Saturday, June 19, 2004

Sermon Luke 8:26-39 Life goes like this, doesn’t it? What I find most difficult is not loving my enemies but loving those who love my enemies. I just can’t quite bring myself to trust them. I can love my enemies quite nicely thank you. They are useful! They can be quite helpful in focusing on blaming rather than readjusting my aim in life. I love my enemies in life. I love the way my enemies help me feel righteous indignation. Even if they don’t give a feel for the kingdom of God at least they help me feel good. I love my enemies - they are always icebreakers among my friends. In my family of origin my enemies provided endless opportunities for dissection and titillation. They helped us avoid having to deal with, or pray for, or in general get too close to each other. Our enemies helped us to keep our emotions set in the safety range of anger and hostility toward outsiders and kept the distance between us insiders safe and certain. No meal went unseasoned without the fine spices of arrogance and ignorance. The politically ambitious can see the advantage to all this. In the backwaters of complexity and risky uncertainty a constant stream of enemies can, as Thoreau said, “simplify, simplify, simplify” things. Why attempt the risky work of inspiration when perspiration over your enemies can bring frequent political victory! My enemies - I love them. But those who love my enemies are another matter. They remind me that as on Easter morning the power to kill is much greater than the power to bury. Those who love my enemies always threaten to give too much credence to the notion that my enemies have some truth that I should pay attention to or that God loves my enemies. They always threaten to remind me that there might be a more excellent way to handle my enemies than calling them arrogant barbarians, Republicans or Democrats, Moslem towel headed terrorists, or ignorant fools. My enemies - I love them. Those who love my enemies, crucify them. Now isn’t that somewhat of what we have here in Jesus’ encounter with the man from the city who had demons and who had taken up residence in the local cemetery? It is a moment of high tension and low comedy. Neither one seems entirely thrilled that the man who does love our enemies is meddling in their situation and the arrangement of their affairs. "Jesus, Son of God in heaven, what do you want with me? I beg you not to torture me!"  The locals were none too thrilled with the results of this encounter either: “Everyone from around Gerasa begged Jesus to leave, because they were so frightened.” At first none of this makes sense. A little thought to the matter would have yielded the idea that there might be some tourist dollars in the advertising “Come see the place where Jesus walked and cured the naked crazy man.” Crazier things have happened. No. The town focuses pretty much on the disruption to their well-worn paths of life that will come if this man is healed. This is what comes of encountering the one who loves our enemies. What will the kids do after school if they have no one to go out and taunt? At least we know where they are. What happens if we no longer have to live down the reputation of being the town with the crazy guy? Now we will have to live up to a higher standard. That might take some thought and work. Just what are we are going to do here if we no longer have this crazy loon to talk about? We just might have to talk to, or even with, each other. For a generation this guy has been the source of constant pity and endless excuses as to why we have never amounted to much. Do you have any idea how morally superior we feel having this guy in town? Did you not say that we are to pick up our crosses daily? Follow well this train of logic. This is our cross and we love having him even if none of us have invited him over for dinner. This is our cross to bear and for the whole world to see what patient kind people we are. I will have you know that every year we get up a collection to fix his chains. If you fix him then quite frankly we will be broke because our well-worn paths of life will be broken and all hell will break loose. It is time for the one who loves the enemies we love to love to go. When pigs fly we will put up with this but since it is pretty clear from the story that pigs don’t, it is time for Jesus to go. The sequence went like this according to the story. When Jesus was done with his healing “He had clothes on and was in his right mind. But the people were terrified.” Oops! Not the indicated response. However, isn’t that the sequence in our lives more often than not; just when we think all hell might break loose it is actually heaven breaking in. What looks like the end of the world, often turns out to be the beginning of the kingdom of God breaking in the midst of what we can only see as a breakdown. I believe it happened at Harvard the year the girls walked into the athletic directors office buck naked in protest of the second rate facilities that the women’s varsity sport were given. Of course everyone thought all “you know what” was going to break loose. Of course it was heaven breaking in for doesn’t it break in whenever no one need consider himself or herself unworthy and refuses to settle for being second rate. Or would we prefer to pay for folks to live quietly and in desperation and in ill health, adjusting to being in the back of the bus? Most studies indicate the result of elevating women’s sports is healthier women and better students. Of course some will argue that it is time for the one to go who puts himself in our place rather than make anyone be satisfied with second place. Yes the pigs that devour us just might take a leap off a cliff if the craziness that causes us to take up residence among the tombs was cured. What if we said that the image on television that causes our children to be torn between bulimia and obesity were unacceptable as way of defining life and we will not tolerate it? You can hear the bodies of those who would devour us hitting the pavement. “Why all hell would break loose,” they might say. Yes but it would be a precursor to all that heaven is breaking into our world. You see what happens here. “When the men taking care of the pigs saw this, they ran to spread the news in the town and on the farms.” They are not just spreading the news; they are sounding the alarm here. “To arms to arms Jesus is coming.” Do you see what happens when this preacher comes to town? Commerce is interrupted, the free hidden hand of the market gets exposed, and people are out on the employment line. Do you see what happens here when the craziness is exposed? When it is exposed that one part of our government fights the tobacco industry tooth a nail while another part actively promtes the foreign sale of American tobacco products. I mean they are only foreigners, for crying out loud. If the Chinese are going to be making our shoes and our underwear for crying out loud they ought to be smoking our cigarettes while they are doing it. “All you know what” is going to break out with this Jesus stuff and people will be in the unemployment line. But maybe it is not hell breaking loose but heaven breaking when we say we are all in it together. Is that not what Paul writes to the Galatians, “whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman.   29So if you belong to Christ, you are now part of Abraham's family, and you will be given what God has promised.” Is it not heaven breaking in when we say that since all belong to Christ then we are all part of the same family and it is dysfunctional to be selling poison to any of our brothers and sisters? Of course it is craziness for one part of the government to be fighting tobacco tooth and tong while the other part gladly markets it over seas. The story suggests that the folks loved their craziness as they fed the very thing that was devouring them. Of course all hell broke loose when the Israeli officers dropped their weapons and said we cannot do this anymore. In effect saying we cannot look through our bombsites and only see the stranger, the alien, and the strategic target. I have seen the look you get on the faces of Israeli soldiers, and they are always young, when you look through your gun site and only see that: a horrible combination of arrogance and terror. It is not hell breaking loose but heaven breaking in when we do look not through bombsites at each other and see targets but when we see each other in the way that one who loves our enemies sees us.            What must have it been like to be a kid growing up in Gerasa? You must have thought that this is crazy, fearing that hell will break loose when it is heaven that is trying to break in. You must have thought it bizarre. You must have thought it crazy to draw lines where people needed to draw together; of targeting each other more than opening to each other. It says that the crazy man came from the city. That is where he got crazy. He came from the center of the way things are and met up with the way things could be. In the city they will say, “as for my enemies I love them; as for those who love my enemies, crucify them lest all hell break loose.” 6:18:42 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Craig MacCreary. Last update: 7/10/04; 6:48:15 AM.