Year C 2025

Luke 8:26-39

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Power That Gives Us Everything We Need

Would you agree with this statement: God is able to do anything that is logically possible to do? I’m sure your answer would be yes but through the centuries many questions have been raised by God’s people as to what might be considered logically possible. And yet, the scriptures do not worry about these questions because the scriptures present God as all-powerful, the one who is able to do even more than we could ask or imagine as Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians. Today’s texts all have to do with the power of God in one way or another. Elijah has just had perhaps the most victorious moment of his life. While he is surrounded by King Ahab, the prophets of Baal who want to kill him, and the people of God who have abandoned God, God makes God’s self known as the only true God through a spectacular display of power on Mount Carmel.

God ignites a soaking wet altar in order to demonstrate that God, not Baal is God. The four-hundred prophets of Baal are killed and Jezebel the wife of King Ahab, when she hears of their demise, vows to kill Elijah, so he flees for his life to a cave on Mount Horeb. In today’s text, Elijah is exhausted and asks God to end his life. As we read, God does not grant Elijah’s request. Instead, God sends an angel with freshly baked bread and a jar of water offering Elijah exactly what he needs at that moment. God then speaks to him, displaying power in the wind, an earthquake and a fire but as Elijah learns, God was not in the wind, earthquake or fire. God it turns out was in a sound of sheer silence. The literal Hebrew means something like “a thin whisper.” The contrast between the violence of the wind, quake, and fire displays of power that we understand and would expect of God, against God’s gentle whisper defies our imagination and our understanding of power.

Sometimes God’s power comes more quietly, providing food to one who is discouraged. After reassuring the prophet, God re-empowered him for ministry and service to lead God’s wayward people in the time of peril. God’s power does not always come in the form we expect and often upends our tidy lives, as the people of the Gerasenes found out when Jesus brought healing and peace to a man tormented by demons. God’s kingdom power came to the people of the Gerasenes, and it scares them half to death. It seems one demon-crazed man was easier to deal with than the idea that God might just upset everything they have come to accept as “normal.” Perhaps no other aspect of the gospel portrait of Jesus that poses so many difficulties for us is the tradition that Jesus was a “wonder-worker,” a performer of “miracles.”

As a culture, we do not take it for granted that there are “miraculous powers” at work in the world. Even Christians can be suspicious of events that require an explanation that rise above what we take to be the “natural laws of cause and effect.” Yet, the mighty deeds of Jesus are definitely a part of the history of Jesus recorded in the gospels and therefore are very firmly attested to historically. We can say that the miracles “really happened,” and as a part of the story of Jesus, they also have a symbolic meaning that point beyond themselves to a deeper meaning for those whose hearts and minds are open to God in faith. What we see of this extraordinary man, Jesus, we see only dimly from a time long ago that we can never fully understand.

Yet, to read the New Testament with our eyes, hearts and imaginations open, is to catch a glimpse of a man who from time to time can be identified as Gentle Jesus or as Christ the revolutionary, the teacher, the healer, the giver of new life. When Jesus steps out of the boat “opposite Galilee,” he sees the Gerasene demonic who is in dire circumstances, an unclean man who lives a tortured life among the dead, tormented day and night by a legion of demons. Like Elijah, he is oppressed by evil but the man does not cry out for help or ask God to end his life as Elijah did. Instead, the man yells at Jesus, questioning what he wants with him. The man is too weak to know what he needs but Jesus knows. He commands the demons to come out of him as soon as he sees the possessed man.

No grand displays of power, God comes to the man and gives him exactly what he needs, as with Elijah. The man experienced the Spirit of God flowing through him with power as Jesus liberates and heals him. Salvation brings life to body, mind, spirit and relationships. In a final demonstration of healing love, Jesus sends the man home, where he becomes a missionary to his whole town. ‘When the great fourteenth-century theologian Julian of Norwich saw the redemption of Christ against evil’s destructive power, she “laughed greatly,” for she saw that in the end the “fiend” would not prevail. Every wound and sorrow inflicted by wickedness would, in Christ, become a source of honor and glory as it was healed. Julian’s vision is borne out in this gospel story today of salvation’.

‘All the former wounds of the Gerasene demoniac bring salvation as the healed man goes among his people to tell them what Jesus has done’.  And yet, the most stunning display of God’s power, came not in a fiery demonstration on a mountain or even in casting out a legion of demons but on a Roman cross on a hill outside of Jerusalem, followed three days later by the empty tomb and resurrection. Paul says this power is foolishness to the world, but to those who are Christ followers it is the power of God for our salvation. It is the power of the cross that broke human imprisonment to a law we could not keep. Through the power of the cross God makes us into new creations. Having accepted Christ by faith, God clothes the baptized with Christ giving us the ability to live not as slaves to sin but as God’s own children. 

Paul, as much as anyone else, knows God’s power can remake a wretched sinner into a brand new creation. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we are new creations, the world as a whole continues to await the “glorious healing freedom of God’s children.” Like the psalmist, there are times when, we feel oppressed by our enemies and forgotten by God. We are downcast. During those times our cries of faith rise to heaven and the Spirit of God, God’s power reminds us that God is with us. Different from the power of the world, this power of God is actually make perfect in weakness. When we are weak, God is strong. Therefore, we can put our hope in God, for God alone is our Savior. God’s power does not always come in the form we expect. Still, the power of salvation really does make all things new and equips us for ministry. It gives us exactly what we need to praise God who is our help and our living God.