Preached at All Saints Episcopal Mission in Linville, North Carolina
In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is so good to be here in Linville with you all. A parishioner back in Salisbury has a mountain house and often speaks about coming up this way for an “altitude adjustment.” Well, that’s exactly what this week is – an altitude adjustment that allows clergy and their families to get away from the demands of parish ministry and the summer heat, while enjoying the gift of your company in this lovely community. This is our fifth summer here and we are so grateful for the invitation and the hospitality. I pray that the time here is restorative for you just as it is us.
Gratitude isn’t just a nicety that I’ve added to the start of this sermon – gratitude is point of this sermon and it’s a theme we encounter in both Psalm 42 and Luke. We begin with the Gerasene demoniac, as he is often called. At first glance, he’s a very strange character – he lives in not in a city or in the wilderness, but he finds shelter among the tombs. He has no community, as the only people who haven’t rejected him are the dead. He doesn’t wear clothing – he’s been stripped of any sense of dignity and social standing. He has no protection from the scorching sun or the blustery wind.
And this man is possessed – a description that we really don’t know what to do with. Can we attach a medical or psychological diagnosis to his condition, or is this more like something depicted in a horror movie? Obviously, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. The most we can say is that this man was not himself, that he was not in control of himself.
Jesus heals this man but because he’s such an odd character, we might be tempted to say “Well done, Jesus. That was mighty nice of you to help that guy out. But I’m not like that – I live in a nice home, not a mausoleum; I have a closet full of clothing; and, for the most part, I am of sound mind. What does this story have to do with me?”
Well, we are more like this man than we might first realize. Sure, we might live in a nice house, but as psychologists and sociologists tell us, we aren’t quite at home. You can choose your favorite expert – Brené Brown, David Brooks, Jonathan Haidt – they all point to our nation’s anxiety, loneliness, and mental health crisis. However we want to track the data – we are struggling.
The aforementioned David Brooks authored a piece last month called, “We Are the Most Rejected Generation,” in which he argues that rampant rejection has become a way of life for those in their 20s. Whether it’s college applications, summer internships, job applications, or first dates – rejection isn’t just a part of life, it’s becoming a way of life. Brooks writes about students who apply for dozens of internships and apply for hundreds of jobs without a single interview, presumably because some algorithm filtered out their résumés. There’s even a growing trend among high school prom goers – fewer and fewer have dates. Instead gendered groups go together without dates because that avoids potential rejection. Add to the mix social media, which doesn’t help people to feel better about themselves, and we’ve got a real mess.
In this article, Brooks writes, “I asked the students I spoke to at elite colleges if living in this exclusionary regime affected their personalities. One young woman told me it had made her harsher; she put on a protective shell. A foreign student noticed that her American peers all had perfect elevator pitches; they were masters of impression management. As a sometime college teacher, I’ve come to recognize this as the Miss America syndrome. You ask a certain kind of promising undergrad a question, and he or she will put on a beaming Miss America smile and give you the perfectly articulated answer that is carefully designed to warm the cockles of your middle-aged heart. One young man told me the system caused him to value security and stability above all – to find a place where he wouldn’t be vulnerable to the next rejection.”
Just because we have houses, doesn’t mean that we are at home. We are longing for a place to be at home, to be safe, to be accepted. That makes us a lot like this Gerasene man.
And though we have clothing, as the author Elizabeth Oldsfield has put it, we’re constantly playing the status game – evaluating where we stand in relation to others and scripting every conversation and email through the lens of what version of ourselves we want others to see. But we also all struggle with imposter syndrome, worrying that, like the emperor, that we have no clothes.
When the demons give their name to Jesus, they said that they are Legion. Clearly, this is the Gospel writer making a political point about the Roman occupation of the Holy Land, as a legion is a military unit. We, too, are possessed by a legion of influences – schedules, consumerism, projects, reputation, appearances, dieting, our past mistakes, our imperfections, wealth, addictions, depression, illness, how our children are doing, and I’m sure you could help me add a dozen more.
If I ask the question: what would you do if you were free of whatever is holding you back – what comes to mind? In a recently published book, David Zahl asks, “What would you do, what risk would you take, what would you say if you were not afraid? What would you do if you could undertake something for the sheer joy of doing it, rather than any outcome it might produce?” Whatever those barriers and obstacles are, those are the legions that we are possessed by.
So, as it turns out, we’re not all that different from this Gerasene man, which is a great place to be because Jesus comes to give liberation to the captive, rest to the weary, and relief to the burdened. Luke tells us that Jesus, in order to save this man, went to the opposite side from Galilee. Friends, no matter how far away Jesus feels, no matter how far you’ve strayed, no matter how forgotten you feel, Jesus comes to each of us to make us whole. Jesus will cross whatever boundary there is to bring the lost sheep back into green pastures.
Whether we feel like we’re adrift, rejected, lost, stressed, bound, or burdened, we’re all looking for the relief of being free and at home in the love of God. This is the sentiment we heard in Psalm 42: “As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God.” Or, as St. Augustine put it, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” Or, if you want a more modern reference, U2 sang “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” We are made in love, by love, and for love, but our society has a way of making us forget our belovedness and chase after idols that always leave us feeling empty. Jesus though brings us alongside the still waters and lets us to drink from his refreshing grace.
The Gerasene man had been homeless and after Jesus sets him free, he tells him “Return to your home.” Jesus does the same for us – he frees us to be at home, to be at peace. Because Jesus is enough, he gives us that sense of enoughness that our hearts are yearning for. We don’t have to find our acceptance on social media, or the awards ceremony, or whatever list you like to pay attention to. Jesus gives us the relief from having to perform, compete, and hustle because our restless hearts can rest in his enoughness. As we pray at the start of worship – to God all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whome no secrets are hid. And that very same God who knows us has chosen us, blesses us, and loves us, not because we’ve done anything to deserve it, but because we are created and cherished by God.
In other words, we are free from building a reputation, making a name for ourselves, chasing after accomplishments, or determining the meaning of our lives. These things are all graciously given to us. We are God’s cherished children and all that is left for us to do is to accept our acceptance, enjoy our forgiveness, and share in God’s abundant love.
This is what Jesus does for the Gerasene, and it is what Jesus does for us. Though our reading this morning from Luke said that Jesus “healed” the man, that’s not what that word actually means. The word is “saved.” It’s not just that Jesus healed the man and left him to sort thing out, Jesus saved him from all that kept him from flourishing in God’s love. Jesus eliminated every barrier to his restoration. I don’t know what doubts, wounds, or sins you carry, but I promise you, Jesus is saving you from them.
As we see in this passage, the people are scared by what they’ve seen. We often prefer the devil we know to the freedom that we do not. We adapt to our dysfunctions rather than having to face the fear of changing. Just imagine if this man had chased after the pigs because that was what he was used to. I really do believe that our lives and our world would look more like God intends for us if we could trust that we are loved and that we are enough more than all of those voices that tell us otherwise, and if we knew that is true of every person we encounter. But hanging onto that message of grace is hard in such an ungraceful world.
And this is where this sermon comes full circle to gratitude. At the end of Psalm 42, we said, “Put your trust in God; for I will yet give thanks to him” and Jesus tells the man he saved, “Declare how much God has done for you.” Gratitude is how Jesus sets us up to be freed and hang onto the gift of our salvation. What has God done for you?
From studies at Harvard to the testimony of mystics, we know that gratitude is a sure and certain pathway to happiness, peace, health, and positive relationships. Gratitude keeps us connected to God and grounds us in humility. One of the most popular TED Talks of all time is called “Want to be happy? Be grateful.” It could be keeping a note on your phone or in a notebook where you write down three things you are grateful for each day, it could be making a habit to go out of your way to thank other people, it could be saying “thank you God for all the blessings of my life” each time you give to church or charity; however you do it, gratitude is how we experience and hang onto the salvation we have in Jesus.
There are a lot of people that need the Good News of God’s relief, which is why Jesus tells us to declare how much God has done for us. Gratitude isn’t something to just hold in our hearts, it is something to proclaim throughout the city, just as this newly saved man does. People are athirst for the living God, starving for a word of belonging, searching for relief for their weary hearts. Our witness to God’s salvation in Jesus is what our world is hungry for. It’s something to give some prayerful thought and attention to in response to this reading – what has Jesus done for you? How can you tell the story of your salvation?
It’s been said that evangelism is simply one hungry beggar telling another hungry beggar where to find bread. We are blessed and grateful that Jesus will soon feed us with the bread of life, the bread of salvation, the bread of relief. For this, and all of God’s mercies, we say, “Thanks be to God.”
