Past All Hope?
Luke 8:26-39[1]
I think all of us have
known someone who was thought to be “past all hope.” Life in this world can
bring so many challenges, and for some it’s just too much. In his brilliant but
cynical novel “A Call to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway said, “The world breaks
everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” I’ve found that to
be true. But I’ve also known people whom the world has broken, and they just
seem to remain broken. For whatever reason, instead of taking the steps to heal
and grow stronger, they cannot break free from the darkness of their pain and
fear. Or they retreat into some kind of unhealthy behavior in order to avoid
their suffering.
Unfortunately, I would
say that our willingness to write someone off as “past all hope” is just a
convenient way to let ourselves off the hook when it comes to treating them
with human dignity and kindness. Let’s be honest: it can be frustratingly
difficult to try to relate to people who are caught in the darkness of their
pain and fear. We have to go out of our way to try to have any kind of basic
interaction with a person like that. And all our efforts may be met with little
or no response. There isn’t much of a “payoff” for trying to treat someone so
fundamentally broken like a fully human person. But the call to follow Christ
demands that we reach out to “the least of these.”
Our Gospel lesson for
today can be difficult for us to hear. It’s easy to get caught up in all the
talk of “demons” and casting them out. Some may want to just write all that off.
But I agree with Karl Barth, who said that Jesus saw and experienced “an abyss
of darkness” that was not imaginary but real and actually affected people’s
lives.[2] On the other hand, it would be a mistake to think that this story is primarily
about the “demonic” and to believe that we live in a world “with devils filled”
as Martin Luther put it. We live in God’s world, and this story shows us God’s
power to overcome all that torments people.
That’s what we see
when we focus our attention on the man who was afflicted. Luke tells us that
although he “a man from the city,” “for a long time he had not worn any
clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs” (Lk 8:27). Because of
his extreme torment, although people tried to restrain him, he broke the bonds
and was driven into the “wilderness” (Lk 8:29). The result of his affliction
was that he was completely separated from human community. Perhaps we might say
that even more than that, he was separated from his own humanity. I think it’s
safe to say that the people who knew him had written him off as “past all
hope.”
When we focus on this
man and his interaction with Jesus, what we see is the power of Jesus to save
and heal and restore this man. It’s important to note that when Jesus crossed
into this territory, which was on the Eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, Luke
says he was “opposite Galilee” (Lk 8:26). That’s a way of saying that he had
left Jewish lands and was in a Gentile region. I think we’re meant to see that
Jesus’ power and authority to both heal and save even one so utterly tormented
was fully intact. That might seem logical to us, but in that day, people
believed that different “gods” had control of different countries. While we may
not be surprised to know that Jesus’ power to heal and save was just as
effective in Gentile territory, Jesus’ disciples may have been.
Part of the point of
this story is also found in Jesus’ interaction with the people of that land.
When those who witnessed what happened went back and brought others with them,
they found the man who had been so tormented “sitting at the feet of Jesus,
clothed and in his right mind” (Lk 8:35). The contrast between his present
state and his former state could not be more obvious: Luke identifies him as
“the one who had been saved” (Lk 8:36). This man who had been written off as
“past all hope” Jesus had not only restored to his own humanity, he had also
saved him.[3] But when the people of that place saw all this, they responded not with joy but
with fear. They were content while he was among the tombs or in the wilderness.
But the thought that he might rejoin their community was too much for them. So
they asked Jesus to leave. Despite that, Jesus left this man behind as a living
witness to the power of God to heal and to save even one who was “past all
hope.”
Some of you know that I
have some personal experience with this kind of thing. My younger brother,
Douglas, suffered a kind of mental and emotional breakdown when he was 16.
We’re not sure what happened, but whatever it was shattered his soul. His life
was one of constantly going from one medication to another that from my
perspective didn’t help much. It was difficult to know how to relate to my
brother, how to treat him as a fully human person. Finally, we decided to make
regular trips to Corpus Christi, where we would take him to his favorite
restaurant, visit with him as much as possible, and then take him back to his
day care center. My brother passed away in 2009 at the age of 44. He was never
“healed” in the sense that the man in our Gospel story experienced. But I’d
like to think that our willingness to treat him as fully human person, along
with his caregivers who worked with him over the course of most of the last
twenty years of his life, was a kind of “restoration” for him. And I believe
that now, in the presence of the living Jesus, he has been restored to his full
humanity. It’s my hope and prayer that all of us may find a way to respond even
to those who are labeled as “past all hope” with dignity and kindness, treating
them as fully human persons.
[1] ©
2022 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Ph. D. on 6/19/2022 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Karl
Barth, Church Dogmatics 4.2:230. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel
According to Luke I-IX, 733: he describes this phenomenon simply as “evil
afflicting the psychic being of a mortal man.”
[3]
Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 104: “The lordship of God
drives out of creation the powers of destruction, …, and heals the created
beings who have been damaged by them. If the kingdom of God is coming as Jesus
proclaimed, then salvation is coming as well.”
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