not outmatched. Pay attention to the words here in Luke 8 and you’ll find out who is in control of the battle. It’s Jesus. The demons are begging Jesus not to obliterate them completely by sending them into the abyss. You don’t beg if you’re in control. You beg if you’re being controlled. Like a prisoner of war who begs his captors for mercy or a criminal who begs the judge to reduce his sentence, they beg Jesus to go easy on them, to send them into a herd of pigs—which Jesus does. And what happens? Luke records: “The herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned” (Luke 8:33). They were sunk. They went down and met their watery grave.
6. Now there is the “after” shot of this demon possessed man. We read about it in Luke 8:35, Luke writes, “Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and 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.” In the “after” shot people did not avoid him. Instead, they were coming out to see him. He was a completely different man in a completely different situation. He had no more demons and there was no more running out into the wilderness. He was fully clothed, restored to community, and sitting at the feet of Jesus in his right mind. Chaos, isolation, and despair had given way to calm, community, and hope. The difference, of course, was not a ten-week self-help challenge. The difference was Jesus. Jesus came to this man and remade his world.
7. Luke’s account of Jesus and the demon possessed man is one more example of a list of people whose worlds were turned upside down by Jesus. The “before” and the “after” shots of these people were striking. There was the outcast leper in Luke 5:12-16, the alienated tax collector in Luke 5:27-32, the mourning widow in Luke 7:11-17, and the sinful woman in Luke 7:36-50. In each of these situations, Jesus came to people living in grief, sin, despair, and chaos. He brought them healing and renewal, resurrection and forgiveness. It is a recurring pattern. Jesus comes to people and changes everything. “Before” is long gone. “After” is a whole new world.
8. What about you? What about your “before” and “after” shots? Think about life “before” Jesus. You may not remember it personally. But you can see it all around you. It is a life of guilt, sin, and deception. It is not vastly different from the demon possession in our text. We did not literally live in the tombs and run around unclothed, and most do not today. But until Christ came into our lives, the “before” shot was not good.
9. To this day, we see Satan’s destructive forces at play in the lives of people, in our own lives. Destroying marriages, destroying relationships, destroying livelihoods, destroying the lives of the unborn, destroying churches, destroying the mental health of individuals. It’s one assault after another. Luke 8:29 says that, “for many a time it [the evil spirit] had seized him.” Many a time. One after another, to the point of exhaustion, when we’re ready to admit defeat.
10. Are there demons still roaming our world today? Are there people who suffer from demon-possession like this man, the answer, I believe, is yes. And yet, I believe that demons, while they may not always possess the soul of an individual as we can see here in Luke 8, they do cause people distress and cause them to do destructive things. I think about people in the grip of drug abuse or alcohol addiction or caught up in destructive desires of the sinful flesh that inflict pain not only on them but on others around them. And whether these forces are chemical or psychological, there can be little doubt that they are still the remnants of a fallen world that Satan exploits.
11. Then came Jesus, to you and to me through the witness of His Church, through water and the Word in Holy Baptism. And we were restored. We were forgiven. We were given right minds. Maybe that is a helpful way of describing our “after” shots. Luke tells us, after Jesus restored him, this man was “right-minded” (σωφρονοῦντα). So are we.
12. But what does that look like? It does NOT mean we have everything completely together. The man in our text was restored by Jesus, but much needed to be addressed. Can you imagine his neighbors’ response when he moved back home? The effects of his former way of life would not go away overnight. Being in your “right mind” doesn’t mean having everything together perfectly. Instead, it means accepting the fact that you do not. Those in their right mind recognize how much they need Jesus, not only for eternal life, but also for an abundant life here on earth. Which is why the man was sitting at Jesus’ feet.
13. The Gospel proclaims: “[Jesus came] to destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8). The apostle Paul says in Col 2:15 that Jesus has disarmed the powers of evil, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. And so, we cling to Jesus, knowing that by his death and resurrection he has destroyed Satan’s power and will deliver us from the destruction that the devil desires to inflict upon us.
14. We cling to Jesus as we go back to our Baptism. In years past, Baptism was seen as an exorcism. The LSB Altar Book includes an alternate form of the Baptism service, based on Martin Luther’s Baptism rite. In it, the baptizer says, “Depart, you unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Spirit in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (LSB Altar Book, p 374). Speaking of Baptism, notice what happens to the herd of pigs that the demons are cast into. They rush down a steep cliff and are drowned. And isn’t that what Baptism signifies? Martin Luther says: “It indicates that the Old Adam in us [perhaps we could say, the demons in our lives] should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires” (SC, Baptism, Fourth Part). And so, when we face our demons, we declare over them that we are baptized, that they now have no power over us. Which brings us to the second place we turn: (2) We go back to the words of the Bible. We go to the clear words of God that proclaim Jesus’ victorious death on the cross, the forgiveness of sins it won, and the power of God over the assaults of Satan that it is. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 Jn 4:4).
15. When we are in our right minds, we also sit at Jesus’ feet. We gather together as Christ’s body the Church in worship to learn from Him and find strength and forgiveness in Him through His Word and Sacraments. When we have our right minds, we gather together with others whose minds have been made right. Together we sit at Jesus feet, rejoice in His forgiveness, and listen to His Word. But we do not stay there. The former demoniac begged that he might go with Jesus back across the Sea of Galilee, but Jesus would not let him. “Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you’” (Luke 8:38). And that is what the man did. That is what we do still today. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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