Episodes
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
Go and Share
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
Go and SHARE
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry United Methodist Church, September 25, 2016.
Text: Luke 8:26-39
As Jesus stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”—for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)
This “man of the city” (Greek aner poleos—kinda like “some guy in the city”) was someone’s son, someone’s brother—perhaps someone’s husband or parent. He bore in his body the scars of different kinds of chains that had repeatedly been fashioned to control and subdue him. He was repeatedly seized by the recurring violence that seeped into his psyche and cells through abuse—his abuse of himself or of others upon him. He was abandoned and alone. He was unhoused and lived in the wild and in the tombs and in the places no respectable person would go. He was not in his right mind.
He represents so many who suffer in our society: black and brown people who bear in their bodies and through daily experience the scars and fresh wounds of racism; people suffering from addiction whose cycles of self-destruction seem beyond even the best efforts at control; those who have been abused physically or emotionally and who dwell in depths that feel like death; LGBTQ people who are abandoned by their families or rejected by their churches; the homeless and the poor who get quarantined to the margins and less “desirable” neighborhoods; the mentally ill who walk among us but whose pain goes unnoticed until it becomes a “nuisance” to our cities or erupts in violence; anyone who feels accosted by spiritual torment that steals life and hope and the ability to live without constant fear.
No wonder the man says his name is “Legion.” In Jesus’ day, anyone would have known the implications of such a name: “legion” was a Roman army unit of up to six thousand soldiers. It symbolizes an occupying force whose power is complete and whose presence means the loss of control over every dimension of life. This was the experience of the Jewish people under Roman occupation. When the man identifies himself as “Legion” we see someone who is powerless before the things that bind him. And the larger implication in the story Luke tells is that the Roman empire—with its violence, exploitation, use of fear to control (all legitimated by religion)—is identified with (or at least compared to) the supernatural powers that are behind all systems of violent oppression. In other words, human communities create “demoniacs” through systemic violence and neglect.
The forces of empire had taken their toll on the body, spirit, and mind of this “man of the city.” The result was a living death. He was doing things that did harm to himself and others. These words in response to the unrest this past week in Charlotte from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II come to mind: “I am a pastor. I will not condemn grief. But I was trained as a lifeguard, and I learned a long time ago that when people are drowning, their instincts can kill them and anyone who tries to help them. If a lifeguard can get to a drowning person, the first thing the lifeguard says is, ‘Stop struggling. Let me hold you up in this water, and we can get to the shore together.’ The riots in Charlotte are the predictable response of human beings who are drowning in systemic injustice.”[i] // I would argue that the “man of the city” in our Gospel was drowning in systemic injustice.
When Jesus came on the scene, seeing what had hold of the man and demanding that it release him, things escalated rapidly.
The “demons”—those supernatural forces of empire: apathy, blindness to reality, distraction, greed, that cause and allow so much suffering—are scared because they know they’re no match for the power that has just arrived in Jesus. They beg Jesus not to “order them back to the abussos,” the Greek word used to translate the Hebrew word meaning “the flood or watery deep.” Jesus grants their request to take up residence in the nearby pigs. And immediately, the pigs run into the waters and drown. Jesus didn’t order them back to the abyss. What we see here is that these control- and power-hungry, life-consuming, enslaving forces are hurtling toward a cliff and will take themselves—and anyone who is in their thrall—over the cliff into the abyss. They don’t want it, but it is where their energies lead.
The man is saved from drowning, is released from his constant struggle, is set free from the powers that had held him. And when the people come to see what has happened they find him clothed and in his right mind. He is described at this point not as aner poleos but instead as anthropon, literally “human being.” When the crowds saw not some random “other” but a human being like themselves, they were afraid. Why? Well, as President Obama said yesterday at the opening ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, “The best history helps us recognize the mistakes that we’ve made, and the dark corners of the human spirit that we need to guard against. And yes, a clear-eyed view of history can make us uncomfortable. It will shake us out of familiar narratives.”[ii] Jesus has just reframed the “man from the city” as a human being with a history that led to his current state. The people were made uncomfortable and shaken in their familiar narratives.
The people got scared because Jesus had just unmasked their complicity with the powers that banished a brother to death. The people got scared because Jesus put a human face on what they wanted to keep in caricature and stereotype. The people got scared because they needed their scapegoat, they needed their victim, they needed to be able to point to the “man from the city” as the problem, as the danger, as the dead-weight. The people got scared because the consequence of saving the man was disruption of the local pig farming economy. The people got scared because they realized that if this brother was so vulnerable then they were, too. The people were on the verge of drowning in their need to blame and deny and justify, in their compulsion to put others down in order to lift themselves up. They were hurtling toward a cliff and the abyss below; and they sent the lifeguard away.
But before he left, Jesus spoke to the now-free human being saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” In other words: Go and SHARE! Go and tell. Go and live. Go and be a lifeguard for your people. Go and let your liberation be a hopeful witness for others who are vulnerable and oppressed. Go and declare the powers of empire null and void in things that truly matter. Go and share the call to stand fast against all that is wrong, to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in any form they present themselves. Go and share the good news that there is no power in heaven, on earth, or under the earth that will outmatch the liberating power of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Will you?
[i] William J. Barber, II, “Charlotte is Drowning in Systemic Injustice,” http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/editorial-charlotte-drowning-systematic-injustice-n652541
[ii] President Barack Obama, http://time.com/4506800/barack-obama-african-american-history-museum-transcript/
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