Clothed and in his right mind

This sermon borrows heavily from the work of James Alison in his essay, titled, “Clothed and in his right mind.”  I’m deeply indebted to Ailson for his insight. 

Luke 8:26-39

In many of the local schools, there is a campaign called “No place for hate.”  It’s a program sponsored by the Anti-Defamation league, and it serves to challenge racism and bigotry in schools.  Every year at my daughter’s school there is a big rally, the kids learn about bullying and bigotry, and they are empowered to work at changing how they treat each other.

My daughter’s school gets into it.  They have chants and t-shirts and big projects around this theme every year.  She comes home saying the right things–things that all adults love to hear–don’t be mean, don’t hate, don’t call people names.  Be kind, be considerate, be compassionate.

I think programs like this make strides in working with hate speech and bullying.  But there’s something that is missing in all these anti-defamation programs–that since the dawn of time, we have needed scapegoats to empower us to be the good people we want to be.  We need the bullied to justify who we are.

And the truth of the matter is, the community is no different from the person or group being bullied.  The group is just stronger than the one being bullied, or haven’t done anything to be noticed.  The weakness of the victim allows the others to have differentiation, to be the strong ones, to be the sane ones.

The Garesene demoniac–our story from Luke–is a perfect example of this.  Here Jesus was approaching the town, but before he could even get there, he met the town crazy person.  The guy who was not like everyone else–he walked around naked, and he lived in and among the graves on the edge of town.  He was not like the other people in the town.

And because he was not like the other towns people, the people kept him at a distance  They would often restrain him to hold him back, but this man had a strength that allowed him to break those bonds.  And notice, that in the text it never said that the people were afraid of the crazy man.  They just needed to put him in his place.  It was his role in the community to be bound up and excluded.

And because this is how it goes in the gospel stories, the folks in the community who are weakest recognize Jesus’ strength first.  The town crazy man, clothed only in his birthday suit, approached Jesus and begged for Jesus’ mercy.  “I beg you Jesus, do not torment me!”

Jesus asked this man’s name, and evil spirits within him replied, “Legion for we are many.”  This word “legion” refers to a Roman military unit.  That’s a large number of soldiers–about 6,000.  This man wasn’t possessed; he was occupied by an army of demons.

Because demons are worthless unless they have a host, the demons asked that Jesus not cast the legion in nothingness, into the abyss.  So, Jesus sent this army of demons into a herd of pigs, and they jump off a cliff and died.  The demons had their way, but only for a moment.  But Jesus was clear here, the cycle needed to end.  These demons had to go.

And it’s only then that the people of Garesene became afraid.  They were not afraid of what Jesus did to the pigs.  They were afraid of this man who was now clothed and in his right mind.  They had not been afraid of the man before.  They were simply abusive of him.  Now that this man was clothed and in his right mind, the people were afraid.  And they politely asked Jesus to leave.

And Jesus did leave.  He quite simply got in the boat to go back where he came from, without even as much as a rebuke to the people.  But before Jesus could leave the region, the formerly possessed man came to him and asked to follow him.

With any other person at any other time, Jesus would have opened up the boat for another passenger.  But not to this man.  He said to him, “Go back to your home, and tell them what God has done for you.”

This man didn’t argue or make a case for why he should be going where Jesus was going–he simply went back to that town and told the story.

This is much more than a story of healing.  This is about more than the occupied man being un-occupied by thousands of demons through the power of Jesus.  This is a story about what Jesus was asking this man to do.

Jesus asked this man to go back to his abusers, to those who had offended him, restrained him, bullied him,  and bound him up.  Go back to his people in Geresene and tell them what God has done.

Following Jesus is hard but going back to the offenders and telling the story, that may be even harder to do. This return was going to be difficult for this healed man, and it was also going to be difficult for the townspeople to see him as anything but the crazy naked guy who lived in the cemetery. Because without him, who were they?

 

Once upon a time, there was a kid that everyone called the “class fairy.”  He wasn’t like the other kids, and for that he was perceived as weak, so he was bullied and picked on mercilessly.  It became so awful, that he asked to be transferred to another school.

But something strange happened when he left the school, not to the boy they called the “class fairy”, but to everyone else.

The kids in the school didn’t know how to play any more.  They appeared off kilter for about three weeks, until they found someone else in their class to pick on, someone else to “other”.  It appeared that among this group of kids the displaced other became the anchor for the well being of the group.  The class fairy became the person that helped the group know who they were.  Without the scapegoat, they didn’t have an identity, and the social order depended on having someone to pick on.

Imagine the shame of this class scapegoat.  He is forced by these children to have to find a safe place to learn and socialize.  He was not strong enough to fight off the threats and name calling.  That school was toxic for him and he could no longer inhabit that toxic space.

Now imagine that this child returned to this school after a time.  Those children that once bullied him would probably expect him to return the same ashamed child he once was.

But what if he didn’t come back ashamed?  What if he returned to inhabit the same toxic space, but the people that once shamed him no longer had that kind of power over him?  What if he went to the children that had bullied him, but showing love, said to them, “let’s play together, but let’s play a different way.”

With this formerly bullied child being clothed in his right mind, not playing the role of the shamed and defeated victim, he is not thrown off, but the other children would be.  The identity of the group is compromised when victim no longer acts like a victim.

This is what Jesus asked of the Geresene demoniac–that he return to the bullies, to the toxic space, clothed and in his right mind, inhabiting the toxic space with love, telling the story of what Jesus did for him, and saying to them, let’s live together differently.

Our text from Galatians affirms the work of the recovered demoniac.  Clothed in Christ we come together.  And clothed in Christ, we are one.  We are all one in Christ–that means, that as baptized believers, clothed in Christ, we do not scapegoat or shame or isolate, or bind up.  We are one in that our identity is in all of us, not in us over and against the weak ones.

In our society, in order for us to feel safe, we need to imprison the people that have taken things from us, or hurt the people we love, and their chains are supposed to make us feel stronger and safer and superior.  In our churches, even the progressive liberal ones, we have to have people to bind up and restrain, so that we can have power and appear strong.

Jesus came to smash that model to pieces.  He sent the man back to Geresene to destroy this scapegoating pattern.  Jesus himself, in his resurrection, occupied the space of death, and came back with love to tell the story.  He occupied the space of death–that toxic, frightening place–and came back to say to people, “Do not be afraid.  Peace be with you.”

These stories are 2,000 years old, but are no less radical today than they were then.  Jesus’ resurrection story shows us what he called the Geresene to do–to come back, after inhabiting fear and death, and to say, “It doesn’t have to be this way.  We don’t have to live like this.”

Jesus is calling us to bold action, to creative action.  Clothed and in our right mind, are called to be part of a  community where we see our chains, and we face them with freedom and fearlessness.  And with our prophetic voices we have power, but we do not use that power to hurt or demean anyone.  We are all part of the body, and we have consideration for each other equally.

It is about more than being nice to each other, nor not calling each other names–that’s the stuff of elementary school pep rallies.  This is about ending the need for scapegoating, it’s about understanding who we are without needing someone that we can define ourselves over and against

This is one of the hardest things we could ever do as people of God.  To return to the space we once inhabited, clothed and in our right mind, and to demonstrate the love of God, the peace of Christ, and the unity of the spirit, even in the toxic spaces.   God, give us the vision to live this radical call.  Give us the hands and feet to live it.  Give us the voices to proclaim your story.  AMEN.