Galatians 3:26-28 (NRSV Updated Edition)
[F]or in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Luke 8:26-39 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Then they arrived at the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on shore, a man from the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had not worn any clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me,” for 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.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
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. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd stampeded down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then 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 became frightened. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then the whole throng of people of the surrounding region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone out begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, “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.
~
"The demoniac is a classic scapegoat figure. He dwells among the tombs and wanders the mountainsides wounding himself and howling. No chains can bind and no man subdue him. He is possessed by a legion of demons, and legion is the mob of his persecutors. He carries his persecutors inside himself in the classic mode of the victim who internalizes his tormentors. ...
"The demons recognize Jesus as their nemesis and try to persuade him not to expel them from the system of violence altogether, but merely to transfer them from one location to another. To do this would be to manage violence by means of violence within the closed sacrificial system. Jesus, however, removes them altogether by sending them into the swine, which, contrary to the demons' expectation, rush into the lake and drown. The herd of two thousand swine is an eloquent symbol of the mob in pursuit of a victim. The herd's drowning means that violence ceases when the mob disappears. The order of expectation is reversed and instead of the victim going over the cliff the mob goes over!
[...]
"When the swineherds report to the city and its environs, the populace comes out and begs Jesus to leave. The people do not want their scapegoats returned, and they do not want to see themselves as a swinish mob. They fear the revealer because he threatens the order of Gadarene complacency and deprives them of the comfort of the scapegoat. They do not want to break their conspiracy: rather, they want the scapegoat to remain in the shadows of the cemetery as a depository for their violence and a guarantee of their complacency. The fact that they had tried to chain him shows how much they needed him. They recognize the threat Jesus poses to the Sacred they inhabit, and they send him away. [...] Nevertheless, from now on they have in their midst a constant reminder of an alternative to the order of violence in the restored and reintegrated victim whom Jesus rescued from the mob in himself and the mob in the city of Gadara."
- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, The Gospel and the Sacred, pp. 93-94
~
"Imagine that you are in the world of the Gerasenes before Jesus comes along, whether as one of the townspeople or as a demoniac. You are not stupid, or primitive - whatever that means. You are just used to the daily run of your culture. You are used to negotiating living day in and day out within the strengths and limitations of your group. You share both adherence to, and scepticism about, its gods, its taboos, its sacred barriers. Like most people in most societies you both go along with and yet relativize, approve of and yet resent, the structures which give meaning to your life.
"Yet there is one thing you cannot do: whether you are a townsperson or the demoniac, you cannot imagine the innocence of the demoniac. The structure which holds everything together is relatively tolerant, as is the case in most human groups. It is fairly ready to turn a blind eye to a whole lot of failings, indeed has mechanisms for reincorporating those who fail. Yet there is one point where this apparently easy-going form of life is implacably totalitarian, where there is a definition of good and evil which cannot be overturned. It never crosses your mind to question it, and indeed it cannot really be talked about, since it is what allows other things to be talked about and given value.
"This immutable fact which the group's imagination cannot conceive in any other way is the definition of the demoniac as demoniac. Before the arrival of Jesus, whether you are a townsperson, or the demoniac, you are all fundamentally yet tacitly agreed on what holds the whole of your order together. You are a participant in a closed system. And of course participants in a closed system do not know that they are in a closed system. It is only the vantagepoint of a system that does not depend on a hidden but secretly-structuring scapegoat which enables us to detect other systems as closed. Before the arrival of Jesus on the shores of Gerasa, such a vantagepoint was not available to you.
"If someone had come along and said “Well, of course, your demoniac is really innocent, and all he’s doing is acting out what all of you are dumping on him,” you would resist this violently. It would be inconceivable to you that such a person was anything other than a troublemaker, someone who wanted to disturb order and subvert morality. The key word here is “inconceivable.” The notion is not one you could imagine, let alone tolerate. You would read the claim entirely from within your own group structure, and would reject it as impossible. So impossible that it could not really be talked about at all. In fact, you wouldn't need to talk about it. All you would need to do is point to the indisputable evidence of the evil and craziness of your demoniac. Something there is clearly wrong.
[...]
"Jesus did not come and give the Gerasenes a lecture on the structure of their society. He didn't argue with them about definitions. He didn't propose an alternative form of legislation. He did something much more three-dimensional. He empowered the demoniac to become a human being, sitting, clothed and in his right mind, going home to his friends.
"[I]f we have already begun to be overtaken by the power of the Creator, who is already beginning to humanize us, give us right minds, and enable us to be at home with our friends ... [this] is entirely dependent on something huge, quiet, and unimaginable already happening. Very God of Very God is already, even as we speak, “doing something new,” speaking to us in tones and at a depth which our former belonging could never reach, and in a way which our former groups can find nothing other than inconceivable and scandalous: calling us into peaceful and gratuitous human being."
- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, ch. 6, “Clothed and in His Right Mind” (pp. 131-133)
[Source of Robert Hamerton-Kelly and James Alison quotes, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_7c/]
[The gospel text in the Roman Catholic lectionary for this week is Luke 9:18-24 (Peter's declaration about Jesus and Jesus foretelling his death and resurrection). I highly recommend James Alison's video "Homily for 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" on this text: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKaKtl5GFS8]
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