We live in a dysfunctional world.  Our world is plagued by sin.  Certainly we see the effects of it all around us.  We are used to the dysfunction.  It is so obvious that it often goes unnoticed.  We throw away food while much of the world suffers from hunger.  We step over the homeless on our streets.  There is too much information about suffering for us to process so we tune it out.

Because there is little we think we can do to alleviate suffering we take the ravages of sin as normal and we just accept it as part of life.  If the suffering is normal we don’t need to look for solutions, we don’t have to ask what our part is in all of this and we see no need to work for change.  Our feelings of helplessness cause us to shrink our world down to personal needs; my job, my friends, my needs.  Even church is reduced to what’s in it for me.

When Jesus exited the boat in the country of the Gerasenes he came across a man who was suffering, possessed by many devils, and out of control.  Sin consumed his life.  In a very real sense he was dead; spiritually, socially and otherwise.  The community pushed him to the outside of their sphere of concern.  They forced him into the mountains where he could not harm them or even more telling, he could not by his very presence confront them with their own lifestyle choices.

If we are Christ like in our response to life then we would be moved to compassion by the suffering around us.  I am not sure we always are; I know I am not.  The more I pull back into my own little world the less caring I am of others.  When that happens the community begins to breakdown.  We no longer fulfill the law of Christ by bearing one another’s burdens.  This painful, broken life that is ever before us makes us uncomfortable and so we do away with as much of it as we can.  Send the possessed man into the mountains. Herd the homeless into shelters no matter what the cost, nor the pain that it causes them and their families.  At age four determine which children are on a tract toward prison and build detention centers accordingly.  Gate our communities so as to keep out the riff-raff.  Justify self-indulgence with the idea that if I earn it, it belongs to me and me alone.

Jesus approaches the man who is naked and alone.  Vulnerable to all that life throws at him. 

It is interesting to note that the man resisted all efforts to contain him.  He continuously broke from his chains and had to be guarded to keep him from harming anyone.  Don’t fix the problem, contain it was their approach to this situation.

Jesus speaks healing to the man when no one else would.  Jesus is found not in the city, but in the mountains with the man.  Where are we found in this city?

We have taken on the vision of ministering to the arts community.  The Stoop and the various uses of this building by community groups and artists springs from our calling.  But the question is where are we found?  I have decided that if we are going to really follow our vision, if it has meaning for us as a congregation I need to model behavior.  I need to be in the clubs supporting the musicians who we are in relationship with and I need to be giving the Holy Spirit opportunities to use me as he sees fit.

Tuesday some of us were at a Tabitha Fair concert at the Rockwood Music Hall on the Lower East Side.  During her set, as she did when she played the Stoop, she inter disbursed hymns that gave glory to Jesus with her other songs.  Not all of her band members are Christian and certainly much of the crowd wasn’t nor was the bartender and the servers.  But that is exactly where one would find Jesus.  Jesus is where his people gather and Tuesday night he was at the Rockwood with us.  Where Jesus is things happen.

When Jesus entered the scene he brought about change.  The man who was cast out to the caves in the mountain was set free.  When you look over your life you need to take stock in the fact that Jesus has set you free.  It is the gospel message that must be lived out in your life.

The demoniac in the text is in fact all of us.  We are born in sin, overcome by our own sinful nature and by the fact of our willful sinfulness.  Isolated by our sin, remember that effect of sin on all of us was separation, from God and from one another, we are in a sense living in our own cave cut off from those around us.

The reality of the people around us and maybe even some here this morning is that they are dead. Even though they walk around and look quite alive they are spiritually dead and isolated from those around them.  There is a loneliness associated with life in this city that is hard to grasp.  So many people, so many interchanges and inter actions each day yet people lack real connections with one another.  We are off in the mountains crying out in need, feeling constrained, bound by our circumstances.  No one to help when along comes Jesus and everything changed.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

But salvation is costly to the community.  Jesus sends the demons into a herd of pigs who drown in a near by lake.  No one touches this idea.  The focus, and rightly so, is on the man.  There is a cost to the community though.  The swine herders lose their pigs, all of them.  Life in the community is changed.

The Bible speaks of two communities; the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world.  When you entered into the kingdom of God through the waters of baptism the kingdom of this world suffered lose.  When the disciples came back from their first missionary journey and told of what took place Jesus said he saw Satan fall like lightening from the sky.

What kind of societal transformation would take place if many people in this city turned to Christ?  What would happen if the Christians of this city took their walk seriously and began living their faith out loud in word and deed?  If we began to not just invite people to church, but begin to call them to repentance and faith.  If we took our stand for justice and righteousness?  If we feed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned.  If we began to reject the sins that so easily enslave us.  How would that impact the city; spiritually, economically and in every other way?  When kingdom values are lived out in the power of the Holy Spirit change occurs and the cost can not be avoided.  Jesus presence disrupts the status quo.

The assumption is that life as we know it, as we are experiencing it at the present time is inevitable.  No reason to stand in opposition to the things we see around us because nothing will ever change.  That is the lie we are handed and which we often accept.  No one could help the man in the caves, no one that is but Jesus.

A Christian that looks and act like everyone else around him or her is no Christian at all.  Jesus said they will know us by our fruits.  Pure and undefiled religion cares for the needy among us James tells us.

The city isolated the man in the mountains, tried to chain him up and placed a guard to contain him.  They avoided him at all costs.  We do the same to the people of this city that threaten us and our belief system in any way.  Jesus entered the man’s life and set him free.

When he was freed sides were drawn.  When the people of the village witnessed the power of god, the man was free, you are free, they reacted in fear.  The possessed man they could deal with.  We have learned to deal with a level of sin.  The freed man was another story.  Him they could not deal with.  Instead of embracing Jesus and rejoicing that the man was delivered, they asked Jesus to leave.  If you engage in behavior as a Christian that challenges the status quo they may ask you to leave as well.  Righteousness means change and change is always costly to the community.  Sin is somehow acceptable because it has worked its way into the fabric of society.  Righteousness shines a light on dark behavior and exposes it for what it really is.

I have been reading about cities and one was a case study on Las Vegas.  Vegas is a made up disneyesque city with a slogan that implies darkness, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”  It is a main tourist destination for many.  Gambling and prostitution are a way of life.  Families are ruined by the behavior most people believe is wrong and would never tolerate in their own neighborhood has become entertainment and taken as acceptable.  Try to stop it and opposition will arise.  Vegas tried to remake itself as a place of family friendly entertainment a number of years ago.  It didn’t work out so it’s back to selling sin.  Instead of rejoicing that the man has been set free fear grips the city and they ask Jesus to leave.

The man wants to follow Jesus but is told to return home.  Where you come from is where you need to return.  There is only so much the pastor can accomplish.  You are from among the people we are trying to reach.  If we are to win them to Jesus you must be found in their world.  They are not going to show up on Sunday mourning on their own.  You need to climb their mountain, enter their cave and set them free by the power of the gospel.

Are we like the people of the surrounding region, afraid that Jesus just might save the people around us?  Are we to uncomfortable and afraid of the man clothed and in his right mind?

Where are you this morning?  Are you the man in the mountain bound by sin and alone in this world?  Jesus is here to set you free.  Or are you one of the town’s people who are afraid of the movement of God?  More content with the status quo and a level of acceptable sin than you are will to embrace the power of God to set people free no matter what the cost and how disruptive it might be to the way you have grown accustomed to living your life.

The gospel is about real change.  When Jesus enters onto the scene everything is different.  We are asked to embrace a new way of seeing the world and a new way of responding to it.  Are you up for the challenge?