Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, January 28, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God names us and claims us as children so that no other name—no other claim—can separate us from God or from each other.
This passage can be boiled down to a name game. Jesus starts us off. He instantly recognizes an unclean spirit in this stranger he encounters off the boat. But knowing what the unclean spirit is, or what it does, or what it’s about, isn’t enough for Jesus. He decides to go the extra mile and ask, “What is your name?” Legion answers and gives us an explanation. “My name is Legion, for we are many.” This Legion, on the other hand, doesn’t feel the need to ask anything about Jesus’ name, or what it means, because he already knows both, and he knows that none of it is good for him. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”
Ironically enough, the man living in the tombs is the most important part of the name game, because he doesn’t really have a name. Unlike Legion, this man is never given the opportunity to introduce or identify himself. Unlike they do with Jesus, nobody refers to this man in terms of his connections, his strengths, or his purpose. No, this man is named and claimed completely by his many, many demons. Even after Jesus expels Legion, the narrator and the townspeople in this story still refer to this man as “the demoniac.” He never ceases to be the “man who had the legion.”
Each of us has probably seen our fair share of this name game in the world. We’ve met people, and sometimes we’ve been people whose names, and eventually, whose realities stem from their vulnerabilities, their susceptibilities and their shortcomings. We’ve met and been people whose communities decide for them not only who or what they are, but also that because of it, they should be shackled and chained. And then, when that doesn’t work, that they should be cast out—unsolvable, unlovable and, ultimately, intolerable.
But the good news this morning is that God doesn’t work like that—God is taking chances on every single one of us, every day, staking an unfailing claim on each of our lives. Our Psalmist sings about this in our passage from Chapter 89. God’s love for us is a love established forever. God’s love for us is love that comes with ancestry. Paul says in Romans 8 that, “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, no, you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” In Christ, then, God has promised us an identity free from demons and transcendent in the face of rejection; of expulsion. Legion might be many, but Legion isn’t holding all the cards.
It’s not that demons are unimportant, or that we should ignore just how much of our lives can end up in their hands. After all, demons are very real, and terrifying for a whole mess of reasons. They have the power to speak with our voices, to bruise us and make us bleed, to cut us out of our communities and to drive us instead to places of isolation and death. This demon, Legion, even has the audacity to ask Jesus, whom he mysteriously recognizes as the Son of the Most High God and completely able to torture and defeat him, a favor. And Jesus grants it! So really, demons even have the power to establish relationships with our Lord and Savior. But demons do not have the power to name us. Only God can do that. And God has done that. From the beginning of time we have been intentional reflections of the creator of the cosmos. Made in the image of God. Each of us has the same name, the same true identity: joint heir with Christ and beloved child of God. And we are many.
