“Legion”
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C)
23 June 2013
Homily
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C)
23 June 2013
Homily
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland
The
Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, Rector
God, take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
When I was first ordained a deacon in
preparation for being priested, I was living in Hong Kong and working as the
Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Consulate there. The Consulate was just a 10 minute walk down
the hill from our apartment, Saint John’s Cathedral another 2 minutes further. I often had gospeling or assisting duties at
7 a.m. before my work opened at the Consulate, or sometimes at noon. And I was supposed to be in clericals when I
was at the Cathedral, and a regular business suit at the Consulate. So I often found myself changing clothes in
my office at the Consulate before or after the brisk walk to or from the
Cathedral. One day, as I was changing, a
knock came on my door. “Just one moment,
please,” I said, and when I had finished changing, opened the door. It was my deputy, with some urgent question
that he needed me to answer before I took off for my lunch hour work in that
other world. He eyed my newly-donned
clerical collar with a raised eyebrow. “Kind
of like Superman in the phone booth, huh?” he said. “But the question is,” he added, smiling, “who
are you now—Superman or Clark Kent?” As humorous as this was, I found the question
very helpful in the coming months and I found myself coming back to it several
times—which was my real identity and
which was my assumed one? Was I a priest putting on diplomat’s clothes to earn
my bread, or a Government organization-man play-acting as if I were a
churchman? Where were my closer relationships—with my fellow State Department
officers at the Consulate, or with my fellow priests at the Cathedral? Where did the heart of my identity lie?
Last week, we saw Luke telling us that
it is relationships and not roles that matter.
Today’s strange reading from Luke is about identity, that subtle mixture
of the roles we play and the relationships we have. Jesus crosses Lake Tiberias, the “Sea of
Galilee,” over into the land of the Gerasenes, or, in some less reliable
manuscripts, “Gadarenes.” Gergasa and
Gadara were both large towns in the highland area just across the Lake from
Galilee. This is gentile territory, what is now called the Golan Heights. There Jesus finds a man not in his right
mind—naked, dwelling among the tombs, hurting himself.
Luke says this man is possessed by demons,
the normal way the people of that era accounted for what we today would call
various dissociative types of of mental illness. This man is not only possessed by demons—he
is occupied by an army of them. When
Jesus asks his name, the man cannot even tell him.
“We are legion,” says the occupying multitude
within him. You may remember that the
Roman Army was organized by Legions, something like a battalion in a modern army,
and its full complement was 6,000 armed soldiers.
“We are legion.” Clearly whatever has happened to this poor
man, he has very little identity left to call his own, very little “I”
left. That us why he lives apart from
human society, separated from other people, naked among the graves of the dead,
and that is why he hurts himself.
“We are legion.” The man has no name of his own. He is not Elijah, or Joseph, or Samuel, or Matthew. He has no name at all left but the names of
what it is that assails him, has occupied him, has thrown him naked among the
tombs and binds him there. No identity
left but what causes him to hurt himself, isolate himself, frighten others, and
wander in bewilderment and confusion.
“We are legion.” I suspect that most of us have known someone
in our lives—a family member, a co-worker, or a neighbor—with some kind of severe
mental illness. Whether perceived as
demonic possession, illness, or sin, we lose ourselves. Whether called obsession or compulsion,
schizophrenia, bipolarity, schizoid affects, dissociative identities (what used
to be called multiple personalities) or addiction to drugs, alcohol, or a range
of self-destructive and hurtful behaviors, such conditions really are like being enemy-occupied
territory. Who we are, our relationships
and what makes us particularly us, all this goes by the boards and we are left
with nothing we can rightly call us.
Now I’m not saying that all these
things can or should be cured or remedied by faith healing. As medical science has learned more and more
on these conditions, it is able to assist more and more. But the basic problem with lost or weakened
identity remains, and loss of identity is not just a pathological problem. It is also an effect of society.
A case in point is our consumer economy
and advertising culture.
“We are legion.” Hundreds of times each day, we are exposed to
carefully crafted images and messages telling us that we are inadequate,
insufficient, not whole, and that we need only to buy or use some product of
the economy to be recover our true selves. We are too old, not old enough, too
fat, too skinny, too boring, overly controlled, not muscled enough, too
muscled, too light, too dark, too short, too tall, not smart or witty enough, too
much of a snob, not enjoying our lives enough.
Men are not virile enough; women not alluring. Our teeth are too stained or crooked. Our bodies have bad odor, as does our
breath. Our clothes are out of
style.
If only we use a particular product,
buy a particular treatment, take a special course, get new and
stylish items to wear, then we shall be fixed and be glittering, happy people
like the beautiful smiling ones we see in the advertisements. Billions of dollars a year in commercial
advertising are spent trying to make you
feel inadequate, unhappy, and dissatisfied with who and what you are. With
all the varied and contradictory roles and identities advertising seeks to
assign you, it is easy to lose oneself.
Think about the things that have made
you at times lose your identity, confuse who and what you are, forced you to
lose your way. The expectations of
others are often a major demon that threatens to occupy us. Our own fears and guilts can hide our true
self’s light. Mental templates and
stereotypes, held by others or ourselves too can be deadly.
In today’s story, Jesus heals the man
occupied by the Legion of competing identities.
He puts him in his right mind, and then overthrows the many spirits that
have been tormenting the man, dementing him.
This all takes place in the land of the Gerasenes, gentile central, and
not in our society with the PETA and the SPCA.
Jesus lets the demons go and madden a herd of swine, farm animals raised
for the unclean tables of foreigners in this foreign land. Presumably, as the swine that bore them fall
off the cliff into the water to drown, the demons go back into the chasm they
mysteriously asked Jesus to save them from.
Apparently such drivers of unsettled hearts cannot end up anywhere else
but the chaos they bring into the lives of the demented that they torment.
It is Jesus who crosses the boundaries
and enters into the land of the Gerasenes.
Joan Puls, in her magnificent book Every
Bush is Burning, writes about such border crossings, “We live limited lives
until we 'cross over' into the concrete world of another country, another
culture, another tradition ... I have left forever a small world to live with
the tensions and the tender mercies of God's larger family.”
It is Jesus who reaches out to the one
lost amongst the tombs, naked, hurting himself, muttering in one voice and then
another, the voices of the chaotic committee inside his head.
It is Jesus who drives away the false
identities, the fears, illusions and delusions that torment one who has lost
his or her identity. That’s why the
people around the demoniac who have witnessed the scene are terrified by
Jesus. He is bad for business that
profits from identity loss, from identity theft. And perhaps they fear he will reveal their
own true identities to them, and they cannot bear this.
Jesus tells the healed man to go home,
reconnect with his loved ones, wash up, have a good meal, and then “tell what
God has done for you.” Tell others how
you found who you truly are through Jesus.
Sisters and brothers, know that each
and every one of you is a beloved child of God, a unique and beautiful work of
the creator of all. As I tell the
children each week when they come to the altar rail, Jesus loves you. Lose your
roles and build relationships. Forget
the expectations and fears, the sins and obsessions, the twists and turns that
make your forget who you truly are. And
then tell others what God has done for you.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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