Liberated and Healed!

The wariness in her face revealed her lack of trust –
but she was in need. She was hungry. There were many other things, but the immediate need was hunger!!
Hunger brought her here, lowering her defences sufficiently to get her in the door.
She was met by one of the volunteers who tried to help her. He was given an earful and left in no doubt 
that he should get away - now! There were threats of physical violence that would render him incapable of 
fathering children, as I remember. He gently moved away, with a smile, to give her space. Others created a 
wide space around her, and she was left alone in a corner to eat her meal. When she finished, with eyes 
darting every which way, and fist at the ready, she departed. The next day she was back, and the next... 
Gradually there was a trust that grew between her and a few of the volunteers. They could talk with her and 
one day she even smiled! It was a lovely smile that revealed an intelligent and gentle human being beneath 
the layers of fear and pain. Over several weeks her defences faded and she began to relish being amongst 
people. She laughed and chatted. She was assisted in getting new clothes, a place to live, and other services 
to make her life better. Joan had a name, an identity and a story she shared. She belonged and was known 
and loved.
Joan’s story connects with another story I am wrestling with this week, one that is both strange and 
challenging. It is a story that is found in a few of the gospels but this week we read Luke’s version (Luke 
8:26-39). It is about a man, a man who, like Joan, lived on the ‘other side’. It was the other side of the lake 
in Galilee, the Gentile or pagan side. It represents the ‘other side’ wherever we are and the people who inhabit 
those places. Maybe it is a physical place where people who are very different live and have free reign. Maybe 
it is a place of emotional or psychological illness and struggle through life where people feel lost in the 
consuming illness that wrestles for control of their mind and emotions. Perhaps it is a place of physical illness 
or disability that limits and oppresses a person. There are places where people are drawn down into addiction 
that oppresses their being and traps them in a world of despair and desperation. There are many, in our world, 
who are oppressed in poverty or violence, trapped in a world of relentless desperation and struggle. There are 
also those who are suddenly engulfed in the chaos of crisis – a sudden illness, the death of someone close, a
sudden loss of relationship, job or something significant – they are thrown into a different world, thrust over 
into a different place, one that is strange and lonely.
The man in the story is described as being out of his mind, daemon-possessed is the phrase used and 
probably incorporates a plethora of conditions. He is isolated away from people, alienated and excluded out 
of fear and his inability to live normally amidst people. The man cries out, is naked and often chained up. In 
his desperate state he breaks chains and causes havoc. He lives in tombs – a man who is essentially dead lives 
amongst the dead. The townspeople avoid him as he runs amok in his lost, lonely and desperate world.
The experience of this level of desperation isn’t mine. I don’t know the experience of this man personally 
but have sat with several who are in this place, such as people struggling with schizophrenic episodes and 
living in a confused world of voices and strange aberrations of the mind. I have sat with couples grieving the 
deep and sudden loss of a still born baby where all their hopes and dreams for this developing child die with 
their lifeless child. They feel different, with many associated emotions from grief to guilt to anger to 
inconsolable pain. I have tried to contemplate the lives of people who are homeless, sitting in a park or in a 
refuge talking and trying to understand. I have walked with street kids late at night trying to understand the 
oppressive forces that hold them and the anger and pain of their lives.
In the story, Jesus journeys to this ‘other side’ where he meets this man. He doesn’t recoil or turn away. In 
fact, he deliberately walks into the place of the dead, a cemetery, where this man dwells, a ‘dead man’ in the 
place of the dead. Cemeteries were considered unclean and to be avoided except when burying the dead. It 
was this man’s abode, physically and metaphorically. Jesus went to the man and saw him not as a madman, 
scary and dangerous, someone to be locked away. He saw a human being who was suffering and oppressed. 
He saw a man who was alone and lost. He saw a man who needed liberation and love. He saw a man…
This man was used to being avoided, shunned and pushed away. He was chained up when he was at his 
worst. He was not normally used to anyone stopping and talking to him, asking him who he was. As is typical, 
he answered out of the daemons within him, that which controlled his mind or emotions – angry, fearful, 
Reflection Notes – 22/6/25
2
nd Sunday after Pentecost – Geoff Stevenson
unsure. It is the same with anyone who is from the ‘other side’ and mistrusts those who come close. What do 
they want? What do they represent? Homeless old men in the streets of Parramatta used to shout out at anyone 
who got too close. People with mental illness avoid people or respond with suspicion. Those who have been 
oppressed do not respond favourably to anyone who comes close, fearing what they really are going to do.
Those on the ‘other side’ react in different ways when someone comes close. Jesus came close and the man 
begged to be left alone – was it the man or the daemons speaking? What did the man, in his deepest being 
desire, want and need?
When asked his name, the man replied, ‘Legion for there were many daemons in him’. When we ask 
people their names, sometimes they respond out of their pain and give an indication of the daemons they feel 
– ‘I am a schizophrenic’; ‘I am the woman who can’t carry a child’; ‘I am the homeless bum who walks the 
streets of Parramatta’; ‘I am the one who has lost everything’ The name of this man offer two levels of 
understanding for the story – the personal story of a man oppressed by the daemons of life, mind and being,
and a larger understanding of oppression in the world. In the story, Jesus casts the ‘daemons’ out into a herd 
of swine who run into the sea and drown. There are connections with other Biblical stories of liberation here
(especially the Red Sea story of Moses and the Egyptian army), both the personal and political, representing 
the liberation that God brings into human life. In this story Jesus crossed over, engaged a man personally and 
reached out in inclusive, healing love.
Finally, in our story, the man is called a human being, a man and he lives into this recognition and grace. 
He becomes that which he is named. Jesus’ expectation is that this human being of unique ability and 
expression will become who he is created and called to be – he is effectively ‘called into being’ through the 
love and acceptance of Jesus who reached out into the unknown dangerous and chaotic places and brought 
liberation and life – as did Joan (and many others)! We are invited to embrace this same way and be people 
who call forth love, hope and life in each other and those suffering and lost.