I know it’s Father’s Day and I’m supposed to have a heart- warming sermon for dads, but the readings are taking me in a different direction and I want you to hold out for the good news. It is coming but it’s going to take a minute to get there.
The land of the Gerasenes
was an area deeply affected by violence and trauma. At least two massacres had taken place
here—one between Rome and the Judeans, in which the lake became red with the
blood of the Judeans, and another in which Galilean commoners drowned those in
the nobility in the lake. Furthermore,
this land was the dwelling of the 10th Roman Legion, so a big army
lived here. In some ways, that would
have meant jobs and opportunity. An army
needs to be fed, clothed, housed—money will be coming into the area while the
army is here. On the other hand, an army
means violence is never far away. Strength and threats and disruption of life
are part of the deal. The army is going
to come first. Rome is going to come
first before any needs of vulnerable people.
Jesus
docks his boat at the Gerasene graveyard.
He is here among the gravestones of so many lives lost in the
insurrections and wars over the years.
These are the graves of young people who fought and died, of neighbors
who wouldn’t stand for being abused anymore, of children and elderly people
caught up in the chaos.
And
Jesus is met by a very troubled man. The
whole area is troubled, traumatized, but here is one man who hasn’t coped well,
in which we can see the trauma. There
are some people who disproportionately carry community trauma. Everyone else hides it, but they either won’t
or can’t hide it. Maybe they have been
traumatized more than others. Maybe he
had less resources to hide it with, but here he is, naked, alone, shackled,
raving, violent. He’s not ok. But he’s not the only one. He’s an alarm, a signal that all is not well,
that harm is still happening, that fear still grips the people. This is an alarm that they are living under
oppression.
We
know people like this. We see people
like this raving on the street corners.
A woman walked by our little coffee and cookies gathering in February
wearing no pants—naked in the cold.
Someone came to the church door hungry last week and when I couldn’t
immediately think of what to give him, started shouting. He’d walked 3 miles in
the hope that we’d have something to eat when he arrived at 3:30. What trauma
are people carrying that they can’t hide anymore, won’t hide anymore?
This
week, this Bible text converges with several anniversaries that remind us of
the trauma we carry. We celebrate
Juneteenth this week, the day that enslaved people got word that they had been
freed years before and still we know that racism and white supremacy continue. Trauma
is re-inflicted with unnecessary traffic stops and police brutality and mass
incarceration. We remembered last week
the Emmanuel 9, 9 black African Methodist Episcopal siblings in bible study,
killed by a white supremacist Lutheran trying to start a race war. We remember this week the pulse nightclub
shooting in 2016. We are carrying
trauma.
We respond in different
ways. Some of us drink a little more
wine. Some of us take our
anti-depressants. Some of us go to
therapy. Sometimes we overeat or eat
things that aren’t good for us. And a
lot of times we blame other people for our trauma or for their response to
theirs—we write them off, cut them off because they don’t handle it how we
think they should, they don’t bury it deeply enough, like we do. And that is a common response, to bury it,
hide it, try to bury it in graveyards so that we will be safe, but it doesn’t help. The trauma persists.
Jesus comes to the
graveyard of our trauma. He came to the
Gerasene demoniac, and he comes to us. Jesus
comes to a naked, homeless, raving, possessed, violent man, and Jesus comes to
us and he sees, in each person, someone worthy of love and healing. We must as a response, look with the eyes of
Jesus, be willing to see the humanity in each other, even people raving on
street corners. We must know they are
worthy of love and healing. When we
recoil, we must look within ourselves and ask what it is we’re afraid of or
repulsed by. Maybe it is that that could
be us or our child or friend. Maybe it
is that that person is an alarm, a signal that all is not well, that our
society fails the most vulnerable, that those traumas are right there on the
surface no matter how deep we buried them.
We’re in the graveyard
with trauma. What are we supposed to do
if not bury it deeper? We’re standing
there with Jesus and he’s looking at us, wanting more for us, really seeing us
and all our pain. Jesus knows pain. He knows.
Jesus is there with us
to unbury it in a safe place, approach it with compassion, and name it, take
away its power.
Find a safe person, a
safe place to address it. Each week when
we gather for worship we make a confession—it is a confession that our world is
not as it should be. We are
hurting. We’ve made mistakes. We have regrets. We haven’t cared for the most vulnerable. We’ve blamed people. We come in need of healing as individuals and
as a community. Find the safety to
address it. Look at it. Confess it.
The man living in the graveyard saw in Jesus a safe person to address it
with. We are invited to do the same.
Approach it with compassion,
whether that trauma is within ourselves or another person. Every person is worthy of our compassion and
care. Every person is a precious child
of God. No one is a lost cause. It is never too late for healing--not the
person on the street corner, and not me or you or anyone. God’s love and healing are for those most in
need. Have compassion on others. Have compassion on ourselves.
Name it. Jesus says, “What is your name?” The man in the story names his “Legion.” The occupying army of the warring empire
resides right there—legions, troops, violence.
To name something is to begin to shift the balance of power. Moses asks the burning bush, “What is your
name so I may tell the people who you are?”
The burning bush replies, “YHWH.
I am who I am.” Now Moses has the
power of calling upon God and God committing to answering. Moses has the power to share the story of
God’s calling him and the people to freedom and new life.
We are in the beginning
process of writing a land acknowledgement for Trinity Lutheran Church so that
we can name the ones who stewarded the land before us and name the trauma that
has taken place right here. We’re hoping
this starts a conversation about what it means to be here and who we are in
relationship with along the way. Naming
begins the process of sharing power with those people and sitations from long
ago that still affect us whether we know it or not.
After safely addressing
it, after naming, after compassion, the power of that trauma begins to
subside. The demons, the malicious
forces, the trauma, have no power in the man anymore. Instead it went into a squadron of pigs—squadron
is another military term and pigs or boars are the mascot of the 10th
Legion. Then the pigs threw themselves
into the lake. They faced the same fate
as the Egyptian army that held the Israelites captive for so long. And those pigs were probably going to be used
to feed the 10th Legion that lived in the area. The soldier’s food, their literal strength
and power, was destroyed and not used to empower the legion.
Jesus is with us as a
healer. It may seem that this man in the
land of the Gerasenes was instantly healed, but he wasn’t. This was just the beginning. He was sent back into his community to
complete more of the healing process.
When the people saw that this man was no longer carrying around their
pain and collective trauma, they were afraid.
Sometimes we’re afraid of the unexpected. Maybe they were afraid because the people of
the city had mistreated this man all this time and now he can hold them
accountable. Maybe now they have to
reincorporate him back into society—give him back his house and his
possessions, his job and his place in community. And now he won’t be quiet about the healing
that has taken place. He won’t shush his
critique of the roman Legion that is nearby and can come crushing opposition at
any moment.
For us, too, healing
and changing direction, also known as repentance, can be disquieting. People expect us to act a certain way and
they push us to return to old behaviors.
So when we don’t, the system is disrupted and has to function
differently. Systems resist change. If I change, others have to change their
response to me, and it’s a domino effect on everything with everyone trying to
set the dominos back up the whole time.
It’s not going to be an easy path for this man. This man is going to confront the legion army
with his criticism and with the truth of what happened and they would rather
keep that buried. This man is going to
confront, by his very existence, the idea that society doesn’t care for the
most vulnerable and that we all give up too soon. Like this healed man we are called to tell
the truth, no matter the cost.
That’s how Jesus
lived—telling the truth about the worth of each person, the love and
forgiveness of God, the injustices that we all participate in. He paid the price with his life. But that’s not the end of the story. He rose from the dead because love cannot be
killed. And he empowered us to live
abundantly, telling the truth, naming the demons, sharing compassion, and
remaking our communities and world until everyone knows the love and power of
God for new life.
And this is the good
news for today, that even though we all experience trauma and pass down trauma,
that Jesus is our healer and a safe person to address it with, and all the dads
who are saying “Enough!” So many dads
came home from war and emerged from slavery and survived abuse and pushed
through to give their families their best.
And so many dads today are shaping the world so that people will not
endure the same traumas they did. They
are saying no to war. They are being
trained in anti-racism. They are
supporting their gay and lesbian children and friends and grandchildren and
setting up community centers and learning all they can. God is reshaping our traumatic world through
these faithful people who are following the difficult path of Jesus toward
peace and hope and grace and love.
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