READING:
Luke 8.26–39
 

“What Is Your Name?” Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

“There was a boy. And he lived in a fence.” So begins the novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.  In the story we meet Bruno, a German boy whose father runs a concentration camp. He stumbles upon another boy, Shmuel, who lived on the other side of the fence. As the novel unfolds we witness their secretive friendship grow.  Ultimately the story ends in a most tragic way.

But as the plot unfolds, we witness a child that dares to be with another whom the world has named unclean, unworthy, untouchable.  The political system at that point and place in history sees Shmuel as less than human: labelled as untouchable because of his race, locked behind the wire of a concentration camp. But to Bruno, he’s simply Shmuel. A friend: another human being just like himself. They knew each other’s names and valued their friendship.

Exiled

The Gospel reading set for today is about a man exiled by his community. Unnamed, naked, chained in the graveyard. Someone who people regarded as less than human. I wonder what you were thinking and feeling when it was being read?

In many ways this bible story is one of the most vivid and unsettling stories in the New Testament. Jesus crosses the water into Gentile territory: enemy ground for a Jewish teacher. He is immediately confronted by a man possessed, wild, naked, and living among the tombs. It’s dramatic and disturbing: demons driven into pigs, pigs plunging into the sea, townspeople paralysed by fear. But beneath the strangeness lies a profound story about identity, marginalisation, and liberation.

A deeper healing

This is not just a story about healing: it’s a homecoming, a being completely accepted. It’s not just about evil spirits. More profoundly it’s about what happens when Jesus steps into the spaces we have closed off, where pain and shame have been buried.

The man in this story isn’t just unwell. He is entirely cut off from his home, his community, his clothes, even his own name. When Jesus asks him, “What is your name?” he doesn’t say “John” or “Joseph”. Instead, he says Legion, a word that echoes with imperial occupation, with violence, with being overrun by forces too big to name. This isn’t just a personal story of one man’s encounter with Jesus: it’s political, spiritual, and deeply human.

Looking in a mirror

Perhaps we can see in this man a mirror in which we can see parts of ourselves: fragmented, frightened, unsure who we really are. The tombs where Legion lives are the inner graves we all carry from time to time: grief, fear, buried trauma. If we identify with the story through this lens, we can then see that healing doesn’t come by denying those parts of ourselves which are broken, hurt and confused, but by naming them before a God who walks with us. And when we do, we find that like Legion we begin to be free…free to live fully.

You see Jesus doesn’t avoid the pain or the chaos in which he finds the man in the graveyard. Rather he steps into it alongside the man. And in naming the man’s torment, he makes space for transformation. Not just relief, but restoration.

Being with rather than fixing

The Church of England priest, Sam Wells, often speaks of “being with” to describe God’s greatest gift to us and all humanity It is presence, not solutions. Jesus could have healed this man from the boat. But he doesn’t. He lands, he listens, he stays. He sees the man not as a problem to be fixed, but as a person to be restored. It’s not just the healing that matters….it’s the relationship. The man is seen, heard, touched, clothed, and named.

And then, when the townspeople come and find the man “clothed and in his right mind,” they are not excited and overjoyed. They are terrified. Sometimes, real healing, real inclusion, is too disruptive for us to handle. Sometimes, we are more comfortable with brokenness at the edge of our society rather than transformation at the centre of our lives and communities.

And so, they ask Jesus to leave.

Being commissioned by Jesus

But before he does, Jesus commissions the man: not to follow him as a disciple, but to return home. Home to the very people who once chained and feared him. He is asked by Jesus to tell his community what God has done. He becomes, in a way, the first Gentile missionary. A man once seen as the problem becomes the preacher of good news.

And maybe that’s where this passage meets us today.

Places we avoid

It reminds us that Jesus goes to the places we avoid: the graveyards, the margins, the hidden corners of our lives and heats. He doesn’t flinch from our mess, and he doesn’t start with judgment. He starts with a question: “What is your name?” And then he stays long enough for us to remember who we truly are and who other people we encounter really are. Just image being challenged to really find out who the person we regard as on the margins of our society really is?

This challenging gospel reading might just be challenging us to ask the following questions.  Who are the people we’ve cast out or given up on?  Or what parts of ourselves have we buried in shame or silence? And finally, do we really want healing to ask for healing for ourselves and world or are we too afraid of what it might change?

A challenging story for each of us

This story is for anyone who has felt forgotten. For anyone living among the

tombs….whether of addiction, depression, exclusion, or pain. It’s a story of Jesus coming to find you, calling you by name, and sending you, not away, but home.

Because the God we meet in Jesus doesn’t wait for perfect people in perfect places. He steps into unfamiliar territory, into our wilderness, and says: You are not Legion. You are mine.

And that, is the Good News of the Gospel.