The Demon Named Legion

The Demon Named Legion

The story of Jesus’ exorcism of the demon named Legion is one of the most important stories in the Bible. If we will take it to heart it will change everything. The oldest version of the story that we have appears at Mark 5:1-20. It goes like this. Jesus and the disciples have crossed the Sea of Galilee to a place the text calls “the country of Gerasenes.” This means that Jesus and his disciples have entered a Gentile region not a Jewish one. A man comes from an area of tombs to encounter them, and he has “an unclean spirit.” His unclean spirit makes him uncontrollable. The people of the area have tried to restrain him with chains, but he breaks them. No one could subdue him. He would spend time “howling and bruising himself with stones.” We would say he had a severe mental illness, but the ancient world of this story knew nothing of mental illness as a disease process. So it said people like this man were possessed by an unclean or demonic spirit. The man sees Jesus and runs up and bows before him. He shouts at Jesus: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” Mark tells us that the man said that because Jesus had already said to the demon “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”

Up to that point this could just be another exorcism tale about Jesus, but then it takes a crucial turn. Jesus asks the demon: “What is your name?” If we think about it that question will probably strike us as odd. The demons Jesus exorcises from people don’t usually have names. Beyond that, why would Jesus care what the demon’s name is? It seems that what really matters here is that the demon come out of the possessed man, that the man be restored to his right mind and made well. Jesus, who of course has power over demons in these stories, doesn’t really need to know the demon’s name or even if the demon had one before he heals this tormented man. Still, he asks the demon: “What is your name?” The question is so odd that we should sense that something important is coming next, and indeed it is. The demon replies: “My name is Legion; for we are any.”

Two important things have happened here. First, it turns out that the man was possessed not by one demon but by many. Second, these many demons have but one name, and that name is Legion. To understand what this story is really telling us we have understand the name Legion the way the first audiences for this story would have understood it back in the first century CE. What did the word Legion (or legion) mean in that world? I think we can already sense the answer. We’ve all heard of the Roman legions. Mark’s audience so long ago would have known immediately what a legion was. For us the word has come to mean only many, a great number of anything. If we say someone’s troubles are legion we mean the poor soul has many of them. In Jesus’ world (and in Mark’s) the word legion had a much more specific meaning than that. A legion was a unit of the Roman army. It was a large unit numbering in the thousands. A Roman legion was something like today’s army division, a large, primary unit of military organization. Today we may miss the association of the word legion with a military unit and specifically with a Roman military unit. Mark’s original audience would not have missed that association.

The next line is telling too. Mark states: “He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.” Note the odd confusion of the singular and the plural here. This sentence refers to the demon both as “he” and as “them.” A Roman legion was made up of individual soldiers, but it acted as a unit; and surely the important thing for the people being subjected by a Roman legion was how it acted as a unit, not how the individuals in it behaved. Mark’s use of the word “them” in his sentence again emphasizes that we are dealing not with an individual demon but with demons collectively. The demon(s) ask(s) Jesus to let them go into a herd of swine grazing on a hillside. Remember that the story is set in Gentile territory. That’s why there could be a herd of swine in the area, something you’d never see in Jewish lands. Jesus agrees, whereupon the “the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank and into the sea, and were drowned.” The demon named Legion drowns in “the sea.” The story says that the possessed man was then restored to his right mind. Legion has been removed from inside him, and he is sane again.

To understand the deep meaning and power of this story we must next consider the cultural context in which it was first told. It is set in a Gentile area, but it is a story about a Jewish man (Jesus) told to and for Jewish people. In the first century CE, the time of Jesus and the time of Mark, the world of the Jews was a world of poverty and oppression. Israel lived under Roman occupation. The Romans with their legions had occupied the area of Israel in 63 BCE. They or their successor the Byzantine Empire would occupy the region for centuries thereafter. In the first century CE Roman occupation was not a pleasant thing. Because the temple authorities for the most part collaborated with the Romans the Romans more or less left Jewish religious practice alone. There was no attempt like that of the Greek Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanis IV in the second century BCE to impose foreign, gentile religious practices on the Jews. The Romans didn’t interfere with Jewish religious practice, which they respected in some ways because it was so ancient. What they did care about was taxes. They taxed the Jewish population heavily, so heavily that they kept most people in abject poverty. Not that most people would have been wealthy without the Romans. They wouldn’t have been. But Roman taxation was a heavy burden on most Jewish people in the first century CE. The Romans also cared about law and order. They wanted the people of the lands they had conquered and occupied to be peaceful subjects of the Empire. They oppressed any resistance to their rule with brutal force.

Perhaps most galling of all to most Jews was the reality that they were ruled from abroad by a Gentile, pagan power. They had to be obedient to Gentiles who were in the eyes of many unclean because they offered sacrifice to gods and goddesses who weren’t real and made their emperor in some way divine, if not during his life then after his death. Jewish people had to use coins with images of one emperor or another with words that said he was somehow divine. The Jews found Roman occupation so unacceptable that they rebelled against it from time to time. They had done so in 4 BCE when Herod the Great, the Romans’ puppet king, died. They did it again with some temporary success in 66 CE, a rebellion that resulted in 70 CE in the Roman destruction of the temple and the scattering of the people across the world away from Jerusalem. For the most part the Jews hated the Romans and the way Rome occupied their land.

Because the Jews so hated the Romans there arose various movements that identified as messianic. Many Jews hoped for the coming of a figure called the Messiah. Our English word Messiah derives from a Hebrew word that means “anointed.” In the ancient Hebrew kingdoms a king wasn’t crowned as king, he was anointed as king. That is, he had oil poured on his head. He was anointed with oil as a sign of God’s favor and even of God’s selection of that person to be king. In Jesus’ time many Jews longed for the coming of a long promised new Messiah, a new king chosen by God to rule the people and to reestablish their independence and glory. People did not see the hoped for Messiah as divine. The notion that a human being could also be divine was (and is) one Judaism could never entertain. The Messiah was to be a king who would raise an army, drive the Romans into the sea by force, and reestablish the kingdom of David. For many Jews Rome was out there in the world, their world, and they had to be driven out of it.

Christians proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, but he certainly was not that kind of Messiah. He never raised an army to fight the Romans. He never even thought about raising an army to fight the Romans, or at least as far as we know he never did. Yet he too knew that Roman occupation was an enormous problem for his people. He, however, understood the real problem with Roman occupation very differently than most of his Jewish contemporaries did, and we see quite clearly how he understood the problem of Roman occupation in the story of the exorcism of the demon named Legion.

Legion, the symbol of the Roman Empire, was inside the possessed man Jesus healed. Legion made the man insane. Legion made the man something other than his true self, something violent, something ugly, something people could not control and so tried to avoid. The man’s problem wasn’t that Rome was out there, outside of him. His problem was that Rome was inside him, in his mind, in his heart, in his soul. We know that this is a truth this story is telling us because the demon that possessed the man had a name, and the name was Legion. The name was Roman army. The name was a word so intimately associated with Roman occupation that no one in the first audience for this story would have missed the connection. Rome was inside this man. That was his problem.

So Jesus got Rome out of the man. He exorcised the demon named Legion, but he didn’t just exorcise the demon. He granted its (their) request to enter a herd of pigs. The original audience for this story must have loved that part of the story. The unclean Romans entered unclean animals. How appropriate! Then the pigs possessed by Legion ran into the sea and were drowned. It was the Sea of Galilee not the Mediterranean; but it was still a sea of sorts, and most of all the hated Roman Legion died in it. That is exactly what so many Jews longed to see happen to the Roman legions that occupied their land and oppressed them. Get them out of here. Drive them into the sea. That’s what people wanted, and that’s what happens to them, metaphorically at least, in this story.

Notice once again, however. Where was Legion? Not out there. Not outside the possessed man. Inside him. In his mind. In his heart. In his soul. This story makes a powerful and central point about how Jesus saw the world’s problems. The man’s problem wasn’t that Rome was out there, outside him. The man’s problem was that Rome was in here, inside him. The man’s problem was that he had internalized Rome. He had internalized empire. For Jesus the solution to Roman occupation wasn’t to raise an army. It wasn’t to look outward at what Rome was doing in the world, it was to look inward to see what Rome was doing to your soul. At least that’s where the solution to the evils of empire had to start, in the mind, heart, and soul of every person living under empire.

Like every great Bible story the story of the exorcism of the demon named Legion isn’t just about something that happened to someone else a long time ago in a place far away. It is a story about us too. It is a story for us. It is a story that points us toward the real problem in our lives, indeed toward the real problem with the life of the world. The world’s problem is the reality of empire, but the problem is less that empire is out there than that it is in here. It is in our minds, our hearts, and our souls every bit as much as the demon named Legion was in the mind, heart, and soul of the possessed man in Mark’s story about Jesus. We too have internalized the ways of empire.

Now, a great many people today are going to find that statement puzzling at best, or at least wrong, or even as downright offensive. We don’t think we’ve internalized empire even if we have some notion of what that statement means. We think the ways of empire are just the way things are. But to understand what it means for us to have internalized empire we must start by understanding what the ways of empire are. The ways of empire are the ways of violence, oppression, and injustice. Empire always functions for the benefit of the wealthy not the benefit of the people. We know that a great many Americans have internalized the ways of empire when we see how they support policies that are essentially imperial. When our nation goes to war we say that all Americans must support the war, or at least support the troops and probably the politicians who sent them to war. Richard Nixon’s war crimes in Viet Nam and Cambodia aren’t what eventually drove him out of office. Polls showed that most Americans supported his policies there. No one has prosecuted George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Condaleezza Rice for war crimes in Iraq though they are clearly guilty of them. Only the internalizing of the ways of empire can explain those undeniable facts.

Today (November 16, 2017) one of the issues before us is the proposed tax legislation in Congress. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and the tax bill they are advocating is a clear statement of Republican beliefs and priorities. That bill benefits the wealthy and big corporations. It does nothing or next to nothing for middle class Americans, and it certainly does nothing for poor Americans. It actually raises taxes on some middle income people. The Senate’s version even has a provision in it repealing the universal mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Polls show that most Americans just don’t care about that bill or the issues it addresses. How can people not care? That bill is an embodiment of gross injustice. How can we not care about it? We don’t care about it because we have internalized the ways of empire. Empires always benefit the wealthy not the people. When we internalize the ways of empire we accept policies that benefit the wealthy not the people simply as reasonable, simply as the way things are. We even believe that they will be beneficial in ways in which they clearly will not. Likewise we accept environmental policies that destroy the earth but make the rich richer simply as reasonable, simply as the way things are, the way things have to be, the way things will always be. We accept a criminal law system that incarcerates Blacks at a rate far higher than whites because whites are dominant. For empire the dominant matter more than the powerless, and we have internalized the ways of empire. The examples of how we accept grossly unjust and violent policies because we have internalized empire could go on and on, but I trust the point is made. We have internalized empire. Legion is inside us.

Jesus knew that Rome, that empire, was inside the people of his day as well. He wanted people to be liberated from imperial oppression as much as the leaders of violent revolts against Rome did, but knew a couple of things that they didn’t. He knew first of all that God is nonviolent and calls us to be nonviolent. Beyond that, he knew that the Jewish people had no hope of defeating Rome militarily, and the history of the Jewish rebellions against Rome after his time prove that he was right about that. He knew that Rome was oppressive and unjust, but he knew better than anyone else how to deal with it. Not by hopeless, violent rebellions but through personal, inner transformation. Liberation comes from the inside out. Free your mind, heart, and soul from Rome, and you will be free.

Now, that doesn’t mean that Jesus passively accepted the dominance of Rome in the world. He didn’t. He wanted Rome gone from Israel as much as anyone else did. He preached an equality that was radically anti-Roman. He preached nonviolence, again something that was radically anti-Roman. He lifted up those Rome oppressed. He chastised Rome’s accomplices in Jerusalem. He was no friend of the Romans, and the Romans knew it. They, after all, were the ones who executed him. No, Jesus didn’t accept the dominance of Rome in the world. He just knew better than anyone else how truly to get rid of it. Work from the inside out. Transform enough people from the inside out, and Rome will disappear. It will no longer have enough people to go along with its brutal policies. Get Rome out of your heart and mind, he said, then Rome will no longer be a problem.

Folks, we Americans live in the Rome of the 21^st century. Far too many of us, probably all but a handful of us actually, have internalized the ways of empire, for we all grew up in the world empire of our day. We all grew up being taught both explicitly and implicitly that the ways of empire are just how things are and that on the whole they are good. At least we were taught that they are good if the empire in question is the American empire. Our country needs a revolution. A peaceful revolution. Don’t ever forget the peaceful part. Don’t ever get violent, for violence is the way of the structures we need to overcome. We need a revolution, a turning, away from the ways of empire and toward the ways of peace and justice. Call this revolution what you will. Socialist. Or Christian, for socialist and truly Christian are very similar. Call it social democracy or democratic socialism. Call it Christian socialism. It doesn’t much matter what we call it, though of course it must benefit all not just Christians. What matters is that we bring about a nation devoted not to the ways of empire but to the ways of peace and justice.

Jesus told us how to do it. The Gospels tell us how to do it in the story of the exorcism of the demon named Legion. Don’t get violent against the institutions of empire. Get intentional about cleaning empire out of your own person. Stop thinking like empire wants you to think. Stop pledging allegiance to what empire wants you to pledge allegiance to. Learn God’s will and ways from Jesus. Analyze the world through the lens of God’s will and ways. Reject violence. Reject injustice. Reject oppression. Reject prejudice. Reject anything that denies or diminishes the value of any human being. Reject anything that harms God’s good earth. Reject anything that harms any of God’s people.

But don’t just reject. Support and work to elect politicians who stand for peace and justice. Give money and work with organizations that promote peace and justice. Speak truth to power. Model your life on Jesus’ life. Love. Care. Take care of. Forgive. Expunge all hatred from your heart. Be at peace in your soul and you will be at peace in the world. Jesus knew that if enough people will live that way empire will fall. Empire will fall because it depends on hatred and violence for its very existence. So love don’t hate. Resist evil assertively, creatively, but never violently. All of that will exorcise the demon Legion from your mind, your heart, your soul. If we will do that, we can change the world.

Addendum

My friend and colleague Rev. Norm Erlendsen, a Congregationalist pastor in Connecticut, read this essay and sent me some additional information. Citing a source for the material, Norm told me that the Tenth Legion of the Roman army was stationed in Syria in the first century CE and that some of it was stationed in Galilee. It's emblem was the boar. Mark sets the story of the demon named Legion on the Syrian side of the Sea of Galilee. He has the demons enter a herd of pigs. A boar is of course a swine, related to domesticated pigs. Mark's symbolism would have spoken even more powerfully to the first audience for this story than I thought. The place where the story is set was occupied and oppressed by a boar, a pig, the Tenth Legion of Rome. This additional historical information makes my analysis of the story stronger, much stronger, than I ever thought it was. Thanks, Norm.