Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and today is the First Sunday after Trinity (Trinity I, 22 June 2025). Later this morning, I am reading one of the lessons at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.
Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 8: 26-39 (NRSVA):
26 Then they [Jesus and the Disciples] arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27 As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me’ – 29 for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) 30 Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. 31 They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
32 Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
34 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. 35 Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 36 Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. 38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Today’s Reflection:
Our Gospel story (Luke 8: 26-39) is set by the Sea of Galilee. After Jesus calms a storm on the lake (Luke 8: 22-25), he and the disciples arrive on the other side and travel deep into Gentile territory, perhaps 30 or 50 km on the other side of the lake. The area is known as the Decapolis, dominated by ten Greek-speaking cities.
Imagine you are among the first group of people in the Early Church who begin to read this story. You would expect the story to unfold with Jesus and Disciples seeking out distant family members, staying with nice, upright people, perhaps visiting the local synagogue maintained by a tiny Jewish minority presence in one of the towns.
But from the very moment they get off the boat, they are in a place and among a people they would have regarded as unclean: these Gentile people are ritually ‘unclean,’ the man has an ‘unclean’ spirit, he is naked or a person of visible and public shame, he lives among the tombs, which are ritually unclean … and the pigs are unclean too.
This episode plays a key role in the theory of the ‘Scapegoat’ put forward by the French literary critic René Girard (1923-2015). The opposition of the entire city to the one man possessed by demons is the typical template for a scapegoat. Girard notes that, in the demoniac’s self-mutilation, he seems to imitate the way the villagers might have tried to stone him and to cast him out of their society.
For their part, the villagers in their reaction to Christ show they are not really concerned with the good of the possessed man. He acts as a scapegoat, and they can project anything they dislike about themselves onto him. Why kill him when he has such a useful function in their enclosed society?
Now, I do not in any way want to diminish or dismiss the real power of evil and the hold that it can have over people.
But in René Girard’s take on this story, the uneasy truce that the Gadarenes and the demoniac have worked out means he serves a ritual purpose for them so long as he is alive and perceived as being possessed.
But when Jesus steps off the boat, he brings with him a stronger spiritual power: love and healing, forgiveness and acceptance, are stronger than stoning, chaining, or scapegoating. And the pigs rushing headlong over the cliffside tell a story that is not so much about cruelty to animals but saying we need to put behind us all that we regard as unclean or sinful in others and need to start accepting ourselves.
After this episode, the man not only sits ‘at the feet of Jesus,’ as disciples did, but he becomes a missionary to other Gentiles. This is a story of dramatic transformation.
Look at the changes in this man’s life: he moves from outside the city to inside it; he moves from living in tombs and being driven into the desert to being alive in a house; he moves from nakedness to being clothed, from being demented to being of sound mind.
He moves from destructive isolation to being part of a nurturing, human community. He moves from being expelled from the religious community to being part of the Church and proclaiming the good news. This is real mission, the sort of mission I hope to hear about this week with USPG.
‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you’ (Luke 8: 39).
Saint Luke here uses the word οἶκος (oikos), which means a house, an inhabited house, even a palace or the house of God, as opposed to δόμος (domos), the word used for a house as a domestic home. Those who live there now form one family or household, and this comes to mean the family of God or the Church (for examples, see I Timothy 3: 15; I Peter 4: 17, and Hebrews 3: 2, 5).
The outsider, the person seen as unclean and defiled, the scapegoat, is restored to a full place in the Church, in God’s household, in God’s family.
Who do we see as Scapegoats today, as outsiders to be pushed to the margins, so that we can maintain the purity of our family, church or society?
Who do we expose and shame so that we can maintain the appearance of our own purity?
Are these the very people who might bring the good news to people on the margins, inviting them into the household of God?
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 22 June 2025, Trinity I):
‘Windrush Day’ is the theme this week (22-28 June) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme is introduced today with reflections by Rachael Anderson, former Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG:
‘Windrush Day marks the anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush in Tilbury on the south coast of the UK. On board were hundreds of Caribbean people who had left the West Indies owing to the call from Britain – the ‘mother country’ – to help rebuild a war-ravaged country.
‘Although they were responding to a call for help, the reality for many of the Windrush generation was a new life subject to hostility, rejection and racism. Shamefully this took place on streets, in neighbourhoods and even at the doors of parish churches – a place where they should have felt welcomed and at home, able to worship God alongside other Christians. It is painfully ironic that it was also the Church of England that had once taken the Anglican faith to the Caribbean – often preaching in the very plantations where enslaved people were held in bondage. A double act of rejection.
‘It is in this reality that the Gospel speaks a powerful and compelling truth. We are all sisters and brothers in Christ, and we all have a responsibility to ensure that our churches are safe places and spaces of belonging for people of every nation and every language who come to church to worship and serve God. It is not just about parish church congregations; the Church of England needs to continue to make the necessary institutional and systemic changes to ensure a more diverse church at every level and recognise that honesty and openness is also key to its flourishing in society.’
The USPG prayer diary today (Sunday 22 June 2025, Trinity I, Windrush Day) invites us to pray:
Loving Lord, we thank you for the amazing contribution of the Windrush generation to our communities and workplaces, and to your Church in our land.
The Collect:
O God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you,
mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you,
grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Eternal Father,
we thank you for nourishing us
with these heavenly gifts:
may our communion strengthen us in faith,
build us up in hope,
and make us grow in love;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God of truth,
help us to keep your law of love
and to walk in ways of wisdom,
that we may find true life
in Jesus Christ your Son.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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