Transfiguration

Transfiguration 2013- August 6 - Luke 9:28-43 (NRSV)

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek

Chaplain, Saint Timothy’s School for Girls, Stevenson, Maryland

Those Who Give Back

Immediately leading into this story of the Transfiguration is Peter’s Confession, followed by Jesus telling the disciples he is going to Jerusalem where he will confront all religious and political authorities and be crucified, and an important teaching on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus: pick up your cross and follow me.

If we were watching a movie of Luke’s gospel, directed by Luke the evangelist himself, he might come up behind us, tap us on the shoulder and say, “Now pay attention to this next scene! This is the heart of the matter.”

Indeed, this episode on a mountain top is at the very dividing line of Luke’s gospel. It is nearly dead center. Up until now there has been activity up and around Galilee. From here on it is a march to the scaffold: the journey to Jerusalem and the cross.

What we find on this mountain top is a massive appeal to our corporate memory as a people of God. Moses went up to a mountain top to receive direction and instructions from God and to even argue with God. When he would return to the people, his facing would be shining bright, so bright he would have to veil it. Elijah hid in a crevice on a mountain top, withstanding wind, fire and earthquake until he heard the “still small voice” of God. Whereupon he immediately covered his face as he came out of the crevice to face the Lord, the God of Israel.

So as Jesus heads up a mountain to pray, we are already remembering what goes on up in these regions closer to the heavens, what some refer to as “the thin places”: places where people encounter the Holy and listen to God. And just in case our corporate memory is failing us, Luke paints the picture more precisely by putting Moses and Elijah there with Jesus, all three dazzling in glory, dazzling white, shining like the Sun.

If you were Peter, James or John, I suspect at the very least there is an audible, “Gasp!” If up to this point there has been any question at all about who this fellow Jesus is, imagine what is going through their minds now! It is like a return to the forty years in the wilderness, the defining period of what it means to be a people of God - days of wandering, living in tents, living on manna, bread that is given daily.

It is like a return to the age of prophets like Elijah who regularly challenged the domestic and foreign policies of the politicians and religious authorities in charge. Elijah, who lived in the wilderness, at the margins of society, who mingled with foreigners and resident aliens, living in tents, booths, accepting the hospitality of total strangers, living on bread that is given daily.

Once a year every year for the eight day Feast of the Tabernacles Peter and his people would build booths and sleep in them for eight nights to remember the years of tenting on the land. To remember the days of  Moses and Elijah. No wonder he wants to build some booths. No wonder he feels the need to do something to celebrate their corporate memory among such revered guests.

Quickly, however, the one in charge of the narrative speaks from off-stage to remind one and all that this is not a story about Peter, James and John, and it is not about us or our experiences of the Holy. “This is My Son, my Chosen; listen to him.”

It is about the Son. The Chosen. And about listening: listening to God’s Son.

It is worth pondering that when the one in charge of the story speaks and names the dazzling one, we do not hear the words, “Jesus, Christ, Messiah, Rabbi, Master or even Lord.” The primary name given to the dazzling one is “Son.” More specifically, “My Son.”

Those of us who are there are told to listen to “My Son.” My Son says, “Bear your cross and follow me.” And as we follow him down into the valley what do we find? Another man’s son. The father is bereft. The son is possessed. The son convulses and foams at the mouth. The disciples have been of no use at all. We are his disciples. Evidently we have been of no help at all.

My Son says, “Bring your son here.” The demon makes one last attempt to conquer the boy, throwing him down on the ground. My Son puts an end to the demon. The boy is restored to his father. The text says My Son “gave him back to his father.” The demon had taken the boy. Then My Son gave him back. Demons take. My Son gives back.

The crowd is astounded. We are astounded. All were astounded – there was not one person who was not astounded “at the greatness of God.” Do we allow ourselves to be astounded? Astonished? Amazed?

Note how subtly My Son becomes God. One could almost miss it altogether for sake of being so astounded and all. It would be several hundred years for the church to wrestle with this insight.

We cannot even begin to know who Jesus is if we separate these stories out. What happens on the mountain top is important, and does have meaning. But that meaning is inextricably bound to both the question Jesus puts to the disciples before going up the mountain, “Who do you say that I am?”,  and to what happens down in the valley.

Jesus will not be known any other way. Not through any clever novelization or cinematic inventiveness. Not through reading and discussing books about him. Not through watching movies and debating the merits of the movies about him. He will be known in our listening to him and following him. And in the breaking of bread that is given.

That’s why we are here. To listen to him, to follow him, and to eat our daily bread, so we might complete his work in the valley of this world. To be those people who do not take, but those who give back. How often do we take the time to be still, be silent, and listen to him?

Perhaps this is what Transfiguration means: listening to him and following him so that we may be transfigured, so that those around us may be transfigured, so that the whole world might one day be transfigured just like God’s Son. We do this by becoming those people who do not take. We are to become those who give – those who give back. Amen.

You Really Got A Holon Me

You Really Got A Holon Me!

"For freedom Christ set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; but do not use this freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves for one another." Galatians 5: 1, 13

Paul gets a bad rap. I am not entirely sure why that is, and frankly have given up trying. The fact is he is the first witness in the New Testament - his letters are the earliest witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The gospels had not been written and quite possibly had not even been conceived when Paul tried to put into words that which seemed impossible to describe, explain, make sense of.

Yet, these two verses are brilliant! Written as they were to a community struggling to know what to do next - a community being told by certain posers that before you can be baptized you must first be circumcised. Paul recognizes at once that a) this is not great motivation for bringing people on board, b) it just is not very good news, and c) he recalls that there were no pre-conditions set out by Jesus when he encountered him on the road to Damascus. So Paul writes a letter to the church in Galatia urging them not to be fooled by all this talk of pre-conditions before you can be connected to the community of Christ - which, as it turns out is the community of creation.

Note the brilliance of his argument - don't be slaves to the latest fashions, don't be slaves to self-indulgence. Be free. Freedom is what Jesus calls us back to. Yet, it is a freedom that makes us slaves to one another - with "one another" as a place holder for "everything," every thing in the entire universe, which of course was a lot smaller then and still expanding as it does to this very day.

Our understanding of freedom tends to be rather superficial. We want it to be a license for a kind of wanton narcissism - "I'm going to do my own thing," we say, as if any thing is ours and ours alone. We seek "financial freedom" which tends to make us slaves to materialism, commercialism, and consumerism. We become enslaved to the very thing or things we believe will make us free. Illusions about freedom convince us we must fight for it, arm ourselves to protect it, only to enslave ourselves to what Dwight David Eisenhower termed the military industrial complex. Then we wonder why we live in a world seemingly dominated by violence on every corner, on every street, on every  eleven o'clock news hour. To quote Barbara Streisand, "De-dum, that's a fine kind of freedom...." So she's a liberal. Get over it.

Holons. Holons, the work of philosopher Ken Wilber, just may be one way to rescue Paul's vision of freedom he believed was what Christ was all about - our freedom. Wilber suggests that the entire universe is made up of holons, or whole/parts (whole-parts). He writes, "A holon is a whole that is a part of other wholes. For example, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule; a whole molecule is part of a whole cell; a whole cell is part of a whole organism. Or, again, a whole letter is part of a whole word, which is part of a whole sentence, which is part of a whole paragraph, and so on. Reality is composed neither of wholes or parts, but rather whole/parts, or holons. Reality in all realms is composed of whole parts."  - A Theory of Everything (Shambala Press, Boston:2000) p. 40

Reality consists of everything, seen and unseen. Holons emerge into ever more complex forms, observes Judy Cannato in her book, Radical Amazement. Molecules are more complex than atoms, and cells are more complex than molecules, and yet the cell depends upon the atoms and molecules for existence. Each holon that emerges depends upon all the other holons below for its very existence. Think about it for just a moment. The utter interconnectedness of everything, literally every thing. It's not just about us. It is about every thing.

Wilbur also asserts that to destroy a holon destroys everything above it. Destroy the atom and you destroy the molecules and cells above it. We have witnessed that kind of destruction. August 6th, The Feast of the Transfiguration is also the day the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima - destroying atoms destroyed life.

The theory of holons holds true for organizations as well. Groups of individuals make up families, families make up communities, communities make up institutions, nations - and groups form even more complex organizations such as NATO, the UN, and so on.

The theory of holons points us to the interconnectedness of everyone and everything on the most fundamental dimensions. Connectedness is fundamental. How we treat water and air has consequences for life - all life. How we treat one another has consequences for everyone and everything else. Paul could see this. Paul understood the interconnectedness of everyone and everything.

Hildegarde of Bingen put it this way, "God has arranged everything in the universe in consideration of everything else." If it bothers you, you do not even need "God" to see how this radically amazing universe is put together. The important thing to consider is that to live in freedom is to live with attentiveness to the intricate connectedness of all that is - seen and unseen. This, asserts Judy Cannato is truly radically amazing! p.102

What parts make you a whole? Consider making a list of all the holons below and above you which make you you. Sit still and ponder the interconnectedness of it all. Reflect on how this interconnectedness calls you to be free. To be truly free is to be truly attentive to all that is and to act accordingly. Through love we are meant to become slaves for one another and for every thing - seen and unseen - throughout this radically amazing universe!  Amen.

The Word Is Very Near To You

21 July 2013 – Proper 11 – Luke 10:38-42

The Reverend Kirk Alan Kubicek, St. Timothy's School for Girls

The Word is Very Near to You

Last Sunday we began to reflect on Prayer with Scripture, or what is sometimes called Meditative Prayer. We examined a standard definition of Prayer: Prayer is a conversation with God. Although we tend to assume it is our responsibility to get the conversation going, we discovered that prayer is not initiated by us.

God initiates prayer – indeed, one might say God initiates all, but all is a rather too comprehensive a reality to take on within the friendly confines of a Sunday morning sermon! As we begin to reflect on the reality that it is God who is calling us, wooing us, choosing us and inviting us, that the “conversation” is already in process, we learn that the first priority in a life of Meditative Prayer with Scripture is to be attentive to what is already being said, to receive it from God, and to respond. We also have come to see that our attentiveness may be all the response that is needed.

So that if we discover in our time with scripture that God loves us, we are to savor that, and allow it to sink in. We do not have to “do” anything except perhaps bow our heads, or raise our hands and say, “Thank you, Lord.”

Yet, it is far too easy to simply reverse the common definition of prayer as conversation and say, “In prayer God speaks and I answer.” For to say that implies that God is out there speaking to us in a one-on-one confrontation, and to stay with this understanding prevents us from living into the distinctly Christian experience of God – God as expressed in Trinitarian worship and Trinitarian belief.

Early Christian writers soon discovered that the experience of Abba-Father, Jesus-Son and the Indwelling Spirit-Breath-Wind of God were not simply colorful metaphors to enliven our devotion to the One God, but rather the Christian community was led to a radical revisioning of who God is, a revisioning that is as daring today as it was nearly 2,000 years ago! So that Christian Orthodoxy came to insist that we cannot have a simple “one-on-one confrontation with God because God is not merely one. Got is a three-fold life – Trinity! The ‘personal’ God of Christian experience is not an omnipotent Individual, but a communion of self-giving love.” The Word is Very Near You, Martin Smith (Cowley, Cambridge: 1989) p 26

So when we are attentive to the conversation that is already going on, we come to know that there is no individual to whom we respond, but rather we are drawn in to a relationship and dynamism of mutual love and self-giving going on within God. So that it is “one thing to say that prayer is conversation with God. It is another to say that God begins the conversation. But it is yet something else to say that God is a conversation. In God love ever flows between the Father and the Son in the Spirit. Love is answered by love, and the conversation … takes in the suffering of a whole universe striving to attain fulfillment with its Creator.” Ibid, p 28

Prayer is communion between all that we are and all that God is.

When we allow our selves to sit with a story like the one in Luke 10 we sense some of all this. It is a continuation of a series of stories in Luke reflecting on our calling to love God and neighbor. Like Abraham and Sarah welcome the three mysterious strangers by the Oak tree, Martha welcomes Jesus into her home – much as we do in prayer, welcoming Father, Son and Spirit into the home of our hearts. Like Sarah and all middle-eastern women of her time and ours, she sets about meeting the needs of the guest in her home. Her sister Mary simply sits at Jesus’ feet and listens.

It is interesting to pay careful attention to what Jesus replies when Martha suggests Mary might be more of a host in the traditional sense: “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴² but few things are needed—or indeed only one.^[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” We see a picture of Jesus who is open to the choices of women. He does not expect women to run for the kitchen when he comes within their home. Despite the traditional take on this story, Jesus does not appear to be chastising Martha, but rather is suggesting that she might also choose to sit at his feet and listen. There is room for Martha to join him as well. He permits choice. In so doing, Jesus becomes the host.

Two things: 1) it is important to find time to welcome God as Father, Son and Spirit into our households, and 2) it is just as important to allow them to host us. For when we open ourselves to receive them into our hearts, we find they come to care for us, to tend to us, to heal and nurture us.

We are all “Marthas” much of the time. We are so busy doing, doing, doing day and night that we forget that when God enters the households of our busyness we have permission to drop everything, even time honored and expected hospitality, and sit quietly as our guest becomes our host, caring for us, comforting us, holding us, loving us for who we are, where we are.

Imagine what it would feel like to allow Jesus to wash your feet for just a few minutes in quiet once a day? This is what Meditative Prayer with Scripture means to be for us – an oasis of God offered hospitality in the midst of an otherwise all too busy day.

Concludes Martin Smith, “In the love the All-embracing Father has for the Son, and in the love the Son has for the Father, in the issuing of the Spirit from the Father and the Spirit’s return in the Love of the Son, there is everything we mean by prayer – intimacy, adoration, self-offering, love, desire, crucifyingly acute sympathy for a world torn by pain and joy. Our prayer is not making conversation with God. It is joining the conversation that is already going on in God. It is being invited to participate in the relationships of intimacy between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is an eternal dance in full-swing, and we are caught up in to it. Prayer is allowing ourselves to join the dance and experience the movements, the constant interplay of the persons of the Trinity.” Ibid, p Amen.

The source of humility is the habit of realizing the presence of God.
   Archbishop William Temple

Base Camp

Base Camp

For Richard Chiroff

“The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every

town and place where he himself intended to go.”

Luke 10: 1

Several years ago a dear friend and colleague in faith astonished us with the assertion that Dark Energy, that mysterious 70% of the universe that is believed to be the energy that keeps the universe expanding ever outward, is the Holy Spirit. I have spent much of my time since investigating Dark Energy, reading both scientific and theological accounts, listening to reports on the radio, sitting in silent contemplation – and I have come to an awareness that Dick is very probably correct in making that association.

The journey toward an understanding of Dark Energy and the third persona of the Trinity currently finds me reading Judy Cannato’s concise little treatise, Radical Amazement: Contemplative lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and other wonders of the universe (Sorin Books, Notre Dame, IN: 2006). Over the past 13.7 billion years (and still counting) Creation has been unfolding, one tiny evolutionary step at a time, a process in which we are certainly important but not the only active participants. Our capacity for self-reflection, however, is what differentiates us from the rest of the time, space, matter, time continuum. Cannato points out that both Julian Huxley and Teilhard de Chardin observed that “human beings are nothing less than evolution become conscious of itself.”
 

“In us the evolving universe is capable of self-reflection. We are the universe conscious of itself…homo sapiens [wise ones], the ones with the ability to be aware.” p 57

Our consciousness, she points out, is both amazing and demanding, both central and essential to the continual ongoing unfolding of creation, of the universe, of the cosmos, of the mystery that is life.

Demanding in that beginning with the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago, every particle, every atom, every “thing” that has evolved throughout the still expanding space-time continuum of interstellar space, right down to the most basic elements on this Earth are all interconnected – interdependent – in the most cosmic sense, “we are all in this together – people, creatures, rocks, rivers , streams, stars, supernovas, black holes, and of course, all being propelled further on our journey by Dark Energy. For our wholeness, what Christians call salvation, is intricately bound to the wholeness or salvation of all – all in the most radical sense we can imagine that word to include and entail. All. Before we go back to thinking the universe is in any way anthropocentric, remember, the human genome shares 99.9% of the same genetic material as an earth worm! We are all in this together.

There now exists an urgency to utilize our capacity for self-reflection.  As a result of our egocentrism, materialism, religious fanaticism, and human ignorance (to name a few), we have spawned political and environmental crises of epic proportions. Our soil, water and air along with our suffering sisters and brothers of all species cry out to us to put our consciousness and self-reflective capacities to work on behalf of All.

“Consider this: you are able to sit and read these words as the result of 13.7 billion years of development. Over the past four billion years, life on Earth has developed from primordial cells that did not even have a nucleus into Homo sapiens. The water in your body contains primordial hydrogen formed in the first seconds of the Big Bang. The carbon atoms that form you came together as a result of the explosion of a supernova. The concentration of salt in your body matches the concentration of salt in the ancient seas. Your cells are direct descendants of unicellular organisms that developed billions of years ago. You have a reptilian brain and are able to walk courtesy of vertebra that developed 510 million years ago. You see because cholorphyll molecules mutated so that, like plant leaves, your eyes can capture the light from the Sun. And in your mother’s womb, your tiny body repeated the whole process of multicellular life on Earth, beginning as a single cell and then developing greater and greater complexity.” p 65

In Luke 10 Jesus sends out seventy on a mission to establish base camps for the Good News – centers for healing, centers for bringing our interconnectedness into awareness – a mission to bring those on the outside of society back into the center. In having evolved into Homo sapiens with the capacity for self-reflection, we have been made the base camps for the ongoing development and expansion of the entire universe, beginning right here on Earth. Jesus, God and Dark Energy are all calling us to be radically amazed at our interconnectedness to all creation, especially to our sister and brother creatures here on Earth. Our soil, water and air along with our suffering sisters and brothers of all species cry out to us to put our consciousness and self-reflective capacities to work on behalf of All.

Cannato concludes that the “how” of creation/evolution and the “why” of Mystery give us an idea of who we are  and what we are about. That the radically amazing elements that make us who we are and capable of being the consciousness of the universe is meant to give us the capacity to reflect, to know, and to make choices on behalf of the whole – on behalf of all. We are all one. When will we begin to act as if we know this and believe this? Amen.

Of Pigs and Demons

Vengeance Is Mine, sayeth The Lord

Luke 8:26-39 / The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac Part II

Romans 12:19/Deuteronomy 32:35

The Gerasene Demoniac, Part II: What about all those pigs? Evidently everyone wants to know: why did Jesus send the demons into the nearby pigs instead of into the abyss?

The easy answer is that the demons, named Legion because they were so many, asked not to be sent into the abyss, but “send us into that herd of pigs” instead. Jesus, being all compassionate, complies.

As always in the world of Biblical interpretation, there is another way of looking at things. When asked their name, the demons reply, “Legion!” The name would carry a particular resonance for the first readers of Luke’s gospel – for it was the Roman Legions who in the year 70 ce had leveled Jerusalem, including the Temple, and most all of Israel/Palestine. There were those still living when this gospel was written and edited who had stood among the ruins, who had witnessed the still smoldering embers of the Second Temple – the center of the Jewish universe, and the center of the Christian narrative.

It is hard for us to imagine the impact that had on the ancient psyche – to see the place that had been the center of Israelite worship lying in ruins at the hands of the Roman Legions. We might recall what it felt like, and still feels like, to remember the destruction of the World Trade Towers in New York City. Now imagine all of New York City and an area about the size of New Jersey completely leveled. And consider that the parts of NYC near the center of the destruction on 9/11 are the modern day centers of worship for world capitalism. This is the scale of destruction the Roman Legions had exacted upon their Israelite colony. Add to this the reality that for decades the people of Israel had been waiting, hoping, praying for a messiah to deliver them from the Roman occupation.

Strange historical factoid: the ensignia symbol for the 10^th Roman Legion was the Boar. That’s right, a wild pig. With all this as background, now let us imagine we are among the first audience in the late first century to hear Luke’s gospel read out loud. Chapter Eight, beginning at the twenty-sixth verse. Jesus sends the demons into the pigs, the pigs hurl themselves headlong into the sea and drown. Legion, the Tenth Roman Legion, is hurled headlong into the sea! This is just what everyone had been waiting to see happen! Serves them right, we say. It’s about time, we say. If only, we say.

But we are meant to remember. A central principal of the Bible is the theological understanding that vengeance is God’s alone. Some 20 years or more before Luke, Paul had written as much in his Letter to the Romans, chapter 12: “…for it is written, Vengeance is mine.” Recalling what had been written in Deuteronomy (the book Jesus quotes the most ) chapter 32: “…To me belongeth vengeance and recompence.” When one takes this in and internalizes it, passages such as those in Psalm 137 that advocate dashing Babylonian babies against rocks take on a whole new meaning. A psalm most likely written during the Babylonian captivity, it expresses something very much like sending Roman legions headlong into the sea to drown. At the end of the day, however, the psalmist, and God’s faithful, leave vengeance  to the Lord, the God of the Exodus – who evidently arranged for a gentile, Cyrus the Persian, to liberate them from Babylon, and who also raises Jesus from the dead. Nothing we could imagine or do ourselves could possibly been so fantastic, so great!

This is, in fact, a central premise of Confession, or The Rite of Reconciliation: we state our fears and the horrible things we want to  happen to others, and then receive absolution letting God be the final arbiter. It’s OK to think and even say horrible things, it is the acting on them that is just plain wrong. Legion and the pigs are a kind of parable, meant to make us scratch our heads and think of life in new and different ways.

Perhaps Jesus, the same Jesus who advocates loving our enemies, offers the vicarious episode with the pigs as release. Perhaps it is meant to make us laugh at ourselves and our puny ideas of vengeance. Perhaps it was a prophetic foreshadowing and sign of hope for those who had been under the rule of Rome for so long. It may even be a statement on the ultimate futility of military occupation. The Bible appears to sanction imagining what vengeance might look like were it left up to us. We are meant, however, to know that imagining is as far as we should go. The act of such imagining is meant to purge the very idea of vengeance from the core of our being. We are to let go and let God. When looked at like this, can we possibly imagine what a world ordered in such a way might look like?

All Together On The Other Side

All Together On The Other Side

Luke 8:26-39 / The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac

A man inhabited by demons is healed. We find this kind of story to be primitive – really, who believes in demons these days. But first, the back story.

Jesus has been busy teaching and healing in Galilee. He and his disciples get in a boat to go over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee – that is, to Gentile territory, which is to say foreign territory – strangers, aliens, people utterly unlike ourselves. It shows tremendous trust on the part of the disciples to get into the boat and go over to the other side. That trust is put to the test almost immediately. A storm comes up on the sea. The boat is filling with water. Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat. Frantic and in danger of sinking, the disciples wake Jesus up. “Master, Master, we are perishing.” Jesus gets up, stills the storm, the wind and waves cease. It is calm. In a scene reminiscent of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid looking back at the cloud of dust, horses and men pursuing them, the disciples ask themselves, “Who is this guy, anyway? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” Jesus has a question for them, “Where is your faith?”

Try to imagine yourself in the boat, in the storm, with Jesus asleep. The boat is filling with water, the wind is battering the boat, waves washing over the sides. Where is your faith at moments like that? After all, we all have days like this. Days when we feel as if everything is sinking, fast. Days when it feels as if God in Jesus is sleeping, not on the job, not there when we need him. Where is our faith at times like this?

As Paul Harvey used to say, now for the rest of the story. After surviving the storm, they arrive at the other side where there is a man inhabited with demons. A man who had no home. A man who had been living in the tombs outside of town – tombs - death. A man who was chained hand and foot, but he had broken the chains and had been driven by the demons into solitary places. A man who had been made to live outside the community because – he was different, he was possessed, he was not like anyone else, he was scary. He was alone.

Jesus tries to drive the demons out of the man. The man says, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” Jesus asks for his name. Legion. We are Legion because we are many – like a Roman legion. Like the occupying Roman military forces who dominated the social and political landscape of life throughout the Empire. Not just a demon, but a legion of demons possessed the man. And they beg Jesus not to be sent not into the Abyss.

Nearby is a herd of pigs. Lots of pigs. Lots of demons. The demons beg Jesus to send them into the pigs. One wonders if the disciples notice that the demons know who Jesus is. They know what he is capable of doing for them. They do not hesitate to take advantage of his great powers. Jesus grants them their wish to go into the pigs. Immediately the pigs run headlong into the sea and drown. Hog futures plummet. The local economy takes a beating, but the man is back in his right mind – he is healed. Those tending the pigs run off and tell the townspeople what is going on out near the tombs – new life for the man they had chained and left out there to live on his own, and the pigs are gone.

The people come to see for themselves. We are told they are afraid. The man is in his right mind. It seems as if life was more tolerable if he were to stay in his place, chained and in the tombs. After all, he is an outsider. They beg Jesus to leave. He obliges them, and gets in the boat to return to the other side. One imagines the disciples are all too happy to get out of the land of the Gerasenes, from the man, from the now drowned pigs, and away from the tombs.

Where is their faith now? Where is our faith? How might we deal with someone like this man? How do we deal with our own demons? Are we even willing to admit we are beset with legions of demons? What do we make of such a strange story?

For instance, do we even realize that as individuals, as a society, we treat “others” the way the town had treated this man? We isolate people, chain them with our own fears, force them to live beyond the boundaries of our own day-to-day lives, keep them “in their place,” build fences to keep them at bay. All because they are not just like us. Yet, what a terrible world this would be if everyone were just like us. We would lose the diversity that makes life interesting and whole. We would deny ourselves access to the gifts that others bring to the table, to our lives, to our culture – all in the name of protecting our “way of life” when doing so only becomes the way of being stuck in one place, or, even worse, the way of death. It turns out that God has given us all we need, only the gifts I need have been given to you, and the gifts you need have been given to me. It is only in the giving and sharing of all of our gifts that we grow and thrive and live.

Then there are those pesky demons. We like to think we are more sophisticated than all that. Demons are the things of myth and represent primitive attempts to explain all those internal fears, anxieties, loneliness, and all the spectrum of  human disorders we publish every decade or so in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Even the recent release of its Fifth edition is met with a chorus of disbelief and shouts of “how can you medically and scientifically prove” these disorders exist? And yet, when an individual or group acts out of these disordered modes of being destroying property and lives in their way we inevitably end up referring to their behavior as “demonic,” or “evil,” and seek solutions which end up taking some form of chaining them and isolating them out among the tombs at the outskirts of town.

Whereas Jesus says, in effect, “Let’s see what we can do for this man. It will be good for him, and, ultimately, for us and for the whole town and region.” We might call this approach constructive engagement. We might call it therapy. We might simply call it helping others to become whole and a fully engaged and “members” of society. This is what the Bible seems to mean by “healing.” The demons are sent away to destroy themselves, not the man. The man is sitting there in his “right mind,” and the people are afraid. As Kurt Vonnegut once said in a sermon one Palm Sunday long, long ago, leave it to a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.

We might look at this story as being rather primitive, or even somewhat bizarre. Or, we might try to look into the ways in which it really tells the tale of who we are and where we are as a society, as a culture and even as individuals. There lies the irony. We put so much hard work and effort into becoming individuals when in the end we all really want to be part of something much bigger – a family, a tribe, a culture, a town, a world which accepts us and embraces us as God in Jesus looks at this man and sees someone he can love.

As Jesus leaves, the man asks to go with him. And why not? These people are still afraid of him, and have spent a lifetime of refusing to work with him. But Jesus says, No, there is still work for you to do here right where you are, right where you have been all along. ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. Hanging in the air over the disciples who witness this episode must still be the question, “Where is your faith?”

Perhaps we are meant to see that Jesus trusts us to continue the work he begins. There is no end to the story, because we are the continuation of the story. We are meant to see ourselves living in this story. We are meant to see that God entrusts us to continue God’s work right where we are, just as we are. It may not be easy, but it will return us to our “right mind.” We may even learn how to treat others the way God in Christ treats us. This stuff may indeed be primitive, but at the end of the day wisdom knows no time and no place. We need only be open to wisdom be it ancient wisdom or new wisdom. Can we see that if the man in chains has a God given task, so do we? Together we can make a difference. And we do, every day right where we are. We are the rest of the story. Good day!