Readings for today.
Listen to the Sermon.
As a preacher, there are weeks when it seems like the lectionary was selected to highlight the news of the week. This past Thursday, June 20, was World Refugee Day - a day set aside by the United Nations for international recognition of refugees and displaced persons around the world. 71 million of them in the last year, according to the U.N.[1]
That’s 20 people every minute of every day who lose their homes, their schools, jobs, life routines and predictability. 20 people, mostly women and children, many of whom end up living in camps for long periods of time, dependent on world aid relief organizations and governmental tolerance.
While we would like to keep the plight of refugees and displaced person on the other side of the world, this week the national news featured a story about the horrific conditions in U.S. detention centers for migrant children at our southern border. No soap, no toothbrushes, no towels or showers, or even a full night’s sleep.[2] For children! Inadequate healthcare, such that some children have died. Rampant overcrowding. Most of us would call child welfare if we discovered children living in those kind of inhuman conditions. Some U.S. officials say that these conditions are safe and sanitary.
As a parent of elementary school age children, I cannot imagine them being so dehumanized, imprisoned and treated with less care than many household pets.
In Galatians, Paul reminds us that God makes no distinctions in who is beloved, who is part of the body of Christ. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). We could add to Paul’s list from our context: No longer gay or straight, no longer homeless or housed, no longer refugee or migrant, no longer Anglo or non-White; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus. Every one of God’s children is unique and beloved to God - and thus fully and undeniably human. We have no basis in faith to exclude or ignore the well-being of every single person.
Which leads us to the Gospel reading from Luke. Our reading today picks up as Jesus and his disciples come ashore after an arduous journey across the Sea of Galilee. The exact location is vague, merely somewhere in the land of the Gerasenes, opposite the town of Galilee, so not near Jesus’ usual locale. The distance and the large herd of swine suggest a place that is not predominantly Jewish.
The first person Jesus meets is a man who is hardly human. He lives in the tombs. He’s naked. Sometimes his community keeps him shackled and guarded because they are afraid of him. He seeks out Jesus, who gives him the respect of speaking with him directly. When asked his name, his demons reply, “Legion.” A legion in the Roman army was 4000-6000 soldiers. At their request, Jesus casts those demons into a nearby herd of swine, which promptly runs off and drown themselves.
The demon-possessed suicidal swine are a memorable part of this story. Some of us will feel sad for the swine, or for the swine owners who clearly suffered a significant financial loss, or maybe for the swineherds who may be in trouble for failing to keep their herd safe. However, the response of the local community to the transformation of the man who is now freed from demons is more informative to us.
This unnamed man had been as far from human as possible. Now he is restored to his right mind, clothed and sitting at Jesus’ feet with the other disciples. He is completely changed, perhaps unrecognizable, from the life he had been living. By the power of Jesus’ love, which recognized him as a beloved child of God, which freed him from the prison of demonic possession, he has received a new chance to live and thrive.
The local people see the transformation in this man they once feared, ridiculed, and ostracized. Now they see that he looks just like them, maybe even better. Seeing him healed, they are afraid and they demand that Jesus leave their town.
But what are they afraid of? One would think they would be happy for this man, or at the very least desiring the same kind of life-changing healing for themselves. Instead, they demand that Jesus leave.
Their lives were comfortable, keeping this demon-possessed man locked away, seeing and treating him as less than human. Jesus challenges their assumptions about his worthiness for respect and dignity. Jesus opens their eyes to the possibility of a different life than they have had. Jesus has the power to change things that seemed unchangeable - like the crazy man who lived in the tombs - things that were comfortable because they were locked away and ‘safe.’
It’s scary to contemplate the transformation Jesus offers – to think about giving up our comfort with the people we feel safe keeping dehumanized, giving up our self-satisfaction with small and secure steps toward the kingdom of God, our inertia for social change that respects the basic rights for life and safety of every human being.
We are afraid of trusting Jesus to cast out our demons of fear and hate and shame. We may even be afraid to realize ourselves transformed into the people, the community, God wants us to be. Whole and holy and imperfect, just as God created us. Without the need to be defensive or exclusive, sharing in one another’s joys and sorrows, transforming the world as we have been transformed.
Jesus does just what he promised the first time he preached in the synagogue, when he said, “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” (Luke 4:18).
When you are no longer chained, you can not keep the experience of freedom to yourself. In fact, how can you keep from singing? From telling everyone you meet about the joy, the hope, the possibilities you can now see? And about how God or Jesus has transformed your life?
And maybe this is the root of fear. That the good news will get out. That the good news frees even those we thought keeping them in chains was in our best interest. That the good news shows no partiality or partisanship. That the good news truly is for all. [3]
God transforms our lives, not so we will be more content, but so that we will share the good news with the world. One way we live our faith, share that good news of freedom, is to use our voices of power to bring attention to the disregard for human dignity that runs rampant in how our country treats those who are seeking safety and freedom from oppression, and new life. Aren’t those the hallmarks of healing and transformation in Christ? Then we stand convicted by our own transformations and healing, empowered and discomforted by the spirit of Truth to speak on behalf of the voiceless.
Let us pray.
Lord, you trouble our peace, you step upon our guarded shore and confront our chaos: may we who are divided and colonized by the forces of death learn from you to speak our own name and proclaim your works of life; through Jesus Christ, Tamer of Legions. Amen. [4]
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[1] “Figures at a Glance” from United Nations High Commission on Refugees. https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html, accessed 22 June 2019.
[2] “Detained migrant children got no toothbrush, no soap, no sleep. It’s no problem, government argues.” by Meagan Flynn. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/06/21/detained-migrant-children-no-toothbrush-soap-sleep/?utm_term=.86975f6c32e9, accessed 22 June 2019.
[3] “Freedom from Fear” by Karoline Lewis, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5358, accessed 22 June 2019.
[4] Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church (New York: Church Publishing, 2009), Collect for Proper 7, Year C, page 99.
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