Christ Frees Us, Restores Us, and Sends Us

Preaching on the healing of the Gadarene demoniac and St. Paul's words "I have been crucified with Christ," Fr. Geoff Harvey shows how Christ frees us from the chains that enslave us, restores us to who we were created to be, and sends us out as witnesses to His mercy. Along the way he reflects on the prophet Jeremiah's call to repentance, the evil we see in Australia today, and how Christians should approach Halloween.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today's epistle, St. Paul gives us one of the great statements in the New Testament: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me."

In the Gospel, we meet a man whose life was the complete opposite. He lives among the tombs. He's naked. He's isolated and tormented by demons. He's been bound with chains, but even the chains can't hold him. He's physically alive in the cemetery, but he might as well be dead with all the other bodies there.

St. Cyril of Alexandria says that God allowed this man's misery to be recorded so that we might learn how the demons treat those in their power. "The suffering of one edifies many," he said. The scene in the Gospel clearly shows what happens when a human person is cut off from the source of life.

We were made for communion with God. That's why God created us. St. Augustine prays, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." So, not surprisingly, when Christ enters this man's life, the demoniac, everything changes. He is found sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.

So both readings today speak of the same mystery: what happens when Christ enters a human being's life. And the Gospel shows us three things that our Lord does. He frees us. He restores us. And He sends us.

First of all, Christ frees us from what enslaves us. In the Gospel today, when Christ appears, the powers of darkness immediately recognise His authority. "What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High? I beg you, do not torment me." Jesus had already commanded the demon to come out of the man. And the demons, who had tormented the poor man mercilessly, immediately began begging for mercy for themselves. They couldn't even run off and escape from Jesus' presence. They even had to ask Jesus' permission to enter the herd of pigs. Again, St. Cyril marvels that powers once honoured in great pagan temples are now reduced to begging for a herd of pigs.

Now, there's a lot of evil in the world today, and it's very concerning. We need to remind ourselves that evil does not possess sovereignty. It is not all-powerful. As we can see from today's Gospel, evil may wound and deceive, but it remains subject to Christ the Pantocrator.

So you ask, why is evil on the increase in Australia? Isn't Jesus in control in Australia?

I recently finished reading the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. It was a message to the disobedient people of Judah, but I think there's a message for us in Australia today as well. His central message is a double one: a call for repentance, but also a promise of restoration. He warned the people of Judah that they had broken their covenant with God through idolatry and social injustice, and that this was going to result in severe punishment, severe judgment, and for them the Babylonian exile, as a consequence of their disobedience against God.

Australia today is not exactly obeying God, is it? If you read my introduction last week, both major parties in Victoria have promised to pay for the murder of unborn babies so they can have our votes. Victoria has assisted suicide. We have a culture of death in this state and all around the country, instead of a culture of life, as it always used to be when we were Christian.

God is speaking through Jeremiah in chapter 18. He says, "For my people have forgotten me. They are sick in their ways, leaving the ancient ways so as to appoint their land for destruction. All who pass through it shall be amazed and shake their heads."

Thankfully, it wasn't all doom and gloom. Jeremiah prophesied a future new covenant, where God's law would be written on human hearts, ensuring forgiveness and a restored personal relationship with God, ultimately pointing towards hope and redemption. But that was only after the judgment because of their disobedience, and after they had repented.

Evil remains subject to Christ. But there is another factor at work in what happens with evil, and that is our nation's obedience to God, which includes our personal obedience. We're not given any details about how this particular demoniac came to be possessed by demons, but probably somewhere along the way there was disobedience involved.

I would say we can help our country to return to being an obedient nation by being obedient to Him ourselves, by praying for the politicians and for the government, by holding politicians and government to account when possible, and by voting wisely, especially in Victoria next month. Hopefully we'll get some advice from the Christian groups as to the best way to vote, and I'll pass it on to you when we get it.

Anyway, going back to the Gospel: Jesus gave the demons permission to go into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed over the cliff and was drowned. This shows where a life separated from God ends — not in greater freedom, but in destruction. There's the picture. Sometimes we think, "Oh yeah, I'll get rid of God. I'll be freer." No — there's destruction as a result. Just think of the pigs when you're tempted.

I'm not aware of anyone here living among the tombs. Anybody here living among the tombs in the cemetery? No? Okay. But I can guarantee that many of us here are carrying chains. They could be the chains of anger. They could be the chains of resentment, unforgiveness, pride, envy, lust, fear, addiction — habits we know are destroying us, yet we keep returning to them. The most dangerous chains are the ones that we're not even aware of.

The world says freedom means doing whatever we want. The Gospel says true freedom is the ability to choose what is good and what is best. St. Paul learned that the law alone could not transform his heart. It could not enable him to always choose what was good. "A man is justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law," he said. We can't save ourselves by trying harder. We need Christ.

For the Church Fathers, salvation is not merely a legal verdict but the healing of the whole person. The Orthodox therapeutic method comes in here: purification; illumination, which comes through baptism; and glorification, which is theosis. As St. Athanasius puts it, God was made man that we might be made god — small "g."

So we need to ask ourselves honestly — especially those who are preparing their lifetime confessions, but all of us need to do this regularly: Is anything enslaving me? Is there any resentment that I'm refusing to surrender? Is there a temptation I keep excusing? Let's bring these things to Christ, not in despair but in repentance, because no chain is too strong for Christ to break.

So that's the first thing: Christ frees us. Secondly, Christ restores us to our true self. Christ does not only drive the demon out; He restores the man. When the people come and find him, he's sitting — at rest at last — and he's clothed. He's in his right mind, and he's at the feet of Jesus.

Now, I'm aware that over the years many people have come to the Good Shepherd by what I would call dark alleyways: Satanism, witchcraft, occult practices, séances, Ouija boards, tarot cards, star signs, and so on, as well as other religions.

And of course, what's happening this week? Halloween. Maybe we should talk about that briefly. What do we do with Halloween? It's something that I've struggled with over the years. If you talk to the Scots and the Irish, they think it's fine, and they've exported it around the world to America, and now it's come over here. But then we have to ask ourselves how other people look at this. The Satanists think there's something in there for them. The occultists think there's something in there for them. In the original Celtic pagan feasts, there was animal sacrifice and even human sacrifice.

The thing that helped me to think this one through was asking: how did the early Christians who were confronted by this feast respond? What did they do? And you know what they did? They got rid of it, and they changed it. The Western Church actually replaced it with All Saints' Day. In the early days, All Saints' Day was kept on the Sunday after Pascha, as we still keep it, but in the West they moved it to the same day that the Celtic pagans had this feast, which we now call Halloween. They made the 1st of November, the day of the pagan feast, All Saints' Day — All Hallows' Day — and so the night before is called All Hallows' Evening, shortened to Halloween. So it's an English word to describe the Western evening before All Saints' Day.

Because the early Christians who were confronted with this feast — some of whom may even have converted from paganism — decided to get rid of it, my advice is not to have anything to do with it. Some people say, "Oh, it's only playing. It's only a game. It's just fun for the children." Well, you could say that about Ouija boards. You could say that about tarot cards. But I can tell you from my experience over the last decades that there is an evil behind those things, and if people get into them and somehow connect with them, they connect with the evil, and it will impact their lives and change their lives. So I think hiding behind the fun and games of Halloween there is also evil, and we need to be careful.

On the other hand, if some little child comes and knocks on my door and says "trick or treat" — well, I'm afraid of eggs going on the wall, so I'll give them a sweet! No — they're just children. They don't really know what's going on. We need to talk to their parents, not to them. So I'll probably give them a little lolly or something rather than put them off for life: "That Christian down the road, he's a mean old so-and-so." But for our own children, I think I would discourage being involved in it.

God is rejoicing that we have found our way to Him, whatever path we took, however dark it was. And He wants not just to drive out and cut off any demonic influence; He wants to restore us to what we were meant to be, what He created us to be. And God willing, this will happen to all of us through the foundation course, through your attendance at the liturgies, and — for those who are coming through now — eventually through partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ.

You see, sin doesn't make us more ourselves. It makes us less ourselves. So when St. Paul says, "It's no longer I who live," he hasn't stopped being Paul. Our Lord Jesus Christ doesn't erase our personality. He restores us to what we were created to be — maybe not instantaneously, as with the demoniac in the Gospel, but sometimes like that. The Christian does not become less human by becoming holy. Isn't that good news? He restores us to who we were created to be. We become more fully human. As St. Irenaeus says, the glory of God is a human being fully alive. Do you want to be fully alive? I do. So we need more of Christ in us.

But God's grace doesn't leave us unchanged. St. Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ." The old life must die so that the new may emerge. So we can't carry on robbing banks, if that happens to be our profession at the moment! You have to give things like that up if they're wrong. "I have been crucified with Christ." The demoniac in our Gospel today is not simply freed from something; he is restored to someone, which is Christ.

Notice too that the healed demoniac is now clothed. St. Paul says in Galatians 3, "As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ." You've been clothed with Christ. Those of you who are preparing for baptism will hear those words during the baptism service as we walk around the font together: "As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ." Words that really mean a lot.

To put on Christ means, in the end, that we're not defined by our failures, our worst moments, our dancing with the devil, or our sins of the past. Our deepest identity is now found in Christ. This is why repentance is more than feeling guilty. It's turning around and coming home. St. John Climacus described repentance as the renewal of baptism; through it we are clothed afresh in the garments that we've stained.

So when we fall, we should not say, "I'm just being human." No — you say, "Christ has not finished with me yet." And then you go to confession. You pray. You return to the Divine Liturgy. You forgive. You begin again. The demoniac did not stay in the cemetery, and neither should we.

So Christ frees us, He restores us, and now He sends us to live for Him. The healed man begs to stay with Jesus, but our Lord says, "Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you." His healing became his mission, and he is sent back to the same people from whom he had been cut off.

Blessed Theophylact of Ohrid says that the Lord was teaching him that Christ's grace would protect him even when He was not physically at his side. So it was safe for him to go back to his people, into his town. Christ would be with him even though He wasn't physically there.

The Christian life does not end with our healing. Christ heals us so that we may bear witness to His mercy. This brings me back to St. Paul again: "The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." That sounds rather self-centred: He died for me. St. John Chrysostom was a bit puzzled by this, and he asked himself why St. Paul could claim something like this for himself, because Jesus said He came to save the world, not just one person. Yet St. Paul says He died for me, because He loves me. And the answer St. John Chrysostom came to is that each one of us owes Christ as much thanks as if He had come for me alone.

So we can say, "He died for me, and He loves me." That's the right thing to do, as St. Paul did. Can you say that? Can you say that He died for me — not just that He died for everybody, for the world? Have you actually got to the point where you say, "He died for me"? When you can say that, it changes everything. When you realise that Jesus loves you and me personally, it will affect how we live. We'll start forgiving people when others expect revenge. We'll start being generous when selfishness would be easier. We'll start showing mercy when others condemn. And we'll bring peace into troubled situations. St. Seraphim of Sarov said, "Acquire the spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved."

Jesus changed one person and sent him back to be a witness to others, hopefully to bring many others to faith. And our mission here at the Good Shepherd is not just to gather as many people as we can into this little liturgy, sing hymns to God, and get to know and love each other. Our mission is to the whole of Australia. We want to reveal the riches of Orthodoxy and the love of Christ to the whole of Australia. Everybody who has come has a part to play in this.

So there we have it. In conclusion, we have a story about a man who was the same man after Jesus healed him, but there was not the same life in him. And I think I've seen that with people who come to the church: it's the same body, but it's a different person inside. God is changing people. It's wonderful.

Imagine the faces of the townspeople. They knew this man — his yelling and screaming, his violence, his broken chains. Now they find him sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus. The same man, but not the same life in him.

Christ does not merely improve people. He makes all things new. Do you know that verse in 2 Corinthians 5:17? It was one of my favourite verses when I first found faith in Christ: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." That was true for St. Paul. It's true for the demoniac. It's true for us.

Sadly, the people asked Jesus to leave. They were more upset by their lost herd of pigs than moved by a man restored. And so the question comes back to us. It is not whether Christ has the power to save us — He does. It's whether we will let Him into the places in our lives that we would rather keep hidden or closed off.

I think he wants me to stop — so I will in a moment. Sorry! Oh, that wasn't a he, it was a she. It's all right; we love the kids.

When we surrender to Christ, we do not lose our freedom; we begin to recover it. Christ frees us, Christ restores us, Christ sends us — not by our own strength, but through faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us; who loved me and gave Himself for me. For the Christian life is not merely that I live for Christ, but that Christ lives in me. There's a difference there: Christ lives in me.

May we therefore glorify the Father who created us, the Son who loved us and gave Himself for us, and the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell within us and make us temples of the living God — one God, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.