8 Pentecost, Year C, July 14, 2013

Luke 10: 25-37

Preached by Rev. Dr. Jason Haddox 

George Zimmerman was found innocent of the death of Trayvon Martin yesterday in Florida.  He was not found guilty on a lesser charge.  He was judged altogether innocent of wrongdoing by the jury.  And yet he pulled the trigger that took the life of another human being.  No matter what the motivation was, no matter what he imagined he was doing in that moment, no matter what the judge and jury and media have said, nothing in heaven or on earth can undo that act.  And it was an act motivated by racial division.  Whatever fear and anxiety was at work that day in that neighborhood to bring those events to pass, the divisions and fears of race and class were present.  For that is who we are, as a people.  It is in the air we breathe.  It is part of our life together, part of the culture in which we live.  “Us and Them,” however we draw the lines.  Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.  

This morning Jesus is asked by an expert teacher of the Hebrew scriptures and traditions, “How may I inherit zohn aionion (Greek).  The phrase is translated “eternal life”, but it might also be translated “the life of eternity.”  The question has to do with the present:  how does a person participate in that way of life NOW, never mind sometime later after death.  This question is about the Kingdom of God, which Jesus has been proclaiming and enacting all along—how does one enter into that living reality?  In other words, how does one live “in the world, but not of the world” as we know it?  And is that even possible? 

Jesus answers not by listing “Do this, that and the other thing” but by asking another question:  “What do you read, O thou expert in the scriptures and the traditions?  You know the book as well as I do.”  This scholar of the scriptures and traditions replies with words taken from two separate locations in the Hebrew Bible:  Love God with everything you are (Deut. 6:4-5); love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18).”  Very good, Jesus replies.  You get 100% on the quiz!     

But then our resident know-it-all asks another question: “Who is my neighbor?”  The implied question-behind-the-question is “Who is NOT my neighbor?  Who can I ignore--who am I allowed to cut from the guest list?”  Jesus does not answer the question; instead he tells a story.   

The idea of a Good (or better, Merciful or Neighborly) Samaritan is, for Jesus’ audience that day, an absolute contradiction in terms.  The enmity between Samaritans and the people of Jerusalem and Judea went back for centuries—they had as little to do with one another as possible.  They were distantly related, many generations in the past, but now they had no use for one another and often went out of their way to avoid interacting with each other.  

Jesus tells a story of a man traveling in dangerous territory, who was attacked, mugged, beaten, and left for dead.  Those community leaders, both religious and secular, who saw this man and should have stopped to help one of their own, kept on walking.  The person who by all societal norms would have been expected to walk on by, perhaps even with a gesture of disdain, sees what has happened, stops, and goes to great lengths to help the man, naked and half-dead, who had fallen into the hands of robbers.  This is scandalous, even disgusting!  It’s not supposed to work that way!  Both Jesus and his hearers know that—and that is exactly the point. 

In telling the story of a Samaritan who does the deeds of a neighbor, Jesus turns his hearers’ treasured stereotype on its head.  The Samaritan, the hated enemy of all who heard that parable, embodies what it means to be a person of “zohn aionion”; he is the one who demonstrates what it means to be neighbor; he is the one who does the deeds, and lives in the way, the domain, the eternal life of God’s kingdom, even on an isolated desert road, vulnerable, surrounded by danger and uncertainty.  He is not merely being kind to another person (as good a thing as that may be); he embodies God’s kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.   Christ, the Word of God Incarnate, points to one assumed to be utterly incapable of even knowing the truth of God as the only one who understands it at all.    

And take note:  Jesus himself will shortly be given into the hands of those who will beat him, strip him, and leave him for dead along a public roadside.  In a sense Jesus is telling this story on himself.  He will be the one, there on the side of the road, beaten and bloodied.  Who is it then that will show pity to Jesus in his sufferings?  Where does one discover Jesus in his sorrows? 

We find Jesus in every place of suffering and sorrow.  In all those situations, in all those lives, that are broken and hurting and half-dead.  The big obvious ones on the nightly news; the little tiny ones we ignore and hurry past on the street or the sidewalk.  Jesus is there, in all of that mess.  And that is where Jesus—hiding, disguised as one of the least, the lost, the insignificant and the dead—looks for us to meet him.  

Jesus is there even in our own brokenness and pain and death—all the little deaths, on the way to the big final one.  And when we ourselves are hurting and broken and half-dead or worse, Jesus comes and finds us, in ways and in the appearance of neighbors, perhaps even Merciful Enemies, who may be surprising, or even distressful or unwelcome to us.   

Because we don’t like letting go of control.  We want to know who’s in and who’s out.  We want to know with certainty where the lines between “Our People” and “Them People” lie.  We live our lives trying to manage our own lists of acceptable and unacceptable, worthy and unworthy.  “Who is my neighbor?” we ask, along with the expert in the law and traditions this morning.   Jesus gives him—and us—no answer, but a story. 

I want to tell you a story.  A confession, in fact.   

In the spring of 2010 I was living in Bloomfield, New Jersey, a comfortable suburban area just a short train ride from New York City.  One afternoon I walked downtown to do some errands, and was returning home when I realized someone was walking behind me.  I glanced back and saw a young man, in his late teens or early twenties, walking maybe eight or ten feet behind me at about the same speed as I.  We were on a sidewalk beside a busy major street in broad daylight.  I had no reason to be anxious or nervous, but I suddenly realized that I was both of those things.  I wondered as I walked: “Why do I feel uneasy in this situation?”  And it hit me like a slap in the face: because of the color of this young man’s skin.  I was white; he was black.  And that was all it took to cause me to wonder…and I was horrified.  Horrified that I had thought such thoughts and felt such feelings, even subconsciously; horrified that there was THAT in me that would create such an imagined scenario.  Without a single justifiable reason, I had glanced once over my shoulder at this young man and judged him.  I had assumed him to be a potential threat. 

 

I went home that afternoon and cried.  For myself, and for him, and for all of us.  Because we’ve been trained, you and I, and all of us.  “You’ve got to be carefully taught,” as the words of Oscar Hammerstein II in the musical South Pacific remind us—to fear those who are different, who are strange, who are “not our kind of people.” This fear and suspicion of one another is not natural; it is taught and learned and reinforced.  And it can be otherwise.  It can be different.  We can learn to live another way, according to a different set of priorities.  Jesus tells the story of an enemy who is a neighbor, to shock his hearers into seeing that the lines we draw around ourselves, to protect ourselves and hold one another at arms’ length are not God’s lines.  And then he goes to the cross, where he opens his arms, to show us how generous, how deep and broad and high the wide-embracing circle of God’s love really is. 

What is your story?  Of a time, a person, a situation, that shattered some belief you had held about “them people”?  That caught you up by the scruff of the neck and demanded something—that what you’d always thought, or been told by those around you, could not be thought, could not be held as true, any more?  That drew the circle wider than you’d ever imagined it could be?

This is metanoia.  This is the place of the turning, where the armor of supposed knowledge we build for ourselves breaks, and the zohn aionion, the life in eternity, the Kingdom of God, can break in and take us over.   

My sisters and brothers, may it be so for us.  May it be so among us. 

 

7 Pentecost, Year C, 7 July 2013

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Preached by Rev. Dr. Jason Haddox

In recent years, in my hometown of Baytown, Texas, my father has undertaken a work of conversion: the transforming of an unused patch of suburban back yard into a vegetable garden.  He has tilled the earth, built raised planting beds, enriched the soil, planted seeds and watered and pulled endless weeds.  And all that before so much as one blessed tomato or pepper shows up.  It is tiresome, necessary work, but not always immediately rewarding in itself, this business of getting the garden ready. 

In the gospel this morning, the Seventy are getting the garden ready:  They too are tilling the soil; pulling out the weeds and rocks and old tires.  They are building connections with the people they meet, for something that they, the Seventy, know is coming.    They have been with Jesus, learning from him and watching him, and now they are being sent out to do and say the things they have seen and heard him do and say.

They are engaged in Preparatio evangelica—preparation of themselves and of the people they meet, to hear the Good News of God’s deeds in Jesus, and in those who follow Jesus.  Jesus is intending to go into the towns and villages of Galilee himself; he’s sending the advance team ahead to get folks ready to receive what he brings to them. 

Jesus speaks to his followers, who are now becoming this advance team:  “Travel light; don’t get distracted.  Carry and embody the Peace of God as you go.  Be content with whatever comes your way; share what you have been given: healing, salvation, and the news of the Kingdom near at hand.  If they reject you, shake off the dust and move on; if they acclaim you and celebrate you for miraculous deeds, give thanks that God has been there with you.  Do not take personally what comes next—for good or for ill.”  

This is a very different set of instructions on living than we hear most of the time.  And the Seventy don’t quite understand either.  They go and do as Jesus tells them, and then come rushing back excited about everything they are able to do.  “Jesus, you won’t believe what happened!  Check it out…”  And Jesus has to tell them again “Look y’all, that’s great, but it’s really not the point.  The spiritual fireworks, and demonstrations of power, and the healings, and everything—none of those things are an end in themselves. 

Remember the message:  ‘The kingdom, the dominion, the power and presence of God Almighty, is here.  Right here, among you, in your midst.  You don’t have to go running around looking for it or trying to conjure it up; it’s here, for you all, right now.’”

 Then and now, Jesus speaks this word to his hearers: that it is possible to travel lightly on the earth, not accumulating things for the sake of a false sense of security; that it is possible to depend on hospitality and kindness from others.

That it is possible, and more than possible, to live in and into the peace of God which passes all understanding, which is not dependent on outward circumstances, even in the midst of sickness and struggle. 

That it is more than possible—that it is needful, that it is essential—to call forth the healing and saving power of the Reign of God into the places we see in need of that healing, saving, amazing grace.   Because even in those places of need, whether in our own private lives or out there in God’s beloved and broken world, salvation and healing and grace are to be had.  They are near; they are at hand.  And so we can do all that Jesus asks us to do.  Because we have been given all that we need to do with. 

The garden is waiting.  God’s kingdom garden longs to flourish and grow and bear good, nourishing, delicious fruit.  We are invited, called, sent, as assistant-gardeners, diggers and weeders and tillers of the soil, to work alongside Jesus the Good Gardener, to make that possibility a reality, in this place, in our time.

 My brothers and sisters, may it be so for us; may it be so among us.

6 Pentecost, Year C, 30 June 2013

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20;

Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Saint Luke 9:51-62

Preached by Rev. Lou Scales 

237 years ago tomorrow, July 1, 1776, was a hot day in Philadelphia, and from the description, it was about like it is here today in Augusta. To make matters worse, a

thunderstorm struck, with lightning and pelting rain.  Delegates to the Continental Congress were meeting in the state house, and a fateful decision was about to be

made. In his award-winning biography of John Adams, David McCullough describes how Adams, not known as a great orator, rose to speak—how he spoke logically,

clearly, carefully, and, "looking into the future, saw a new nation, a new time."

 

Later, Adams remembered his words: "Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, measures in which the lives and liberties of millions, born and unborn, are most

essentially interested, are now before us. We are in the very midst of revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of the world." 

Two New Jersey delegates, Frances Hopkinson and the Reverend John Witherspoon arrived late, after Adams had been speaking for nearly an hour and was concluding.

Witherspoon --a Presbyterian minister—was the only clergyman there. He was president of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, and he asked if Mr. Adams would mind repeating his address.  Adams good-naturedly objected that he wasn’t much of an orator, but other delegates urged him and Adams began again and delivered the hour-long speech a second time. 

The debate lasted nine hours. A preliminary vote on the matter of declaring independence from Great Britain was taken, and nine colonies voted in favor. A motion to adjourn for the night was adopted. The tension at the City Tavern, where many of the delegates were lodging and where they talked into the night, increased as word reached Philadelphia of the sighting of a hundred British ships off New York. 

They began again on the morning of July 2, at 9:00a.m. At 10:00 the storm returned outside. A vote was taken. No colony opposed the motion. The colonies had declared their independence.  McCullough reflects: "It was John Adams, more than anyone, who made it happen. Further, he seems to have understood more clearly than any what a momentous day it was and in the privacy of two long letters to his wife Abigail, he poured out his feelings as did no one else." 

Adams wrote to his wife:  “The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable

epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illumination from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.” (David McCullough, John Adams pp. 126-131) 

The delegates discussed the matter and refined the document for two more days. They argued over every word. Then, Thomas Jefferson wrote these lines:  ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." 

I honestly love that story. I love the fact that a minister from Scotland, albeit a Presbyterian, was there and played an important role and signed the declaration—actually committing an act of treason against the crown. I love the references to the Creator, to the will and providence of God, and the invocation of the idea of freedom as the heart of the whole enterprise. They voted for a final time on July 4 and lined up and signed it and sent it out for the world to see and hear.  Adams hoped it would be celebrated with "shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations," and that’s a pretty good description of what will happen in Columbia and Richmond Counties, and the rest of the nation, for that matter, this coming Thursday. And Mr. Adams also hoped that it would be commemorated in solemn acts of devotion to Almighty God, which is what we are doing here this morning. 

It is an occasion for people of faith to reflect on the meaning of freedom, the particular and important meaning that word has for Christians. Paul, writing to the Christian churches in Galatia (modern Turkey), said, "For freedom, Christ has set us free.” They were Gentile churches and they were deeply divided by a disagreement over how to be followers of Jesus Christ, focusing on the question of freedom. Did they have to obey the Law of Moses? Or were they free from the law as Paul, their teacher, had said? 

Jesus was a Jew. The disciples were Jews. The early church was Jewish. The first Christians met in synagogues and never thought they would be anything but Jewish.

Jesus had said that he came to fulfill the law—the Law of Moses, the foundation of their life as a people, a nation.  The law—613 rules based essentially on the Ten

Commandments—regulated and gave order to all of life. It defined how life was to be lived with God and in community. It told them what to eat and not eat, how to

dress, how to relate with neighbors, spouses, children. Its instructions included how and when to work, how to cook, how to raise children, how to farm. It included rules about feast days and fasts and sacrifices and offerings and prayers. Torah—the law, is why Jews survived twenty centuries of exile and persecution. It is why there is an

Israel today.

 

The trouble started when our first missionary told the story of Jesus to non-Jews, Gentiles—or Greeks, as he called them. Paul traveled into the lands of the Gentiles

and spoke about Jesus so compellingly that something happened that no one anticipated. Gentiles became believers. Paul baptized them and told them to stick together. Paul told them they were the church. Paul called them the body of Christ.

 

Now by Jewish standards, these Gentile Christians were a motley crew. They didn’t look or act like God’s kind of people. They ate food that was unclean according to

Jewish law. They didn’t keep Sabbath, didn’t observe the fasts and feasts. Those Gentiles looked like sinners. So the Jerusalem church sent teams of teachers north to

those Gentile enclaves to do some remedial work. Paul, they said, missed something important. If you want to be true Christians, you have to abide by the Law of Moses: the dietary restrictions, the feast days, and your men must be circumcised, just like us, just like the law requires. 

When Paul heard about it, he was livid. Paul was a Jew, followed the law, kept kosher—but for non-Jews to try to become Jews on the way to being Christian was to miss the whole point. You are loved by God in Jesus Christ, he said. That love is given to you as a gift you can’t earn, no matter what you do, no matter how many rules you obey or sacrifices you make. Nor can you put yourself outside the focus of God’s love. It is grace—the grace of God in Jesus Christ—that saves us and redeems us and reconciles us and sets us free. 

We are free from all the ways people have tried to please God because God has already shown his pleasure.  We are free to live in joyful gratitude, free to fulfill the real and original intent of the law—which is love for the neighbor. Paul’s letter to the Galatians has been called the Magna Carta of Christian freedom. 

In Christ, he wrote, there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. For all are one in Christ. And he wrote, "For freedom Christ has set us free. . . . Do not

submit again to the yoke of slavery."  To the good, upstanding, law-abiding people down in Jerusalem, doing the very best they could to keep all the rules, Paul must have seemed like a hopeless liberal, preaching grace, telling people that God loved them no matter what they did or didn’t do. What kind of religion was that? 

But Paul’s message doesn’t stop there. There’s more.  "Do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. . . . Become slaves to one another."  Now in that statement Paul uttered a very sophisticated understanding of human nature and what it means to be free. "Do not submit to the yoke of slavery. . . . Become slaves to one another." 

The modern definition of freedom has to do with autonomy, independence, sovereignty. Webster’s first definition is "the absence of necessity, coercion, restraint,"

none of which sounds like Paul’s admonition to become slaves to one another.

In fact, the Christian definition of freedom—because it is freedom in Christ, defined by Christ—differs fundamentally from the popular, cultural definition.  Freedom in the abstract sounds like the right to do whatever you please, but that is not it at all. Christians are free in Jesus Christ from the necessity of earning their salvation; but because it is Jesus Christ who is doing the defining, love of neighbor, commitment to the community is the other side of freedom. It is grace and responsibility. 

There is important truth in that idea. Those brave souls who signed the Declaration of Independence were not thinking about declaring their right to do whatever they pleased for their own self-realization and gratification.  They were declaring independence in order to become a new nation, and perhaps more than anyone else in history, they knew that freedom from external political coercion was freedom to serve the common good and that it was going to require serious sacrifice: people were going to die for it, and fight to defend it, and work very hard to maintain it. David McCullough wrote, "What in another time and society might be taken as platitudes about public service, were to John and Abigail Adams a life-long creed" (p. 29). 

It is not about doing what you please—although the culture and the market economy in which we live sounds sometimes as if that is exactly what it means. University of

Chicago sociologist Jean Bethke Elshtain, in one of her latest books, Who Are We?, worries that in our obsession with individual rights, our insistence on the right of the

individual to do whatever he or she pleases, we are losing a sense of "social covenant," a sense of obligation to the community, to our neighbor.  She cites an automobile advertisement that is a virtual invitation to selfishness. The copy reads this way, "Little

kids are selfish. Impulsive. They don’t make rational decisions. When they see something they want, they want it now. Little kids have a lot of fun. Hmmm."

Elshtain urges a rebirth of civil commitment, a rededication to the common good, a reinvestment in the institutions where the common good is actually strengthened: In political parties, labor unions, schools, and churches. And she is not alone.  The late Thomas Merton observed, "I do not find in myself the power to be happy doing what I like. . . . On the contrary, if I do nothing but what pleases my fancy, I will be

miserable most of the time. This would not be so if my will had not been created to use its own freedom in the love of others" (No Man Is an Island, p. 35). 

John Adams hoped that the birth of freedom would be commemorated in churches. And a fitting way for that hope to be fulfilled is for churches to remind the world that

freedom—to do whatever one wants to do—is simply license and is ultimately self-destructive; that real freedom is the liberty to give oneself fully and generously to others.  That’s the greatest reversal of all. Real freedom is found in the act of serving another person, an institution, a cause other than you. Real freedom is discovering you by forgetting you for a change.  Jesus turned a lot of things upside down. You can’t earn your way into the kingdom. God has already opened the door and invites you to stop groveling and whining, to stand up and walk in. 

You can’t earn God’s love because God has already given it to you. All you can do is be grateful and try to live up to it.  You can’t get in because you’re the right race, or

gender, or economic class. It’s not a matter of ethnic group, income, or sexual orientation. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female.

You see, you’re not really free when you do exactly what you want to do. You are really free when you voluntarily limit your own freedom by being a servant to others.

The Good News is about grace and it is also about responsibility.  Grace leads to freedom, which leads to love. And unless you get to love, to being a servant, you do not really know the grace. If your freedom simply allows you to make yourself your own life’s project, you’re not getting it.

Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl survived the holocaust and later wrote very movingly about what it was like to be caught in the very antithesis of freedom, a kind

of absolute imprisonment that would end in death. He wrote:  ”We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been

few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last human freedom—to choose one’s attitude in any given set

of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” (A Rumor of Angels, p. 8) 

Dear friends, let us commemorate this day, this freedom, in solemn devotion to Almighty God, and let us give thanks for this land of liberty.Let us be grateful for the amazing grace of God—given to each of us in Jesus Christ.  Let us be grateful for the freedom Our Lord gives—freedom to let go of frantic efforts to please God, freedom to love God with our heart, mind, soul and strength; freedom to love one another.  For Christians—for us—the best picture of freedom is Jesus Christ, on a cross: there voluntarily; there because of self-emptying; there because of love.  For freedom, Christ has set us free. Paul said this to us so many years ago, and today I remind you of it in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

5 Pentecost, Year C, 23 June 2013

Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

Preached by Rev. Dr. Jason Haddox  

 

What name did your mother call you when she wanted your attention RIGHT NOW?

 

“Jason Monroe Haddox, get in here…” 

Even if it’s been years since you heard that voice, you still know that sound.

The power of naming, by which we simultaneously bestow and call forth the identity of the one being named, is a mighty power indeed.  And so it is to be used with great care and humility.    

That power of naming stands behind our gospel this morning.  The writer invites the hearers to see and recognize God’s presence and action in the lives of those named in the story, and in our own lives as well.    

Immediately before this morning’s passage, Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee in a boat with the disciples and calmed a storm, to the disciples’ salvation and confusion.  Afraid and amazed, they ask one another: “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?”  For Jesus to command the winds and waters from storm to stillness is not merely a cool party trick, a little meteorological sleight-of-hand.  The writer of Luke’s gospel wants us to understand that Jesus’ words “Peace, be still” comes from the same voice of creation spoken over the waters of creation at the beginning of all things, that said “Let there be light.”  To control wind and water is to control the natural forces of chaos and destruction.  This is the work of the Creator, and no one else.   

But the disciples—bless their hearts—just don’t quite get it.    

As this morning’s gospel begins, Jesus and the disciples (who are still amazed and afraid, confused and befuddled) come ashore on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee in Gentile country.  A man possessed by demons meets them.  He screams aloud “at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most high God?’”   

The man himself is naked, uncontrollable, wild; he cannot be kept at home, he is driven by raw diabolical impulse into the wilderness, he lives in the cemetery among the dead.  He is as strange, as frightening, as “Other” as imaginable.  And yet HE KNOWS. 

This man knows who Jesus is, and that alone is enough to set him in contrast to the disciples, who are still confused about the whole thing.  Both the man himself—a Gentile, a stranger, one who is clearly one of “them people” in every possible way—and the demons who have possessed him—know and recognize Jesus for who he is.   

Jesus asks the name of the unclean spirit.  To know the name is to have power.  The name given is not a single name; it is the name of a mob.  Legion.  It is a military term for approximately five thousand foot soldiers.  It is a Latin, Roman term, reminding the hearers then and now of the power of empire to possess and destroy the souls of those under occupation.  It is another word of “otherness”, no proper name for a human being at all. 

Like the disciples, the powers of darkness and corruption are filled with fear.  But it is worse for them; they KNOW who this is, and that in his presence their power is at an end.  “Do not send us back to the abyss; let us go over there into those pigs grazing by the lake.”   

GO, he tells them.  “Get out.”

 

And they go, into a herd of pigs, creatures which are also understood to be unclean, who go mad and plunge down the cliff and into the lake to destruction.  Into the lake, into the water, into the place of chaos and disorder over which Jesus has just moments before demonstrated control and power.  Into the abyss, just as they had feared. 

When the dust settles and the neighbors come to see what all the commotion is about, they find this man whom they have known and feared for years, “from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  He has not been in his right mind for as long as anyone can remember—himself least of all.  Sitting at the feet of the teacher is the posture of a student, of a disciple.   This man is now one of Jesus’ followers, by his disposition and body language.   

He is clothed.  We learn at the beginning of the episode that “for a long time he had worn no clothes” and yet he is dressed and sitting calmly with the other disciples. 

Where did he get the clothes? 

It must be from the other disciples.  An undershirt from this one; a belt from that one; a tunic from someone else…together they clothed this new addition to their community.  Together they provided what was necessary to bring him into the place of calm and welcome and restoration.   

This, as much as anything, makes those who see it afraid.  They discern, however imperfectly, that something very strange and very powerful is present, and they back away from it.  Before this the townsfolk would have stayed away from the man who had been possessed by demons out of fear for their own safety; now they keep their distance out of amazement and holy fear.  They don’t know WHAT to make of all this, only that it is even more strange and unsettling than before.  

 

For their own comfort, they ask Jesus to leave.  The man who had been freed from the demons seeks to stay with Jesus—of course he does!  But Jesus tells him “No, I have a job for you.  GO HOME, and tell them all what God has done for you.”  So he goes home—how long he has been away from home!—and tells the people there all that JESUS has done for him.  Note the shift—that it is in Jesus that God’s blessing and healing and sending has been revealed.

 

My brothers and sisters, we are ourselves plagued by the powers of darkness and evil.  We know what it is to wander in the tombs, to be driven into desert and wilderness.  Whether by anxiety or fear, depression or grief for ourselves, for loved ones, or for the world in which we live, we know something of that man’s struggle.  Perhaps we have known ourselves cut off from one another, as if we alone had to battle and batter against shackles and chains. 

Into the midst of all of this—in the deepest darkness, into the place of hurt and rage and despair, Jesus comes to us.  Calls to us, names us with the name which is our truest, most complete self, and turning to the powers of darkness orders them GO—GET OUT.  You shall not have this one, these many, for they are my beloveds. 

For that is who we are, dear ones.  Beloved of God, made in the image and likeness of God, called as brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus, in whom (as the letter to the Galatians says this morning) “there is neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ.”  Children of the promise made to Abraham and his offspring.  Blessed, in order to be a blessing. 

As the newly-freed man in the gospel was clothed by the other disciples,

to go home and tell what had been done for him by God revealed in Jesus,

            so in our baptism we are set free;

            the powers of darkness are dead and drowned in the waters of new life;

            and we are clothed in Christ,

            to go and tell what God has done, is doing, and yet shall do through

Christ, for and in us.   

What God calls us to do, God gives the gifts to accomplish.  As the letter to the Hebrews says: “Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”  It is God’s power, not our own, at work.  All we have to do is say yes. 

May that yes be our word, our answer to God’s call, this day and all our days. 

 

4 Pentecost, Year C, June 16, 2013

1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21A; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36—8:3

Preached by Ian Lasch

 

          Our epistle reading today, much like both the Bible and Christianity itself, begins with the law. The giving of the law on Mount Sinai was a transformative event in the history of a people who only then became a nation. It was a moment which would come to define them, and us, even millennia later. And while Paul has some very interesting things to say about the law, we ought to delve a bit into the background of the law itself before we get to his points about it.

          There is a tendency, particularly among us as Christians, to think only of the Decalogue (meaning “ten words”), or the “Ten Commandments” as we know them, when speaking of the law. The Decalogue is very important, but an article I read recently about it by Leon Kass referred to it as the preamble for the law, which seems like an apt description. The Decalogue gives a framework for the law; an idea of what the law entails. The first four commandments concern how we should relate to God and the last six are about how we should relate to our fellow human beings. But the Decalogue is just a bird’s eye view. The full Law of Moses contains some 613 separate commandments and is spread out within four different books. I promise I won’t go into too much detail, but I want to highlight just a couple of parts of the Decalogue, not because they’re any more important than the rest, but because they give us an idea about the intent of the law.

          The fourth commandment or word is to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy; as it’s given to us in Exodus it explicitly parallels creation, which wasn’t finished until God desisted, and admired the whole of creation, and saw that it was good. But that article by Kass brings up the point that it also echoes their experience with manna in the wilderness during the exodus from Egypt. During this time God provided for them when they feared they would starve, by raining food on them from heaven, but only for six days out of the week. Every day, they’re to gather only what they need, except for the sixth, when they should gather enough for two days, so that they can keep the Sabbath. This shows Israel, and us, that this world in which we live is not a world of scarcity, but a world of plenty… that God will provide sufficiently for our needs, and that we shouldn’t work endlessly to try to accumulate more than we need… that we cannot be grateful if we’re always worried about getting more.

          The tenth commandment or word says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” This as much as tells us that those desires we have to accumulate or possess, to be consumers, are often contrary to God’s plan. Just as we are told to stop struggling and working for one day out of the week, we find out that we shouldn’t be as enamored of stuff as we are.

          These two commandments, again, don’t represent the whole of the law. But they give us at least a small idea of what the law intends. It’s important to have at least a little bit of the background of the law, because it is such a major part of who Paul is. It’s a law that he spent his life pursuing, up until the time of his conversion, and he knew it inside and out. Even at the time of writing this letter, he continued to try to live by it, so it’s all the more surprising when he says that a person is not justified, or rectified, or made righteous by the works of the law. That always seemed a bit counterintuitive to me. It never seemed to make much sense. I mean, how could someone not be righteous, if they follow the law? But God isn’t concerned only with how we behave. He also cares how we think and feel. Is it compassionate to refrain from murder because it's against the law? Is it charitable to pay taxes, even knowing that some of that money will be used to take care of the poor, if we only pay taxes to avoid jail time? Is it faithful to refuse to cheat on a spouse only for fear of the consequences? In these cases, the law is meant to be a minimum standard that all should follow, and if we congratulate ourselves for doing the bare minimum, the only righteousness we get is self-righteousness. That’s why the law cannot make us truly righteous. To be truly righteous depends on our intentions, on our heads and our hearts. And this is what God wants to change.

          Luckily, Paul gives us a solution. While we cannot be made righteous by following the law, we are justified instead through faith in Jesus Christ (or, perhaps more accurately translated, through the faith or faithfulness of Jesus Christ). Paul tried to find righteousness through following the law, and it didn’t come. Through the law he died to the law, because that way did not lead to life. It was by pursuing righteousness through the law that he found out it wasn’t possible. Paul found out, just as we know, that by being crucified with Christ through our baptism, we are set free and made right. As the epistle could alternately be translated, “I have been crucified with Christ and yet I live. But it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” This “I” who no longer lives in Paul is a word familiar to us, thanks to modern psychology. The Greek word is “ego.” By sharing in the crucifixion, Paul has put his ego, his self, his desires and wishes, to death. They no longer live in him, because he has decided to let them die so that Christ may live in him instead. This may seem extreme, but it’s something that Christ himself told us several times. In the Gospel of Mark, he tells us that a house divided cannot stand. No one can plunder a strong man’s house without first tying up the strong man. And we know that our desires are strong. In the Gospel of Matthew, he tells us that no one can serve two masters. We cannot serve both God and Mammon, a Greek word which means “wealth” or “material possessions” or even “greed.” We cannot serve God if we’re trying desperately to get more stuff.

          And so, like Paul, we try to put those earthly desires to death. We strive to submit to God’s will, even knowing that it means subjugating our own. By being baptized into Christ’s crucifixion, so we live. But not us; Christ lives within us. Knowing this, we cannot help but be forever changed. Christ lives in us; in each and every one of us. He lives in me and he lives in you, just as he lives in my neighbor, and in my friend. He lives in my coworker and my acquaintance. He lives in my competitor and my enemy. And this is the intent of the law, for us as Christians. We still try to tithe to God’s church and to keep the Sabbath, but not because we'll feel bad if we don't or we think it's expected of us. We still remain faithful to him, but not because that’s the letter of the law. We still try to love one another as Christ himself loves us, but not out of guilt or obligation. We do it because Christ lives in us, in each and every one of us, and without the gifts we are given by the grace of God, not one of us would have a dime to our name, or breath to draw, or one minute of time on this earth. All that we are and all that we have is because of God, and it is only through him in Christ that we are made righteous.