FATHER'S DAY

Sunday is Father's Day.

We learned early in school that the family is the basic unit of society. The familia, with the father as its head, go back to the Ancient Romans. The father had absolute power over everyone in his family. Absolute meant exactly that: the father can disown, sell, even kill his children. For many fathers in antiquity, children were property. Possessions.

For the Ancient Romans, the emperor was the father of all fathers. For the emperor, occupied peoples and nations were property. Possessions.

Sunday's lection from Luke (which is also found in Mark and Matthew) possibly echoes the Roman army's massacre of Jewish rebels in Gerasa by Vespacian's general, Lucius Annius, around 67 CE. The "occupying forces" who possessed the Gerasene in the narrative is named Legion (which was the largest military unit of the Roman Army).

Jesus's exorcism reminds us, especially those among us who are fathers, that people are not property nor posessions. Especially not our children. And if we think they are, then we need an exorcism.

Sunday is Father's Day. It can also be Exorcism Day.

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*art, "Jesus, the Gerasene, and the Unclean Spirits," James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum (available at vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).