Prayer

The Doorway into Thanks

Luke 11:1-13

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 7-24-2016)

I have been praying a lot lately. Praying for you and for me as we begin this new journey together. Praying for loved ones that Jennell and I left behind in Atlanta, including our two children. Praying for civility and truth-telling to find a prominent place in public debate. Praying for so many of my friends who keep being reminded, and far too often, that black lives matter little. Praying for law enforcement officers caught in the deadly social crossfire of violence gone wild. Praying for a large percentage of people today who see God as nothing more than an artifact of days gone by, see Jesus as nothing more than just another good guy who died too young, and see the Holy Spirit as nothing more than silly church hocus pocus.

I have been praying a lot lately. I have always wished that my prayers were more eloquent. While a student at Union, I would rush to my Hebrew class, not so much because I loved Hebrew, but because of the prayers that Sib Towner would pray at the start of each class. The eloquence of his prayers would move my soul for hours and I always left class wishing, “How I wish I could pray like Dr. Towner.”

Eloquent or not, I have been praying a lot lately. It is not that praying is new to me. I grew up in a family that prayed daily, but our family prayers were largely Prayer 101. We prayed at the dinner table every night, but never at breakfast and never at lunch. I still am not quite sure why. My late brother, Dale, and I were instructed to pray at bedtime, but those instructions were often ignored, especially as we approached our teen years. As I finished Seminary, I still did not pray as eloquently as I wished, but I knew much more about prayer. At least, I thought I did. Then, I entered the church and I realized that I had a lifetime of learning left about prayer.

I wonder in today’s text if the disciples of Jesus ask him such an odd question because he made them realize whole new dimensions to prayer. After all, why would these disciples who had prayed several times a day, every day, all their lives, ask Jesus:  “Lord, teach us how to pray.” Surely their request was more than about technique:  “Do we stand to pray or kneel or sit with our eyes closed?” “Is it best to craft long, eloquent prayers or to sit for extended periods in silent prayer?” Maybe the disciples saw something in the quality of Jesus’ prayer life that made them want to learn more about this mysterious human act, an act that, for them, had long since lost any mystery.

When I announced that I was leaving Central Presbyterian in Atlanta to accept the call from Cove, the best advice I was given was by a relatively new member. He encouraged me to spend my remaining time at Central not making sure every detail was in place prior to my departure. Instead, he encouraged me to spend this leaving time in giving thanks.

It was soon after his sage advice that I came upon these wise words from the marvelous poet, Mary Oliver in her book, Thirst:

“Praying
It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.”

Mary Oliver had to be reading my mind when she wrote these words, because

ever since my Hebrew class, too often prayer has been some kind of spiritual contest to offer the most eloquent prayers. I love it when she says about our prayers, “patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks.” 

I wonder if the disciples asked what they asked because they noticed that for

Jesus, prayer was always “the doorway into thanks.” Jesus tells his friends that prayer is not primarily utilitarian as are most of my prayers: “God, help me with this.” “God, we could sure use some of that.” “God, give us direction, give us a sign.” These utilitarian prayers are perfectly fine prayers, natural prayers, and are even a part of how Jesus teaches his disciples to pray:  “Give us this day our daily bread.” The front door into prayer though, says Jesus, is through “the doorway into thanks.”

When you pray, says Jesus, pray: “hallowed be thy name,” “thy kingdom come,” “thy will be done.” In other words, prayer is fundamentally not about us; it is about getting in sync with the One who cares for every last DNA strand of our being, for every blade of grass, for every creature that swims the seas, dances on the earth, and soars through the sky, and especially for those who are unnoticed and excluded and ridiculed just for who they are. In those moments when we find ourselves in sync with God and in step with Jesus, we find ourselves walking gladly through “the doorway into thanks.”

I have walked through “the doorway into thanks” almost every day since that April Sunday when you voted to call me to be your pastor. I have crossed that mysterious threshold giving thanks to God for Fran and Will, Beth Neville and Renee and Susan. Even before a call had been extended, I gave thanks to God for Jane and Greg, old friends, who helped me imagine myself as your pastor. I gave thanks for Josh who went out of his way to make sure that Cove never experienced anything but fine pastoral care and inspiring worship.

In a troubled world and when our lives are troubled, it is tempting to fast forward in our prayers, skipping over thanksgiving on our way to more pressing, utilitarian prayers. To quote Jesus, “lead us not into temptation.” Instead, may God give us wisdom to follow Jesus through “the doorway into thanks.” When we do, we cross over first into a silence in which “another voice may speak.” When our thanks is coupled with silence to listen for the voice of God, prayer becomes something more than a helpful habit of the faithful; it becomes the very doorway into life.

So, this is where I need you to help me finish this sermon. Some of us have been taught since childhood not to talk in church. Today, let’s set that custom aside and instead walk together through “the doorway into thanks.” First, I invite us to sit in silence so “another voice may speak.” Then, I invite us to offer our prayers of thanksgiving, followed by prayers asking God to intercede for others and then we will offer own prayers of petition to God.

So, let us together walk through the doorway into thanks as we come before God in a time of silent prayer . . .

O God, I give thanks for this call to serve as pastor of Cove Presbyterian Church, for the trust and confidence of the people of Cove, for my family that makes my ministry possible, and for those congregations over the years, to which you entrusted to my care.

Friends at Cove, as we walk through the divine doorway into thanks, for whom and for what do you give thanks . . .

Friends at Cove, for whom and for what concerns do we ask God to intercede today . . .

          Friends at Cove, what are your own petitions that you would bring before God this morning . . .

Risk

New Testament: Luke 9:18-27, 51
Old Testament: Esther 4

Before we read the passage from Esther, let me give you a little background to the story, because we’ll be jumping into the middle. First, some history: you might remember that Israel was conquered by Babylon and many of the Jews were forced into exile. About 40 years later, the Persians conquered Babylon and some of the Jews returned to rebuild their homeland, while others remained spread throughout the newly-Persian empire.

The book of Esther is set in Persia, with those who remained, about 50 to 75 years later, when the Jews have developed an identity as a “holy people centered around a holy book” – rather than a holy land. The Jewish main characters in this story – Esther, an orphan, and Mordecai, the uncle who raised her – belong to “a people out of place, a people away from their ancestral home, a people scattered, looking for something that would give hope.” [1]

The story begins with the Persian king, Ahasuerus, who, at the end of a weeklong banquet displaying his wealth and power, calls for his Queen, Vashti, to come entertain his buddies. Knowing her husband (and his taste for wine) she refuses. The king’s men suggest that, if word of this gets out to the other women in Persia, they might have a feminist uprising on their hands. What if all the women start disobeying their husbands? Obviously, Vashti has got to go.

But soon enough, the king gets lonely, and decides he’ll have a yearlong national search for the most beautiful young woman to be his wife. It’s kind of a cross between “The Bachelor” and “America’s Next Top Model.” This is where Esther comes in. Mordecai gets her into the competition, but makes her swear she won’t reveal she’s Jewish. Her religious background would, in all likelihood, disqualify her.

During the year of preparation, Mordecai spent most days in the courtyard of the king, keeping his ears open to learn how his niece was doing, and sending messages to her when he could.

Finally, it was time for Esther to meet the king. “When she was taken to King Ahasuerus in his royal palace,” the story says, “he loved her more than all the other women; of all the young women she won his favor and devotion, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. Then the king gave a great banquet to all his officials and ministers—‘Esther’s banquet.’ He also granted a holiday to the provinces, and gave gifts with royal liberality.”

For some time, Esther lived “happily ever after” in the court of the king. Mordecai continued to hang around the courtyard to keep tabs on her. Unfortunately, one day, King Ahasuerus’ right-hand-man Haman commanded Mordecai to bow to him. As a Jew, Mordecai refused to bow to any human authority. This incensed Haman, who was a megalomaniac, and felt that it wouldn’t be enough to punish just one man – he wanted to punish every single Jew in the land. Haman went to the king saying, “There is a certain people scattered and separated among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them. If it pleases the king, let a decree be issued for their destruction.”

In case you hadn’t noticed, the king was very easily manipulated, and he gave in to Haman’s demands. Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces, giving orders to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day: the thirteenth day of the month of Adar.

Mordecai stumbled upon a copy of this decree, and that’s where our reading begins.

Esther 4

When Mordecai learned all that had been done, [he] tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went through the city, wailing with a loud and bitter cry; ²he went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one might enter the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth.³In every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and most of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.

4 When Esther’s maids and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed; she sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth; but he would not accept them. ⁵Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what was happening and why. ⁶Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, ⁷and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. ⁸Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction, that he might show it to Esther, explain it to her, and charge her to go to the king to make supplication to him and entreat him for her people.

9 Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. ¹⁰Then Esther spoke to Hathach and gave him a message for Mordecai, saying, ¹¹‘All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—all alike are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the golden sceptre to someone, may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days.’¹²When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, ¹³Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, ‘Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. ¹⁴For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.’ ¹⁵Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, ¹⁶‘Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.’ ¹⁷Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

At the point Mordecai brings Esther news of this plan to exterminate the Jews, it’s hard to really imagine how much has changed for her. She grew up as an orphan living in a minority culture; now she is the queen, living a life of comfort, luxury, and safety. And then she discovers her people are in danger. In order to help them, she knows she may very well have to give up everything.

“If I perish, I perish.” These are words of extreme bravery from a woman who is probably not even twenty years old. Esther knows that what she’s being asked to do – disobey the king’s command – is exactly what got Queen Vashti deposed in the first place. There is danger to her just in approaching the king, let alone revealing she is a Jew. No one knows exactly what the king will do – he’s unpredictable and prone to drinking – but a smart person could guess.

A smart person could also guess what would happen to Jesus if he entered Jerusalem. I wonder if he was thinking of Esther when he “set his face” toward that city as he does at the end of our gospel lesson for today. Jesus was, of course, a faithful Jew. From other gospel stories we know that he was familiar with the Hebrew Bible – he mentions the stories of Jonah and the Queen of Sheba, he interprets the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue, he quotes the Psalms from the cross. So it makes sense for him to know Esther’s story.

It makes sense for him to know that the Jewish leaders were upset with him for the things he’d been saying: he critiqued their hypocrisy, their lack of compassion toward the needy, their greed, and their lack of humility.[2] He also ate with tax collectors, claimed to forgive sinners, and didn’t exactly follow the rules for fasting and Sabbath-keeping.[3]

It makes sense for him to know that the Roman authorities would’ve wanted him dead. They saw him as seditious, as challenging the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. The historian Reza Aslan puts it clearly: “Crucifixion was … a symbol of what happens when you defy the will of Rome. [It was] a punishment reserved … solely for the most extreme crimes, crimes against the state.”[4]

And so, as he set his eyes toward Jerusalem and toward what was likely to be his doom, I wonder if the words of a young woman trying to save her people echoed in his memory: “v’c’asher avdoti avdoti” – “If I perish, I perish.”

"Queen Esther" by Edwin Long (1879)

Esther’s bravery is astounding. To get a sense of the danger she faced by approaching the king, imagine a teenage, Muslim, Syrian refugee jumping the White House fence to get President Obama’s attention. Esther did this because she recognized a call. But a call from whom?

I wonder if you’ve noticed the one person – the one entity – that I haven’t yet mentioned in Esther’s story (or in this sermon): God! Actually, God is never mentioned in the entire book of Esther – nor is prayer. This is a big part of the reason why the book was almost excluded from both the Jewish and Christian canons – and why Esther is the perfect role model for those of us in 21^st century America who are trying to hear God’s call.

Moses had a burning bush from which he heard God’s voice saying, “Bring my people out of Egypt!” Isaiah had a vision of heaven and the Lord seated on the throne, saying, “Whom shall I send?” Mary had the angel saying, “You have found favor with God!” Paul had a blinding light and a voice asking, “Why do you persecute me?”

Esther didn’t have any of that. There were no miracles, no divine appearances, no booming voices from heaven for her. Just her uncle, and a piece of paper spelling doom for her people.

And the thing that burned was her conscience.

If I had to guess, I’d say most of the people in this room experience God’s call in a similar way. If you’ve recently gotten magical instructions on how to build an ark, PLEASE let me know. Otherwise, I’m going to assume you’re struggling like me to understand what God wants us to do.

This church is at a turning point. You’ve discerned God’s call to bring a full-time minister for the first time in recent memory. Not only that, but you’ve called a pastor with more than 30 years of experience in ministry and a heart for social justice! Gary will help you as you seek to discern what God is calling this church to be – but it won’t be without risk.

Of course, there’s the financial risk. A full-time salary means an increased budget. An increased budget requires more generosity. Can you make this community your number one giving priority?

There’s also the risk to your comfort level. Growth means change, and change is hard. What if more young families start coming? What if their kids make noise? What if we need more volunteers to teach Sunday school? What if worship begins to look different? What if the people in worship look different?

And finally, there’s the risk to your lives. When we listen for God’s call, we can find it changing us in so many ways. It takes us places we never would’ve gone on our own; it makes us reorder our priorities; it introduces us to people we never would’ve met; it changes the way we see the world; it reshapes our lives.

And if we perish, we perish.

But read the rest of Esther’s story – she didn’t perish!

Remember Jesus’ story – even death could not stop him.

Look at your own story – God’s not done with you yet.

So let’s go to the king. Let’s set our faces toward Jerusalem. Let’s risk everything, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus!

And who knows? Perhaps we have all come here for just such a time as this.

Amen.

---

[1] “I Love to Tell the Story” podcast for November 30, 2014. www.workingpreacher.org/narrative_podcast.aspx?podcast_id=562

[2] Hypocrisy – 11:39, 42; Compassion – 11:43, 14:7; Greed – 16:14; Humility – 10:29.

[3] Tax collectors – 5:30, 7:34, 15:1-2; Forgiveness – 5:21; Fasting – 5:33; Sabbath – 6:7, 14:1, 3.

[4] Reza Aslan, Fresh Air interview, July 15, 2013.
www.npr.org/2013/07/15/198040928/christ-in-context-zealot-explores-the-life-of-jesus

Sharing Our Faith: Kristin Dinwiddie

Letters in the Sand – Letras en la arena

The buckets need to be filled.

The wheel barrows need to be dumped.

The blocks need to be stacked.

The mezcla needs to be mixed.

The walls need to go up.

And here I sit . . . on the dusty arid land, being careful to avoid the bits of thrown away “stuffs” of others.

Across from me, sits a lovely wide-eyed 6 year old with a smile that never ceases.  We sit just outside of the ring of organized chaos that is building a home for his aunt, uncle, and two cousins.  But we could just as easily be miles away, as we are so intent on what we are doing, we cannot be distracted.

Even though neither of us speaks the other’s language, we understand each other.

He brought to our little party what looked like a wooden chair spindle that he had found sticking out of a concrete block.  I show him how to write in the arena with the ‘pencil’.  I write out the letters of my name one at a time, K-r-i-s-t-i-n, as he attempts to sound them out.  He then takes his turn with our shared pencil and writes the letters of his name, upside down, so they are right reading to me, A-l-e-x-i-s, with a precision and accuracy that I have never mastered.

I had taken a respite from the filling and dumping and stacking and mixing to draw letters in the sand.

We adjourn our meeting in the sand and reconvene in the 2 square feet of shade along the concrete block wall.  I removed my earrings as Alexis watched.  He moved his face within inches of mine.  He stood perfectly still, while staring at my ears.  I had no idea what he was doing or thinking.  He finally broke his gaze and walked over toward his abuela.  He returned with a small metal tin, which I thought he found in one of the many trash piles around, and handed it to me.  I wasn’t able to remove the lid so he returned to his grandmother for her assistance.  He walked back to me with the seriousness of someone much older.  He then very deliberately took a small fingerful of the salve contained in the tin and smoothed it on each of the holes in my earlobes with the gentleness of butterfly wings.  He cared for me.

What a gift I had received for just taking time to write letters in the sand.

Now I am home and day-in and day-out . . .

The clothes need to be washed.

The rugs need to be vacuumed.

The meals need to be cooked.

Although the filling, dumping, stacking, mixing, washing, vacuuming, and cooking are so very important, it is the connecting with each other that rewards the soul beyond measure.

I hope I can remember to take a moment every now and then to again draw letters in the sand. 

Hunger

Old Testament: Deuteronomy 8:1-4

New Testament: Luke 22:7-23

People don’t live by bread alone.

There’s another kind of hunger – the hunger to connect – that pop culture explores with differing visions of a future apocalypse in which a few human survivors battle – you guessed it – zombies. “The Walking Dead” is one of the most-watched shows on television today, and it’s based on a very popular series of graphic novels. A Wikipedia list of zombie movies[1] shows countless films dating back to 1932, including several from the “Night of the Living Dead” and “Resident Evil” series, as well as “Abraham Lincoln versus Zombies,” “Ninja Zombies,” and one with the imaginative title, “Zombies, Zombies, Zombies!”

It seems our culture is experiencing a bit of an obsession with the undead these days. For example, everyone knows that, whether they are lightening fast or shamblingly slow, and whether they were created by a space invaders, ancient curse, or global pandemic, zombies are killing machines that feast on the living. They wander the earth, motivated only by a desire to eat, and to do so mindlessly.

At least, that’s what I thought until I saw the movie “Warm Bodies,” which came out a couple years ago. It’s the first movie I’ve seen that tells its story from the zombie’s point of view, through the eyes of its main character, R.

“I am dead,” he narrates at the outset, “But it’s not so bad. I’ve learned to live with it.” He is part of a group of zombies that have gathered in an airport and spend their days wandering from one terminal to the next, biding their time between hunting trips to the nearby city. R has a friend named M, and they have conversations that consist mainly of groans and awkward stares, infrequently punctuated by a question: “Hungry?”

R wishes he could speak more clearly. He wants to express the thoughts trapped within him. “In my mind I am eloquent,” he explains. “I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses. … it [makes] me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I miss my own and I mourn for everyone else's, because I'd like to love them, but I don't know who they are.”[2] This was not the mindless zombie I was prepared to see. This was a creature stuck in a meaningless life – or at least a meaningless “un-death” – motivated by hunger, yes, but moreso by the desperate desire to connect.

R is not unlike us in that way, we who hunger and thirst all too often for fame and glory and power; we who spend so much time glued to email and Facebook and iPods that we can easily forget the world – and people – around us. And yet there is someone reaching out to us, trying to get our attention, straining to help us experience a moment of grace in which we are filled by more than just bread alone.

Grace comes to R when he least expects it: in the middle of a feeding frenzy when he and his friends come upon an unsuspecting group of survivors. It’s there that his eyes fall upon a woman named Julie, and he suddenly feels something. The feeling stops him in his tracks, and he chooses to save her, rather than eat her, taking her back to the airport and protecting her from the other zombies. Over time, they come to trust one another, and R feels life – real life, not undeath – begin to return to him. Amazingly, his closest friends begin to experience the same thing.

Their hunger fades away as they discover that zombies do not live by brains alone. The color returns to their faces, they regain their vocabulary, their wounds begin to heal. The phenomenon spreads from zombie to zombie, and R realizes that, with the help of his friends – and Julie’s love – he may have discovered a way to heal the world.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, or what will happen when it’s done,” he says, “but at the very bottom of this rising siege ladder, at least I know … I’m not going to say good-bye [to Julie]. And if these staggering refugees want to help, if they think they see something bigger here than a boy chasing a girl, then they can help, and we’ll see what happens when we say yes while this rigor mortis world screams no.”[3]

I think there is something bigger to this story than a boy chasing a girl. Sometimes this does seem like a rigor mortis world. The news brings us daily reports of terrorist attacks, economic injustices, mass shootings – human frailty on an epic scale. One thing that makes Presbyterian worship services unique is that we always have a time for confession, because we recognize that our sin has reached epidemic proportions.

In the Old Testament, Isaiah says, “All of us, like sheep, have gone astray,” and in the New Testament, Paul says, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”[4] It can be hard to see the light, to make our way in all this darkness, to reach out and connect with God and with one another. One of the ways we fall short of God’s glory is by separating ourselves from each other.

At General Assembly this year, I was honored to vote in favor of adding the Belhar Confession to our Book of Confessions – the collection of documents that help guide us in our faith. This is the first document in that collection that comes from the Global South – it was written in South Africa, in the middle of apartheid.

It begins with a powerful witness to our continuing conviction that unity is central to our life together: “We believe in one holy, universal Christian church, the communion of saints called from the entire human family.” It goes on to affirm that Christian “unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity, and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered, and accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted.”

We must resist the temptation to break away from others who look, act, or think differently than we do. We were created to be in relationship with all kinds of people, so that we could hear all kinds of voices, and thus, hear God’s voice more clearly. When we cut ourselves off from others, we cut ourselves off from God, and we start to get hungry. Because people don’t live by bread alone.

Jesus understood that kind of hunger – understood how people can starve to death – spiritually – and I think that’s why he decided that the last thing he’d do with his disciples was share a meal with them. He gathered them all together to eat the Passover meal – but he changed things a little. As he gave out the bread, he said, “This is my body.” And he blessed it and broke it. He told them that, every time they ate bread, they should remember God and remember how God feeds people. God feeds people by giving them food to eat, like in the scripture from Deuteronomy, and by giving them spiritual food – like Jesus’ teaching and presence and love.

We’re about to celebrate communion together, which means we’ll eat small pieces of bread to remind us of the ways God has fed us – the ways God is feeding us right now, in this place, in this act of worship together. Jesus tells us: “Where two or three gather together in my name, I am there among them.”[5]

Friends, we are gathered in Christ’s name. He is here among us – among us who sometimes feel like “The Walking Dead” – who are wounded, scarred, not sure we can go on. And in the midst of all this, he gives us his very self as food for the journey. In this rigor mortis world, let us dare to truly LIVE! In the midst of our fractured humanity, let us dare to connect. In the face of ravenous hunger, let us come to the table and be fed. This invitation is extended to all:

Those who have much faith and those who have little;

those who have been here often, and those who have not been for a long time;
those who have tried to follow and those who have failed.

Come, not because I invite you: it is the Lord.
And all who hunger can meet God here.

Amen.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zombie_films

[2] Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies. New York: Simon & Schuster, pps. 10, 4

[3] Warm Bodies, p. 106

[4] Isaiah 53:6, Romans 3:23
[5] Matthew 18:20

Jesus, Please, Just Go Away

Scripture Lessons:

Galatians 3:23-29

Luke8:26-39

Our gospel reading this morning reports one more of Jesus’ miracles. It’s a colorful one.

Jesus meets a naked, crazy man who lives among the tombs. When the demons who torment him are cast out, they invade a herd of pigs. The pigs go crazy. They stampede down the hillside to drown in the Sea of Galilee.

This miracle story may seem just another one of Jesus’s spectacular miracles. It is, however, much more dense. It has something important to say about the costliness of healing. I want to speak about that this morning, for we may find this story speaks very pointedly to us today.

But to hear its message, we need to spend some time looking at the story’s details.

The first thing we should note is that this story takes place on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. This is a region inhabited primarily by Gentiles, not Jews. In Luke’s gospel, in fact, it is the only time Jesus ever travels into Gentile territory.

That’s a curious fact. Luke after all is a Gentile Christian. In the book of Acts he tells how the Christian gospel expands widely out into the Gentile world. But in Luke’s gospel, Jesus enters Gentile territory only once, in today’s story.

When he steps onto shore, he confronts a truly crazy man. This man has apparently been insane for a number of years. He has either fled the town or been cast out of it. He lives among the dead in the cemetery. He wears no clothes.

He reminds me of the many homeless men and women I used to see living under the highway overpasses in Dallas, where I lived for 17 years. They were dirty, smelly, and often exposing parts of their body that should have been covered. They were often too, mentally ill, living with voices and obsessions that made them anti-social.

The First Presbyterian Church, which my wife and I attended, had a ministry to these homeless people. It was called the Stewpot. It fed 500 to 600 of these homeless five days a week. It also provided a variety of other care and rehabilitation services.

It was an essential ministry of the church. The church supported it generously in both funds and people. But it was not an easy ministry. It demanded much of the church.

Part of the homeless problem in America today results from the decisions of Americans to opt for more limited government. As state revenues have been reduced, so has funding for public-supported mental hospitals and clinics.

Take New York State, for example. The New York Daily News reported in 2012 that in 1955, there were nearly 600,000 mentally ill patients receiving treatment in the state’s mental hospitals. In 2010, after years of hospital closings, the state had only 43,000 spaces left in state psychiatric hospitals.[1]

We find a similar story in state after state. We here in Virginia know the tragic story of how Senator Creigh Deeds’ son attacked his father with a knife before killing himself. All because there was no mental hospital bed available where he could get treatment.

Patients who were once cared for in a medical setting have been released to the streets to fend for themselves. So we have hundreds of mentally disturbed homeless people wandering our streets just like this crazy man in the gospel story. Or incarcerated in jails, as a Washington Post cover story reported last Sunday.

I share the desire many Americans have for more limited government. Nonetheless let’s not forget that lower taxes have their social costs.

When Jesus confronts the man, he begins to heal him, by ordering the demonic spirit in him to leave him. But it turns out that this man’s mental disorder is much more complicated than Jesus or anyone else realizes.

Jesus asks the name of the demon, and the man responds “Legion.” A legion was a unit of the Roman army that consisted of about 6,000 troops.

By hearing this name, we are meant to realize that this man’s disorder is complex. Under normal therapy today, it would take years or even decades for this man to be healed, if he could be healed at all. He’s a real basket case.

The demons beg Jesus not to send them to the abyss, which Jews believed would be the ultimate prison for demons at the last judgment. So Jesus allows them to go elsewhere. They invade a herd of pigs on the hillside. This drives the pigs crazy so that they rush mindlessly to their destruction in the lake waters.

Terrified over this result, the swineherds rush into the city, inform the citizens, who probably included the owners of the pigs, of what had happened. The citizens rush out to check it out for themselves. There they find the crazy man indeed healed. He is sitting at Jesus’ feet, fully clothed, and in his right mind.

In other gospel miracle stories, the crowds respond by glorifying God and marveling on the great miracle. But not this crowd. They are terrified. They immediately ask Jesus to, please, just go away. And Jesus does.

As he departs, the healed man begs to go with Jesus. But strangely, Jesus does not permit him. Instead, Jesus asks him to return to his hometown and declare how much God has done for him. With this simple instruction, Gentile evangelism begins in Luke.

Although the gospel writer presents this story as a healing by exorcism, what we find in it is a rather clear example of serious mental illness.

We are not told how this man became ill. Did he go mad from a chemical disorder in the brain, from a traumatic experience, or from a childhood of abuse? We are not told. Instead we see the ravages of his disorder. And we sense its roots are deep-seated and multi-dimensional.

Yet Jesus heals him. Jesus exercises amazing power. No wonder the crowds are constantly asking, “Who is this man?”

But what I want to focus on today is that small detail where the town’s citizens come out to Jesus and beg him to go away. Please, please, Jesus, just go away.

They note that the crazy man has been healed. But rather than rejoicing, they are terrified. They do not want this healing power in their town. “Let’s get this Jesus out of here as fast as we can.”

Now here’s the odd thing about healing, whether it be our own healing, the healing of a person in our family, or the resolution of a deep social problem in our community. Healing can make us very anxious and sometimes extremely upset. For healing can be costly.

In our gospel story, it is economically costly. The man’s healing has taken place at the cost of a herd of pigs being lost. The gospel of Mark says the herd numbered 2,000. That represents an enormous financial loss for the herd’s owners.

If healing is going to cost us money, maybe healing is not all that important. Maybe we can live with a few diseased people in our midst, as long as they don’t include us or live in our neighborhood.

Isn’t that what we as a society are saying when we yank funding away from the mental hospitals and other medical services that are funded by government, especially when they serve the more disadvantaged in our society?

Are we not saying then that as a consequence, we as a society are accepting the fact that periodically we are going to have to live through the horror of deranged young men, tormented by their inner demons, picking up assault rifles and slaughtering innocent children and adults? We have indeed been living through that again these past 10 days.

There is indeed a cost if we say our goal is a healthy, peaceful society.

But there is another cost in healing, one that we do not always recognize consciously, but is very real.

Talk, for example, to psychologists and therapists who operate out of a family systems understanding of illness. They will tell us that sometimes when an individual in a family becomes physically ill or acts out in troubled behavior, it is because that ill one has become the locus of a dysfunction that pervades the whole family as a system.

The family maintains some semblance of stability and normalcy by displacing all the disorder of the family onto one family member. That man or woman, that boy or girl, becomes the ill member of the family. All this happens unconsciously. The system therefore remains hidden.

If the ill one begins to become healthy, this often creates great anxiety in the wider family. Why? Because if the ill one becomes healed, then the other members of the family must face and deal with the disorder that lies behind the illness or the troubled behavior.

And that can be painful for the family as a whole. In such situations, the family has a psychological investment in the sick member being sick. So the family may work unconsciously to make the ill one ill again if he or she starts to get healed. In this paradoxical way, the family system can return to its stability.

Now this may sound very strange to you.[2] How can any family have a psychological investment in the illness or misbehavior of one of its members? But if you talk with psychologists and therapists, they will tell you they encounter it all the time. Healing can be very costly in terms of family dynamics.

Healing can also be very costly spiritually, as our epistle reading today suggests. In it the apostle Paul alludes to the implications of our Christian sacrament of baptism.

In the ancient church, when a person was baptized, one took off his or her street clothes, entered into the baptismal pool naked, was immersed under the water, and lifted up out of the water to be clothed in a new white garment. From the baptismal pool, one was then led into the church community for one’s first participation in the Lord’s Supper.

Baptistry in the ruins of the Church of Mary

During a trip to Turkey that my wife and I made three years ago, we visited one such baptismal pool in a ruined church in Ephesus.[3] It had steps on one side where a person entered the pool and steps on the other side where he or she emerged.

As a part of that experience, one renounced sin, evil, and the devil, and one declared one’s trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and committed to living in the way of Jesus. We still make these ancient promises in our Presbyterian baptismal service today.

Baptism was therefore the decisive moment when one ceased to be a pagan or a Jew, and one became identified as a Christian. It was a very important psychological and spiritual moment in a Christian’s life.

For the apostle Paul, it was much more. It was a revolutionary moment. Hear his words again:

… In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with 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.

For Paul, baptism brings about of a healing of religious, class, and gender divisions in society. These divisions are the source of constant disorders in the lives we live.

One needs only to look at the stresses and strains our world continues to experience through interreligious conflict, through social strife between races and economic classes, and through the constant struggle between men and women in family relationships.

If we understand the meaning of baptism, says Paul, we rise out of the baptismal waters as one in Christ. We are healed of the divisions not by erasing them, but by our being brought into harmony with one another in Christ.

We are healed, that is, if we are willing to accept the cost of healing. That cost is the letting go of the prejudices, the attitudes, and the inherited social patterns we have grown up with. We allow these divisions to become secondary to our union in Christ.

That is a cost, however, that many Christians have been unwilling to accept through the ages, as we have worked hard to keep the distinctions of religion, race, social class, and gender actively in place. We have, in fact, actively used the Bible to support them.

Healing is costly, and time after time each one of us says along with the Gerasenes, “Please, Jesus, just go away.”

But Jesus does not. It is true he does not allow the healed man to follow him. Instead he sends him home to declare how much God has done for him.

In so doing, Jesus gives the Gerasenes a second chance. As they witness the healed man in their presence… as they watch how his healing is real and permanent…as they experience his change in behavior…maybe, just maybe they will come to realize that the healing is worth the cost.

And so, I pray, may we all. Thanks be to God. Amen.

                                                                                    -- The Rev. Gordon Lindsey

                                                                                        June 23, 2013

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[1] James Panero, “The Danger of Closing ‘Asylums’,” The New York Daily News, December 27, 2012.

[2] A good presentation of family systems theory can be found in Edwin H. Friedman, Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue, New York: The Guildford Press, 1985. Friedman’s book deals with the application of family systems theory to the life of religious congregations, but it contains a good summary of family system theory in general.

[3] The church was the ruined Basilica of Saint John in the Turkish city of Selçuk.

Sharing Our Faith: Marilee Lindbeck

I have been coming to Cove since Dillon was 2 ½ years old.  He is now 26.  George was just embarking on his career at the UVA emergency department.  We lived here in Covesville on our farm.  We came to church together and we came pretty regularly.  As time went on, George was more about his rare weekends off and I was not leaving my church to hang out with him on Sunday mornings.

I knew that it was good to give something to your church when the plate came around.  I have absolutely no recollection of what we gave back then.  Then there were a few good sermons and stewardship messages over the years that made me pay more attention to our giving and what that really was supposed to mean.  I am still learning about what stewardship means.

Anyway, once George made it clear that church was my thing and not his, we had to have a conversation about the support I wanted to give to Cove.  So that was when I began to figure what I could give to my church.  I always have had to take into account that George is the wage earner and I am the church-goer.  But the great thing is, George has clearly recognized how important Cove is to me.  So I have maintained regular monthly checks and each year I have increased that by a certain amount.  It adds up over time.

There have been times over the years when it seemed to me that my monthly giving was just helping to pay the bills.  But as my faith has grown, so has my understanding of the need to help Cove be here for me.  The building itself, yes, but more importantly, what happens within when we are all gathered here.  And it seems to me, that the more funds we have available, the more we want to give.  Our mission outreach makes me very proud to be a part of this congregation.  I am in for the long haul!

Marilee is a member of the newly formed stewardship team.