An Army of Demons (Proper 7C)

Gerasene Demon, by Toonfed (Frederico Blee)

“An Army of Demons”
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C)
8 a.m.said and 10:00 sung Eucharist 19 June 2016
Homily
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, Rector

Isaiah 65:1-9; Psalm 22:18-27; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

Most healing stories in the gospels are pretty simple:  There’s an afflicted person, and Jesus fixes them.  Here, Jesus confronts what seems to be a primal force of nature, uncontrollable and uncontrolled. “For a long time [the afflicted man] had worn no clothes… Many times [the demon] had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven into the wilds.”  This guy has been through the wringer—multiple possessions, getting worse until he ends up raving, naked, and bleeding in a graveyard.  Here is something deeper and darker than normal illness, something intractable and overwhelming.

Jesus starts to cast the demon out; it argues with him, “Why am I any of your business?   Don’t hurt me!”   Jesus asks the demon its name, a prelude to exorcism in that day and age. It replies, “We are legion.”  Not very helpful: more a taunt than a name.  “Legion” was a 6,000 soldier-strong battalion in the Roman Army.   “My name?  I am so numerous as to be almost chaotic, as strong as the Roman imperium, and as violent as an army.  My name? Legion.”     

These demons are violent and expect the same of Jesus.  They call him Son of God but think this just means someone more violent and powerful than they are: “Don’t torment us, or cast us into the pit!”  But instead, without using violence, he drives them out of the poor man.  He even gives them their wish, to go into a herd of swine.  But alas, the violence of the demons is just too overpowering: the pigs panic and run headlong into the sea, drowning.  This terrifies everyone there. They beg Jesus to leave, just as afraid of violence from him as the demons. 

This story is about healing a mental illness, since people then blamed demons for madness. But “demons” also had another meaning.  They often are the personification not just of personal interior conflicts, but also of the unseen movers behind the world we see, the drivers we cannot see or explain.  When Paul talks about “thrones, dominions, rulers, and powers” (Col. 1:16) in God’s creation, he is thinking of spiritual beings, whether angelic or demonic, at work in the world around us.    We identify these same forces more abstractly, and less personally. We call them institutions, cultures, governments, corporations, power structures, ideologies, and value systems.

That’s why the great social conscience theologian of our age, Walter Wink, entitled his books Naming…, Unmasking…, and, Engaging the Powers.   He saw with clear vision these dark forces in the world around us that fight against God’s good intention for creation: abundance, peace, and justice.

We saw dark forces at work in the world this last week: last Sunday morning’s news of murder of 49 people at a gay and lesbian nightclub in Orlando, most of them Latino or Latina.    It shocked, but did not surprise anyone: another case of assault weapons in the hands of an angry male run amok, a problem that our society doesn’t want to deal with.   Orlando’s mass murder, driven by hatred of gays, occurred one year to the week after the mass murders at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, driven by racism.   The killer made reference to his faith (he was from a Muslim family) and an allegiance to Da'esh in a phone call to the police during the shooting, but little evidence has been uncovered linking him to terrorist planning networks.  At the very least, we can say the act was a hate-crime against gay people.     

The demons, primal and intractable, that possess us as a people are seen in this.  These demons are not named Azazel or Beelzebub.  They have different names, and Jesus has something to say to each: 

Violence:  It seems that the violence that plagues us is uncontrollable, just like Legion.   We glorify violence in our arts, have movies that tell stories of the good guys blowing the bad guys away, use armed force as a major component of our foreign policy, proclaim it in our political memes, and think that capital punishment is the ultimate solution to horrible crime.  Guns are an important part of this culture of violence.  

 

Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America says that our culture embraces the idea that there is no problem so severe that it wouldn’t improve if we could just shoot someone.  Walter Wink called this the false “myth of redemptive violence.”   To this, Jesus says, “those who live by the sword will die by it,” and “if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him your left.” 

 

Fear:  Closely tied to this fascination with violence, is fear.  Most people who buy guns and who argue for no restrictions on gun ownership appeal to “self-defense” as their motivation.  They buy guns and want others to buy guns because of fear.   Fear makes us hunger at a banquet, be stingy with abundance, and externalize all our problems.  To this, Jesus says, “be not afraid, I am with you.”   

Rejection of the Stranger: Blaming our problems on someone else, we scapegoat.  We  make them bear the blame, and take it outside the wall.  If you don’t have a wall, build one.  And make the stranger pay for it.   To this Jesus says, “welcome and care for the alien and foreigner, for you too were once aliens,” and “the only thing that will matter on the last day will be whether you cared for the most vulnerable and least able to care for themselves.” 

Disgust at the Strange:  Blaming our problems on other people might seem a bit too unfair. So we say “love the sinner hate the sin.”  We objectify evil and bad and identify it with anything that is different than we are, anything with which we are unfamiliar or uncomfortable.  Disgust is the most common emotion we experience as we do this, and we often link the object of our disgust with the impure, the unclean, the corrupt.  Disgust is an instinctual emotion that tries to keep us safe by keeping us from eating or touching poisonous or contaminated things.  But when it becomes part of a system of exclusion, oppression, or power relationship, it is a demon of great power.   

 

Using any reason—different sex, language, cultural practices, sexual orientation, skin color or hair texture—any reason to take away in our minds the image of God that God left in creating a person and replace it with a cartoon caricature that disgusts us is evil.  That is what the parable of the Good Samaritan, the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, and stories about Jesus spending his time with sinners, drunkards, and whores are all about.   Disgust must never get in the way of generosity and welcome.  Let me be clear:  Homophobia is a sin.  Sexism is a sin.  Racism is a sin.  Xenophobia and nativist political ideology are a sin.  It’s that simple.   Jesus says, “the last will be first, and the first last,” and “follow me” when he spent most of his life with the very people his religion told him were unclean and unworthy.  And this was not simply so he could fix them and make them less disgusting.    Remember the story of him and the Canaanite woman?  He learned from her faith to accept what he previously found beyond the pale.

Of course, the demons of Power, Control, and Wealth are all here too. The gun lobby draws its strength from the money of gun manufacturers and sellers and the greed of politicians eager for it.   To all these, Jesus says “You need to lose your life in order to save it,” “not as I will, but as you will,” and “You cannot serve both God and money.”  

Bigotry seems always abetted by religious hierarchies seeking to preserve their privilege.  They shame and condemn those they see as unclean and unworthy of God’s blessing.  Some say the problem is a lack of godliness in our society, mainly in the groups they do not like.  “We are only trying to follow God’s commands,” they say.  The curious thing is that some of these are talking about the Bible, and others are talking about the Koran.   Christian and Muslim fundamentalist fanatics have many of the same habits and arguments.   Jesus says “love your enemy,” and, “sinners will go into the kingdom of heaven long before the religious and righteous who oppress them,”  and, “judge not, lest you be judged as well.”   

Unhappily, the Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all contain a few passages that incite violence against the ungodly and the impure.   These do not represent the heart of God.  The unstable and the unscrupulous can exploit them to stir up horror in the name of God.   These same Scriptures also all dream of a world from which murderous violence has been finally exorcised.  The prophets sing of a world where swords have become farming tools and where natural enemies dwell in peace together.   All three faiths teach that God’s most basic nature is steadfast loving kindness. 

Facing Orlando, San Bernardino, Roseburg, Charleston, Sandyhook and Columbine, we as a people are flummoxed.  We cannot even agree on the names of what is at work here. And we all tend to demonize those who disagree with us: violence and scapegoating are part of who we are.   

One definition of insanity is always trying the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.   In America, guns and our obsession with power and privilege have made us crazy.  Our original sin is racism and all the other “isms” of bigotry that mimic it.  This demon is both a mental illness and the powers at work in society.

Those songs of the prophets tell of a world no longer haunted by war, horror, or hunger.  This should should give us hope.  This is what God wants for us.  In the end, God will win.  Love will win. 

 Exorcism, tapestry, Andrei Madekin

Legion, breaking all the chains and bonds, bursts forth to terrorize us. Legion brings us to the grave mourning again and again.  Orlando, I fear, is the latest, not the last of his appearances.  We wait in the graveyard, head bloodied and body aching, for deliverance.  This legion of demons has us in his thrall.  So we wait, we pray, and we keep on trying to drive the demon out.   Gay people, straight people, trans people, whites, blacks, old Americans and newcomers, citizens and aliens, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and everyone else—we wait and we hope. We, not them and us.  And we pray that those songs of freedom and peace open all our hearts and that we work together to drive away the army of demons.   To do otherwise is to accept the fate of the Gadarene swine. 

Jesus in today’s story assures us one day we will sit together, clothed and in our right minds.  

Thanks be to God.  

Gaudete (Advent 3C)

“Gaudete”

16 December 2012

Advent 3C

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Zephaniah 3:14-20 ; Canticle 9 ; Philippians 4:4-7 ; Luke 3:7-18

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

Such horrible news this week.  Shootings in a Portland mall filled with holiday shoppers.  Then the horrible murder of dozens of elementary school children and their teachers in Connecticut.   We can only feel anguish and sorrow for the victims and their bereft families and communities, for the souls and poor families of the murderers, and, ultimately, for ourselves.   Lord, have Mercy.

A week ago on Thursday, we here at Trinity recited a “Blue Christmas” litany during the noon healing Mass and then had a remembrance luncheon for those in the parish family who are still grieving for the loss of their loved ones by death in the last year.  

As we approach the holidays, I have had numerous parishioners come to me and express their fear and sorrow at having to go through a time of “comfort and joy” when they themselves feel no comfort or joy, whether because of bereavement, or pain they suffer from bad relationships in their lives, whether with controlling and never satisfied parents, abusive or emotionally distant spouses, negligent and distant children, or former co-religionists in churches they have left because they were just too beaten up by them.  

Friday, as the news from Connecticut unfolded, Elena and I drove up to Portland to attend the annual performance of the Christmas Revels that evening.  The theme was an early American and Appalachian Christmas, with plenty of African-American spirituals, Sacred Harp shaped-note hymns, and the fuguing tunes of William Billings.  It was joyful, happy, and hopeful, with lots of music for and about children.  But the events in Connecticut were on everyone’s mind. 

Thinking about the dead first graders, I found myself weeping several times while children sang such things as “follow the stars, how they run; see the moon, how it grows,” “What a goodly thing if the children of the world could dwell together in peace,” and “God bless the Master of this House, and his good mistress too, and all the little children that round the table go.”  Even the call “rejoice, rejoice, rejoice” seemed hollow.    

Today, the third Sunday in Advent, is called Gaudete Sunday.  We lit the pink candle on the Advent Wreath, and I am in rose rather than blue or violet vestments.   This is the Sunday in Advent when our fearful expectation of the coming of Christ is supposed to turn into anticipated joy, when the coming of Christ is seen as the setting right of all things that are wrong, rather than as the ultimate comeuppance of the wicked, including us.   The Latin word Gaudete means “Rejoice.”

It is what Paul commands us to do in today’s epistle reading.  “Rejoice always, again I say, rejoice.”

But how can we rejoice in the face of such dreadful things? 

Rejoicing amid bad things is incongruous with how our emotions work.  The problem is hinted at in the contradiction we find when we read today’s Gospel, about John the Baptist’s severe moral teachings, along with Paul’s “Rejoice! Rejoice!”   It is shown, I think, by the difficulty that many of us have this time of year if we are bereaved and mourning, or suffering from isolation, loneliness, or despair.      

I do not think that Paul is giving us a dopey repetition of the nostrum, “Don’t worry, be happy!”  He wrote this letter to the Philippians while in prison, after having been beaten savagely several times for declining to denounce his faith.  And in his letters he certainly seems to have the full range of human emotion, from cold rage and blazing anger at times to gentle warmth and affection and even fall down laughing humor at others. 

There is something much deeper at work here.  Our emotional life has a certain shape and dynamic, and normally this horror and sorrow rule out rejoicing.  But perhaps our emotional lives are not complete.   We may seem constitutionally unable to feel joy at times of sorrow as Paul enjoins us, but perhaps our feelers are broken. 

Paul is not arguing for us to become clinically emotionally impaired, whether as rapid-cycling bipolars or sufferers from profound and dissociative mixed states of affect. 

Importantly, Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always.”   His point is that the source, object, and driver of our joy should be Jesus, not the circumstances we find ourselves in.   He as much as admits that our circumstances can be pretty bad when he says, “do not worry about anything that may happen,” but rather pray and ask God for our deepest desires in all aspects of our lives with a thankful heart.

What’s petitionary prayer and thanks got to do with it?   Our rejoicing should be in the Lord, that is, in Jesus, and Jesus taught us how to pray.   

In his great model of prayer the Our Father, Jesus gives us a whole list of yearnings we should feel and supplications or petitions we should present to God in our prayers:  the arrival of God’s reign, the fulfillment of what God wants on earth as well as in heaven, our daily sustenance, forgiveness of and reconciliation for our failings and the ability to forgive others and reconcile with them, to not be subjected to severe testing if possible, and to be delivered from all ill.    

Where in any of this is the gratitude Paul talks about, the thanksgiving?    

It is found in the opening words of the prayer, “Our Father in heaven, may your name be made holy.” This is the ultimate confession of God’s love and beauty, and of thankfulness for all that God’s love and beauty entails, all the blessings we enjoy.

That is really the heart of the matter.  Paul says that if we have thankful, yearning hearts full of petitions to God, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will fill our hearts and minds with the knowledge and love of God.  Joy, rejoicing, is found in such peace.  

As I have said over this pulpit before, standing in awe before the eternal weight of glory, beholding the beatific vision of a Holy and perfectly loving God, looking upon the beauty of God and feeling the love of God in the heart of Jesus—this is the core of trusting God, of being open to God, and of being changed, and in changing the world.   It is also the core of peace in our hearts. 

It is at the heart of finding solace in grief, hope in despair, comfort amid horror, joy in all things even when they are pretty horrific, and the strength to advance God’s reign. 

The Revels performance is so moving to me each year for the same reason that I love our Trinity Church Advent Labyrinth walk, precisely because they celebrate the Light in the darkest and drearest part of the year.  A poem written for the Revels and read at each performance sums the idea up well: 

The Shortest Day
By Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Carols of this season put it well.  One says, “Good Christians all, this Christmas time, remember well, and keep in mind, what God Himself for us has done, in sending His Beloved Son.”  Another says, “So let us be happy, put sorrows away, remember Christ Jesus was born on this day.”  Another:  “In the deep mid-winter, Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.  Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him Nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away When He comes to reign: In the bleak mid-winter A stable-place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.”  And the Latin carol we often hear choirs sing this time of year, “Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus ex Maria Virgine, gaudete!”

Hope in the darkness, joy amid wickedness.  Not joy at wickedness or darkness, but joy at the Light which the darkness cannot overcome, and yearning and hope for the Good and Love that Evil cannot destroy.

Thankful and yearning prayer in the midst of darkness, in the midst of mourning, in the depth of fear and despair, allows us to feel joy in the Lord.  And this is so even if such yearning and prayer is manifested merely as reveling and dearly loving our friends.  When consciously part of yearnings that we in our vulnerability intentionally reveal to God, such prayer empowers us, and moves us to change, and amend our lives.  It is at the heart of what John the Baptist preached, as dour and forbidden as he might at times seem to us. 

Let me close by reading what the Bishop of Washington D.C., the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde,  wrote in reaction to these horrors: 

Thus says the Lord:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more. Jeremiah 31:15-17

We are united tonight in grief.  Tomorrow shall we unite in resolve to ban weapons whose only purpose is to kill large numbers of people?  And to make it as easy to get mental health care as it is to buy a gun?

I join Dean Gary Hall of Washington National Cathedral in calling on our national leaders to enact more effective gun control measures. We know from experience that such calls go unheeded. But what if this time, you and I took up this issue and wouldn’t put it down until something was done? You will be hearing more about this from the dean and me in the days ahead, but for the moment, let us join in lamentation, in mourning and in prayer. Today we grieve, but soon we act.

Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water?
in the presence of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to him
for the lives of your children Lamentations 2.19

Other bishops, including our own Michael Hanley here in Oregon, have made similar calls.

Let us go forth from this Eucharist today, this Great Thanksgiving, renewed and recommitted to joy, to love, to caring for children, to supporting and healing the ill and reconciling hurt, and to forgiveness.  Of course, let us mourn the people and things we need to mourn.  And let us be angry as appropriate at the wrong way the world is.  But in this all, may joy in Christ inspire us to work for a better world, both in our own lives and in our communal life together. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.