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<v ->The second reading is from the Galatians, chapter three.</v>

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Now before faith came, we were imprisoned,

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and guarded under the law, until faith would be revealed.

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Therefore the law was our disciplinarian, until Christ came.

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So that we might be justified by faith, but now that faith

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has come, we are no longer subject to an disciplinarian

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for in Christ Jesus, we are children of God through faith.

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As many of you were baptized into Christ, have closed

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yourself with Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek,

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there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer

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male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

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And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's

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offering, heirs according to the promise,

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this is the word of the Lord.

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The third reading is from the Gospel

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according to Saint Luke, chapter eight.

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Then they arrived to the country of

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Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.

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As he stepped out on land, a man of the city,

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who had demons who met him, for a long time

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he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house

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but in a tomb, when he saw Jesus, he fell down before him,

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and shouted at the top of his voice,

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"What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most

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high God, I beg you, do not torment me!"

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For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to

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come out of the man, for many times it had seized him,

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he was kept under guard, and bound with chains and shackles,

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but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demons

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into the wilds, Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?"

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He said, "Legion," for many demons had entered him.

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They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

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Now on the hillside, a large herd of swine was feeding,

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and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these.

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So he gave them permission, so then the demons came out

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of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed

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down the steep bank into the lake, and was drowned.

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When the swine herd saw what had happened, they ran off

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and told it in the city and in the country.

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Then people came out to see what had happened.

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And when they came to Jesus, they found the man, from

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whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus

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clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.

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Those who had seen it, told them how the one who had been

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possessed by demons had been healed.

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Then all the people of the surrounding country of

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the Gerasenes, asked Jesus to leave them, for they were

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seized with great fear, so he got into the boat

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and returned, the man from whom the demons had gone

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begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away

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saying, "Return to your home, and declare

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how much God has done for you."

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So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much

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Jesus had done for him, this is the word of the Lord.

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[Congregation] Praise the Light.

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<v ->I'd like to take a moment of personal privilege,</v>

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to give thanks to God for the ministry of this place,

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for the staff and the congregation and all those here,

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and especially on this day to give thanks to God for

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the ministry and witness of Deborah Brazil.

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I preached in this chapel on Deborah's first Sunday,

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and I recalled it last night, and I think it's

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a fitting close for both of us to be here, sharing

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in the leadership of worship this morning.

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But I do thank you, Deborah, for what you have meant to me.

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Let us pray.

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Oh, God, silence in us any voice but your own,

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that hearing your word, we may believe and obey, amen.

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Our culture

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is often loathe to name things

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what they are,

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we disguise the truth with clever words,

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firings become downsizing,

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lying or cheating is a character flaw,

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unfaithfulness becomes an affair of passion,

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gluttony, drunkenness and greed

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get labeled addictions,

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evil moreover, is represented by

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a vapid theology that suggests nothing worse

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than mere unpleasantness

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or absence of good,

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the scripture lesson for today,

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forces us to take seriously the

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demonic dimension of life

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and Jesus' power over it.

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But first, we need to ask

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just where is the demonic located,

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this story from the Gospel of Luke, sheds some light

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on the answers to that question with straight forwardness

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and an ironic twist,

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lets consider first the situation

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of the man from the city, Gerasenes,

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he is unwelcome,

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the one rejected by his community.

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Granted, he wore no clothes

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nor lived in a house,

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pretty strange by any conventional standards,

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his neighbors did not want him running loose

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in their neighborhood, so they kept him under guard

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and bound with chains and shackles,

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but he broke the bounds, and ran into the wilds

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and lived among the tombs,

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you know it seems every community

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has some unwelcome element we would like to

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keep out of the spheres of our lives,

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not in my neighborhood, how many times have we heard

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that, better yet,

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how many times have we said that?

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The public schools decide to place children

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impaired with a variety of emotional, cognitive,

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and physical conditions in all classrooms.

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We worry about how the teachers and other children

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will be affected,

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why can't special education classes

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have their own rooms, corridors, even entrances?

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The county buys a house for the rehabilitation of

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substance abusers, uh-oh,

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recovering addicts are unpredictable and uncontrollable.

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What if they back slide, they will share our

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sidewalks, and lurk outside as we walk to our cars.

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There are numerous ways to deal with those

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who are unwelcome, to banish them, control them,

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keep them out of the way,

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Pat Conroy, in his novel,

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Prince of Tides, describes starkly what

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it must be like from the other side.

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In mental hospitals, no matter how humanistic

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or enlightened,

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keys are the manifest credentials of power.

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The steel asterisks of freedom and mobility.

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The march of orderlies and nurses is accompanied

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by the alienating cacophony of singing keys,

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striking against thighs, annotating the passage of

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the free, when you find yourself listening to their

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keys and owning none, you will come close to

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understanding the white terror of the soul,

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that comes from

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being banished from all commerce with human kind.

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We have a glimpse of where the

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demonic is located from one angle.

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But I do not mean to imply that there isn't more.

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And here it is, the unwelcome power.

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The unwelcome power is any source of evil,

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whether in an individual or human systems and structures.

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One biblical commentator writes of this story about

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the demoniac, even if one were to accept demon

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possession, as a way to name the disintegration of

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someone's personality, that we recognize as mental

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illness, and even if we were to recognize exorcism

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as a way to speak about healing, Luke's story is

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marked by such grotesque and fantastic descriptions,

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that it is like a caricature,

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drawn in primary colors.

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The fact is that we are not simply faced with

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an interesting medical case, but with the presence

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of the demonic,

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evil is real not theoretical,

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and none of us has to look further than ourselves,

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to know the demons that we struggle with.

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Self absorption, control, addictions of

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every kind, dishonesty, mistrust, jealousy,

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we can fill in the blanks for ourselves.

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Then there are the movements in which groups

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get caught, that work for evil.

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Whether it is in the senseless bombing of a

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nightclub by a militia group, people yelling

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obscenities and throwing rocks at other people

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because they have a different skin color or

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practice a different religion, or an undeclared and

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illogical war,

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we see the enslaving power of the

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demonic, an unwelcome power,

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if we are going to take seriously the force of evil,

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then even more

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we need to take seriously what God does about it.

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God sends Jesus

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to prevail over the demons,

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and defeat them he does,

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central to the ministry of

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Jesus and the Gospel of Luke, is Jesus' power

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to cast out demons, Jesus announces

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that a new age is breaking in,

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the Kingdom of God is here,

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therefore, he commands the demons to depart.

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That is why the demons cry out when they meet Jesus.

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They know that for them his coming means

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the beginning of the end,

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two chapters later in Luke,

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the 70 commissioned followers

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of Jesus joyfully report, "Lord, in your name,

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even the demons submit to us."

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to which Jesus replies, "I watched Satan

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fall from heaven like a flash of lightening,

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see I have given you authority to tread

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on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power

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of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you."

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Luke delights in Jesus' display of power over demons.

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And what a demonstration of power of Jesus

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unfolds in this story about the Gerasenes.

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Immediately, upon stepping out on land,

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Jesus is recognized by the demons,

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I said demons, not just one, but Legion,

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there were many, the possessed man falls

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upon the ground, and foolishly, the demons

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negotiate with Jesus so as not to

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be sent into the abyss,

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Jesus agrees to their

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request to enter the swine, but they wind up

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in the abyss anyway and are drowned.

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The spectacle Luke records had many witnesses,

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and the man sitting clothed and in his right mind,

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gave truth to the testimony of those who told the story.

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Now if Luke's story ended here, we could all

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joyfully celebrate the arrival of a power

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greater than evil, claim that all is right in the world,

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and go home,

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but it doesn't and we can't, not yet, anyway.

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The ironic twist Luke presents is this,

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Jesus is the unwelcome

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power of good.

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The very folk who tried to control

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and contain the Gerasenes, recognized the mystery

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and power of what has taken place,

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but they cannot make a place for it,

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or accommodate it in their lives,

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and they asked Jesus to leave,

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Jesus' power of good is unwelcome, he is rejected.

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And in that, to be sure, the demonic is

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located as well,

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it is only the one from whom

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the demons were exorcized,

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who appreciates Jesus and his power,

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the neighbors, Luke records,

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were seized with great fear,

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fear of what?

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Power over the demons,

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I suspect it's something more.

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A psychiatrist friend has written

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that when a destructive force of behavior is driven away,

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it has to be substituted with a good force.

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A community that wants to rid itself of war making,

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needs to substitute it with assertive peace making.

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A bad habit has to be replaced with a good habit.

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Perhaps this community of the Gerasenes was so

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accustomed to the evil presence, that it

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could push away or work around that freedom

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and wholeness were scary to them.

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They couldn't change and accept and unknown power.

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Even Jesus' power of good over the known

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and predictable power of evil,

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and that is often

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the response to workers of justice and righteousness.

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Julia Esquivel, is Guatemalan, a human rights

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activist, theologian, and poet.

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Her poem, I am Not Possessed, is dedicated

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to the many valiant women of her Quatemala,

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it goes,

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"I am not possessed, I am not crazy, obsessed

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with an idea, I am simply a women with a human heart,

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I am a rebel when faced with a cold and calculated

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correctness of a bureaucrat,

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he who is always bound

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by the limits of the correct, the objective, and

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the prudent of an always neutral balance.

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The one who avoids taking risks for the sake of his

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office and his prestige,

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I am the possessor of not

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possessed by the normality

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of a woman that rejects

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and always will reject the disorder constituted

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by macho's, all of them potential generals,

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by all who place the law above life,

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the institution above humanity, the personal project

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above truth, fear above love,

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ambition above humility,

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that I must admit to those obsessed with

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such criteria,

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I am a red hot coal, lighted

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by the fire of a great love,

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brother, do you know

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the story of the burning bush that was never

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consumed?"

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Juliet Esquivel has been exiled from

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Quatemala since 1980,

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the unwelcome power of good.

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So if the man who's demons were exercised,

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is the only one who appreciates Jesus

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and his power of good, what does that mean for us?

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I believe Jesus' power of good will continue to

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be unwelcome to us, until our own demons are

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exorcized, and Jesus' power of good is welcomed

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as a way of life,

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exorcisms are largely ignored

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in our culture, as Kathleen Norris notes in

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her new book, Amazing Grace:

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A Vocabulary of Faith,

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"I suspect that most people have experiences that

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need to be exorcized," she writes.

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Fortunately, exorcisms have not been quite killed off

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in the modern Protestant Church, I enjoy finding

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them tucked away in hymns, where people tend

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not to notice them, what might be considered

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Martin Luther's theme song, the tough and resolute

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a mighty fortress is our God,

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puts it well,

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in the third stirring verse,

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and those this world,

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with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

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we will not fear,

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for God hath willed his truth

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to triumph through us,

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the Prince of Darkness Grim,

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we tremble not for him,

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his rage we can endure,

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for low his doom is sure,

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one little word shall fell him.

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We need to believe what we sing,

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that little word is Jesus.

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Jesus is the one who dispels all demons

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and leads us to a new way of life,

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a life in which

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each and every one who calls upon his name,

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welcomes the unwelcome,

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engages evil as the enemy,

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defeats the demonic,

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and works towards good,

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even when it is unwelcome.

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My friends,

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Jesus' power is good news,

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and it is the only hope we have to transform

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the world into what is not yet,

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and to purge it from what seems to be,

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amen.