Today's gospel reading is quite a story,
not one you'll find in many children’s Bible coloring books.
It’s right in the middle of some more straightforward stories in Luke:
Before this, Jesus tells--and even explains!--some parables.
Then he gets into a boat
and calms the sea during a storm.
After the episode we heard today,
he heals a sick woman and brings a little girl back to life.
But here in the middle of all of this,
not quite as neat and beloved as the others,
we have today’s story of a chained-up man who lives in a tomb.
A legion of demons is driven out of him
and transferred into a herd of pigs,
who, in turn, face an untimely end in some water.
It's not immediately apparent what we do with all of this.
Despite the perplexing scripture reading, though,
I think that the part of today's worship service
that was the most difficult to prepare
was the prayer time.
Every Sunday, but especially today,
there was so much to pray for,
it was hard to know where to begin.
What can we say, God?
It's as if we're in layers of hatred and fear, injustice and grief.
Last Sunday night, our team of 8 was in in a remote village on the Haitian/Dominican border,
a place with horrors of its own,
and we learned about what happened at Pulse, in Orlando.
The heaviness that took over the air, our hearts,
made it hard to move or speak.
We were overwhelmed.
Now, demon-possessed isn’t a term I usually use to describe myself
or anyone else,
But
my heart goes out to the man in this Gospel story.
I feel for his sense of being overwhelmed.
There are so many demons in his world
that they’ve stolen his name and called themselves “Legion.”
which, in Roman army terms,
was about 6000 soldiers.
This guy was dealing with a lot.
And that's pretty much all we know about him:
His problems.
You see, when people are tortured or held captive,
either by personal demons,
like addiction or fear or depression.
or by demons that plague societies--
poverty, prejudice, violence--
When those afflictions are the ones pulling the strings,
that’s all that we--
folks on the outside--
can see.
Instead of seeing a person, we see the demons.
The problem becomes the identifier.
He's a drug addict.
She's a bigot.
“Homeless guy” becomes the only name we have for somebody.
Or we say, “that’s a gang-riddled neighborhood.”
Or a ”corrupt country.”
That is a demon-possessed man.
Now, let me be clear,
we all have our demons.
We are all, personally and collectively,
struggling under the thumb of forces or systems that bring harm
and tear apart.
They call this man “unclean,”
but none of us is clean.
Granted, some demons are more socially acceptable,
or more easily quieted, than others.
This guy in the scripture, though,
he's one of the ones who’s got unacceptable, noisy demons.
Other people in his community,
tortured by their own prejudice and fear,
have made this man an “other” and an outcast.
Luke writes that they physically bound him with chains and shackles,
isolated him and kept him under guard.
To his neighbors, this man was not human.
He was his demons;
his overwhelming, too-many-to-name,
Legion.
Who are the people,
where are the places,
who have become that dehumanized,
that isolated in our time?
Who is known only by what is wrong with them?
Who is kept at arm's distance,
so we need not notice them?
Certainly we don't have to go all the way to Haiti to find examples,
but it is one of those places that is frequently overwhelmed.
Known as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Famous for poverty, for corruption.
People ask me all the time,
"What's the matter with Haiti?"
"Why can't they get themselves together?"
Anywhere we go,
especially when we're in this mindset that we need to fix things,
it's so easy to slip into the habit of looking at people or looking at a place,
and seeing only problems--
Seeing only the demons.
How about this photo from the Washington Post article on Haiti this weekend?
It fits right in with what we expect.
Or these, that we took this week?
It’s so easy to just see what is wrong;
to go to Haiti looking for abject poverty,
looking for trash on the side of a dirt road,
looking for kids without clothes
and houses made of mud,
and to find it all.
Demons are everywhere.
And remember, everyone has them.
Just as we look at this kid,
or this country,
and see desolation,
people in Haiti watching us come into their country
can easily look for the stereotypes of Americans
and find them written all over us.
Maybe they see representatives of the racism and elitism that has oppressed them for generations.
Maybe they see opportunistic tourists.
Maybe they see the learned prejudice that still lives in us.
As we walk back and forth every day,
across a border that people who “look Haitian” can’t cross,
we sure seem accustomed to privilege.
Demons are everywhere.
I’ve got them.
Our communities have them.
And, when we come across each other,
how often it is that only our demons connect.
I smell the alcohol on a person asking for money,
and my prejudice grows stronger.
We visit a community in Haiti where there’s relentless heat, hunger and thirst,
and our fear of failure,
or reluctance to be uncomfortable,
makes us want to turn away.
It makes me think of that bubble soccer concept--
I think our youth have played it--
where you roll around in these protective Inflatable bubbles,
so that your physical person
never comes into contact with another.
You just kind of bounce off of each other.
Fun for soccer,
not great for living in holy community with one another.
The Jesus we read about in Scripture, here in Luke 8,
he’s not so into staying in a protective bubble,
so he gets into a boat on a stormy sea.
He’s not so into lines that divide people,
so he crosses that stormy sea,
from his familiar home in Galilee
to the unfriendly territory of the Gerasenes,
opposite his home.
This Jesus,
he’s got a problem with chains.
He’s always standing with the ones who are forced outside
and so the first person he sees
is the person who’s invisible to everyone else.
Jesus crosses over where he’s not supposed to go,
and where everyone else just sees demons,
where everyone else is too overwhelmed by what is not right,
Jesus sees a human being.
Under 6,000 demons,
demons that speak for the man,
who take away his name.
Jesus sees a child of God of sacred worth.
and values him.
He loves that child of God so much,
that, with a love beyond our comprehension,
Jesus casts out every demon.
He blows them out of the water.
and brings healing.
Now, your guess as to what that looked like
is as good as mine.
Because it’s hard to imagine.
This man had no words to ask for healing,
no concept of what it would look like.
We too, overwhelmed by our demons,
personal and global,
don’t have words.
We can’t fathom the kind of healing that God’s love makes possible.
It’s hard to imagine, in the throes of an addiction,
that it can ever be overcome,
It's hard to imagine, in the midst of an epidemic of violence--
--violence against women, violence targeted at people
because of their race, or their religion,
their sexual orientation or gender identity,
Political or random violence--
It’s hard to imagine what peace could possibly look like.
And yet, there’s this hope.
There’s this hope that God’s love made human in Jesus
Is actually powerful enough to do something.
And with that is a hope
that the people who believe in this God,
will live differently because of it.
Right?
Believing that God has power that we don’t have
does not give us a free pass
to sit back and say,
“well, God will clean up this mess one day.”
It should change us to follow a God whose business
is breaking physical chains,
giving spiritual healing,
driving out the demons that threaten to destroy.
It’s no small thing to say we follow this sort of God.
Earlier this month, 17 confirmands professed their faith right here.
and that same day, 3 more people took baptismal vows in the Potomac River.
And I don’t know how many,
but a great number of us here today,
have also taken vows of baptism or confirmation.
And when people are baptized or confirmed,
the United Methodist Liturgy--look for it on page 34 of the hymnal
asks this question:
“Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you
to resist evil, injustice, and oppression
in whatever forms they present themselves?”
And, again, I don’t know exactly how many,
but a great number of us here today,
have responded to this question.
Affirmatively.
Even if the words weren't exactly the same,
we have said, yes.
We accept freedom and power from God.
Freedom and power to resist evil, injustice, and oppression.
That means that the power of Jesus lives in us.
That means that we stay on the boat, even when it storms.
That we cross over to communities opposite our own.
It means that we walk with Jesus to the outskirts,
to the places where people are kept in chains
or told they are less than human.
We have accepted a power to see like Jesus,
to see and connect with the person,
and not the demons.
It's not our job to cast out all of the evil from this, or any place.
but it is our job to resist it.
It is our job to unbind where we can,
to witness and follow.
It is our job to recognize people for who they were created to be,
to allow them to reach their full potential.
Notice how the Gerasenes in this story respond to Jesus’ action.
They can’t deal with it
Once the man is healed, sitting at the feet of Jesus,
and wanting to be a part of their community,
the people, who only saw the demons,
want nothing to do with the person.
No photo opportunity or news story there,
just a man with a different perspective,
whose very presence shakes what they thought they knew for sure
about clean and unclean,
about the power of God.
It turns their world upside down,
and no one knows what to do next.
The pigs fall off the cliff.
The swineherds run away.
The people ask Jesus to leave.
And the healed man begs Jesus,
“Let me come with you.”
It seems he has nowhere else to go.
But Jesus says,
“No.
Return to your home.”
Jesus heals and transforms us, casts out our demons,
and sends us back where maybe we’re not welcome anymore.
Jesus sends us back as a challenge to people who won’t believe in change.
“Return to your home and declare all that God has done for you.”
That is witness.
Witness is saying to our community, saying to the world,
That the power of God in Jesus Christ has cast out of us
demons of fear and prejudice.
It is affirming that, at our baptisms, we accepted power
to resist evil, injustice, and oppression,
in whatever forms they present themselves;
In whatever demons, too many to name,
cover up individuals’ or communities’ humanity.
It can be overwhelming.
But when we don’t know where to start,
we can always start with somebody’s name.
Somebody’s story.
How many chances do you think you'll have today,
or this week, or this year, to connect with a child of God and learn their story?
Whether you are called to go far away,
Or to the person on the outskirts of your own family,
We are called, today, this week,
And every day of our lives as baptized people,
To connect with God’s light in each person,
To love them.
Jesus calls us out from under every demon,
To bear witness to the light that shines in and through us.
The light that shines in the darkness,
And was never overcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment