Proper 7: Isaiah 65.1-9; Galatians 3.23-end; Luke 8.26-39

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal; grant this, heavenly Father, for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

WE SHOULD not lose sight of the context of the Gospel reading: it is the same basic story as the previous one, when Jesus stilled a storm on the lake. Both resulted in calm, and people were afraid as a result of what they experienced. What Jesus did for his disciples, he promptly did for a man who was, in that culture, unclean in every way. Although this is Luke's only example of Jesus's going deliberately into Gentile territory, it looks forward to his story in Acts (16.16-24) of Paul's healing of a Gentile girl who was possessed by demons.

Entering the culture helps us to understand this unsettling story. Disturbing behaviour, whatever medical cause we understand today, was ascribed to demons, and thus opposed to God. The abyss was either the home of demons, or the place of their ultimate judgement.

Water symbolises chaos and disorder (cf. Genesis 1, Noah), and it was believed that demons could not survive in water, hence Jesus's reference to demons' wandering in waterless places (Luke 11.24). Houses in some parts of the world are still painted blue (representing water) for protection from evil. To know people's name was to have authority over them, hence the significance in the Bible of who gives names.

Put all that together, and the story emphasises Jesus's complete authority over powers opposed to God. Having tried unsuccessfully to heal the man, he demanded to know the demon's name, thus claiming authority. The demons named themselves as multiple, legion; recognised his power; and pleaded not to be sent to judgement in the abyss, but into the pigs.

Jesus, for whom, as a faithful Jew, pigs were unclean, gave permission. Perhaps as a result of general pandemonium, they nevertheless plunged to their own destruction in the water. At this point, the disciples should have recalled their recent experience of the chaotic power of water, and of Jesus's authority over it.

The baptismal imagery is strong: we are saved through water, which is both essential for life, and, as in this story, a cause of death. Baptismal candidates are asked if they reject the devil and all rebellion against God (exemplified in this story by the demons), and are then plunged under water or have it poured on them.

Recently, a visitor to Durham Cathedral described her shock on being told by a parish priest that, at her grandchild's baptism, the parents and godparents would have to renounce the devil and evil. She was surprised when I explained that this has been part of the baptismal liturgy since the early days of the Church.

With the murders of April Jones and Drummer Lee Rigby in the news as I write this, we cannot pretend that there is no evil in the world today. It is antithetical to all that the Christian faith proclaims about the good news of God's Kingdom, and Christians have to make choices: they cannot be on two sides at once. Baptism is a significant and demanding choice.

Alongside the story of the healing of a Gentile outcast, it is significant that we hear Paul's describing those who are baptised as being clothed with Christ, and therefore there being no distinction in Christ between Jew and Greek (or Gentile). Conversion involves putting off the old way of life, and clothing ourselves with the new self (Ephesians 4.22-24).

The Early Church clothed the newly baptised in new white garments. At the end of this story, the man was to be found sitting at the feet of Jesus, "clothed and in his right mind". Jesus had again calmed a storm, and the man was clothed, healed, and saved.

By sitting at Jesus's feet, the place of a disciple of a rabbi, the man recognised Jesus's authority, and became his disciple. Like the demons, he "begged" Jesus, but, whereas they begged to escape Jesus, this man begged to be with him.

Paradoxically, Jesus granted their request, but turned down his, and, instead, sent him home, where his transformation would raise questions to which he had a life-changing answer. Jesus sends the most unlikely people on mission, sending this man even before he sent the Twelve.

The Revd Rosalind Brown is Canon Librarian of Durham Cathedral.