Listen, O you who are beloved of God, listen to a story about the messiah. It is not a well known story, it’s one of the stories only Brother Luke was wise enough to include in the good news. Listen to a story that begins when the Son of God had no name.
O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I lie down and when I awake, You discern my thoughts from far away. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, You know it completely. You surround me, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. How weighty are your thoughts, O God, how vast the sum of them. I try to count them—they are more than the sand, I come to the end—I am still with you.
Jesus was, among other things, a famous exorcist, a person who cast demons out of those who were possessed. And it’s a good thing too because it seems that there were demons everywhere in those days. In the gospel stories about Jesus’ ministry, there were demons in every town and city, in the houses of worship and in the waste-scapes of chaos beyond civilization’s reach. Everywhere Jesus went, some poor child of God was under the power and sway of a demon.