Sermon – June 22, 2025 “What Possesses You?”

What Possesses You? – June 22, 2025

Bulletin-06-22-2025

Gospel Lesson: Luke 8:26–39

This Sunday, Pastor Chris took us into the haunting landscape of Luke 8, where Jesus confronts not just a man in torment, but a system of possession—a legion of forces that isolate, dehumanize, and silence. For many, this story of demons and drowned pigs might seem distant. But through the lens of lived experience, it is painfully present.

The man among the tombs represents every soul shackled by shame, trauma, or the lingering weight of injustice. And the pigs? They represented profit—economic value. When Jesus liberates the man, the cost is immediate. The community’s fear is not about the healing—it’s about the disruption. Liberation always unsettles those invested in the status quo.

Rooted in Jesus’ piercing question—“What is your name?”—Pastor Chris challenged us to examine what possesses us. What binds us? What are we protecting by refusing to name the demons among us? In our time, Legion has a name: white supremacy. And evil, when confronted, resists being named. We see it in white fragility. In denial. In our silence. But refusing to name evil is itself a kind of possession—a surrender to the very systems we claim to resist.

Throughout worship, the bulletin’s prophetic voices—Cole Arthur Riley, Kaitlin Curtice, and Kelly Brown Douglas—echoed this truth: healing begins with honesty, and liberation with courage. Jesus doesn’t turn away from the man’s agony. He steps toward it. He restores him. And then he commissions him to testify.

We are called to do the same. Like the man once chained, we are sent not just to be whole—but to bear witness. To tell the hard stories. To speak what evil begs us not to say. To name the demons we’ve buried in systems and silence.

By God’s grace, may we become truth-tellers. Fearless and free.

Thanks be to God.