The Rev. Marc Eames
Proper 7
June 19, 2016
“They found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.”
I admit that sometimes I get frustrated with those critics of scripture that complain that the scriptures are hopelessly out of touch. They could not possibly carry the word of God into the 21st century. This story which I did not chose by the way, it came up in the lectionary for this Sunday, tells the tale of evil’s intersection with mental illness and public safety as well as a society valuing material objects over human life and human flourishing. How could such a story be relevant in the 21st century?
The lectionary has skipped ahead a bit to the latter part of chapter 8 in St. Luke’s Gospel. Jesus has just calmed the storm and he and his disciples then head to Gennesaret, a gentile region to the northeast of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus is immediately encountered by a man suffering from a demonic attack. This man is naked and out of his mind. He is the stereotypical raving lunatic. He wears no clothes,and he lives among the tombs. The people are frightened of him. Perhaps with good reason. They have tried chaining him up, but he is always able to break his chains.
Some scholars believe that anytime one sees “demon” in the text, modern people need to translate that to “mental illness”. I don’t think that is true. Not in every case, anyway. I don’t believe in little red men with pitch forks, though I don’t think St. Luke did, either. I do believe in evil, though, and I believe there are dark spiritual forces that can be called demonic. I have read stories about ISIS, the Nazi, and others throughout history that go beyond reports of killing, revealing a truly demented state that makes even the most empathetic and understanding human, unable to relate to what the tormenters were thinking.
I believe the Gerasene demoniac was mentally ill. I believe his fellow villagers were frightened by him. They did not know how to relate to him, and I feel for this poor man who was shackled, lonely, and cut off from the rest of society. I think there was something above and beyond mental illness about this man that scared the people. I think they were terrified of him, and just wanted to stay as far away from this man as possible. I think he was a scary person. There was something really wrong with him. His fascination with death was disturbing.
Then Jesus walked off the boat. The demons knew immediately they were done for, and they just asked for mercy. Jesus throws them into a heard of pigs, which may have been merciful, but evil, as St. Augustine writes so well, is a force without any substance. It is self-destructive, and even in a pig, it ends up destroying itself. The man, himself, is then healed.
Jesus’ previous healings brought amazement and praises of God. Not this time. The villagers ask Jesus to leave. Why? I think there are two reasons. Firstly, they blame Jesus for the loss of their pigs. That was a lot of money. They had a price for those pigs that they could value in shekels. The life of the man that Jesus healed, what was that to them? He was worthless – a write off. They viewed saving this man as not being worth any cost, never mind in exchange for bacon. I think they were greedy, but I don’t think St. Luke was wrong in writing that they were afraid. The villagers were legitimately frightened. This wasn’t a simple healing, and maybe it was even more impressive than a resurrection. This man scared them maybe even tormented a few of them. They conclude that the ability to change someone that frightening was far too powerful to comfortably have near them. Why would someone so powerful help someone so scary? Even if Jesus was a force for good, he seemed to be a power that would throw everything they knew into doubt. This was a power best kept away. They were afraid.
Jesus healed someone, someone really scary, and this led not to triumph and praising God, but lead to more fear. Interesting. How quickly we can find new things to be afraid of when old fears are relieved. Interesting how when fear is the operating principle, and not love, removing the object of one’s fear does not remove fear. Fear seems to be its own spiritual force, and our nation understands this even when we fall victim to it. It was one of our own Presidents who said during a moment of darkness that “the only thing we had to fear was fear itself”.
It is striking how little the people cared that the demoniac was cured. He did not seem to count as a person. He was deemed something beneath human dignity and human rights. Not only was his life deemed unworthy of the bacon it cost the village, but even after paying the price, they still do not seem to value him.
Knowing this, Jesus gives the man a special task. The man wanted to join the apostles and follow Jesus. It is so understandable why that would be. Jesus healed him, and the villagers hated him. They chained him up, why would he want to stay? Yet Jesus tells him to stay. His place was there. He was to tell his story. He was to evangelize with the truth of the life-saving gospel. He accepted Jesus’ instruction and he returned to his city.
Just last week we heard Jesus say that those who are forgiven little, love little. It is little wonder that Jesus chooses men like Peter, Paul, and this unnamed man who suffered terribly to spread the news of Jesus. He wanted them to speak of their own experiences as we are called to speak of ours.
This has been a difficult week for western civilization. Last week a terrorist walked into a gay night club and killed 49 people and injured more than that many again, some critically. He was a lone gunman – perhaps self-radicalized. He was a violent man to start, and he found the destructive ideology of Jihadist Wahhabis Islam preached by the (so called) Islamic State. ISIS is evil. It is a destructive and self-destructive force.
The middle East has been in real turmoil for the past century. The problems of the middle east for the vast majority of that time stayed there. As you hear commented time and time again, the world is getting smaller. Technology is making our world grow closer together. This can be good, and it can be awful. The problems of the middle east are now everyone’s problems. Southern and Central Europe are dealing with a serious refugee crisis. Western Europe and the United States have had multiple acts of terrorism against our people. The oceans which protected this country for so long have lost their power in our ever shrinking world. Violent white supremacists can now be inspired by racists from all over the world. Violent Muslims hear the call for a total jihad without conventions, or rules of war, and are inspired. This terrorist, born in this country, working in Florida was a violent man who hated gay people. They just bothered him. He found an ideology and he grabbed it. ISIS throws gay people off buildings and tweets it to the world. That is their solution, and they are proud of it. These actions somehow made sense to this man, and he took up arms in their name. Under that banner, he killed as many gay Americans as he could manage. He wanted as much attention on himself as possible, and he spent a fair amount of time talking with the media and with law enforcement during the shooting. He wanted to be famously violent. I believe he was a vain man.
There has been much debate over a response to this. Gun control advocates are in accent at the moment, though they always seem to fail. In my hospital ministry, I became an advocate for the position that sometimes one has to treat the symptoms even though you know the medicine is not going to cure the problem. I agree with my multiple gun owning grandfather and with President Regan who both believed that no American needed to own an assault rifle for hunting or self-protection, but I do understand that most mass shooting is the past twenty years were done with handguns. Banning assault rifles would not stop a single mass murder, but it would probably save a few people from dying which makes it worth doing. I certainly don’t want terrorist gaining access to firearms, though I understand that using a terrorist watch list to accomplish this may be difficult. American citizens can end up on that list for a time based on a vague tweet. American justices are not usually comfortable taking rights away from people who have never committed or been charged with a crime but whom merely expressed an opinion. The proposed law may violate the first and the second amendment. I am never confident when justices have options as to how they are going to strike down laws.
Doing something in many cases is better than doing nothing, and we have done nothing for so long that it seems time to do something. Gun reform could help a little. A massive investment in mental health services would help. I don’t understand why this is not taken more seriously. As I have preached to you before, taking domestic violence more seriously would also help. A man willing to badly beat a woman, or a child, has serious problems, and it never surprises anyone when they commit greater acts of violence.
We also have to learn for the Gerasenes. When the Gerasenes were scared and faced healing and love, they stayed scared. They did not love. They did not open up. Love has the ability to change people and cultures. Fear keeps us where we are. What if we decided, as a society, to show support for the Muslim communities of this country by proving to them that the society of the United States is on their side and that together we can solve our problems?
What if the same was done for your average Trump supporter, so often mocked and vilified? What if our culture came around them to say how can we overcome fear together? What if the whole of the society was interested in asking, “What are the issues that you are most concerned about, and what do you think is the way forward?” We should not be afraid to engage each other. Our current politics, with some help from social media, has actually made us more insulated. We hear the opinions we want to hear, and no more.
What I have found so depressing about this week, after the carnage itself, is just how divisive the response has been. Last year, after the Charlestown shooting, it felt like the country came together. This week, it seems we are further apart. There is a great amount of fear - fear of the power of the political other, fear of Muslims, fear of neo Nazis extremists like the one who killed MP Jo Cox this week. We must not be afraid. It is a condition that has no end, and it always seeks out something else in which to be afraid. We must show love and compassion to all people to work together for healing and peace.
Amen.