As you prepare for worship on Sunday

“Then all the people...begged Jesus to leave them, because they were seized with great fear.”

This Sunday we hear the gospels’ most detailed telling of Jesus exorcising a demon. The demon called itself “Legion”--the name of a Roman imperial army. A decade or so before the writing of Luke, a legion ravaged the very place Jesus was and another destroyed Jerusalem and razed the Temple. The demon might well have called itself “Panzer” or “SS.”

Jesus confronted the specter of war and its atrocities, occupation, oppression, and violence. Do these haunt you? This land? People far and near? The man possessed was more sensitive, more vulnerable than the rest. But healed, he became the first evangelist among them for what Jesus can do. Ask Jesus to heal you too and give you faith that he’ll turn your pain and vulnerability into public praise.

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