A Fully Armed Battalion to Remind You of My Love

Luke 8:26-39

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 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.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, 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. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

This story, at first glance, looks like a simple healing.  The story of Jesus doing a wonderful kindness for one particularly tormented individual.  “Bring what kindness you can to anyone who is tormented.”  As they say, “that’ll preach”!  Boom!  We’re done.  However, underneath that simple kindness, Jesus is actually doing a whole lot more.  Luke, in his telling of this story, has very carefully chosen to use a few, very particular words, that to his audience would have immediately revealed the “more” beneath the simple healing.  The trouble for us is that out of that time and context, Luke’s very particular words tend to go right over our heads without some insider information.   

It’s actually just a few word or phrase choices that seem to make all the difference.  When WE hear “The land of the Gerasenes” it's just some random Gentile city on the lake.  But to Luke’s audience, “The land of the Gerasenes” was a city in the news for the violent invasion and occupation by an unwanted, powerful, military force deployed by an authoritarian ruler.  They might, therefore, have heard “Land of the Gerasenes” in their time like we hear “Los Angeles” today.  When WE hear the demon’s name is “Legion” in our minds we think, “Oh, that just means he had a LOT of demons.”  But what if Luke told you today, that the demon’s name was “Battalion"?  With the 7th Marine Battalion deployed against Americans in the headlines, it hits differently doesn’t it?  When Luke’s audience heard the particular Greek words we get translated as “hand and foot chains” they would have heard those particular words the same way we hear the word “zipties” today.  Both turn out to be very particular types of restraints each used in their own times for the same purposes.  When we read Luke’s word “seized” it doesn’t invoke in us anything deeper than just the straightforward meaning of the word.  But what happens in your gut when you hear the word “detained” in our current world’s situation?  Different, right?  And finally when we read in Luke that Jesus chose to send the demon hoard into a herd of pigs, WE tend to attach no additional meaning to that beyond it reminding us this was a non-kosher, Gentile city.  But everyone in Luke’s audience would have caught the bright, flashing, neon, completely unsubtle double entendre that the demons were sent into a herd of PIGS and the mascot of the Tenth Roman Legion, the 6000 elite combat troops occupying the city, just happened to be the WILD BOAR. 

For Luke’s audience, Luke’s particular word choices in just those few places took a simple, sweet, healing story and transformed it into a Divine proclamation:  Might Makes Right and the oppression of our neighbors is NOT the way God calls us humans to order our lives… not for Jews and not for Gentiles!  Weapons of war and an overwhelming force using intimidation, bullying, and violence to get and hold onto power, is NOT God’s way.  AND… the implication from Luke’s particular telling of this story goes even further than that.  It declares that these ways of bullying, intimidation and violence are nothing short of demonic!

But Jesus wasn’t JUST healing this one man and Jesus wasn’t JUST condemning authoritarianism and might makes right.  In Luke’s telling of this story, Luke was also trying to help his audience see that Jesus was ALSO trying to teach ALL people how to work through their problems in better ways.  The town, you see, had tried to solve their demoniac problem by snatching it off the street, locking it up, and sending it away.  Not quite literally burying it alive, but chaining it up in the tombs wasn’t too far off!  They had tried to detain, restrain, and warehouse their problem... out of town, out of sight, and out of mind and Jesus told them that when you do that, your problems will ALWAYS break loose, always come back, and always end up causing even more problems than they had before!  

Jesus then goes on to SHOW them a better way.  He walked right up to the problem… face to face… and addressed it head on.  It wasn’t an easier way but it was a kinder, more compassionate, and frankly more effective way of dealing with their community problems.  Shunning, deporting, ghettoizing, warehousing in prisons, chaining up, and de-humanizing others is NOT God’s way AND on top of all that it also doesn’t solve your problems!  It only makes them worse!  Luke’s particular telling of this story again, goes even further.  It says that snatching people off the street, chaining them up, and throwing people away, for any reason, is frankly, demonic!  The Jesus way… God’s Way… is to meet people right where they are.  See them honestly in all the bare, naked complexity of their human condition AND still  as Children of God, and then do everything in our power to give our neighbors what they need to live with dignity.

You all know me.  I’m not one to throw around woo-woo words like “demonic” easily or casually, but I have to say that these days there is no better word for what is going on around us.  This story reminds us that THOSE ways are NOT God’s ways and that the best way to deal with both challenging people and our shared community challenges… is the Jesus Way… directly, head on, with honesty, selflessness, kindness, compassion, grace, generosity, and love.  

The world’s problems back in Luke’s day were not solved with either the “Might makes Right” ways of authoritarian rule, nor by sending away challenging people or community challenges.  Those problems would only be solved, Jesus showed them, by embracing the Jesus Way of living and that way… the Jesus Way, is STILL the best Way to address the challenges of the world.  My prayer is that the world might one day soon embrace the Jesus Way to solve its problems… rather than choosing again and again to tell Jesus and his Way to get back in his boat and go away.  Amen. 

The Trinity: God Wrapped Nice, Neat, and Nifty

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Today is Holy Trinity Sunday.  You know how a gift in a nice, neat, nifty box wraps up with folds perfectly creased?  Everything straight, uniform, and square so you can even match up the pattern on the paper?  The Trinity ISN’T like that.  The Trinity is like the wrapping on a bicycle, or a rake, or one of those carpet covered cat condos.  Can you gift wrap those things?  Sure!  And from far enough away… without your glasses on… it looks… okay?  Ish?  I mean, is it covered?  Absolutely!  Well, mostly.  Sort of.  It’s good.  

The reason the Trinity only wraps things up “mostly” and “sort of” is because this is GOD we’re talking about!  And because it’s God we’re talking about, God’s going to stick out of anything we try to wrap God in, Trinitarian or otherwise!  Even today, on Holy Trinity Sunday, this Wisdom lady shows up to show us that.  Where does she fit into the nice, neat, nifty Trinitarian packaging?  She doesn’t… and yet… here she is causing trouble… as Women and Wisdom are want to do! 

So… what do we do?  Well, some folks VERY firmly, VERY adamantly, and sometimes VERY violently INSIST… through screwed up faces and clinched teeth that the Trinitarian wrapping of the Divine IS perfect!  IT… IS… PERFECT!  “But what about… ?”  NO!  You do NOT see that!  THAT is NOT a thing, a problem, a contradiction or a piece of the infinite, unknowable nature of God sticking out of the Trinitarian packaging at a strange and completely unexplainable angle!  NO!  NO!  NO!  IT… IS… PERFECT!  

The OTHER way is to move in close, glasses on, take an honest look at how well the Doctrine of the Trinity wraps God up and say, “Yup.  Well.  Folks have put A LOT of work into this.  Centuries of work, by the very best theological minds out there and the Doctrine of the Trinity is VERY good.  It’s super helpful in many, many ways.  It’s not perfect.  But… to be fair, they were trying to wrap up THE DIVINE.  Which, honestly is like asking a barnacle to do differential calculus equations!  So, as good as the Doctrine of the Trinity is… and it is incredible… God’s still gonna stick out of that Trinitarian wrapping all over the place, because this is God we’re talking about! 

I’m actually super thankful that God doesn’t wrap up all neat and tidy because, on my mind just this last week was… let’s see… A president who admires dictators, a Gestapo style police force spiriting away random people… undocumented, documented, citizens, even fellow law enforcement officers. The National Guard and a battalion of Marine combat troops in Los Angeles deployed against fellow American citizens.  The government of Israel bombing an Anglican Hospital in Gaza and then Iran because, I don’t know… World War III is what we need right now?  Which inevitably leads to horrible antisemitic people who have no interest in seeing the difference between the Government of Israel and people of the Jewish faith, killing and burning Jewish people in our country.  Then there is the democratic lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota gunned down and killed, and another shot but not killed in their homes by someone pretending to be law enforcement.  There are my Latino friends who are all on edge, including the ones who are citizens, for good reason. There is half the US congress looking to strip food assistance and healthcare from millions of poor and elderly people, AND on top of it all there are too many damn mosquitoes for me to sit outside!

It is a lot.  It is too much.  I need… you need… we need… this world needs… a GOD who doesn’t wrap up so neatly!  I need… you need… we need… this world needs a GOD who is big enough and wild enough to get us through THIS life!  I need… you need… we need… this world needs… a GOD who, as Paul describes, will pull us out of Suffering into Endurance on to Character and finally into some Hope!  A nice, neat, nifty wrapped up god just ain’t gonna cut it!  We need an unwrapped, out of the box, out of the closet, out in the streets God, slogging it out with us and carrying us from Suffering into Hope. 

The GOOD NEWS is… THAT… is the God we have!  Our God can’t be wrapped up by human conventions, ideas, or doctrines… Our God can’t even be wrapped up by DEATH!  Our God is anything but nice, neat, and nifty… Our God burns down hate filled fences, blows pepper spray back in the faces of the oppressor, and carries us into HOPE where the merchants of hatred, fascism, racism, nationalism, authoritarianism, lies, and propaganda will not stand.  Our God is at work, wild in the world tearing down every abomination wielded by small, fearful, men used to demonize and victimize “the other.”

THAT is the God we have… not a god that fits neatly in a box, but a God, who in a fierce love, takes each of us by the hand in the depths of our suffering when the paranoia has struck deep, when fear has crept in, when we find ourselves always afraid and actively pulls us out of the loneliness of Suffering and carries us into HOPE.  And HERE is where the Doctrine of the Trinity shines, because the Trinity reminds us that GOD IS COMMUNITY… Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… GOD IS RELATIONSHIP… Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier… and it is IN God, IN community, IN relationship that we find HOPE!  We experience HOPE only when we are in relationship with others.  We find HOPE only when we gather in community.  We see HOPE only when three gather together as one.  We are carried into HOPE only when one of us comes together with three.  

I am… you are… we are… the world is… Suffering.  The GOOD NEWS today is that the Holy Trinity, in spite of falling well short of perfectly wrapping up the Divine, DOES show us the antidote for all of our Suffering.  

THE ANTIDOTE IS FOR US TO DO WHAT GOD IS… 

DO relationship relentlessly… DO community obsessively… DO time with one another continuously.  Because it is only when we are together, in community, in relationship that we have the opportunity to see the TRUTH… that God is relentlessly, obsessively, continuously carrying us all into HOPE.  Amen. 

Tables Not Fences

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

The first Pentecost was when the people of Israel received the ten commandments.  Folks since then have used those commandments to put up a fence separating "us" from "them" but that was not the intention.  The intention was for them to be a guide in creating a new, liberated, and unified community.  The old ways in Egypt, living as the property of Pharaoh, had ended.  A new way of liberated living had begun, a way of living as children of God.  Fast forward a bit and Jesus gives a NEW commandment “that we should love one another.” And again, people used Jesus' words to put up a fence separating "us" from "them" but again, that was NOT the intention.  Then intention for that commandment was for it to be a light shining on the pathway folks could walk toward a new, liberated way of living for ALL people in this world. 

In his life, Jesus taught us with words and actions, the WAY of liberated living… what that new, unified, and liberated community would look like, and who it was meant to include.  He talked about it and he SHOWED it to us, often using his favorite teaching props… The Table and A Meal.  He ate with tax collectors and sinners, foreigners and Pharisees, men and women, those the world labeled “clean” and those it labeled “unclean” all the while teaching us with his daily lived-out life that “all means ALL” without exception.  His life embodied the saying “When you have more than enough, build a longer table rather than a higher fence” and Jesus showed us that with God's abundance there is always MORE than enough… even when there were more than 5000 to feed… there was more than enough!

 

The second Pentecost we read about today in Acts, is the next chapter in that same story.  It is the story of the Holy Spirit coming to take a turn… wielding divine wind and flame… continuing the work of teaching the world a liberated WAY of living, by blowing apart the things that divide people and and burning away whatever gets in the way of humanity’s liberated living.  Cultures, borders, languages, walls, prejudice, race, class.  Every wall that insecure and fearful humans continue to put in place to keep “the other” out… every fence that hard-headed humans insist upon building in order to perpetuate the hatred of the other, the Holy Spirit comes to blow apart and burn down.  

Now, you may have noticed, that humans (in spite of God’s rules to the contrary) continue to build walls faster than Usain Bolt runs 100 meters.  You may have noticed that people (in spite of God’s rules to the contrary) continue to close their tables to others (both in the world and even more painfully and ironically in churches).  You may have noticed that God’s work in Jesus of building longer tables and God’s work in the Holy Spirit of blowing apart walls and burning down fences is not yet finished.  

And because it is not yet finished, IT IS INTO THAT ONGOING WORK that you and I have been called as Baptized Children of God.  I know… believe me I know… the enormity of that work… the enormity of that calling… feels overwhelming.  The powers at work in this world that continue to divide, build walls, and reject the dignity God gives every human being seem to be Legion!  

Which is why I need YOU to continually remind ME and I will do my best to continually remind YOU that we are NOT called into this work alone!  We are called into this work alongside the Holy Spirit… The Advocate… who is still with us AND we are also buoyed up for this work by the Saints who came before us… some of whom began doing this exact same work of building longer tables and tearing down walls, in this exact same place, way back in 1866.  Listen to what they wrote way back then: “We have a building capable of seating one-hundred persons and would be glad to see the space filled whenever services are held. The seats are FREE and we assure the inhabitants of this and adjoining towns that the church was not built to accommodate “ourselves”, neither are the services or Sunday School conducted with any such intention. Our idea was that its use and purpose should be to further the cause of Christianity, believing that one soul in the site (sic.) of God and the angels is the peer of any other, whether it be possessed by a person of mean estate, or a high degree, whether he be black or white, artisan, farmer, merchant, priest or king…each and every (person), of whatever faith or no faith, will find a generous welcome.”

I also need to remind YOU and YOU need to remind ME that we actually do an excellent job here building longer tables.  We’re not generally a “literalist” sort of church but when it comes to bigger tables and more than enough food… we do that quite often and very literally!  We also faithfully continue the work of the Holy Spirit blowing down walls and burning down fences.  Six years ago we added this to that original welcome statement written by the founders of this church: “Today in 2019 - and beyond - we continue to recognize and cherish the diversity of all, which includes, but is not limited to: age, race, immigration status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and marital status. We welcome the gifts of everyone in our diverse community, whatever your socio-economic status, your ethnic and cultural background, however you may be physically- or mentally-abled, wherever you may be on your own faith journey, or whether you are a full-time resident, seasonal visitor, or just passing through (for now!).  We invite you to participate in our faith journey as we strive to understand the Gospel, participate in the Sacraments, share in the love that comes through the grace of reconciliation in Christ, and to make meaningful connections through the joy of fellowship with each other.   In short, YOU are welcome here. Come.  Be at peace.  You’re home.”

May we, on this year’s celebration of Pentecost, recommit ourselves to doing the work that Jesus showed us how to do and continue building longer tables.  May we, on this year’s celebration of Pentecost, recommit ourselves to doing the work that the Holy Spirit continues to show us how to do and continue to blow down the walls that divide, and burn up the fences that keep out “the other” so that we and the world will one day live into God’s own Truth, that we are indeed… all ONE.   Amen.