20 June 2004

Sunday June 20, 2004
Proper 7, Year C
Preached at Trinity Church, Swedesboro

"Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people in the surrounding country asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear."

Yes, they were seized with great fear; that is understandable, Jesus is very good at that, frightening people. Indeed, seeing someone who used to be severely mentally ill calmly and sanely sitting at the feet of Jesus must have frightened them. Guards and chains had not been able to keep this man at bay, yet, a minute with this one Jew left him completely “normal”,
but I don’t think it was only Jesus’ power that frightened the Gerasenes, but also the repercussions of Jesus’ actions on them.

Though he lived among the tombs, this man, Legion, was clearly not abandoned.
The story tells that the people were active in Legion’s life, they tried to tame him, and hold him down with chains, even placing him under guard, so most likely, he didn’t hurt others, and himself, but it was his legion of demons which sent him into the wild.
This implies that many people spent time trying to care for him.

Caring for someone with extreme needs- such as Legion,
---or an aging parent, a physically challenged child, or child or spouse suffering from mental illness, is a huge task.
It takes a lot of time, and it’s common for those of us who are in these situations to neglect ourselves, or to throw ourselves so deeply into this task that it enables them to forget any other problems.

Normally, when a person either dies, or slowly becomes well, their caretakers have time to slowly reintegrate into society,
but because Legion was spontaneously healed, there was no time for that. He was, basically, gone.
This new, normally functioning man was not the “beast” who had previously lived in the tombs. What were they to do? What were they to throw themselves into?

Jesus had already ruined the business of a pig owner in town. The owner’s entire enterprise, which Mark refers to in his account of this story, as 2000 pigs,
was sitting, demon infested at the bottom of the sea.
The locals must have been afraid of what Jesus might to do next. So, they asked him to leave. He did leave, and though Legion begged, Jesus would not allow Legion to come with him.
Legion must have feared for his life-- because the townspeople were afraid, and frightened people do crazy things.

Yes he told Legion to stay because he wanted Legion to tell everyone what God had done for him.
Jesus didn’t give up on Legion,
and he was not about to give up on the Gerasenes.
Here a bit of background: The Gerasenes were not Jews, they were mostly Gentiles, pagans, in fact, they were one of the few groups of Gentiles the Gospels have accounts of Jesus visiting. Theirs was a large city, and an important one in spreading Jesus’ message. Their anger toward him was irrelevant to his helping Legion, as well as to Jesus’s commissioning of Legion, to go out and tell them what this God had done.

Today’s first lesson also speaks of an unwilling commissioning. Elijah is a totally burnt out prophet. As they didn’t want Jesus in the land of the Gerasenes, people didn’t want Elijah. But they weren’t scared, no they were just angry. There’s a death sentence over Elijah’s head, and no one wants to hear about God, because, you see, unlike in the New Testament, God’s sometimes kinda slow to act in the Old Testament, so no one really cares about God. Elijah has ticked off some important people. He’s worked really hard and no one appreciates him. Like your standard workaholic, he is in the midst of some major burnout, and now he wants out of the prophet business!
He sits under the broom tree, asking God to kill him, But, instead of killing him, like Elijah wants, God sends an angel to Elijah who gives him lunch. Elijah carries on, but still wants to die. But, like to the Gerasenes, who also wanted God out of their lives, God has other plans. God sends Elijah out to the wilderness of Damascus, where, if you read on to the end of the chapter, he is to anoint people and meet up with Elisha, so he’s not totally alone.

God just seems to have this annoying tendency to expect people to care, and go out and share that caring- Caring about each other and caring about God-
And this tendency grows even more annoying- God doesn’t have this expectation out of people who already care—no God calls all these people who would rather not care to go around caring. Legion wanted to go with Jesus, but he stuck around to tell about God, and thus making more people who don’t care have to start caring. Elijah was depressed and discouraged, but still, God sent him onward.

God’s tendency to expect people to care obviously did not end 1960 years ago. A close friend of my family, lets call her Sarah, was in a similar position. She had always been a good Christian, trying to do the best she could to follow Gods instructions. Well, she had been battling a horrid case of cancer, was having severe financial problems, had just watched her younger sister die of an illegal drug overdose, and was fighting to get custody of her sister’s adopted child from the sister’s abusive not-quite ex-husband. She and her husband didn’t know where they were going to get any money for their older son’s college tuition,
and she felt totally abandoned.
I recall her at a picnic, saying how she just wanted to quit, she worked so hard, and nothing came of it. She served God and her neighbors, and was still in deeply over her head. “I know blessed are those who suffer,” she said, “but this is ridiculous.”

Well, she was sitting her bedroom one day, and all of the sudden, there was a bright light in her room, and she felt calm. She had been a popular Sunday school teacher for years, but she had stopped that, along with many of her other activities both because of her illness and her feeling of abandonment. I remember her saying that she felt a sense of urgency, a need to get back into teaching, and basically caring- Like, it wasn’t her choice.

Happily, she’s been in remission for 5 years and her son is currently a senior in college.

I’m sure we’ve all had an experience or have known someone who has given up, who has stopped caring-
about God, about themselves, about their old hobbies, about life in general. But as we all know, sometimes what we want, plan, or care about, isn’t what God has in mind.
Like the previously demon inhabited Legion, the fearful, Gerasenes, and the burnt out Elijah, we with all our preoccupations have also been given a commission, in the words of the well-know hymn, to “heal the sick and preach the word.”
And like Legion, the Gerasenes and Elijah, as Christians, no matter how we resist, we must live our commission as well.