Go Home

The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 8:26-39

June 22, 2025

 “Go Home”

“Go home.” Depending on how we say these two words and in what context they are spoken, they can be uplifting and positive, or they can be mean-spirited and negative. This is what Jesus tells the man who was demon-possessed after he had been set free. In the last verse of that amazing story in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells him to go home. But he was to go home with a mission and a purpose: “Return to your home and tell how much God has done for you” (Luke 8:39a). Based on that Gospel lesson, today’s message is entitled “Go Home.” May the Lord’s rich and abundant blessing rest upon the preaching, the hearing, and the living of his Word for Jesus’ sake.

If we look at the context surrounding today’s Gospel lesson here in Luke 8, in addition to Jesus’ casting out of the demons, we see other amazing things as Jesus demonstrates his power over all things. In the verses just before today’s Gospel, Jesus commands the forces of nature by stilling the storm (Luke 8:22-25). What comes after today’s Gospel is Jesus’ healing of the woman with the hemorrhage and raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead (Luke 8:40-56). Putting these all together, we see that Jesus has power over the natural world, over demonic forces, over sickness, and over death itself. In our fallen world, all of these things, are under the influence of sin, but Jesus has power over all of them. Jesus has power to rescue and set us free.

There are all kinds of surprising turns in this Gospel account as Jesus ventures into Gentile territory. The area where this happened was somewhere on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Ten Cities, the Decapolis, which was under Syrian rule. Although you wouldn’t expect to find a large herd of pigs in Judea and Galilee which was overwhelmingly Jewish, you would expect to find pigs in a Gentile land. One of the most surprising turns is that after it’s all over, after the demon-possessed man had been healed and restored, the people asked Jesus to leave. That legion of evil that had possessed the man begged for mercy from the divine Power that stood before them. A legion was 4000-6000 soldiers within the Roman army. And now, that horrible power was powerless before Jesus, Son of the Most High God. That’s important for us to remember in our own lives. There are times when it seems that we are up against a terrible power that is bent on our destruction. It is precisely then that we must cry out to Jesus, before whom every power in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, must submit (Philippians 2:10-11). Jesus alone is all-powerful. If he could deliver that man from a legion of devils, there is help and deliverance from Jesus for us whatever our need may be.

There is a lot of begging in this account. The legion of demons say to Jesus: “I beg you, do not torment me” (Luke 8:28). There’s more: “And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss” (Luke 8:31), the bottomless pit, the prison, for unclean spirits opposed to God (Revelation 9:1, 2, 11; 17:8; 20:1, 3). “Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these” (Luke 8:32). Mark’s account of this tells us that the herd numbered about 2000 animals (Mark 5:13), and they all rushed down and were drowned in the sea. Although it’s not the same as begging, the local people “asked [Jesus] “to depart from the, for they were seized with great fear” (Luke 8:37). It was too much for them. They were afraid of Jesus and what he could do. But there is one more use of begging here: “The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him” (Luke 8:38). Note that everyone knows who to beg from – Jesus!

Of course, the man wanted to be with the One who had healed and restored him. Jesus had literally saved him. Jesus had given him his life back, and the man was willing to follow Jesus wherever he might go. But Jesus refused the man’s request. Jesus doesn’t stay where he’s not wanted. The people asked him to leave, and he does, but Jesus sends a messenger in his place. Jesusa tells the man who had been healed and restored to go home: “Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you” (Luke 8:39a). What must it have been like for that man to go home and tell his story? People who heard him, who knew him, who remembered what had happened to him, and even those who did not know him at all, would have been speechless as that man pointed anyone and everyone to Jesus who had delivered him literally from hell.

Our own story of deliverance may not be as dramatic as this man in today’s Gospel lesson. But what Jesus did for him, he has done for us as well. We, too, have been set free from sin, death and hell through all that Jesus has done for us through his suffering, death and resurrection. It is as St. Paul tells us in today’s Epistle lesson (Galatians 3:23-4:7): “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:4-7).

Jesus tells us also to go home. He calls us to tell how much God has done us. The takeaway from this sermon is for each one of us to think about what God has done for us. What God has done for us, and what God continues to do for us each and every day, will be so much more than we realize.  Who are the people you can tell about this? Are they at home, or down the street? Are they friends, neighbors, co-workers, people at the coffee shop? Whoever they are and wherever they are, they are people for whom Jesus shed his blood and gave his life on the cross. Jesus loves them just like he loves you and me. “Return to your home and tell how much God has done for you” (Luke 8:39a). Amen.