June 22 2025 Second Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 19:1-4, 8-15a; Psalm 42; Galatians 3:10-14; Luke 8:26-39

Sermon by Bishop John Roundhill.

This is the end of refugee week. There are more refugees than there used to be.

For me, Refugee Week is more than just a calendar event; it's a renewed call to reflect on the plight of the forcibly displaced, a call I feel compelled to answer with increasing frequency in my sermons.

By the very crude metric of my sermons the number of refugees increases as I preach about it year on year. In 2013 I preached and mentioned that there were 15 million. I preached again about this in 2016 and that number was 20 million.  When I went to the UNHCR for the same stat this week it reports the number for 2024 as 43 million. That number scary though it is, is dwarfed by the number of forced displaced persons which was reported as 120 million in 2024. That means every 1 in 69 people here on earth is forcibly displaced.

Will we end up with a world where the very poorest have places or are we going to build walls and barriers and lift border to protect those of us who already have so much?

When we hear numbers like 120 million, or words like 'hoard,' 'swamped,' or 'inundated' used to describe people fleeing for their lives, it evokes a primal fear. It reminds me of the chilling declaration in our Gospel reading today: the demon-possessed man, when asked his name, responds, 'My name is Legion; for we are many' – a statement loaded with the same kind of fear and dehumanization we sometimes apply to those seeking refuge.

In a way we have a refugee story with this Gospel. The demon possessed man has sought refuge with the dead in the tombs. He has been thrown out of the city where his possession has mean that they could not contain him and now he is a displaced person. 

 He is an outcast, driven from society, living in a place of the dead, unable to find peace or belonging. Is this not, in a profound spiritual sense, the experience of many who are forcibly displaced today – pushed from their homes, stripped of their dignity, often seeking refuge in the most desolate of places

But what happens next although in a way predictable is also still shocking. 

We have some strange stuff to digest. The chatter and bargaining between legion and Jesus, the pleading not to be sent to the abyss. Why didn’t Jesus just exorcise them? They are sent into a heard of pigs. We know we are in gentile territory earlier in the reading when we learn we are on the other side of lake galilee, pigs are not a eaten by Jews so this place is a gentile place and in fact the demon possessed man is a gentile. I reckon this becomes significant later. So the legion of demons is sent to the pigs and the pigs run off the hillside to drown in the deeps of lake Galilee. 

But it is what happens next that intrigues me. The formerly demon possessed man is now clothed, in his right mind and sat at the feet of Jesus.  The townsfolk hear via the now jobless swineherds what has happened and they come to see for themselves and as it says in verse 35 “And they were afraid”

That for me is a turning point in this story. The people come, see the former deranged man in his right mind, clothed and listening to Jesus. They are aware that the demons have gone and will have heard with perhaps heavy hearts that the pigs are drowned, and they are afraid. 

We have grown accustomed to evil, we have accommodated ourselves around its cancerous growth to the point where its removal is painful for us, we too are afraid. 

There is so much evil in this world of our own making and to a degree we are each are like the townsfolk, when good change comes we are afraid. Our accommodation with evil; that very idea is offensive when you think about it, but do I not tolerate, put up with, accommodate evil, just a bit. It might be too easy to think about the situation with refugees but don’t we could we not do more to defeat the scourge of ice, but quite literally whilst the evil is far away we might tolerate it. 

I am not wanting to make each of us feel uselessly guilty here, but I do wonder if we are really that different from those townsfolk years past. And if we are like them, and we know and believe in the good news, shouldn’t a bit more be expected of us. Us, you and me. 

And if you and I together are the body of Christ, isn’t that “more” quite a bit more. I am not suggesting that we can walk and trample on snakes (chapter 10:19) and a verse that some Christians have taken literally to their loss. But together, as the body of Christ we are here to dethrone evil and to send it to the abyss.

And what kind of world would that truly herald.

One last idea springs from our Gospel reading. The former demoniac begs to follow Jesus,  but Jesus tells him to go back to his city and tell of what God has done to him. I think he becomes at that point the first gentile evangelist.

What a turn around, the demon possessed wild man becomes an evangelist, who would have thunk it. 

Who are we in this story?

Are we the townsfolk, fearful of the change that good brings, or dare we think  at times we are in fact the man, in need of Jesus and are we too ready to be commission to be sent back to our own town to tell of what God has done.

  "Because if we are indeed the man, commissioned by Christ, then our 'city' – our homes, our workplaces, our communities – awaits the good news of what God has done, and continues to do, in us and through us."

  "Let us pray for the courage to shed our fears, to embrace the liberating power of God, and to be sent forth as evangelists of compassion and hope in a world desperately in need

Amen