June 22 | Pentecost 2, Year C
1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a or Isaiah 65:1-9
Psalm 42 and 43 or Psalm 22:18-27
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39
There is evil in this fallen world, and personal power tends to breed evil. As the 19th-century historian and moralist Lord Acton wrote: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That corruption is not confined to our behavior, but also affects our nature. When people come under the dominion of evil, they act subhuman. They may not run around naked and live among the dead, but our reaction to their dreadful attitudes and actions is to question how anyone could be that way.
Our leading news stories are constant reminders that people do atrocious things to other people, with little regard for human life or even common decency. Tyrants gas their own people. Children are trapped and sold into slavery. Recidivism rates among prisoners, and the modest results of addiction recovery programs, demonstrate that those under the power of evil do not have the power to change. They are in bondage, regardless of whether they are imprisoned.
Another aspect of evil is that it is inherently destructive. In today’s Gospel reading, demons leave the man and enter the pigs, and immediately the pigs are destroyed. Where there is destruction in the world, there is evil. This is especially obvious in our relationships. In the economy of evil, the commodity with the highest value is the self. When that is the case, everyone else simply becomes a tool of the almighty self. Relationships become diminished to the level of the interaction between a plumber and his wrench. We may be deceived into thinking that we are autonomous, but our interactions affect all those around us. Ultimately there are no private sins.
In contrast, the things of God are good and creative. Jesus, the Son of God, demonstrates the restorative power of God by demanding and hearing the name of the demons. Throughout Scripture, to know the name of a person or animal is to exercise power over that being. Man’s delegated power over creation was manifested in God’s permission for him to name the animals.
God, however, names the evil and establishes his power over it. The demons are named and have no choice but to do Jesus’ bidding. We were not designed to wield such power, and in the hands of human beings, such power renders them subhuman demoniacs. But a perfectly good and almighty God can wield that power for good because it is his nature. He takes the power by which we are possessed and uses it to remake us as human. When we align ourselves with God and his will, we are being truly human because we were created in his image.
Being made in God’s image, the power we were designed to wield is the power of love. It lacks the danger of being used for personal power or evil because it is self-sacrificial and other-centered. As Timothy Keller wrote in King’s Cross, all effective love is a matter of substitutionary sacrifice. Our love of God is expressed through our obedience to his will and has as its corollary the desire to love our neighbors.
That is what God did for us through Jesus Christ. By dying for us, Jesus made it possible for us to be delivered from our possession by evil through taking that evil upon himself. Jesus is the power to destroy evil and to liberate sinners. Jesus is the power of God to overcome evil in all its forms.
Our response to the manifestation of God’s power is either that of the townspeople or that of the healed demoniac. Are we threatened by the power of Jesus to overcome the status quo of evil, or do we fall at his feet and ask what he would have us do?
Look It Up: Galatians 3:23-24
Think About It: The power of faith is a Divine gift.
The Rev. Dr. Chuck Alley, former rector of St. Matthew’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, teaches anatomy at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical School.
