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“Do You Hear The Voices?”

Text: Luke 8:26-39

© June 24, 2007 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

Did you know that over in India right now, there are more than 40,000 dead people walking around through the streets of that country? No, India is not being overrun by zombies. Instead, what happens in India is that quite often a group of family members will get together and file papers with the government to get another family member, who is quite alive, to be declared legally dead.

Family members do that because once they get you declared dead, they can then just move in and take your property, carry off your possessions, and empty out your bank account. And if that happens to you, there’s not much you can do about it, because when you call up the government or the bank or the police to complain, they just sort of chuckle and say that you can’t possibly be who you say you are because, according to their records, you’re dead.

The situation is so bad in India that one man whose relatives had gotten him declared to be dead decided to kidnap one of his cousins in the hope that he would be arrested and thus proven to be alive, since dead people quite obviously can’t be kidnappers. Another man, who had been declared dead in 1976, only succeeded in getting the government to officially recognize that he was alive 28 years later, in 2004.[1] Can you imagine what kind of existence that must be for those people? Can you imagine what it must be like to be alive but dead at the same time? Can you imagine what it must be like to be alive but to be unable to live the life that you’re meant to live?

In the story that we heard today from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus encountered a man who faced a very similar kind of situation. On the one hand, the man that Jesus met was technically alive – he had a pulse, he could breathe, he could move about. But on the other hand, that man that Jesus met was as good as dead, because the life he was forced to live wasn’t any kind of life at all. Because of the demons that were inside him, he had been turned into some sort of a raving madman, who ran around naked, who lived in the town graveyard, and who had to be restrained with chains and shackles.

And so when Jesus saw the man, and realized what kind of existence he had been reduced to, Jesus asked him what his name was. But the man wasn’t able to answer the question. He wasn’t able to tell Jesus who he was. Instead, the demons inside him answered for him and said, “Our name is Legion.”

Back during the time of Jesus, a legion was a military unit. A legion was usually made up of between 5,000 and 6,000 soldiers. And so when the demons told Jesus that their name was Legion, they were saying that that man was no longer in control of his life. Instead, his life had been taken over by a whole army of demons and it was their voices, and their voices alone, that that man now listened to and obeyed.

Whether we realize it or not, there are a whole army voices that call out to us every day, trying to shape what we think and influence what we do. For instance, if you flip around on the radio and listen to different stations, you quickly discover that certain radio stations seem to play the same songs over and over. And we might be tempted to conclude that the stations are doing that because those are popular songs – those are the songs that people like. But the reality is that songs aren’t played a lot on the radio because they’re popular. No, those songs are popular because they’re played a lot.

For example, let’s say that a group of teenagers were to sit around for an afternoon and listen to a radio station that played brand new songs they had never heard before. And let’s say that during the course of that afternoon the radio station played a certain song five times while all the other songs were played only once. What researchers have found is that at the end of the afternoon if those teenagers were asked to name their favorite song, the overwhelming majority would pick the song that had been played five times. The more we hear a voice, the more that a voice calls out to us, the more we feel drawn to it.

And that’s true not just with teenagers. No, the whole multi-billion dollar advertising industry is based on the idea that no matter what age we are, the voices we hear, the voices that call out to us, influence what we do. After all, when we walk through the grocery store and we see all the dozens of different kinds of toothpaste on display – assuming that they all cost pretty much the same, more often than not we end up buying the one that we’ve seen the most commercials and ads for. We end up buying the one whose voice has gotten through to us the most.

A lot of the time, of course, it doesn’t really matter if we listen to those voices and do what they say. A lot of the time it doesn’t really matter which brand of toothpaste or laundry detergent or spaghetti sauce we buy. But there are some voices that call out to us, at times without us even being fully aware that they’re calling out to us, and we need to be careful about what messages those voices are trying to get us to believe.

For instance, a voice that is constantly calling out to us almost everywhere we turn is the voice of greed. It’s that voice that calls out to us and tries to convince us that no matter how much we have, it’s never enough. It’s like the person who said that in America, happiness is making $10 a month more than your brother-in-law.[2]

Or let’s say that someone came to your house and gave you a brand new Cadillac. Most people would be thrilled and excited about that. But what if the same person who gave you a Cadillac then walked up and down your street and gave a new Cadillac to everyone else who lived on your block? Studies have found that when something like that happens – when other people around us suddenly get something good that we already have – instead of feeling happy for them, we tend to feel miserable and resentful. That’s because the message that greed keeps whispering in our ears is that it’s not good enough to be equal to everyone around you – no, you need to have more than everyone else. And a lot of people in the world today listen to that voice and pursue that kind of life. But is that the kind of life that God’s voice is calling us to live? Or does God call us to a life that’s not based on accumulating more and more stuff, but a life that’s focused on giving and sharing with others? Which voice are we listening to?

Another voice that’s constantly calling out in our society today is a voice that presents a very warped version of family life. It’s a voice that basically says, “Kids, don’t listen to your parents. Your parents don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re fools. They’re idiots.” That’s the message in the popular TV series The Simpsons, which is now in something like its 18^th season. The father, Homer Simpson, is presented as the ultimate buffoon, while the children are depicted as being the smart ones, who always get their way.

It was the same kind of thing in the sitcom from a few years ago, Home Improvement, where the dad, Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor, was regularly portrayed as an inept and immature father while it was often up to the kids to speak up and correct their parents. And in many other TV shows, and in the comic strips, and in many other ways that voice speaks loud and clear in our society, and lots of people listen to that voice. Many kids listen to that voice and treat their parents with disrespect. And even many parents listen to that voice and convince themselves that maybe they shouldn’t expect their kids to listen to them, thinking to themselves, “Maybe I am a fool – maybe I’m someone who my kids shouldn’t respect.”

But is that the kind of family life that God’s voice wants us to have? Or does God’s voice call us to something better than that? Because God calls us to have families where parents take seriously their responsibility to raise their children to know right from wrong, and where children recognize that honoring their parents isn’t just some optional thing that they might do if they feel like it, but that honoring their parents is something that God himself, in the Ten Commandments, commands them to do.

Or yet another voice that calls out in our society is a voice that tells people to just forget about God. In the last year, all kinds of books on atheism have been pouring out, telling people why worshiping God is a waste of time. Or on television, how many shows ever show a family going to church? No, you almost never find people on TV worshiping or praying or practicing their faith. Instead, if religion is depicted in some way on a TV program, it’s often depicted as being something that’s bad and harmful.

And many people in our country today listen to those voices. They’ve listened to those voices so often that they end up reacting to Jesus like that demon-possessed man did at first, when he said, “Jesus, don’t come near me! Because I know you only want to torment me!” People have listened to those anti-God voices so often, they’ve convinced themselves that if God were to come into their lives, that would be a burden, a hardship for them. But how different that is from the voice of Jesus, who offers to release us from those wrong and misguided voices and to give us the strength and love and encouragement we need to live the lives that God created us to live.

So, faced with the reality that there are a whole legion of voices calling out to people in the world, urging them to turn away from God and to pursue other directions with their lives, what are we to do? What can we do?

Back during the 1600s a Frenchman by the name of Blaise Pascal came up with this suggestion. He basically said that all we need to do is show people that following God is more logical than not following God. And he based that suggestion on the idea of a bet. He essentially said that based on how people live their lives, they’re showing whether they’re betting that there is a God or whether they’re betting that there isn’t a God.

In the end, if it turns out that there really isn’t a God, Pascal said, then ultimately there’s nothing to be won or lost by any person. But in the end, if it turns out that there really is a God, then those who have bet that there is a God and who have lived their lives according to God’s ways will win everything; but those who bet that there wasn’t a God and who ignored God in their lives will lose everything. And so, according to Blaise Pascal, the only logical, the only reasonable thing to do is to bet that there is a God and listen to God’s voice.

The problem, of course, is that people don’t always do what’s logical. Time and time again we make bad choices that end up leading us farther and farther away from God. No, if it’s up to us and to our own reasoning power and to our own will power, we’re never going to be able to muster up the ability to shut out those legions of voices that are calling out to us and get ourselves focused on God’s voice. So, where does that leave us? Does that mean that there’s no hope?

No, there is hope. It’s the same hope that that man who lived among the tombs discovered. And the name of that hope is Jesus. Just as Jesus cast out the legion of voices that were calling out to the man and causing him to live a life that was far less than what God wanted for him, Jesus stands before us and wants to do the same thing for us and for the people around us. Jesus stands before us and wants to help change our lives. But the question is: do we want our lives to be changed? Do we want our lives to be transformed from what we’re used to to the way that God wants them to be?

Whether we realize it or not, every day legions of voices are calling out to us, trying to shape what we think and influence what we do. But amid that whole confusing cacophony of voices, look to Jesus. Because he, and he alone, has the ability to silence those voices that are trying to harm us and drag us down. And it is he, and he alone, who has the ability to speak to us the words of life – the words that are able to transform us from what we’re used to to the way that God wants us to be.