I am Legion....

Sunday, June 19
1 Kings 19:1-15; Psalms 42/43; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

What is your Name? Legion…for many demons had entered him.  Some days I think this could be my authentic response: Legion…for many demons have entered me.  And if we are honest, we are all a little demon possessed from time to time.  In fact, I think the man in today’s Gospel story is actually a representative of all of humanity.

What is your Name? Legion…for many demons have entered us.  Humanity is filled with demons.  Demons like greed, consumerism, anger, vengeance, cruelty, hatred, prejudice, self-centeredness.  Spiritual and mental demons like worthlessness, hopelessness, despair, apathy, indifference, and depression. We have physical illnesses and diseases that attack us like demons.

But I think the Granddaddy of all demons---and I call it the Granddaddy because I think all the other demons find their origin in this demon---the Granddaddy of all demons is FEAR.

Fear of not being enough, having enough, not being liked, not being important, Fear of not belonging, not being seen or heard, Fear of being left out, without power or status or prestige. Fear. And our society and culture is constantly manipulating that demon to get us to forget who we are.  That there is humanity underneath that legion.

Did you hear what fear did to the people in today’s Gospel?  They pushed Jesus away—they told the Christ to take his bags and shove off.  Great fear seized them. They saw what the healing power and redemptive love of Jesus can do—with their own eyes, they witnessed that drawing near to the Christ transforms and transfigures a person, and they wanted none of that.

“No,” the people in today’s Gospel say: “Go away, Jesus.  We like our status quo.  Get out of town; we want nothing to do with you.”

Status quo isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But too often we strive to keep the status quo because it provides us comfort and convenience.  And again, comfort and convenience are not bad in and of themselves.  But comfort and convenience can become like cotton batting that gets wrapped around our ears, our eyes, and our heart.  Wanting to maintain our comfort and convenience can prevent us from hearing the cries of our brothers and sisters in pain; they can blind us to the need in front of us and in our world; they can shield our hearts from feeling suffering of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the outcast.  Like the people in today’s Gospel, at times we find ourselves pushing away Jesus in order to maintain our comfort and convenience---afraid of the great power Jesus has to transform our lives.

Did you notice how the man who was legion is described after Jesus’ healing power and redemptive love gets hold of him: Luke describes him as “clothed and in his right mind.”

In his right mind.  When we are freed from our demons, we are in our right mind. In the first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul tells us we are to have the mind of Christ.  The Mind of Christ is our right mind because, as the Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber tells it, having the mind of Christ allows us to see differently. To see ourselves differently, to see the world differently, to see others differently.

When we have the mind of Christ, we see ourselves differently because we are released from the demons of shame, guilt, unworthiness, greed, self-centeredness and hopelessness.  When we are in our right mind, we are released from the demons of apathy, the mindset of us vs. them, the need to seek power and status at all costs, so we are empowered to see the world differently.  Having the mind of Jesus, we see others differently because we are freed from anger, vengeance, cruelty, prejudice, and hatred.

In the reading from Galatians today, St Paul refers to this as “being clothed in Christ.” We are the Children of God, St. Paul tells us, so we are to be clothed in Christ.

I don’t know about you, but when I get up in the morning, I have to choose to be clothed. I could stay in my pajamas all day.  Not only do I have to choose to be clothed, I have to have intentionality in choosing what I will wear and actually putting the clothes on.

Being clothed in Christ Jesus is much the same.  We have to choose it…with intentionality.  This isn’t the Jetsons where we can stand in a room with our arms stretched out and hit a button and WHAMO! we are clothed.  No, we must choose Jesus; we must be in intentional relationship and connection to the Christ.  

Being a Christian is about being clothed in the Christ so that we are equipped to live differently in the world. It is our connection and growing relationship with Jesus that frees us from our demons—just like the man in today’s Gospel—and then we are empowered and equipped to declare how much God has done for us by how we are in relationship with others and in the world.

 Beloved, let us choose to clothe ourselves in Christ every day, every hour of the day, every minute of every hour and every second of every minute.  Of course, we’ll blow it from time to time.  We’ll mess up. But this God of ours, this God simply says: Choose again.  No worries.  You are forgiven.  Try again.  This God  runs out to meet us with open arms, this God refuses to spend eternity without us, this God has a built-in reset button. The man in the Gospel needed the demons to be named before he was freed of them.  We too are to name our demons so we can be freed. Turn around God says, realign yourselves and, simply, begin again.

Imagine how the life of that man named Legion was transformed once he was freed from the demons of humanity.  Freed from violence and hatred and anger.  Freed to treat his neighbors as his fellow brothers and sisters.  Freed to see Creation as the gift that it is.  Freed to know that God is in control so anxiety and fear, guilt and shame didn’t have to direct and manipulate his days.

Imagine our lives as we choose to intentionally be clothed in Christ, to live and move and have our beings from the mind of Jesus---Imagine how the lives around us will change as we change—our relationships, our connections, this web of community to which we belong.

And oh, as more and more of us seek to be clothed in Christ, as we gather together to support one another in this life-changing journey, imagine the reach, the wave of grace that will spread out from this church community to the shores beyond these buildings. It could be like a Grace tsunami. As St Paul describes, there will be no more social barriers, no more cultural barriers, no more barriers of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual identity—no more us vs. them. Only us. Clothed and in our right minds.

Beloved, the mark of an effective church isn’t how many people show up on a Sunday morning.  The mark of an effective church is how many lives are changed for the better because that church community exists.

Sunday, June 12: Putting our Whole Selves In

Sunday, June 12: 1 Kings 2:1-21a; Psalm 5:1-8; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3

Did you ever wonder if the Hokey Pokey is what it’s all about? Yes, you put your right arm in, but pay attention to the big climax of the song:

You put your whole self in….you take your whole self out….you put your whole self in….

I think it just might be what it’s all about---all least what this Christian living is all about….you put your whole self in…and then you second guess and you take your whole self out….but then you get realigned and you put your whole self in….

That’s what it’s all about. Putting our whole self in. Researcher and storyteller Brene Brown calls this whole-heartedness.  Brown has been doing research by listening to stories of people who have been able to remain whole in the midst of the tragedies and struggles of this life.  People who don’t lose their joy or hope or laughter---even when the reality of life is bone-crushingly difficult, sad, or just plain indifferent.

Brown says that whole-hearted people--- people who demonstrate resilience, redemption, and restoration---these whole-hearted people share three traits: courage, compassion, and connection.

We see an example of this kind of person in today’s Gospel.  That woman.  Only known by her gender and her label: a sinner.  This whole-hearted person of God sees the Jesus in front of her, and even though the voices in the room whisper Sinner; she steps forward, kneels at the feet of the One whom she loves, and she tends to Jesus.  

With boldness, she proclaims God’s truth of love and forgiveness by washing the feet of Jesus with her tears of thanksgiving.  She wipes his tired, dusty feet with her hair—ministering God’s justice with compassion---and then she anoints this Chosen One, this Jesus, with expensive oil.  Probably costing her all that she has---and she kisses him.  She kisses his feet. The healing of human touch. Courage, Compassion, Connection.

Your faith has saved you; go in peace.  Her faith---her belief and trust in Jesus put into action---saves her. 

And this is what saves you, what saves me---putting our belief and our trust in Jesus into action by tending the Jesus we see before us. When we live our faith, we are freed from our prisons of self-centeredness and restored to our true nature as one made in the image of God, as one who lives in community. Earlier we prayed: “that through your grace, we may proclaim your truth with boldness and minister your justice with compassion.”  This is our calling as the church—we are to proclaim God’s truth with boldness and minister God’s justice with compassion.

And frankly, beloved, after considering the events of just the past two weeks when I have been away, God’s truth and God’s justice often seem hard to come by in our society. 

When people seeking national positions of power speak words of racism and many around them continue to show support because the candidate’s other viewpoints work in their favor…….this, my friends, is not God’s truth nor God’s justice.  I am not preaching politics.  Not election politics anyway.  I am talking about politics in the true definition of the word: a discourse on the common good of all people. This is what the word politics actually means—discussing and considering what to do, how to be, how to govern for the common good of all people.  Jesus is all about politics ---Jesus is always political—always pointing us to what to do, how to be, how to govern and live together for the common good of all people.  That’s Gospel.  No, I’m not preaching election politics---I’m talking Gospel here.  As the church, we are to proclaim God’s Truth that racism: racist words, beliefs, systems, and privileges—have nothing to do with God’s Kingdom or how we are called to live.

At the conference I attended, I was sitting next to a woman whose son is attending UCLA when we learned about the shootings there. Praise be, he was not hurt. But, haven’t we had enough?  Aren’t we beyond tired of hearing about more shootings, more death, more gun violence?  If we as the church will not proclaim God’s truth and minister God’s justice, who will?  In these situations, it is hard to know what to do as a disciple, but we can proclaim and minister by tending to the wounded and the grieving, by refusing to support a system that allows for this escalation of violence, by carefully choosing our words in conversation and in social media, by deciding who and what we support with the Gospel in mind.  Because somehow, as God’s people, we must WITH BOLDNESS declare that God’s truth and God’s justice is no where to be found in gun violence.  The book of Genesis tells us the story of Cain killing Abel and the LORD declares to Cain: the earth cries out with your brother’s blood.  Beloved, the earth is still crying out with our sisters’ and brothers’ blood.  It is time to proclaim; it is time to minister God’s justice.

And at another prominent school, Stanford, we hear of the young man who finds an unconscious woman and rapes her.  And we hear those who say, “She was drunk; she should have known better; she put herself in harm’s way.”  The only one to blame for rape is the rapist.  Never the victim.  Yes, foolish choices, stupid actions---but no person, no action, no foolish choice deserves the violence of rape.

And because we believe Genesis 1:31: God saw all of Creation and declared it very good.----then to minister God’s justice with compassion means we are called to demand rehabilitation and restoration for both the victim and the rapist.  We are called to demand a justice system whose prisons and jails actually do the work of rehabilitating and seeking to mend the brokenness of those behind their walls.  God’s justice isn’t about punishment for punishment’s sake; it’s about restoration and rehabilitation. We dare not find ourselves simply wanting to punish this young man; we are called to seek his rehabilitation and reconciliation. When we seek to punish solely from man’s sense of justice instead of God’s sense of justice, we find ourselves perfectly happy with treating human beings like animals instead of like God’s created.  When we treat human beings like animals, we get what we created----not what God intended.

We see this warning in the Old Testament story.  Ahab and Jezebel are not seeking the common good of all people.  They do not seem to know God’s truth or God’s justice; they know their truth and their justice: I can take what I want when I want it, no matter the cost to anyone else.  I can make decisions purely for the self-preservation of my power, my privilege, my position.  This is the opposite of God’s truth and God’s justice.  And the moral of this Old Testament story isn’t that God’s going to get ya….the moral is that when we act for our own self-preservation instead of living for the common good of all people---there are disastrous results in our relationship with God and disastrous results for ourselves.  In the end, it will destroy a person---even if he is a King and she is a Queen.

We are an apostolic community.  Every Sunday we pray: We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.  To be apostolic means to be sent.  To be sent out.  To take church outside these walls and into our everyday lives. Being the church by the words we choose, by the time we take to listen, by connecting a need of someone to a resource we know or have, by using God’s truth and justice to determine our actions and choices, by stopping to see the Jesus right in front of us. Being apostolic means we are never not the church; we are called to put our whole selves in.

Being the Church cannot be relegated to a building.  Being the Church cannot be relegated to Sunday mornings.  Being the Church cannot be relegated to our private lives.  Being the Church is our primary task in this world—our main identity: we are agents of God’s Kingdom 24/7.

Recently I read a novel called The Eagle Tree. The main character is a young man with autism, and he is obsessed with trees: climbing them, learning about them, reading about them.  He talks about Aspen groves and how all the trees in the grove are connected underground. So, if a tree on one side of the grove isn’t getting enough water, then it effects a tree on the complete other side of the grove. 

Beloved, we are an aspen grove.  If a part of God’s creation or one of God’s creatures is wounded, is broken, is hungry, is thirsty, is condemned, is outcast, is oppressed….then so are we all.  Our future---our wholeness---depends on the health and well-being of every single other person.  No exceptions. We are one another’s business.  Even when our good, Midwestern sensibilities tell us otherwise: we are each other’s business.

This week, remember this woman in today’s Gospel.  This whole-hearted woman condemned by society’s standards and yet her faith, her belief and trust in Jesus put into action, saves her, brings her peace.  Keep in your mind that image of how she gives all she has to tend the Jesus in front of her; tattoo it on your heart. 

We are the Church. It is time to proclaim God’s truth and minister God’s justice with Courage. Compassion. Connection. That’s what it’s all about.