Title: “No One is Out of God's Reach”
Scripture:
6/20/04 Third Sunday after Pentecost, Yr. C
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
There is a re-occurring theme in the Gospel of Luke that tells us a great deal about how the author understood God working in the world through Jesus - that no one is beyond the reach of God's love. Through the actions and words of Jesus we see how God heals; transforms, forgives and redeems those that have been rejected, discounted, blamed or shunned. This is the good news that he has found in Jesus Christ.
Today's story is a powerful example of that theme. What more frightening picture could we imagine of a human being than one that is naked, his hands and feet bound in chains, living far away from community among the tombs of shadows and death, his only company a herd of swine and a mind gone mad. It is said that he is full of demons - evil spirits that make him “wild”.
The wild man recognizes Jesus straightaway as God's son.
Jesus asked him his name and he was told it was “Legion”. In the Roman army, a legion was a battle force of four to six thousand soldiers. The man was bearing a battle force of demons.
As Jesus commanded the “unclean spirits” to come out of the man, the “Legion” asks that they not be sent into the abyss. The abyss was known as the bottomless pit reserved for God's enemies, perhaps how some people today understand hell. So Jesus sent the spirits into the herd of swine that was near by and they then rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
It is helpful to know some of the cultural and religious myths and rituals that are intertwined into this story that would have been understood by the earliest hearers. Drowning, according to traditional lore destroyed demons. An ancient ritual during the time of temple worship in early Judaism was the selection of a goat as a “scapegoat” which was symbolically laden with the nations sins and then driven into the wilderness where it would be thrown from a precipice to die. It was understood that this ritual reunited the nation and its religious leaders with God.
The man with the demons is symbolic of the earlier “scapegoat” and he bears not only his own sins, but the sins or demons of his community. Jesus then, following his religious tradition, releases the demons into the swine - using them as “scapegoats”. (Which us animal lovers don't much like either!)
I hear two profound spiritual Truths in this story:
The first Truth is very difficult for most of us to accept - that no one is out of reach of God's love.
This does not mean that God's love does not require repentance or even complete transformation. But still, no one is out of reach of God's love.
In a book of prayers called All Will Be Well, edited by Lyn Klug, there is a reflection by English writer, Sheila Cassidy that reads:
I believe that God has the whole world in his hands.
He is not a bystander
At the pain of the world.
He does not stand
Like Peter,
Wringing his hands
In the shadows,
But is there,
In the dock,
On the rack,
High on the gallows tree.
He is in the pain
Of the lunatic,
The tortured,
Those wracked by grief.
His is the blood
That flows in the gutter.
His are the veins burned by heroin,
His the lungs choked by AIDS.
His is the heart
Broken by suffering,
His the despair
Of the mute,
The oppressed,
The man with the gun to his head.
This is the spiritual Truth that the writer of Luke believes about God - that no one is out of reach of God's love.
What is your Truth?
I believe that it is sometimes difficult for us to understand or receive this level of unconditional love from God because we humans tend to place conditions on our love thinking that unconditional love means anything goes.
We believe that there must be lines that if crossed, puts us or others completely out of reach of God's mercy and love.
I will always remember the image from the movie of “Dead Man Walking” when the Catholic Sister that visited the man convicted of rape and murder invited him to both admit to what had happened, to confess his serious and horrific offense AND know that God loved him dearly. Is it possible that the two of those could go together?
Unconditional love does not mean that anything goes. Unconditional love is the toughest most demanding love of all because it calls us to dig deep into the depths of our beings and with help, see our unhealthy patterns and our self-destructive ways of thinking. It means being willing to let go and surrender to the possibility of God inspired change and transformation.
When we become parents, we see the unconditional love that our children have for us. This does not mean that we can do whatever we want and just assume that respect and love will continue. In response to that amazing gift, we are called to a deeper level of responsibility and we are also called to surrender our self-centered ways.
This is similar to what can happen when one becomes aware of the unconditional love that God has for us. When we recognize the gift of God's unconditional love for us, it can call forth more responsibility in us to make choices that reflect that divine love.
That is why the second spiritual Truth in Luke's story is also important.
We need professional “healers” that can help us. Counselors, caring physicians, Pastors and other Spiritual teachers - people that will help us understand and release our “demons”, burdens or fears, and receive the transforming and life changing unconditional love of God.
The more we allow the unconditional love of God to permeate our own being, the more able we are to see how no one else is separate from that mercy either. The judgement we project on to others turns into compassion and a desire that those most burdened - be it an individual, a family, a church, a society or a nation - might be transformed.
Whether as individuals or communities or even nations, we need professional healers that can help us discern the broken patterns and behaviors of our lives and human institutions.
It is not a sign of weakness to seek help, nor is it a sign of strength to live stoically with burdens that handicap a person, a community or a nation's ability to be made whole.
This week I read a piece in the Weavings journal I subscribe to by author and Spiritual Director, Avery Brooke. She wrote about her own experience of working with a Spiritual Director during a time when she was struggling with depression.
After having met with her for quite some time her companion suggested that her mother must have carried some very difficult burdens that seriously impacted her ability to mother Avery in a healthy way. She thought that perhaps the pain of Avery's mother, though she had been dead for many years, might be connected to Avery's own pain today.
She guided Avery in a time of prayer, imagining her mother and the various traumas of her mother's childhood. They sat in silence together and then Avery herself was given these words to say:
“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I bind all these painful memories that trouble you and send them to you, Lord, to do with as you will.”
Avery reports in her story that her whole interior memory of her mother changed with that experience. The memory of her mother was as the young woman she never was - free, happy and content. But it was this young woman that became Avery's companion. Through healing prayer they were both liberated from the hurts that bound them.
This very personal story of Avery's speaks to me of the same spiritual Truths that are in the story from Luke. 1. No one is out of reach of God's love; not even Avery's deceased mother. And 2. We need help in order to receive God's unconditional and transforming mercy and love.
Though society had sent him away to living amongst the tombs of shadows and death, “the wild man” in today's story was not out of reach of God's love and mercy.
I believe that scripture such as this one from Luke is not meant to make us comfortable but to cause us to ponder how it might speak to our own lives and world - may it be so.
(Let us have a time of silence)