Left Behind Luke 8.26-39 Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27As 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. 28When 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’— 29for 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.) 30Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. 31They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. 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. 33Then 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. 34 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. 35Then 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. 36Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37Then 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. 38The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 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. This is my truth. That I talk a lot. And that truth is connected to part of my calling, preaching. However, my kids, my friends, my parents, and the woman who sells me my diet Pepsi every morning at UDF will all tell you that I don‟t hesitate to preach outside the pulpit as well. It‟s not always good news, sometimes it‟s a little bit of whining – that I am at UDF at 6 am buying diet Pepsi because I am headed to an Easter sunrise service. Sometimes it is good news, but it‟s of no interest to my children that I ran across a Psalm that particularly spoke to me. Sometimes my friends don‟t understand at all the high I speak of when I have just come out of the pulpit or from a productive meeting. Sometimes my preaching, my testimony to my truth, isn‟t news at all to them, let alone good news. Sometimes it just freaks them out. I talk a lot. You know this. I know this, it has been my truth for a long time. And the good news in my life is that I get paid for it. But as I entered Luke‟s text this week, I realized that I am often preaching when I‟m not conscious of it, and it’s not always in a place where people are prepared to hear it. Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.

In our text today, Jesus has entered non-Jewish territory for the first time in his ministry. We know this because are pigs grazing, animals which are an abomination to the Jews. Jesus finds a man who is crazy – he is possessed by a demons. He is living among the tombs because the townspeople don‟t have chains strong enough to bind him. The demons had driven him into the land of the dead; he was all alone. Jesus casts the demons out and in doing so, sacrifices a whole herd of pigs. And the swineherds, the ones who are paid to watch the pigs and see it happen are surely a little worried that their charges have disappeared over a cliff. They want to be sure they get the first word of explanation out to make it clear that this economic disaster isn‟t seen as their fault. They want to get their testimony in early, so they can‟t be accused of remembering wrong, so that they don‟t have to claim the 5th amendment, so that they can speak their first hand eyewitness truth before the story gets muddied with extra commentary. So they start the gossip mill cranking – they tell the news all over the country side and in the city. But there‟s a group that is ensconced in the air-conditioned coffee shop in town deep in conversation. These folks haven‟t yet heard the testimony of the swineherds. The only piece of the story they know is the wordless testimony of the former demoniac as he slides into the café area just outside, as if nothing is wrong. They come out to see what on earth is going on – could it be the one they tried to chain up last month? They see the living testimony of a transformed man and for some reason there is no rejoicing at the end of the Boo Radley façade. They see the almost dead raised to right life and they‟re not buying a round of lattes for the house. They see their neighbor made whole and sitting at the feet of a strange man and they don‟t have questions, only fear. When the swineherd‟s testimony finally gets down the road to the coffee shop another piece of testimony is added to the one in front of them. Two truths, two testimonies, two telling of good news that together still don‟t convince or tell the whole story. When everyone sees these two realities – that the man who drove out demons (and in the doing killed their pigs) is the same one who commands the attention of the man now without demons, they don‟t recognize good news when it is right in front of them: they are afraid. So they drive Jesus out of town. And the transformed man who has new life is left behind. His loneliness is all the more apparent: what will it be like to live in community as the formerly crazy tomb dweller? It‟s going to be pretty hard to find a wife. The children will most likely run from him. He will pour over the want ads knowing that his resume will be trashed. His prior medical conditional makes him uninsurable. He will walk the streets keeping his head down from all the eyes that will be watching him, waiting for his next episode, and the return of the demons. So he begs Jesus to let him come with him. He knows that life as a disciple of Jesus, even if it takes him to strange places, even if he has to leave behind all that he has known is better than the future where he is. But Jesus doesn‟t say those words he said to the twelve: Follow me. Jesus tells him, Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.

Return home. Give your testimony with your life. Live free and in your right mind. Put one foot in front of the other and take each day as it comes, living as a healed and transformed person. That is all each of us can do, right? Live our lives the best way we know how and hope that truth is told by our walk. Now that‟s evangelism Presbyterian style! But Jesus asks more of us. Tell how much God has done for you. Give your testimony with words as well. It is not enough to just live the good news, you must speak it. The rest of the truth will become clear in its own time – stand in your own truth now and tell the good news that God has done for you. Testify! We know the power of testimony. Speaking our experiences out loud somehow makes them real, and allows us to own them. It also calls others into a shared story, making them part of our good news.  

A marriage isn‟t legal until two people stand up in front of witnesses and say, “I do.” When we have truly life changing experiences, somehow it isn‟t fully realized until we share it. What is the first thing you do when you get a job after being unemployed? You tell the people you love most. What does the engaged couple do as soon as the future groom gets off his knees? They call their parents. What do we do right after the Dr. says the tests came back negative? We text everyone we know and follow up with phone calls as soon as we have cell service.

Sometimes our truths aren‟t such good news. Sometimes they witness to horror and pain. Sometimes the truth is that we just want to put our experiences behind us, bury them, and move on silently into tomorrow. Someone reminded me this week that it is hard knowing that we are people sent by the Spirit to share good news. It‟s hard if you can‟t quite locate good news in your life. It‟s hard when you feel left behind by Jesus. It‟s hard to tell good news when you can‟t quite locate God in your life. It‟s hard when you feel lonely and victimized and set aside by your community. The good news comes in pieces, it seems. And it doesn‟t always feel like good news. It isn‟t always received as good news by everyone. The swine herds told the good news that the demons had left the man but the community heard only that their pigs were gone, along with the money they were worth. The community buzzed with the news that there was one among them that commanded demons and set people free but they saw only the threat of a man who had great power they didn‟t understand. But Jesus doesn‟t seem to care about how people perceive his actions, whether they judge them to be good news or not. Jesus doesn‟t even seem to care if sharing the news of his work is received well or threatens the messenger. Jesus simply tells us to testify to our truth. There is power in testimony. 

It‟s the 12th step in AA which reads: we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. We live our healing, and an essential part of that healing is telling our story to those that need to hear it. There is power in testimony.

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It‟s the bravery of Elizabeth Smart, the teenager who testified her truth of kidnapping and rape because those awful facts, which were only hers to tell, held not only terror but the key to a kind of freedom and healing and potential good news. There is power in testimony. It‟s the experience of both victims and perpetrators of the horrible atrocities in South Africa during apartheid. By speaking their truth out loud, they can begin the road to reconciliation. There is power in testimony.

It is fascinating to me that in a court of law a witness swears to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” How can we know the whole truth? Our testimony is only our truth, our piece, What I see is not necessarily what you see. What I know is simply what has happened to me and how I have received it. Jesus tells the healed man to “…tell the good news of what God has done for you.” but the man has no knowledge of the God of whom Jesus speaks. The man only knows Jesus, and that he once had demons, and now does not. The man is not Jewish, he didn‟t grow up hearing the Hebrew Scriptures and going to temple. Only the demons recognize who Jesus truly is, “Son of the Most High God.” Everyone else simply testifies to the truth they know. The man goes and tells “what Jesus has done for him.” He bears no witness to a God he doesn‟t know; he simply tells the truth about what Jesus has done for him. Sharing the good news of the gospel seems a monumental task sometimes. We want to connect the pieces, we want to explain global truths, and articulate centuries of thought and truth about God. And so we often stall out. When all we are called to do is testify to what Jesus has done for us. We must tell our truth. We must stand firmly in the midst of our lives and God‟s Word to us and speak what we know. We hold only a piece of the good news. It isn‟t our job to give the closing argument, only to testify to what we know to be true. And when we don‟t feel like what we know to be true is good news, when it seems more like our truth is our livelihood driven into the abyss by a failing economy, or that we are left behind by Jesus, or that there are powers in our lives we don‟t understand, we are still called to speak that truth, trusting that even the awful truth can be transformed into God‟s good news. The Book of Acts tells us that the apostles were sent out beyond Jerusalem to proclaim the good news and churches sprung up everywhere. But by the time they got to Gerasa, surely there was already good news being spoken in that place. There was the living testimony of a man made whole and right forever living among them. There was the spoken testimony of his reminder that Jesus had made it happen. There was the memory of the day it happened, and the testimony of the swine herds who witnessed it and the townspeople who saw the whole man sitting at Jesus‟ feet. There were all these pieces that witnessed to a truth bigger than the parts, good news that could only be known over time, with all those pieces of testimony coming together in God‟s time.

I know now that I preach everywhere. You do to. Preaching, the testimony to the presence of good news in our lives, doesn‟t just happen in the pulpit. When we are intentional, it happens at the gas station each morning, over the dinner table, on the porch at a friend‟s house, and through the gossip mill at school and work. It doesn‟t make grand references to God‟s universal plan for humanity, but just a small piece of humanity‟s experience of God. There is power in testimony. When we speak our truth, we are preaching; we are sharing good news even when it doesn‟t seem like it. Even seemingly bad news can be gospel to someone suffering in the same way we are. Can you picture the word going out over the countryside that the man from Galilee had driven the man‟s demons into the pigs? It was awful news to those that lost their livelihood. But perhaps there was a woman hiding on the edge of the crowds, not wild enough to be driven to the tombs, but dealing with her own demons. Surely Jesus‟ power was good news to her, surely her heart began to hope through hearing this small piece of testimony, this small piece of truth. What is your good news right now, without peering into the future or even tonight forseeing loneliness or potential upset? What is Jesus doing for you? If you can‟t come up with any good news, just name your news out loud to the person next to you or your family over lunch, or the cashier at Skyline, and do it in the name of God. Tell them how the text touched you today. Tell them how it made you mad. Tell them why you are afraid. Tell them about an answered or unanswered prayer, a minor miracle, or the pain that you are living with that God seems to be ignoring. And when you start to feel inadequate because you can‟t connect your truth with God‟s truth, stick with what you know. Tell your truth. Here is my truth: as much as I want Jesus to do a grand thing through me, to send me to a place that is fertile and ripe for my telling of the good news; as much as I want Jesus to paint a big arrow on the ground showing us exactly which direction Calvin Church is called in, for now, I am called to speak my truth to you, to Judy at UDF, to my children, to my parents, to my friends, and lucky for me since I get paid for it, to you. I am not so much left behind as sent to the spot that I‟m on each and every day, each and every hour. We all are. Let us preach our gospel experiences with our lives, let us speak our truth with our testimony, and let us be bold to stand right where we are and claim our piece in God‟s good news. We can do no more, but thanks be to God, it is more than enough.

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