Not too long ago, I was at a convention. I went to the big convention for Lutheran Church Canada in the beautiful metropolis of Edmonton, and while we were there, we had a luncheon sponsored by tourism: Israel. Tourism Israel sponsored the lunch, where we got to sit, enjoy some food, and appreciate the possibility of travel to Israel. No problem there so far.
The video presentation had the nice man going through the Kidron valley, and pointing out all the spaces in the valley that would have had the feet of our Lord walking through it. The nice man pointed out how special it was that he was able to stand in the exact same places where Jesus had been standing as well. And that was neat to see. Israel. The land of the Bible, a space called the 'holy land.' The space on planet earth where the Lord Jesus Christ, God himself, had walked, talked and spent time.
Now, that brings up a cultural matter, because in our reading that we had from this Sunday, it was a matter of quite personal interest in the demon, Legion. Legion is the Demon, or collection of demons, tormenting the man from the Bible reading today. Now, Jesus our Lord was walking, talking, eating drinking, and so on, in that area of the world.
What it that area of the world? It's Israel. In 1523, Luther wrote a book, a chapbook, called 'that Jesus Christ was born a Jew.' In this essay, Luther argues not only that Jesus Christ was born a Jew, obvious from the title, but that it was wildly important that he was. This is something about which we all tend to agree, that the Jewish nature of Christ was fundamentally important, and not just a strange footnote. It is crucial that Jesus was born a Jew, in order that the rest of the story may work and function. Without that, the story fails.
What do I mean by that? I mean, quite simply, that the world that Jesus Christ inhabited was specifically set aside by God himself to bring that about. Israel was particular, and set apart from its neighbors. There are lots of, well, let's call them quirks, in the Bible, Old and New Testaments, designed to show that the people of Israel were set apart, and peculiar. Unlike their neighbors, Israel had commands from God to be set apart, and set apart in specific ways. Food, dress, gathering, rest, all these things were there to keep Israel set apart from their neighbors.
Good thing too, given the volume of takeovers that Israel had to undergo. It seemed in the Old Testament like everyone wanted a piece of Israel, and why not? Israel was at the crossroads of the world, and it seemed as though empires moved through there all the time. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, everyone cruised all the way through, and everyone took a bite. But it's not as though any of those empires cared about Israel, Israel was just there. It was land, resources, people, that could be gobbled up and turned into part of the empire. The goal was to make Israel completely indistinguishable from the rest of the empire. Again, to specify, these empires didn't have some sort of vendetta against Israel - they had a vendetta against things that weren't in the empire existing.
But Israel proved itself to be shockingly immune to being folded in. Not that Israel didn't get conquered, they did. All the time. But the conquest was where a foreign power would show up, take over, run the government, export the people, but find that when their empire fell, Israel would still be there as though nothing happened. Like, you can destroy the temple, knock it down and burn it, but if the people are still there, then when your empire falls, they're just going to put the temple right back up again as soon as you're not looking. This worked because the people of Israel were set apart from everyone else wherever they went. It didn't matter if there was an occupying power, if Israel were in exile or a disapora, or if they'd been left alone completely, there were certain things that they just stuck to. No matter where they were, they'd worship only one God, not work on Saturday, and not eat pork or shellfish.
Finally we get to the point, which is that the people of Israel would have no use for pigs. Pigs are interesting when it comes to farm animals - sheep are wool and meat, goats are milk and meat, cows are milk and meat, chickens are eggs and meat, horses are workers and, if you're desperate, meat. Pigs are meat. That's it. There's no reason to have pigs unless you're going to eat them. There's a reason that people bring pigs on long voyages - which is that the pigs turn garbage into food. Like magic. Israel would have no use for pigs, but Rome would. And Rome was a hungry empire.
When Jesus confronts legion, you're looking at a scene where things are falling apart. Demons present and empires about. We don't really think about this as part of the equation, but the people of Israel are rotted within and plagued without. Have you ever noticed how often Demons show up in the New Testament? Have you ever noticed how frequently you see or encounter the presence of Demons in the New Testament? Jesus has to engage in battle with demons very frequently indeed, and does so in a wide number of environments. And this is where things get interesting, at least for me.
There are a lot of ministers preaching about Jesus standing up to empire. They preach about how Jesus stood up to the powers that be, doing battle with the Roman government of his day. The idea is that Jesus was put to death for standing up to imperial forces, powers and state apparatus, which is funny given how little of the scripture Jesus spends tangling with government powers. Almost none, in fact. But he certainly does mix it up with demons, on the regular.
So here we are, in a moment in time, where Jesus is standing in Roman occupied territory, but with a demon occupied person, and which do you think his attention is towards? Towards the man who is occupied by demons. That's the major concern for our Lord. And whether you're anti-imperial or not, you need to understand something, which is that you're not going to kill the empire that occupies your territory, until you kill the demon that occupies your soul. The implication that Christ was only concerned about political matters external to the human is bizarre, given how much time and effort he put into dealing with the internal spiritual matter of the human. He can drown the pigs of empire, as proven here, he can smite the powers that be if he wants to. But apparently, he doesn't want to. What he sets out to do is to banish the demons of this world, and to cast them out, and cast them away.
And what does that teach us? It teaches us something crucial, which is that Christ was concerned with destroying the demons within, and that had definite consequences for the empires of the world. Jesus didn't go out to destroy the empire, to lay waste to them in war or upheaval. Instead, he worked on them the way he works on all of us - by slaying the demons within. It took a shockingly short amount of time for the Roman Empire, the kings of the world, to become a Christian empire. Within 300 years, the people of the empire were Christian people, unbelievably quick for an empire that had crucified Christ, now his greatest supporters.
Demons and pigs, folks. Demons and pigs. Which of those is Jesus more concerned about? If you can change the empire, the pigs won't matter. But if you can't change the people, then it won't matter how much you put down the empire. It'll come back in some form or another. But if you can change the people, if you can get that done, then you'll end up with an empire transformed because the people are transformed.
