5 Pentecost C June 19, 2016
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie G. Hutson
Isaiah 65: 1-9 + Galatians 3: 23-29 + Luke 8: 26-39
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Today our Gospel reading is the very, very strange story of Jesus and the man possessed by many demons. Jesus commands the demons out of the man, puts them into a herd of pigs, who promptly run off of a cliff to their death. Some might call this the original “deviled ham.”
The man in this story is a figure not unfamiliar to us, if we but look around. Those possessed by the many demons of complex mental and physical illnesses compounded by unemployment and addiction sleep in our doorways, and under the overpasses, and in the parks. They are often known to us, by name. We give these brothers and sisters lunch here at the church.
What is heartbreaking to me, in this story, is that when Jesus asks the man his name he says only “Legion”, indicating how many demons have possessed him.
A legion, then, has come to be known as a large number of something….a group. This man had a legion of demons. But there are other legions….even today we know of the American legion and the Foreign legion. Groups who come together out of a common or shared interest or similar views or skills.
But in this story we are not talking about any of that….we are talking about a crush of demons that have occupied this man’s body and spirit. So many that the man is no longer known by his given name or his childhood nickname; he’s not even known by his occupation…tailor or baker or tanner. He no longer carries his family name. Instead he is named simply and tragically as Legion.
It’s natural to find people and groups of people named by something that identifies them. Maybe the best example in our city are the “Twelves”. In high school there are the jocks and the nerds and the preps and the goths and the geeks. Even as adults…there are Liberals and Conservatives, Republicans and Democrats…monikers we are hearing a lot about these days. We are gay and straight, rich and poor, black and white. We live in suburbs or cities or out in the country.
But the problem is that every time a person says I am THIS, they are also saying, I am NOT THAT. And then we begin to take sides and view one another with suspicion and contempt and worse.
Paul wrote to the early believers in Galatia these words: “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.” Of course those divisions did exist…there were still men and women, free people and slaves, Jews and Greeks. But the point Paul is trying to make is that we are not defined by these things. We are formed by the way we are known as children of the living God and followers of Jesus Christ.
In recent days, there has been much finger pointing between legions of people. We have blamed everyone from the conservatives, to the talk show hosts, to the red necks, to the Muslims, to the NRA, to the politicians, to the parents, to the liberals, to the radicals…we have even blamed the President of the United States. Legions of blame.
But the harder reality is that there are legions of victims. There are high school students in Columbine and soldiers in Fort Hood. There are movie goers in Denver and little school children in Sandy Hook. There are employees gathered for a lunch in San Bernadino and college students in Virginia. There are college students at Umpqua Community College and high school students at Marysville Pilchuck. There are sisters and brothers….gay, straight, and trans….Latino and white and black…..young and old….who were gathered together for a night of dancing and community. The victims are Legion.
We light our candles and we pray and we mourn and we sing until our short attention spans and the next news cycle call us to the next thing and eventually the next thing is the all too familiar story with legions of victims.
And we search for answers. For something we can do. For something we can say. We change our Facebook pictures in solidarity with the community. We attend vigils. Greg Zanis of Illinois made 49 wooden crosses and then drove from Illinois to Florida to take them to a community in Orlando, where they have become a shrine. A little girl made 49 Father’s Day cards out of poster board and put them outside the building where her father worked for passers by to sign. At one point you could not get through the crush of people waiting to write a message. Passengers on a plane with a victim’s grandmother wrote long letters of solidarity and sympathy to her and then each one…each one….honored her as they left the plane. The mother of Eddie Ray Justice who died at Pulse said that she will tell her son’s story until she has no breath left in her.
The reality is, that most of us in this building today have not been targeted because of who we are. Most of us have gathered here with a level of privilege that means we move about our lives in relative safety. And this week, with the shooting in Orlando, we must as a culture and a community come to terms with the reality that this was another hate crime. And there’s enough hate to go around. One year ago last Friday another shooter, this one raised in a Lutheran church, committed another hate crime at a church in Charleston.
An activist in the gay community, Drae Campbell, said this week that one of the best things we can do as allies is to say the names of the dead. “Say their names” he wrote. Say their names. This is one of the ways we can hold space for them….sacred space….by saying their names….a reminder that they are our sisters and our brothers, bound to us by the love of God.
And this is what we will do this morning. While we are receiving communion, rather than singing our songs, the names of those who were killed at Pulse Nightclub will be read aloud. Those names will mingle with the words we hear every time we come to the table….”This is the body of Christ; this is the blood of Christ….given for you”. And even as we come to the table and hear those words and receive signs of grace, we remember how wide the grace of God truly is. It is given to us, and it is given to those who died, and it is even given to those whose hearts are filled with hate. It is the unbearably hard beauty of the grace of God.
And when you come to the table, I invite you to take a candle from this basket, light it from the paschal candle or another candle, and place it in one of the containers here. There are 49 candles here and there are 49 candles in the narthex to remind us of those people who are the most recent victims of hate and violence. There is one candle on the font to remind us of the wideness of God’s mercy.
The man in the Gospel story this morning, so filled with demons that his name was lost to him was wandering in the dark. He lived, the text tells us, among the darkness of the tombs.
When hatred and bigotry and intolerance are allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged we wander in the dark. As a community and as a culture and as God’s beloved children, we are called to be bearers of the light.
Today there are families who have an empty place at the table; fathers for whom this day is bittersweet. Today there are people who will not have the opportunity to achieve the dreams they still had when they walked into the Pulse nightclub last Saturday. Who will not take that trip or complete that degree or have those children or marry that beloved one. But we can carry their message of love and the light of their lives into the world. We can love all of God’s children. We can speak truth to power. We can teach our children to love one another regardless of difference and because of the light that shines bright with possibility in each person.
Jesus then asked the man: “What is your name?” He said “Legion”. Sisters and brothers, when we are asked who we are, let our answer be that we are legion of light and that we are legion of love.
Thanks be to God….and let the church say….Amen