Luke 8: 26-39

Jesus and his disciples arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “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 rushed 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 were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country 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 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.

Some of the most memorable scenes from The Sopranos, the series about a complex, driven New Jersey mafia crime boss, are those that occur in his therapist’s office. Early in the series, Tony begins to have black-out episodes after which he’s diagnosed with depression, and so sprinkled throughout the scenes of his violent work life and his complicated family life are his sessions with Dr. Jennifer Melfi, his “shrink,” as he calls her. These scenes are scenes in which Tony tries to explore, or better said, tries to resist exploring, the relationship between his depression and his family history and his frenetic, violent life.

In one scene, Dr. Melfi and Tony sit across from each other, having just had one of those exchanges in which she tries to encourage him to explore reflecting on his life while he tries to avoid it. Finally Melfi asks: “Do you know why sharks are always in motion?” Because they have to be,” she says, “because if they stop, they drown. It may be that the reason you can’t stop for even a moment and talk about your life is that if you did, you’d be overwhelmed by what you’ve done and what it does to you and the to people you care about.”

This scene jumped to mind when I read our Gospel for today especially in the light of our first reading from the Hebrew Scriptures.

In our Gospel, Jesus has just passed over into Gentile territory where he immediately encounters a man who cannot stop, who, it seems, is always in motion. The man is possessed by demons, we are told, many, many demons. He does not wear clothes; he inhabits the tombs or the wilds; he cannot be restrained by shackles. He is, in a word, “driven,” impelled by internal energies that cause him to do things that a normal human being would not do.

As we might expect, Jesus comes to the man’s aid and casts these energies out. And what happens as a result speaks even more to the driven, destructive nature of what was inside the man. For Jesus casts the energies into a herd of swine which bolts uncontrollably down a steep hillside into a lake where all the swine drown.

And so it seems to me that this story has something to do with the restless, driven, unable-to-stop-ourselves impulses in all of us, the impulses that, when given free reign, cut us off from our humanity and cut us off from each other. It’s a story that has something to do with our “demons:” the ones that are hard to name, harder still to get hold of, harder still to manage. And, of course, this story is a story of extremes—of a driveness that has taken over everything, so that the one taken over has no ability to rest, no ability to reflect, no ability to be at peace, no ability to be in relationship, no ability to choose…which is what initially reminded me of Tony Soprano and his conversation with his therapist about his frenetic, disconnected and driven life.

But there is more, more than Jesus and the man with demons, more than Tony and his therapist, more than you and I and our demons.

For our first reading today is the story of the prophet Elijah who has been zealous for the Lord—driven, you might say, to do the things he thought God wanted him to do. This, as is often the case, has made him a wanted man, so he has withdrawn to complain to and commune with God about it.

And God shows up for the conversation, not in the powerful and dangerous ways that Elijah would have expected—in the wind, in an earthquake or in a raging fire. No, God shows up in something entirely different :the experience of sheer silence—a place of rest, a place of peace, a place of relationship with God and a place of choice, a choice that is consistent with what the prophet as prophet needs to do next. Oh yes, Elijah was zealous for the Lord, but what we learn in this story is that being zealous for the Lord, or for anything else for that matter, only gets you so far.

And so as I look at these two stories together what I see is not only an image of what dehumanizing driveness looks like and how Jesus responds to it. I also see a point being made about the dynamic interplay between inaction and action, between receptivity and directed energy in a healthy spiritual life.

When I think about managing the demons of driveness and about the dynamic interplay between inaction and action in my own life, I have to admit that I am ever a beginner. Wired for action and activity, it has taken me most of my life simply to find a way to be, to stand in the presence of something a little closer to sheer silence and out of this, on a good day, to act. What I have to admit is that while I, like Elijah, have been afraid to do this, to stand inactive in the silence, that this very inactivity allows me to hold onto my humanity and is the place out of which creativity comes.

One of my favorite authors, environmental activist and short-story writer Rick Bass, uses the word “balance” to speak of what I’m talking about here.

“What many people mean by balance is safety or security,” he says, “but they’re not the same thing…What I mean by balance is more like “amplitude” - space and movement together…. “The left and right, response and counter-response of movement and desire, of focus and unknowingness, is a pattern I’ve seen in humans and animals and even the sheer physical patterns of meandering rivers….What’s required for balance or stability is space to have those amplitudes of left and right. It’s a requisite of most threatened and endangered species, it’s a requisite of humans’ emotional lives, and that left-right motion, that movement, is the precise thing that gives a story life.”

And so today, just for today, look at and let go of the driveness of your life—whatever that driveness might be. Stand near the sheer silence and receive the amplitude of God. For the Holy One is her to bring us space and movement together, action that emerges from inaction, focus from unknowingness.

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