Luke
I got a little help from Ellen Haroutunian on this one. It's a good one for applying the skill
of finding your self in the story. It's another one of those
situations where Jesus does something seemingly mean and hurtful. He
sends demons into pigs and the pigs kill themselves. It's a problem
if you want a consistently fair and peaceful Jesus, but not if you look
at this as a lesson in community justice.
This is the gospel, so we
have Jesus. In this case he will be representing a group of people or
an idea. The story begins with him meeting a demon-possessed man. The
community has chained him up and he lives in a cave without clothes.
To whom in your community do you see this being done? It might be
drug addicts or welfare cases or felons or dropouts or some kid who
doesn't pull his pants up. You may also be ignoring your neighbor or
co-worker who sits on the opposite side of the political fence.
Anyone you think is crazy for thinking in some way that you don't.
Jesus appears from far away
as a healer to this man. Somehow the man recognizes him even though
nothing tells us that he had ever seen Jesus before. People who are
hurting, who have problems that they know are problems, but can't
deal with them, often are able to recognize those who are able to
help them. They are then doubly confronted, with their own "demons"
and with someone who can help "exorcise" them. They sense a painful encounter. The Bible is
terribly unhelpful on telling us exactly how to do this. It is not a
manual for psychologists on how to break through someone's addictions
and mis-education and get them to see they can be a useful member of
society. All we get in this story is Jesus told the demons to go into
some nearby pigs.
The pigs are the property of
the community. This community had made no attempt to help this
person. At least, the story doesn't tell us if they did. Judging a whole community is always dicey. What should we expect of them? There are
people who don't want to be helped and can't be helped by anything
except perhaps severely invasive therapy and medical attention. We
have certainly abandoned a lot of these people in rural America (See
book reference below). We have blamed communities and families for
being backwards and causing the problems while we have whole
organizations dedicated to giving assistance to people who live on
the streets in cities.
But one story can't cover
every situation. The way this is presented assumes the man can be
healed. Back to the pigs. The pigs represent a cost to the community.
Our Jesus here has judged that this community could have done
something. They could have tried to talk to this guy. They could have
kept an eye on him and kept him away from whatever it is was that
triggered his behaviors. They could have met with him and his friends
and relatives and designed some steps for him take to reintegrate
himself. Instead they chained him up and that created a different set
of consequences. It's a "pay me now or pay me later"
situation. The healer eventually comes, but he has a price.
I really like the ending.
The community tells the healer to go away, they don't like the price he extracted. The healed man wants to go with Jesus. This happens in 12 step
and community support situations. People find the help they need, and
they want to attach themselves to the help. Programs become self
perpetuating and insulated from the very community they were supposed
to be integrating people back in to. Participants may re-offend just
to get back into the feeling of being supported that they found in
the program.
In the blog I linked above,
Ellen puts the community's role in terms of Roman gods. Those gods
could be bargained with, and they could punish people you didn't like
with demon possession. As she says, "There
is a strange comfort in having gods that can be manipulated.
Certainties feel safe. Jesus is a problem." I
hope the analogy of calling the police on your loud neighbors instead
of talking to them is not lost. Or
the analogy of paying the price required to deal with people we wish
would just go away.
* Hartland to Capitol
Hill, The Journey of a Wounded Healer by Ernie Gunderson and Mary
Gunderson. This book was written by a friend of mine using journals
from his late mother. It was a large family in rural Minnesota. Two
of Ernie's siblings had severe mental illness. It chronicles the many
problems they had obtaining services. Her work leads to speaking
before congress in Washington D.C. on these issues.
Kings
Elijah is not too happy with
his Kingdom and is ready to call it quits. This is a well known
passage and marks a turning point in the Bible where God seems to be
speaking differently to his Prophets. Elijah is a very key figure
too, in case you didn't know. He appears in the Transfiguration as an
apparition with Moses when Jesus wants to show his apostles where he
fits in the big picture.
And it's a beautiful bit of
poetry isn't it? The "still soft voice", isn't that nice?
If you stop reading at this point, which is exactly what the
lectionary wants you to do, it sounds like "still" and
"soft" are better than a loud wind that shatters rocks or
an earthquake.
But I couldn't preach to
this part of the Lectionary without mentioning the part they left
out.
This is what immediately
follows the verse:
15 The Lord said
to him, “Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of
Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over
Aram.16 Also,
anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and anoint
Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as
prophet. 17 Jehu
will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha
will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu. 18 Yet
I reserve seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not
bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.”
And it goes on for pages
about how they did just that. These anointed kings went about
"putting to death" people all over the place. This is pure
religiously motivated warfare. Never mind that it didn't actually
happen, that doesn't make the story any better. There is no reason
for this. It was probably a story told to make the Kingdom of David
sound more important than it actually was. What purpose can it serve
other than to say if you have God on your side, as opposed to Baal,
you'll win?
Psalm
Psalms are not my strong
suit. This is a "lamentation" from King David when his
kingdom is in a lot of trouble. It is also one of the more popular
Psalms as it's opening line is repeated by Jesus on the cross. Some
even say this is a prophetic vision. My non-supernatural view of that
is, it is a literary device. The gospel writer is using words that
his readers would be familiar with. The Psalm also has words about
hands and feet being pierced. They are said to be parallels. They
might be errors in translation, but that's far above my pay grade.
The Psalm itself begins with
David considering an argument against God known. In the last century, the term "Divine Hiddenness" was coined to describe questioning the existence of God like this. He is seeking God, but feels he's not there and
shows some evidence for his absence. Then he sings some praises and
ends with a list of good things that will come from that praise,
despite all the detractors.
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