The season of Pentecost, which we have now officially entered, is long. This year it will last for twenty-three weeks. Take that in for a moment. It will be late November before this season gives way to the next one. This is a prolonged and beautiful time of sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning from him how to be a beloved and loving child of God.

Zooming out to a place of expanded perspective, all three lessons today are about human captivity and freedom. Isaiah speaks of Israel’s emergence from fifty-plus years under Babylonian control. Freedom at last! Paul reminds the Galatian Christians of their restored relationship with God, no longer captives under the law, but God’s children and inheritors through faith alone. And Jesus frees a man from demon infestation.

Zooming back in to a more intimate examination of these stories, there is a very human theme running through all of them. Which is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And who among us does not have some experience with decisions that turned out…poorly.

What do the people of Israel do now that they are free to worship God Most High? They find other spiritual practices so much more attractive. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Binding themselves to gods in gardens and tombs through rituals and sacrifices. Claiming godly status for themselves. Denouncing God Most High.

Moving to the apostle Paul in Galatia scarcely twenty years after Jesus’s life, the people had found freedom in the good news of Jesus. Freedom from divisive social class distinctions. Freedom to follow the spirit of God’s commandments instead of unquestioning obedience to a religious legal code.

But rivalry arose between Paul the apostle and James the brother of Jesus who insisted that the law requiring circumcision still be applied to male gentile converts. It seemed like a good idea at the time. A matter of honoring tradition and good order, nothing more. But it caused conflict.

But Paul counseled the confused people to hold fast to the teaching of Jesus. They were children of God through faith. Just as Abraham and Sarah were, long before the law was ever given to Moses.

Jesus found people in captivity to troublesome spiritual forces wherever he went. Sailing to the southeastern part of the Sea of Galilee he stepped on to the shore. Right away Jesus was approached by a man.

The man called to Jesus, identifying him both by name and reputation. According to tradition, knowing the name of a spirit is the key to having control over it. This is a direct challenge to Jesus by forces opposed to him.

Those inner forces were confident in their ability to withstand Jesus. It seemed like a good idea at the time. They didn’t hesitate to proclaim their superiority as a malevolent collective. We are Legion.

Jesus spoke to the inner forces that were relentlessly driving the man. Accordingly, the response came not from the man whose own spirit was captive, but from the chaotic occupying forces within him. In fact this man is never identified by his own name in the story at all.

But the inner forces quickly realized their misjudgment. And in the face of condemnation went for a plea bargain instead. Don’t send us back into the abyss, let us go into these pigs.

We need to pause here to observe something. This story has a strange undercurrent. It is a Jewish story unfolding in an area of historically free Greek cities now under Roman governance.

The main character of the story (which was written in Greek) suffers under the captivity of a demonic force that is identified by a Latin word which corresponds to what our military would call a division. It can indicate a force of many.

Or, it may also subtly refer to suppressive and violent actions by Roman forces. Which created another kind of captivity for people of faith trying to live in the peace and freedom Jesus taught. The people feared any activity that might draw the negative attention of Roman authorities. This was the situation both in the time of Jesus and later when Mark, Matthew, and Luke all of whom placed this story in their gospels.

But back to Jesus, demonic forces, and Gerasene pigs. It turns out that Legion’s strategy for remaining at large to unleash chaos at will was based on flawed reasoning. The demons overlooked that God is God of everything.

Every part of creation belongs to God. Flowing rivers, lakes and oceans. All plants and animals belong to creation. The pigs on the hillside. The abyss that is the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus didn’t command the pigs to go into the lake. He didn’t prevent them either. All we can say is that the pigs carried the demons into the abyss, sequestering their power for the time being. But we can observe that freedom can take many forms, including both opposing and serving God’s purposes.

By the way, when Jesus sent the de-demonized man to tell people what God had done for him, he didn’t get it quite right. He told people about what Jesus had done for him. Which is not wrong necessarily, but perhaps misses the beautiful implications of God’s presence in Jesus.

Anyway. Whatever seems like a good idea to us at any given time is subject to our limitations of vision and hope. We tend to overestimate our own wisdom, overlook the demons that reside in us, and underestimate God’s generous and unearned love.

It is good then that we will continue to hear the stories of Jesus in this long cycle of teaching. By these stories we learn the meaning of salvation. Great stories of deliverance for all of us.