Father Stephen De Young: God didn’t change between the Old covenant, the New Covenant; the Old Testament and the New Testament. Same God, right? Same God. And what St. Paul says about the Old Covenant, about the Torah, is that it was a pedagogue, meaning it’s like a schoolteacher, meaning God was teaching his people something. What should the correct response have been? Or what was the correct response? Because there were saints in the Old Covenant, right? There are saints from the Old Covenant. What is the correct response to attempting to keep the Torah under your own power and failing? It’s right there in the Torah. The whole sacrificial system of sin, offerings, of guilt offerings, all of that was there for repentance. It was all there to cause the people to turn to God in repentance and say, “I can’t do this under my own power. I’m striving to do it. I’m struggling to do it, but I can’t do it under my own power. I need the help of God.”

In the New Covenant, we’re blessed, we’re given more, and so we’re more accountable. And we’ve entered a new era where we’ve been given more. But that doesn’t mean that the saints of the Old Covenant are somehow second-class saints. As we talked about with forgiveness, God can forgive sins however he likes, right? He could do whatever he wants to. He could do it through sacrifices of the Old Covenant, He could do it through baptism with St. John the Forerunner, He could do it through confession to the apostles and their successors in the New Testament and the New Covenant. He could do it with none of that, he could just forgive sins direct, like Jesus does. Jesus just looks at people. We’ve seen it happen already in St. Luke’s Gospel. He says “Your sins are forgiven.” Doesn’t say he baptized them. Doesn’t say he sacrificed an animal. Doesn’t say he even made them confess. He just says “Your sins are forgiven” because he’s God. He could forgive sins however he feels like.

But God works with different people in different places at different times in order to bring them along and bring them to salvation and reveal himself to them. So that takes one form with Bronze Age people in a Bronze Age culture. That takes another form in the Roman Empire, takes another form in the Church Fathers. So the faith is one, right? There’s one faith. That faith is explained in different languages, in different ways to different cultures, but it’s the same content. And that content was known in the Old Covenant, according to St. Paul, in a shadowy way in the Old Testament. Not completely understood until the incarnation of Christ, his death, his resurrection, and it sort of all comes together. We have a more complete understanding of it now, but it’s not a different faith. It’s not a new faith.

And so, we’ll see that tension as we go forward in the New Testament, where St. John says, “A new commandment I give you, to love one another.” But it’s not really a new commandment. I mean, it goes back to Deuteronomy, where he tells, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” right? That’s where Christ quotes it from. So it’s new, but it’s not new.

Interlocutor: It’s building on your thing of the essence, from what now you have just said, this strikes me as daily God revealing himself to us, continuous revelation. Is that the theologically correct interpretation?

Fr. Stephen: Right. That’s what Christ was just getting at with his example when he was talking about the lamp. As God reveals Himself to us, as we come to know God, if we take that knowledge that we receive, we take that word that we hear and we put it into practice, we’re given more understanding and more revelation. As we put that into practice, it continues, right? But if we receive it and we do nothing with it, we ignore it, then even that that we think we understand is going to be taken away from us. So that’s exactly what he was getting at there.

So now, we’ve seen Jesus’ call in the storm. He’s done another God thing to save the disciples, although they lacked faith. And they asked the question, sort of the rhetorical question that’s unanswered, who can this be? So St. Luke sort of hammers the point home. “Yeah, who is it who could do this?”

So then with the Sea of Galilee calmed:

Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee. And when He stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me!” For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness.

So we’ve now gone to a Gentile area. Remember, Galilee is sort of a mixture, there’s a lot of Jews living there, a lot of Gentiles living there. This is a straight Gentile area. We’re going to see more evidence of that in a second. This is a man who’s from the city, he grew up in the city and then at some point becomes demon-possessed, and it talks about them shackling him. So obviously he got into some trouble with the law in the city. They tried to chain him up, they tried to imprison him. He escaped, went out into, essentially, the cemetery, went out into the tombs and is now living among the tombs like a wild animal. Because, not to be too graphic, but it was scavenger animals, vultures and jackals and stuff that lived out in the tombs because they’d try and scavenge out there. So, these are unclean animals to boot. It’s not “Oh, he’s living with nature, in some beautiful way like the animals do.” No, this is like unclean animals. This is like filthy animals out among the dead.

And so, we’re told in a roundabout way, we get the response first and then we find out, “Oh yeah, he said that because Jesus commanded the demon to come out of him.” He says, “What have I to do with what do you? What do you and I have to discuss?” But notice the demon knows exactly who he is. He identifies him as Jesus, Son of the Most High God, so he recognizes him immediately.

This is in contrast to what? The disciples who we just saw, who apparently were still iffy on who exactly Jesus is, “Who can this be?” Well, okay, unfortunately the demons have to tell them.

And so, we’ve talked before. I’ve gone over this several times. I know. So I’ll just briefly demonic possession, obviously, we think of The Exorcist and a hundred other scary movies, and so it’s obvious to us that being demon-possessed is very bad. It’s something you don’t want to happen to them. Not so in the ancient world. Right? In the ancient world, being demon possessed was seen as a good thing and an honor. So the oracle at Delphi was possessed by Apollo, and that’s how she would give her prophecies. Apollo would come and possess her and speak through her and prophesy. Socrates in Plato’s Theaetetus says he has a demon that whispers wisdom to his soul. That sounds really creepy to us in English, but at that time they thought nothing of it because the word, the word demon just means, or meant in classical Greek at that time, a spirit. Just meant a spirit, not necessarily an evil one.

Now, from the perspective, obviously, of the Jewish people, in the later Christian perspective, the only spirits possessing people are evil ones, or evil and unclean ones. But that wasn’t the case in their view. And there were festivals and rituals that involved people being possessed. The most famous at this time in history were the Bacchanalia; the Roman god Bacchus, who is sort of the rough equivalent of the Greek god Dionysus, they would have these festivals, big drinking festivals, which would culminate in people being possessed by the Bacchae, by the spirits of Bacchus, and they have orgies and run through the streets and burn things. And this was a religious celebration in the first century.

There are still a lot of animistic religions that still practice this. The most obvious and nearby example being voodoo. In voodoo ritual, they believe that there are spirits, called loa that inhabit the Earth. And in the rituals, people will be possessed by the loa. And that’s generally expressed as someone looking like they’re having a seizure and occasionally, quote-unquote, “prophesy”. So this is still practiced by some of the religious groups.

So demonic possession is still not viewed as a totally negative thing by some groups. In this case, it’s clearly negative in the sense that it’s negatively affected his life. But from the perspective of the people in the city, this would be a person who’s sort of touched by the gods. Since we know he could speak, they might have even tried to go out and offer him stuff and talk to him to try and get wisdom from him. Because this was their…

Interlocutor: Is that why they chained him up, instead of killing him?

Fr. Stephen: Yes, because they believed that the spirits were gods that would possess people. So you wouldn’t want to kill him because then that god might get mad at you. So since they believe that their gods were spirits… spirits, they thought couldn’t talk to you and interact with you directly, so they had to have a body to use. So they would either possess a person or they would go into a piece of statuary. That’s where Greco-Roman idolatry comes from. The centerpiece of the temple would be a statue. They believed that during the religious rituals, after you offered the sacrifices, the spirit of that God would come into the statue. And so then you could interact with that spiritual being. Or like at the oracle at Delphi, it would come into a person, and then you could interact with that spirit through the person.

So this has happened to this man. Jesus comes, and Jesus, just by his presence and what he says to him gives a very different reading to demonic possession. This is not a good thing. This man is being tormented. These spirits that the Gentiles worship, what St. Luke is saying here, not very subtly, these spirits, these quote unquote “gods” who the Gentiles worship, are actually spirits who are bent on the destruction of human beings, not on their well-being, not on their welfare. They’re not interested in helping you or blessing you or doing anything good for you. They’re interested in destroying you and leading you astray.

So, this is important to keep in mind, because as we’ve seen already, we’ve said before, Gospel according to St. Luke is the first part of a two-part work with the Book of Acts. We’ve already seen, as we’ve been going through St. Luke’s gospel, he’s very concerned about the Gentiles and the fact that Jesus has come for the Gentiles too. But the fact that Jesus has come for the Gentiles also, that’s inclusion. Jesus is here for everybody, not just the Jewish people. He’s here for everyone. But that doesn’t mean the way we sometimes talk about inclusion today, that Jesus is somehow endorsing Gentile religion, Gentile customs. He’s not endorsing the Roman political system. He’s not endorsing Roman wars or Roman violence. He’s not endorsing Roman religion. All those things that are all tied up together, because remember, there’s no separation of church and state in the ancient world, right? These are all tied up together. He’s not endorsing any of that.

He’s come for the Gentiles, to set them free from that, to free them from idolatry, to worship the true God, as St. Paul is later going to put it in Colossians. So, he’s here to free these people. And this is a person, who is exhibit A of someone who is a victim of pagan religion, who is a victim of the spiritual and religious system of the Roman world at that time. This is someone who’s being destroyed by it.

So, Jesus tells the spirit to come out of him, the spirit says, “What have I got to do with you? Please don’t torment me” So you notice, paradoxically, the spirit who hasn’t shown a whole lot of mercy to this man driving him out to the tombs, but now he wants mercy from Jesus, right? Because as we’ve talked about, when God comes to visit and Jesus is God, when God comes, justice is established, right? There’s a reckoning, things get sorted out. Well, now that Jesus is here, there’s going to be a reckoning. This demon knows he’s on the wrong side of that reckoning.

Jesus asked him, saying, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him.

Roman legions had, depending on the legion and depending on the time in Roman history, but you’re talking about 20,000 soldiers. So the idea is that this fellow isn’t just someone who is walking around one day minding his own business and a demon hopped into him. This man became somehow deeply invested in the demonic realm, right? And he is now filled with demons, with evil spirits who are seeking his destruction.

And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.

Now, the word “abyss” literally means sort of the depths of the ocean. But that’s an image. Just like when people talk about hell today in our modern culture, they talk about it like it’s somewhere in the Earth’s mantle or something, which obviously it is not, right? That’s an analogy. This is also an analogy, you can’t take a stairway down and find hell.

But the term abyss also goes back to Genesis 1. The Spirit of God hovers over the abyss because before God creates, there’s just water. Because water, as we talked about in the Old Testament, was an image of chaos and destruction. So they’re asking Jesus not to cast them into destruction, for them not to receive their judgment. They know the final judgment that’s coming to them, the demons do. They don’t want it right now, right? They’re like, “Can we have a little more time to cause trouble?” Because that’s all they’re going to do is cause trouble. They’re not going to repent, right? Demons can’t repent.

This is an important note here. We have to remember, and we’ll see this all the way through, even into the Book of Revelation. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God created hell for human beings. God did not create hell to have a place to send bad people. The lake of fire that we’re going to see, the judgment, the condemnation, that’s what hell is, is the place of punishment for the devil and the demons. That’s what it’s for. What we’ll see in the Book of Revelation is that those human beings who refuse to accept God’s salvation, who reject God, who live their lives and then their eternal lives in rebellion against God and hatred against God, and therefore do not want to live in the new heavens and the new earth, where is there left for them to be?

The only other place to be if you don’t want to be with Christ, is with the devil and his angels in condemnation. This is why we say people don’t accidentally go to hell, right? People aren’t accidentally eternally condemned. “I’m trying real hard to do what the Lord wants me to do, and I’m trying really hard and aww, I just didn’t make the cut and ended up in hell.” The people who end up under final eternal condemnation are people who have chosen to be there.

That said, before we use that to say, “Oh, well, then I don’t have anything to worry about because I love God”, we need to be a little more self-aware about how we choose to live our lives and where we’re actually choosing to go.

So they don’t want that to happen right now. They’re trying to bargain for a little bit more time.

Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain.

This is our proof that we’re in a Gentile community. In case you were unsure before, because they’re herding pigs, there’s only one reason to herd pigs, it’s not for leather, it’s to eat them. So there’s a herd of pigs there feeding on the mountain.

So they begged Him that He would permit them to enter them. And He permitted them.

So they’re saying, “Don’t send this to condemnation yet! We know we’ve got to come out of this person, but there’s some pigs over there. They’re unclean animals, right? You don’t care about pigs, right? You’re not worried about them. Let us go into those pigs, okay?” So, Jesus gives them permission.

Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned.

So notice something here. First of all, Jesus actually shows them some sort of mercy. He says, “Okay, you can go to the pigs,” right? You can go to the pigs; he doesn’t judge them at that moment. But what happens when they go to the pigs? Because these spirits can only do one thing and that’s destroy. They can’t create, they can’t heal, they can’t love, right? They can’t bring about any of that. All they can do is destroy. So when Jesus shows them a little mercy and sends them to the pigs, they just end up killing all the pigs and destroying themselves too.

So, we have to keep in mind that St. Luke’s audience reading this included a whole lot of Gentiles. A whole lot of Gentiles. And we’re going to see, especially when we get into First Corinthians and also in Colossians, but especially in First Corinthians, one of the problems St. Paul is going to deal with in his early church communities that include a lot of Gentiles who are converts, is that there are going to be a lot of Gentiles who kind of want to still have one foot in both worlds, right? They’re going to want to be Christian, “Well, yeah, I want to be a Christian and I want to follow Christ and everything, but it really helped me at work if I could go to my boss’s party and they’re kind of offering sacrifices to Zeus there. And so if I could go to that party and just eat a little meat, I’m not going to worship Zeus or anything, but the meat is going to come from the sacrifices to Zeus. If I could just go there and eat some meat, I’ll be in the corner and kind of be seen and sneak out to help me my job, keep me from losing my job.”

And St. Paul’s going to have to say, “Uh-uh”. He’s going to get to the point where he’s going to say, “You can’t come and receive communion from the altar, drink the cup of Christ and then go and drink the cup of demons. Doesn’t work. You’ve got to choose one or the other.”

And so, St. Luke is sending a message here and the details of the story and the way he tells it to his Gentile readers. That world you came out of, that world that Jesus set you free from, the way he set this man free from these spirits, doesn’t offer you anything. All it offers you is destruction, all it offers you is chaos, all it offers you is immorality, which is going to destroy you. So the break needs to be clean. If Christ has set you free of that, you need to now stay away from that. There’s nothing more there for you. There aren’t sort of some helpful insights from the Zeus priests that you can incorporate into your Christian life, right? Because he’s on another trajectory going to a different place.

Now, if we can manage to preach the gospel to the priest of Zeus and have him set free too, and become a Christian, that’d be great. That’s our goal, not to just tell the priest and Zeus to buzz off. But we’re not going to join religious practices that just leave the death and destruction.

And I know this cuts against our modern sensibility, because our modern sensibility is we want to go and see the good in all religions and the good in all beliefs. But again, there’s no separation of Church and State at this point in history, and the proof is in the pudding. The Roman religion was part and parcel of the Roman political system and the Roman way of life. So when we talk about the oppression of women and children, when we talk about mass slavery, when we talk about brutal forms of capital punishment and torture like crucifixion. When we talk about the whole Roman ideology, that there are people who are more and less human and more and less valuable humans, and some humans who aren’t valuable at all, and others who have more value, this isn’t a separate thing from the Roman religion.

The beliefs of Greco-Roman religion brought about that type of society, and the faith and belief in that type of society was directly connected to the Roman religion. If you have any doubt about that, look at all the Christians who got killed for not being willing to offer sacrifices to the Roman gods, who are called anarchists, who are called traitors to Rome because they wouldn’t worship the Roman gods, and so they were calling into question the Roman way of life.

And this is true, I don’t want to go off on a screed, I don’t want to talk about any existing religions, but if you look closely at a lot of world religions and you look closely at the societies in which those religions are practiced, it is not accidental the way those societies govern themselves and the way they operate and their religious beliefs. The one justifies the other. The one supports the other. The one puts the other into practice. And so it’s not just a neutral thing. You couldn’t go to a slave in the Roman Empire and say, “I know they consider you subhuman, I know you’re considered property and all that, but I mean, some of those hymns they sing to Zeus are just kind of beautiful. Aren’t you patriotic about Rome?” Doesn’t work, these things are all connected. They are all connected.

And that’s why, on the flip side, we can’t try and disconnect our Christianity from politics, ethics, the way we live our day to day lives, the way we conduct ourselves at our jobs. You can’t section those off. They affect each other. To quote a certain politician in this last election who I won’t name, you can’t sort of check your Christianity while you go vote. Christianity doesn’t work that way. These things all go together. The way we live our lives and everything we do is informed by who Christ is and what he’s done for us, and what he expects of us in terms of how we relate to other people, to our culture, and to our society. So, verse 34:

When those who fed them [the pigs] saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country.

So notice, their response is not, “Hey, we want to become followers of Jesus.” Their response is “Ahhh!” and they run off in fear after seeing the spectacle and go telling everybody about this crazy thing that happened.

Then they went out to see what had happened, and came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.

So they come out, and this guy who’s been tearing chains and running out in the living, naked in the tombs like an animal, is now just sort of sitting there fully dressed, mellow, relaxed.

They also who had seen it told them by what means he who had been demon-possessed was healed.

What means was that? How did Jesus do it? By speaking. Remember, this is one of those things we’ve been seeing in St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus does these things by speaking. Because how did God create? He spoke, then it happened. So this is another pointer to who Jesus is, because the prophets in the Old Testament, some of them did miracles, too, but they didn’t do it by speaking. They did it by praying. They prayed and asked God to do it. They interceded and asked God to do it. And then God did this miracle through the prophet.

Jesus says it and it happens. So St. Luke is setting Jesus apart from prophets and pointing out again, he does things that God does.

Then the whole multitude of the surrounding region of the Gadarenes asked Him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. And He got into the boat and returned.

So, their response is not to seek wisdom from Him, not to try to understand, just to be afraid, why?

He didn’t do something negative, right? It’s not like he hurt somebody, other than slaughtering a lot of pigs.

Well, what he did fundamentally called into question their beliefs, their way of life, their livelihood. If they had talked to Jesus and found out who he was and what he was there to do, if they heard, what would that require of them? They would have to transform their whole society like we were just talking about, right? They couldn’t live like good Romans anymore. Their whole religion out the window, the whole political culture out the window. The whole material culture out the window. They have to stop eating pig, right? Everything out the window. So, they had reason to be afraid. They had reason to be afraid. And in the face of that, they said. “You know what? No, we don’t even want to know. We don’t even want to know. Just go away so we don’t have to deal with this. We don’t want to think about this. We don’t want to try and process this. We don’t want to try to understand this. Just go away.”

We’ve got another object lesson here of what Jesus was talking about, because if you hear, now you’ve got a responsibility, now there’s accountability. They don’t want it. Once again, even these Gadarenes, even these Gentiles, are not here for us to make fun of or poke at or shake our finger out. They’re there because they in some way represent us. They represent us. How many times do we shrink back from really trying to get to know God, really trying to understand things, really trying to live the Christian life, because we get to a point where we realize, “If I really want to pursue this and really want to go through with this, I’m going to have to change a lot of things then I’m not ready to change just yet. I’m not really ready to maybe have to quit my job because it’s calling on me to do things that I know are wrong. I’m not ready to commit to doing the things the Church tells me I need to do.”

And so, we kind of say, “Well, that’s okay. I’ll stay where I am. I don’t want to know too much more.” And we shrink back because we’re scared of the accountability that we know is going to come if we go further.

And the tragedy here is when we do that, just like with the Gadarenes who do that? What did the Gadarenes ultimately do? They told their salvation to go away. This one man was freed from slavery to the dark spiritual powers of the world, the rulers of this world. He was set free. They all could have been set free, too, but “We’re more comfortable staying slaves. We’ve gotten comfortable with the way we’re living now.”

So, it’s tragic, and that same tragedy can happen in our life if we think and operate the same way. The fact that having more knowledge and more understanding and more closeness to God makes us accountable is there to get us to step up to the plate, not to get us to say, “Well, I don’t want to really be accountable for that.” When they tell you to lead, follow, or get out of the way, they don’t really want you to get out of the way, right? They try to get you to lead or at least follow. Same kind of thing. When Christ says, “You’ve been given much, so now you’re going to be accountable”, he isn’t saying, “Well, I’m going to try not to get so much.” He’s saying we need to step up and accept that accountability now.

Now the man from whom the demons had departed begged Him that he might be with Him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you.” And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.

There’s something very subtle that happens there. But first, he wants to go with Jesus, right? He’s ready. He’s been set free. He doesn’t want to go back. He doesn’t want to go back where they are. He wants to come with Jesus now. He wants to follow Jesus. But what does Jesus send him to do? “You need to go back to them and you need to proclaim to them what God has done for you.” Because the fact that they sent Jesus away doesn’t mean Jesus doesn’t care about them. He says, “OK, you don’t want to hear this from me. I’ll send you one of your own. And maybe he’ll…”

Now think ahead to when St. Luke is writing Acts. He’s writing in large part to a bunch of Gentiles who never saw Jesus in person during this time, never saw him in person. But what happened? Jesus sent St. Paul, or Jesus sent Apollos, or Jesus sent one of his other disciples to come to them and tell them what God had done for them. And so you see this pattern with the Gentiles already here. Jesus sends someone to them. But notice, Jesus says, “Return to your own house and tell what great things God has done for you. And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.”

It’s the exact same phrase, but one word has been changed. Do you notice which one? God got changed to Jesus. So once again, St. Luke, somewhat subtly, he doesn’t come right out and say, “Jesus has two natures, divine and human.” But he shows us here what God has done for him. And what Jesus has done for him are the same thing, right? Not what God has done for him through Jesus, but God doing it and Jesus doing it are the same thing.

Let’s finish off the chapter:

So it was, when Jesus returned, that the multitude welcomed Him, for they were all waiting for Him.

So they’ve gone now back over to the Galilee side of the Sea of Galilee; that crowd that’s been following him around is still hanging out, waiting for him to come back.

And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue. And he fell down at Jesus’ feet and begged Him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter about twelve years of age, and she was dying.

So, a ruler of the synagogue means he was basically one of the wealthy people who paid for it, is essentially what that means. It’d probably be a little too strong in comparison to compare it to our parish council because it wasn’t really a deliberative body that would get together and make decisions. But there were certain people who paid for the scrolls, paid for the bill, they paid for the upkeep, pay for things, and so they would be recognized and considered. The word translated ruler there really means sort of a first person or chief person, important person of the synagogue. That’s what that’s referring to.

Interlocutor: Benefactor?

Fr. Stephen: Well, benefactor could be used with someone who’s not part of the synagogue, right? There were people who weren’t part of the synagogue, like Gentiles, who would give money to the Jewish community. So I’d use benefactor more to describe them. He’s part of the synagogue. He’s Jewish, he’s a member of the synagogue, but he’s sort of a prominent member of the synagogue who helps to endow.

And so, he’s got one child who’s a daughter, twelve years of age, meaning she’s marriageable age. In this culture, the hopes for his family, if he doesn’t have a son, if he’s just got a daughter, then what you want to do is you want to try to marry your daughter off to someone who’s going to give you a sizable dowry, because that money is going to be what you’re now going to have to live on. Because there’s no retirement plan in the ancient world, right? There’s no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security in the Roman Empire. So if she’s twelve years old, just getting to the age where she could be married and she dies before she does, not only does he and his wife lost their only child, but he loses his only security for the future and old age. So this would be disastrous. This would be disastrous in every way. In addition to the loss of your only child, you have economic issues, cultural, social problems, all piled on top of this.

But as He went, the multitudes thronged Him.

So, he’s in the midst of this crowd. He’s trying to go with Jairus to go and heal his daughter. But the crowds, he’s having to work his way through the crowds.

Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped.

Okay, so this having a flow of blood for twelve years, what he’s referring to is essentially menstrual blood. She had some kind of hemorrhaging and she’s had this problem for twelve years. So you can imagine, in addition to the sickness, which is obviously kind of debilitating, you have to remember she’s Jewish and living in a Jewish community. Menstrual blood is unclean. This means she’s been ceremonially unclean for twelve years. She hasn’t been able to go into the synagogue. She hasn’t been able to go near anyone who’s going to the synagogue. She can’t go to Jerusalem for any of the feasts or the sacrifices. Anyone who touches her is now unclean, has to go through a ritual so no one will have her in their home because they have to cleanse their home afterwards. So, in addition to the obviously physically debilitating parts of this ailment, she’s also a social outcast and pariah because of this illness in that culture. And you notice they had healthcare problems even then because she had to spend all of her money on doctors. So even then they didn’t have it all worked out for twelve years. None of them could help her at all.

But so she’s in the middle of this crowd, right? She comes up and touches just the edge of Jesus’s robe as he is passing by. And when she does that, boom. Healed instantly. Instantly.

And Jesus said, “Who touched Me?” When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, “Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, ‘Who touched Me?’”

Peter’s like, “Jesus, you’re getting mobbed here. There’s probably 15 people touching, right? You’re in the middle of a crowd. What do you mean, who touched you?”

But Jesus said, “Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me.” Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden,

She sees, “Ahh, the jigs up, right?”

she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately.

Why is this such a big deal? Why is she so scared?

Interlocutor: Because she’s unclean.

Fr. Stephen: Because she’s unclean. Because the flow of blood has made her unclean. So if she as a woman who’s unclean went up and touched a rabbi who’s ceremonially clean to make them unclean, this would not go over well in this society, right? She’s probably scared, especially in the middle of a mob. She’s probably scared the mobs would have stoned her to death or something, which could have happened. That kind of mob violence, I mean, we’ve seen it before in the Gospels. So she could have been stoned to death, she could have been attacked by the mob, they could have just all spit at her. So that’s why she’s so scared.

As we’ve seen before, when somebody who’s unclean touches Jesus, Jesus doesn’t become unclean, they become clean. Jesus’s cleanness, Jesus’s holiness goes out to that, his power goes out to that. Their uncleanness doesn’t come to Him. This is important in terms of St. Luke’s overall view of what Jesus is doing in the Incarnation. We sometimes talk about the Incarnation purely in terms of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The point Saint Irenaeus and many of the other fathers make is that Jesus, in addition to dying and rising again, lived a human life.

You find a lot of meditation on the death of Jesus, especially in the West. You find a lot less meditation, especially in the West, on the life of Jesus, all the things he did beforehand, right? This whole life he lived all the way through childhood, young adulthood into adulthood. And so what Saint Irenaeus and St. Athanasius and many of the other Fathers point out is that Jesus, by living through all these stages of human existence, by taking on Himself, our humanity, and then living out our humanity, Christ sanctifies and makes holy all those parts of our life, right?

So, Jesus coming into the world, his holiness, we when we make some sort of effort to be holy, at least me, I end up sort of like the seed that fell among the weeds, where the cares of the world come and choke it out, right? I tend to, rather than making people around me more holy, the world around me tends to make me a whole lot less holy, right? I tend to take in the bad, but what happens with Christ is just the opposite. Christ comes into our world and travels through our world, and our world is blessed and made holy and purified and healed by his presence in it.

This is key to understanding… we celebrated about a month ago the Feast of Theophany, right? Christ goes into the water, not so that the water can wash Him and cleanse Him, but he purifies the water and makes the water holy. He comes into our world, makes our world holy, sets our world free from the powers of sin and death. So this object lesson with this woman we see that pointed out, she’s unclean, she’s sick, she’s suffering and coming into contact with Jesus purifies and cleanses and heals her when she comes close to Him. That’s the promise for us as well. As we come closer to Christ, we become more aware of how sick and unclean and unholy we are. But we’re also transformed by Christ’s presence, and that is healed.

So, she comes forward expecting and admits that the jig’s up. Is fully expecting to suffer some probably horrible consequences. But he says to her:

“Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

So his response to her is her faith, her belief, right? For her, Jesus didn’t even need to say anything. He didn’t even need to do anything. He didn’t even need to be aware because she didn’t make them aware. Her plan was to come up, touch him, sneak off. That was her plan. And she thought just touching him without even knowing she did it would heal her. Again, we have that faith compared to our friends, the disciples of the boat who are screaming and all think they’re going to die because of the storm set in juxtaposition there. So he tells her to go in peace. No negative consequences for her. But:

While He was still speaking, someone came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house, saying to him, “Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the Teacher.”

So again, we have a comparison here. She thinks, “Oh, he doesn’t even need to know about it. Just touching the edge of his robe. Not even him will heal me.” But these folks say, “Well, he probably could have cured her fever, but she’s dead. Game over. Forget about it. Never mind, right?” So again, we see the level of faith here.

But when Jesus heard it, He answered him, saying, “Do not be afraid; only believe, and she will be made well.” When He came into the house, He permitted no one to go in except Peter, James, and John, and the father and mother of the girl.

We’ve talked before about how Peter, James and John sort of formed the inner circle of the inner circle who are closest to Jesus.

Now all wept and mourned for her; but He said, “Do not weep; she is not dead, but sleeping.” And they ridiculed Him, knowing that she was dead.

So Jesus comes in and says, “Don’t worry, she’s not dead. She’s just asleep.” And they’re like, “Pfft, she’s dead.”

Why does St. Luke include this? St. Luke includes this bit about how they all knew she was dead.

Interlocutor: To show he can raise people from the dead?

Fr. Stephen: Well, there’s nothing new under the sun. So when you read some of our more liberal, scholarly friends who read the story, and they’ll say, “Oh, see, here’s what happened. She was in a coma, everybody thought she was dead, but Jesus was smarter than that. Jesus was just smarter. He understood comas, right? And so he came and stopped them from burying her or something stupid and woke her up.” That’s how they want to explain it. But St. Luke sort of nips that in the bud here. He says, “No, all her friends and family and relatives were there, and they knew she was dead. Dead, heart not beating, not breathing.” So, St. Luke is very clear about that. This is not a person who is nearly dead. This is not a person who has swooned. This is not a person who has fainted or is in a coma. She is dead.

But He put them all outside,

So, he sends them all out. He sends them all out because they have no faith. But notice what that says about what he’s doing, about why Jesus does miracles. Remember all the trouble he gave the crowds and the Pharisees early when they came and asked him for a sign? Do a miracle so that we may believe they show us something. Give us a couple of card tricks. What can you do? You want us to follow you? You want us to believe in you? Come on. What you got? Jesus says no.

If Jesus were doing these miracles in order to prove who he was, wouldn’t you have kept them in there? Wouldn’t he have said, “Oh, you think that’s funny? Watch this!” Notice the order here, both with the woman and with these people. Jesus doesn’t do miracles to cause people to believe. Miraculous things happen in Jesus’s presence because people believe, because people have faith, right? They are healed by Jesus. They are transformed by Jesus. They are made clean by Jesus. That’s the order. He doesn’t do it in order to get people to believe, right? What did he say to the father on the way there? Do not be afraid, only believe, and she will be made well. If you have faith, she will be made well. What did you say to the woman your faith has made you well.

This is another one of those things, in our tendency to sort of put God to the test. We go and we pray and we ask God for things, and if he doesn’t deliver, if he doesn’t deliver enough, or he doesn’t deliver about something that we think is really important, then we say, “Oh, all this God stuff is nonsense. It doesn’t work. Religion doesn’t work. Forget it. I’m going to go become an atheist.” Or if we’re not really committed, an agnostic, “Forget it. That’s all a crock because I wanted this.” Sometimes it’s something tragic, sometimes it’s not something frivolous. Sometimes we have someone we love and we don’t want them to die. And we pray and we pray, and they still die. It’s not always something frivolous.

But what we’re doing there is we’re saying, “God, if you want me to believe in you, if you want me to trust you, if you want me to worship you, then you need to do this. You do this for me and then I’ll worship you, then I’ll believe in you, at least until the next thing.” And that’s not how it works. When we believe and when we trust and when we follow God, then we see these things happening in our lives, then we recognize them happening in our lives. Then we look back and say, “You know, all my life God has been taking pretty good care of me. And we see all the things that he’s done for us.”

As long as we try and look at it the other way, as long as we try to test God, trying to make him prove himself, we stand in judgment of him, mothing he does for us will ever be enough and we will always be faithless. It’s only when we approach it the other way, when we believe and we trust first, that we see these things happen first, right? He doesn’t prove the scoffers wrong. He sends them out. He sends them out and says, “Get out of here.”

But He put them all outside, took her by the hand and called, saying, “Little girl, arise.”

And that in Aramaic is talitha koum.

Then her spirit returned, and she arose immediately. And He commanded that she be given something to eat.

So her spirit returns. Her life returns. She gets up immediately. She’s alive again. And he commanded that she’d be given something to eat. Why? Because dying makes you hungry? No, it’s to prove she’s alive. She’s not a ghost. Well, they didn’t really have zombies then, but they did have the idea of ghosts. They did have the idea of apparitions. It’s fairly common in ancient literature for people to say they saw the spirit of their dead loved ones in a dream or something. We’re going to see this again when we get to the very end of St. Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus comes back from the dead. St. Luke’s going to make it very clear that this is not Jesus’s ghost. This is not just like his spirit showing up to say goodbye to the disciples after his death, to make it very clear that he rose from the dead in his body because he ate something, his ghost can’t eat. A spirit can’t eat. So this means she’s really alive again.

And her parents were astonished, but He charged them to tell no one what had happened.

Again, he’s not trying to prove anything to those people he just threw out.

Interlocutor: They wouldn’t figure it out, that she’s alive?

Fr. Stephen: They might figure it out, but the point being, he doesn’t say, “You go tell those haters out there that I just raised your kid from the dead.” He’s not trying to prove anything. These parents, in the darkest hour of their lives, up to this point at least, trusted Jesus with their daughter and with their lives.

Interlocutor: He brings in the big three.

Fr. Stephen: Peter, James, and John. They see it, right? Because he wants them to put it together. They’re not going to until after the resurrection, but after the resurrection, they’ll remember these things. After Jesus rising from the dead they’ll remember these things, and finally things will start clicking into place about who Jesus is. Okay, so we got to the end of the chapter. That’s almost like doing a whole chapter, except we were part way into the chapter. But so, Lord willing, see everybody next week. Thank you.