RELEASE by Cheri Holdridge (with an assist by Patti Lusher)

There’s too much on my mind. That’s what the song said. It seems there’s more to life than just to live it. But there’s too much on my mind. My poor demented mind is slowly going.  Well, I turned 50 and I feel like that sometimes.

Do you ever feel so weighed down by your thoughts, your worries, or perhaps your addictions that you just want to say, “Enough! Please God, release me.”

We used to talk about old tapes playing in our heads. For those of you under 30 you don’t know what tapes are, so I’ll have to change the image to mp3s. Do you have mp3s in your head of things you want to change? They just keep playing over and over again, so much that sometimes you think you are going crazy. You just want to get them out of your head and replace them with happy thoughts.  The ones that tell us “God loves us.”

God loves us. We know that. But the rough parts of our lives and our history shout out and try to drown out that voice of God saying: “I love you. You can do it. All is well.” 

Today’s story in Luke is about a man who had something going wrong in his head. His situation was more extreme that most of us have ever encountered. He most likely had what today we would diagnose as either mental illness or epilepsy. 

In those days they called it demons. The man is so full of demons that when Jesus asks his name he says his name is “Mob” for the mob of demons that he feels has taken over his body and mind. In another translation, a little less up to date, the man calls himself “Legion.” A legion was about 3000 to 6000 men in a Roman army. So the man was saying, I have several thousand demons in my head. Just call me Legion. I have lost control of my life. I am hopeless.

Now, I don’t talk much about demons in my day-to-day life, except for that movie with Tom Hanks called “Angels and Demons,” but that is Hollywood stuff. But when I think about someone possessed by demonic forces, or by a force so evil I can’t imagine how they would ever break free, there are some people in current events that come to mind: Jerry Sandusky, the Assistant Coach at Penn State who seems to be possessed with a demon of pedophilia. Then there is Arial Castro, that guy in Cleveland who held three women captive for more than 10 years and made them his slaves, even bearing a child with one of them. There is even Anthony Weiner, now running for mayor in New York, who has a sex addiction but does not seem to be able to own up to it. Then there is San Diego mayor Bob Filner who has a pile of nine accusations of sexual harassment. These men, all to varying degrees, have demons in their lives. Some have gone to jail, some are being judged in the court of public opinion. 

There are some deviant behaviors, such as the one we see in Mr. Castro, that even the best psychiatrists and psychologists don’t really have much hope to rehabilitate. This week he was sent to prison for life plus 1000 years. As a Christian, I oppose the death penalty, so I am glad we are not, as a society, going to kill the man. As a citizen and as a mother, I must confess, I would not want to ever live next door to him, so as a citizen of Ohio I will, regretfully but willingly, pay my share of the taxes to keep him in jail for the rest of his life.

But as a follower of Jesus, I leave the door open that there is hope for the Arial Castros of this world. If I believe in the God of love and light and transformation, then I must consider that a miracle can occur even in the life of each of these men I have named. It’s hard to wrap our minds around, I know. And we must not be naïve, but I, for one, never want to doubt the power of God.

That is the sort of story we have in Luke’s Gospel today: it is a story of miracles.

And, by the way, if ever there were story in the bible to explain why the birds in Angry Birds fling stuff to destroy pigs, it is this story. We’ll get to that in a moment. 

First, the backstory: Jesus and his disciples travel to a country of some Gentiles – people different from them as Jews. They come upon a man who has been so possessed by demons that the people in his town have taken to chaining him up in the local cemetery. They don’t know what else to do with him. 

Now, looking at this story through modern eyes, we might guess that he had some sort of mental illness, perhaps schizophrenia, paranoia or obsessive behavior. Whatever it was, his demons meant that he was cast out from his family and his community. He practiced self-destructive behavior. He was in such a state that he was naked. (Ever heard of anyone whose demons got them to such a state that they run down the street naked? Yep! It makes the news now and then, doesn’t it?) He was most likely hungry, unless someone had pity and took food to him out in the cemetery. But if he had such demons that he needed to be chained up, who would want to risk getting that close to him? Well, maybe his mother still loved him. But as the story goes, we know he had broken his chains more than once.

When Jesus asks him his name he says: “Mob,” or “Legion” another translation says, “because many demons afflicted him. And they begged Jesus desperately not to order them to the bottomless pit.”

Then the story says: “A large herd of pigs was browsing and rooting on a nearby hill. The demons begged Jesus to order them into the pigs. He gave the order…. Crazed, they stampeded over a cliff into the lake and drowned.” (See what I mean – about Angry Birds?)

Then comes the best part. The people who were tending the pigs came out to see what had happened. They saw the man – the one they had known as demon possessed. He was sitting there next to Jesus. He was wearing clothes and he was making sense. “It was a holy moment.” 

It was a holy moment. You see, it was holy, because a man, who had been tormented by demons, was released. He was made whole by an encounter with Jesus. In his encounter with Jesus, he was set free.

What is your demon?

I’m pretty sure we don’t have any Ariel Castros or Jerry Sanduskys in this room today. I don’t see anyone who is so demon possessed that we are naked and need to be put in a straight jacket or chained up to keep us from harming ourselves or others.

But friends, we all have demons.

We all need to be released.

What is your demon?

What keeps you from having the life of wholeness that God created you to have?

Do you have negative thoughts that haunt you and weigh you down like a backpack full of rocks? Maybe you had a parent who was (or is) super-critical – and you could never live up – but you are still trying. And so now you find yourself always being negative and critical. The demon of negativity can make life a prison. 

What is your demon?

Do you have a demon of regret? Looking back on your life, do you wish you had done some things differently? Do you wish things had turned out differently? If you could turn back the clock would you take another path? The demon of regret is a tough one. It does us no good to beat up on ourselves over what could have been. We can’t change the past. All we have is the future. 

What is your demon?

Do you have the demon of mistakes made: people hurt, relationships damaged. You think they are beyond repair, but you just never know. Imagine how you might feel if that person reached out to you. Could you be the one to make the move toward healing and reconciliation?

What is your demon?

You see, when the man met Jesus, he encountered God. He experienced the fullness of the healing love of God. Yes, I believe it was a miracle. And yes, I believe God can work miracles in our lives every day. God can release us from our demons when we let God. 

When we ask Jesus to take up residence in our hearts, we will be so full of God’s light and love that there is no room for negativity or criticism. There is no room for regret. We can be so full of God’s light and love that we can reach out to that person we have hurt and who we think will never forgive us. We can be released from all these demons. Jesus gives us the power and the courage.

I don’t know about Arial Castro and Jerry Sandusky and those other guys. I hope somehow, someone will reach out to them with the healing love of God. I pray for a miracle for each one of them. God wants everyone to be whole. God wants everyone to be released from our demons. 

But I do know about each one of you. You have taken a step today, by getting out of bed and coming here rather than staying home. You have made God a priority by choosing to be a part of the Village in this moment. You came here because you want an encounter with Jesus. And we want to be released from our demons. So let’s do it. Let’s ask God. Will you pray with me?