2nd Sunday after Pentecost
One of the commentaries I read in preparation for this sermon was written by Rev. LaDonna Sanders Nkosi. She started her commentary with the following: “Many people are bound. Some are bound and don’t even know it. Anxiety, fear, unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, disappointment, distraction, memories of the past—all these things can affect a person’s perceptions, experiences, and quality of life.”
She continues, “On a recent mission trip to South Africa, I encountered these words from the late president Nelson Mandela: ‘For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.’”
As followers of Jesus, we are called to be an inclusive and compassionate community, where everyone is connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul. That is, of course, our new mission statement. A couple of weeks ago, I focused on the community aspect of it. If you’ll remember, I posed the question “How do we get from exhausted, wary, anxious, and fearful to inclusive and compassionate, fostering wholeness of mind and soul? And the answer was this, right here. What we’re doing right now. Gathering together in the name of Jesus. Coming together as that entity known as the Body of Christ. We gather to rehearse the stories that form us into the kind of people—the kind of community—that has the power to provide hope. The stories of our faith, provide a clear and concrete picture of the power of God’s presence, promise, and peace; God’s wholeness and healing. By the gift of the Holy Spirit, God gives us the power to reclaim for ourselves the community that many feel has been diminished over the past couple of years. This, right here, this community, is the manifestation in our lives of God’s power working through us. That’s the “how” of our mission statement. What I’d like to focus on for this week is more the “what”. To wit: that we are in connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul.
As Pastor Nkosi said, “Many people are bound. Some are bound and don’t even know it. Anxiety, fear, unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, disappointment, distraction, memories of the past—all these things can affect a person’s perceptions, experiences, and quality of life.” And I would add to her list still other things. Things like depression, OCD, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, addiction…
What does it mean to be free and what does it mean to be bound? Those are the questions that lie at the heart of our Gospel reading for this week. Jesus goes to the land of the Gerasenes and is met by a man who has demons. The man is bound with chains and shackles—and when he breaks his chains, the demons drive him into the wilderness. So ironically, even when he breaks his chains, his state remains the same: he is isolated from family, community, and society. By the time Jesus meets the man in our story, he, the possessed man, has been suffering a long time with these demons. He lives among the tombs, an unclean place, away from everyone. He’s alive but forced to live in a dead place. When he encounters Jesus, he is set free.
In this day and age, people sometimes look at you a little funny when you start talking about demons, demonic possession, and deliverance. Yet it’s a central area of Jesus’ ministry: he encounters people who are bound, and he sets them free—even and especially from devils, demons, and unclean spirits. It’s central to Peter’s encapsulation of the Gospel in Acts 10: “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power . . . he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (v. 38). At the beginning of chapter eight in Luke, Jesus is accompanied by the 12 disciples “2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out” … (Luke 8:2). The people who are at the core of Jesus’ ministry have been healed, set free, and delivered through their encounters with him.
I can relate to the man in this week’s Gospel text through my own experiences with depression, and I know that many of you do, as well. Some of you through your own lived experience. Some of you by virtue of the experiences of friends or family. We have seen demons at work, either in our own lives or in the lives of others. We have seen their power to oppress or imprison. We’ve seen first-hand how they can deny God’s children the abundant life that God promises to us.
So, what does freedom look like according to our story? First of all, true freedom requires surrender. Now, let me be 100% clear: Surrendering, in this instance, does not mean giving up. What it does mean is recognizing the reality of your situation. It means being honest first and foremost with yourself, and secondly with those around you. A true love-filled community is a place where healing and wholeness prevail because it’s a place where people can dare to be honest. A true love-filled community is a place where healing and wholeness prevail because it’s a place where people can dare to be vulnerable.
When the man sees Jesus, he falls down before him. A lot of the time, we don’t realize, or refuse to acknowledge, that we are bound. Of course, it’s always easier to identify other people’s demons or places of bondage. If we’re feeling a little more brave, we may even be able to call out systemic or societal ills and spirits. But we are prevented – sometimes by arrogance, often by fear or shame, or by the masks we wear – from coming to Jesus and surrendering our whole hearts and selves to deliverance from the things that keep us bound. When the man falls down before Jesus, it is an acknowledgment of the power of God in him. It’s an important step on the road freedom and wholeness of mind and spirit.
Second, freedom means being restored specifically to community. When the man was bound by demons, he existed in isolation. After he encounters Jesus, he is commissioned for service among his people: “Jesus sent him away saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.” When the woman at the well encounters Jesus in John, chapter 4 – a woman who is isolated from her community due to her marital status or lack thereof – Jesus not only restores her dignity and personhood but sends her back to preach the good news as an evangelist in Samaria. By the same token, this man, once occupied by a legion of demons and living in the graves at the margins of society, is sent back to his home to declare what God has done.
Faith is much more than a mere set of beliefs or a facile recitation of doctrinal formulations. At its heart transformative faith is the trust of the heart that is assured of God’s favor (grace) to us. True faith is not a matter of the head alone. True faith engages the heart, as well, and has the power to transform a person. Whatever sense we make of the phenomenon that was interpreted by ancient people as demonic possession, the fact remains that many people today, as then, live under the domination of evil forces and are trapped by them. Salvation for them requires liberation from evil. People under the power of an addiction feel that they have lost the freedom they once had to control their lives. This experience of addiction can be likened to that of possession by an external demonic power. People living with mental illness can have a similar experience. The experience of feeling as though your life is being controlled by something inside of you that is also, somehow, not of you. And yet when things get really bad it can feel as though it is the very thing that defines you. The addiction, the depression, the anxiety, the eating disorder can become so intense and pervasive that you feel as though it is who and what you are, which of course in that moment of suffering, makes it feel as though it’s inescapable. And feelings of perceived judgment and the resultant shame serve only to increase the sense of isolation; The sense of being forced to the margins; The sense of being bound and defined by the very thing you hate.
That’s why a place like Calvary is so important. A true love-filled community is a place where healing and wholeness prevail because it’s a place where people can dare to be vulnerable. To harken back the words of Nelson Mandela: “… to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” Calvary is a place where the fetters that bind us are shattered by the power of Christ’s love for us. It’s a place where the sense of isolation and marginalization are diminished by the power of God’s grace, made manifest by the inclusive and compassionate community that we foster here. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be an inclusive and compassionate community, where everyone is connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul.
AMEN