2nd Sunday After Pentecost

Proper 7C: Isaiah 65:1-9; Psalm 22:18-27;

Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

The Rev'd Stephen Siptroth

June 22, 2025

Today’s account from the Gospel of Luke follows the calming of the storm over the Sea of Galilee. After seeing the winds and the water obey Jesus, Jesus takes his friends to “the other side” of the Sea, into Gentile territory, where Jesus encounters the demon-possessed man. But I invite you to ask: who was actually possessed? And by what demons?

A demon had taken hold of the man. The man was naked and apparently prone to violent fits. He lived among the dead, in the cemetery outside of the city – basically excluded from any kind of social support; cast out from having any place in society. And, apparently as the Gospel tells us, this had gone on for a long time. This was the man’s living situation for a long time – living outside of the city, without social support or a place within the community. He was an outcast and excluded by the people who lived in the city and the surrounding territory.

Another demon – fear – had taken ahold of the community. Fear had come to roost and had led the community to shun the man. Fear had caused the community to close up ranks. Out of fear, the community cast the man out, or, if they did interact with him, required him to be chained and shackled. He had no place in a family, no friends, no place in society, no ability to make any living; deprived of care and support; and fear caused them to make the man live in the far outskirts of the community – naked, or nearly so, and living in the tombs. In the ancient world, the people simply saw the man as someone of unclean spirits – not an equal or having any dignity to be cared for, loved, affirmed, and offered healing.

According to the Jewish-Roman military historian Josephus, during the late 60s CE, Garesa was the site of horrific events. The Roman general Vespasian sent soldiers to retake Gerasa (Jewish War, IV,ix,1) and march to Jerusalem after the Jewish Revolt against the empire. The Romans killed a thousand young men, imprisoned their families, burned the city of Gerasa, and then attacked villages throughout the region. One commentator explained that the tombs where the demon-possessed man lived according to Luke’s Gospel, included the graves of many young men killed by the Romans during their siege of Garesa.

While the people saw the man and found him to be possessed by demons, more than the man and his demons were haunting Gerasa. The entire community is haunted by the ghosts and memories of their violent and oppressive past. Professor Albert Hogeterp, from South Africa, explains that both the demon-possessed man and the wider community are exhibiting responses to trauma. For the demon possessed man, the response was to feel like a prisoner in his own body; the inability to escape his lament, grief, sadness, mourning, and maybe even his self-hate and loathing. For the community, the demons that possessed them led them to disregard the man consumed by his own terrors, and deny his humanity. Jesus’s exorcism, then, is meant to both liberate the individual, but also to provide a wider, broader and deeper message of healing: that Jesus comes to heal not only our individual woundedness, but also our collective woundedness, both of which are the product of injustice, oppression, and the dehumanizing acts that we inflict on one another.

Healing is central to today’s Gospel. The healing Jesus brings is not only individual, for the demon-possessed man, but also is communal. The man, now liberated from his demons, is sent to proclaim the Good News to his community and beyond, and to find a place in his community. The healing Jesus brought him is not his Good News, alone; it is Good News for all, to be shared. Both the man, and the community that ignored him, cast him off, left him to live among the dead – they both needed healing. They were both consumed by demons, the man and his community, but their demons were different. For the man, the demons inside him tormented him and prevented him from seeing his own dignity and worth; for the community, their demons led to their failure to recognize the dignity of the man or that he deserved healing and a full place in the community.

I have been thinking a lot about this past week’s court decision in United States v. Skrmetti, which arose out of a challenge to a Tennessee law that banned gender affirming care to transgender youth. The Tennessee Legislature, by creating this law, effectively imprinted transgender people under the age of 18 with a label as being somehow lesser than and undeserving of care that affirms their dignity as human people. As one author put it, after this decision, the Equal Protection Clause no longer applies to everyone equally. The Supreme Court’s decision will allow other states to maintain their laws, or pass new laws, that do the same thing. These laws treat our trans siblings as not being fully human, not being fully alive, and not having a full and equal place in society.

And this, too, has a broader context. These laws, and this court decision, arise from a kind of bigotry, fueled by hate-filled and fear-filled forms of Christianity that has spread through cities and across the countryside – through our Garesas – to Washington, to our High Court, to assert a perverse and pervasive authority over all aspects of American life, even the most intimate parts of what it means to be a human person; even those most intimate choices a person makes. The victims of the Skrmetti decision, fueled by a hate-filled version of Christianity, are our trans siblings in this community and in communities like ours; they are being treated as if they are among the dead. But our siblings – members of this community – are alive, and they have dignity, and Jesus seeks their healing by casting out the demons of their fears and self-doubts, their anguishes. Jesus invites them to live fully and freely as redeemed and beloved children of God in bodies, with identities, and choosing names that match and reflect who our siblings are as human people.

And, like the community in Garesa, Jesus also came to heal the traumas inflicted on the nation from false gospels and false prophets and historic hatreds: the traumas inflicted by transphobia, fear, prejudice, and bigotry that prevent people from recognizing the dignity of trans people. Jesus wants us to be freed of those demons, too, by speaking to us through testimony and lived experiences and voices of our trans siblings in our community – this community. They are here to tell us, and to keep telling us: they are who they are because of the God who made each of them in God’s image; through Christ who liberates all of us from whatever keeps us from living into our full personhood; and with the ever-present Spirit who indwells in each of us assuring each of us that we have dignity and a role to play in enacting God’s liberating reign in this world, including through legislation that protects the dignity of each human person – every trans youth, every trans person.

Please join me in prayer:

Gracious God, you created all people in your image, diverse and united in dignity, reflecting your boundless creativity and unwavering love. In light of the recent Supreme Court decision that allows states to prohibit gender-affirming care for minors, we pray for the youth who feel afraid and will no longer be able to access the care they need. We pray for the parents and family members who must now seek new ways to care for and protect their children. Grant us wisdom and courage so that we may offer support rooted in truth and compassion. May we, like Jesus, who welcomed the marginalized and restored the vulnerable, bear witness to your mercy and grace; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.