Madness in the Land of the Dead

(Posted June 20, 2025)

It takes no more than checking on the news in the morning. It seems as if the entire world is descending into its own form of madness. There is no more timely Gospel than the one assigned to this Sunday: Jesus Meets the Geresene Demoniac.

Jesus meets this raging, mentally tortured man where he lives: amid the tombs and graves of a cemetery, where in times past the townsfolk have tried to chain him to the stones. But this has never worked, and he rages through the place near where a flock of pigs graze by the sea.

We, too live in a time when the authorities decide that some people are “demons,” and they capture and try to chain them in the land of the dead. But that doesn’t work, either. Too often the demon hunters act more like demons themselves.

The key to Jesus’ healing of the man in the land of the dead is to know him well enough to know his name, and in turn, the man and all the hatred that infects him learns the name of Jesus Christ.

This Sunday we’ll look at the way the lessons in this scripture are lessons to be applied to all the “demons” raging in our society today. Join us to consider some of those solutions.