They Always Knew

Pentecost 3 – June 22, 2025

Isaiah 65:1-9
Psalm 22:19-28 
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

If you’ve paid attention to the stories that involve Jesus and demons, they always recognize him. It was not just Jesus, do you remember the incident with Paul and the woman who was possessed by a demon? It seems that they always knew him. We contrast this to the many people, especially the leaders of the temple and synagogues, that did not recognize Jesus. Logic would say it should have been the other way around. It was not. Maybe it was self-preservation on both sides. The demons needed to know in order to protect themselves and the Sadducees and Pharisees were protecting their way of life. Which brings me to remind you that everyone who encounters God in the Bible experiences change. That is often shown by the fact that God changes their name. I wonder if you’ve thought about how God has changed your life?

Our lessons today can give us an insight into God’s way and how it impacts God’s people. Our first lesson is from the second-to-last chapter of Isaiah. That means it comes from the hand of third Isaiah – written after the Babylonian captivity during a time of rebuilding Jerusalem and the temple. All was not going well and it seems that many of the Israelites were giving up on God. Or, at least, blaming God for their failure to rebuild their lives. Instead of looking to new opportunities that were possible they were looking back at what had been and were trying to rebuild that. Their encounter with God and God’s punishment (the captivity) seems not to have changed them. Isaiah was trying to remind them that with God all things become new.

Our psalm is the most quoted psalm in the gospels. Jesus quotes the first line (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?) from the cross. This psalm starts out as a lament about the seeming abandonment from God then changing into thanksgiving for what God has done. For Isaiah he was writing in an attempt to get the people to change their outlook from their self-centered ways to God’s way. 

Paul tells the Galatians that, because of Jesus, they no longer need to look to the law as a disciplinarian because Jesus had fulfilled the law for them. Before they were under the bondage of sin, now they are free and able to choose to live their lives as God desires. No longer will there be divisions among us for in Christ, we have all been made one. That is a big change from what the world says and is about. We have been changed so that we work together to make a better world for all people.

That attitude is shown by our gospel for today. There, after being freed from the bondage of a legion of demons, our young man wishes to follow Jesus. But Jesus gives him another task: he is to proclaim to the world what God had done for him. And off he goes telling others what Jesus had done for him. You see, what he wanted and what Jesus called him to do was not the same. While some other person might have enjoyed having another follower to boost his ego, Jesus wanted this man to spread the good news of what God had done for him so that those who were afraid of Jesus would still be able to hear the new thing God was bringing into the world.

Now, it is our time to set aside our wants and desires in order to answer Jesus’ call to proclaim what he has done for us. Freed from the bondage of sin and death we have been changed into the likeness of Jesus. We get to act as Jesus did by telling all what God has done for us by sharing all that God has showered upon us. With Jesus at our side we can change the world around us so that all people will experience God’s love in Christ Jesus.