Published With Thanksgiving

Luke 8:26-39

It gets overshadowed by the more impressive points of the story. To be honest, it’s hard not to pay attention when you’re told your antagonist is a wild, naked man roaming among the tombs like a character out of a horror movie. In fact, I’m quite surprised some studio—desperate for a Halloween box-office win—hasn’t put our man on film. He’d be heavily made up, probably modestly clothed, and at the climax we’d see the CGI demons come rushing out of him like lava from a volcano.

But the story here is about more than demons and wild men (and pigs). The story is about home.

At the outset of the story we’re told that this man—whose name we never know—did not remain in a house. The word for house doesn’t just mean that he didn’t have a roof over his head. It implies living with a family—those who loved him. This isn’t just a case of living on the outskirts of civilization; this man was alone.

This is why the end of the story is not to be missed. The temptation is to think that the conversation with Jesus is just coda. But it isn’t. The ending of the story takes us back to the beginning and that statement about this man and his lack of a home. Jesus, out of love, sends this man to a place he had not been in a long time. He sent him home—a place of friends, family, community.

Talking about this story with a friend, the question came up “What if home isn’t home?” What if the place that is “home” is just as lonely as the tombs, as life among the dead?

I, of course, did not have nor do I have any answer for that question. Sometimes it feels that the place we came from—be it the place we grew up, where we spent our formative years, or even a place that once was home but has since been taken from us by tragic events or bad memories—is not a place we want to which we want to return. Maybe the man who had been possessed feared returning to the village because he knew no one there would welcome him.

But what I did say, and what I do believe, is that home is more than a place. Home, in the end, is wherever we are allowed to be who we were created to be. It is with people who know our past—no matter how wild and naked it was—and love us anyway. No, they love us because that is who we were and part of who we are.

Finding our home can be difficult. It can feel like years before we are reminded who we are. It can seem that we belong among the dead.

But the day does come when a boat appears and someone, fearlessly, approaches when all others run away. And they ask “What is your name?”

God you know us and call us by name. Remind us who we are so we might live into whom you created us to be and find those who will love us for all we are and all we’ve been.

(Edit to Add: I posted a different devotion earlier today.  In the end, I liked this one better.)