Proper 7 C
Transcribed from a sermon given at
The Chapel of the Transfiguration
Grand Teton National Park, WY
On June 19, 2016
By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart
Luke 8:26-39
Galatians 3:23-29
We all have voices inside ourselves. If you have ever tried to meditate or do Centering Prayer or even to be quiet for a moment of silence you will notice how busy your mind is. You sit down with the full intention to focus your entire mind on being with God and you start thinking about - “I wondering how long this is going to take.” “Oh, this is an uncomfortable seat.” “My nose itches. Would it be really inappropriate for me to scratch my nose while this is going on?” “How long is this going to continue?” “What am I going to do afterwards?” “Oh, I need to go to the store. What do I need to buy? Well, someone is coming over tomorrow.” Our brains are always talking to us.
There are all kinds of voices. We have voices left over from our childhood. Today is father’s day and some of the messages that we received from our fathers are wonderful, like: “You can do it.” “Good job.” “You are strong.” “Don’t be afraid.” There are any number of wonderful messages we received from our parents. But when we are a child we also get other messages. Like from the bully at school or the cousins or siblings: “You are so stupid.” “You messed up again.” “You can’t do that!” “No one says that!” “You’ll never amount to anything.” So we have all of these voices in our heads. Sometimes it feels like my father is sitting on one shoulder and my mother is on the other and they kind of talk into my ears.
As we grow up we learn to realize that these voices are inside our own minds, and we learn to decide which ones to listen to and what to ignore, which ones are helpful and which ones are not. But some people, for one reason or another, are unable to make this differentiation. Some people experience these voices in their heads as if there is a person talking to them, inside telling them what to do. And they find these voices irresistible. So when it is a hot day and one of the voices says, “Take off all your clothes.” They take off all their clothes. Or when the voice tells them to hurt themselves or tells them to hurt someone else. They hurt someone.
In our culture someone who hears voices in that way and can’t control themselves we label as schizophrenic. And we treat them by giving them medicine. And sometimes that works really well, and sometime it doesn’t. We don’t fully understand why. This is a disease that has a lot of mystery to. In Jesus’ time they didn’t call it schizophrenia they called it being possessed by demons. They believe that there were demons inside the person that were telling him or her what to do. Because that is how the people experienced it - as if there were voices in their head. And so at that time if someone was diagnosed with being possessed with demons, the treatment option was exorcism, a healer would come and send the demons away.
Jesus had been in Galilee. Galilee was part of the Jewish area. Almost everyone in the area where he has been was Jewish. They identified as being religiously Jewish because they worshiped Yahweh. They also considered themselves ethnically Jewish because they were descendants from Abraham. And they felt that that made them special. They felt they were the ones who worshiped God correctly. They were the ones who followed the law. And they followed all the cleanliness rules. They were clean and pure. Everybody else, everybody who wasn’t Jewish was a Gentile. That meant not Jewish. So there were the Jews and there was everybody else. And there was a clear distinction in that the Jewish people felt that they were cleaner and better and purer.
But Jesus gets on the boat and goes across the lake to a gentile area. It is called the Decapolis. You know it is a gentile area because they have swine, they are herding pigs, and Jewish people do not eat pork. They consider pigs to be unclean animals and a swineherd is the lowest of the low, and they certainly wouldn’t have had any pigs in their towns. So it is clear that Jesus has gone to a gentile area. He is with “them”. But that doesn’t matter. He sees someone who needs his help. He sees this man who is possessed by demons or schizophrenic and doesn’t hesitate to help him. It doesn’t matter whether or not he is Jewish. He is a human being. And when you read the Gospels you see that over and over again Jesus heals and has compassion for everybody. For a Roman centurion, for a woman from Tyre, for people who are outcasts, for people who are sinners, for tax collectors. It didn’t matter. For Jesus every human being was someone that he loved and he did what he could for them. For Jesus it was all “us.” And he loved them.
We get this sense of being rid of the “us” versus “them” in the letter from Paul we read today. Paul is talking to the Christians who were made up of people who were from the Jewish faith and people who were Gentiles. He said: “In Christ there is no Greek or Jew, there is no slave or free, there is no male or female. We are all one in Christ.” Those three differentiations that he made are the basic differentiations in any culture to define who is in your group and who is not in your group. Who is part of the tribe and who is not part of the tribe.
The first one is Greek or Jew. Well a Jew is both a religion and ethnic heritage. Greek is an ethnic heritage. It says it doesn’t matter who your parents were. It doesn’t matter what religion you were raised. It doesn’t matter at all. It doesn’t matter whether you have Abraham as your ancestor or have no idea who your ancestors were. It doesn’t make any difference. If Paul was writing today he might say, “It doesn’t matter how you believe in God. It doesn’t matter where you were born. It doesn’t matter where your parents were born. We are all one in Christ.”
In the second one he says there is no slave or free. In that society clearly on the socio economic ladder the lowest class were the slaves. They owned nothing. They had no power. They were on the bottom rung. And the free people were on the top rung. He was saying that it doesn’t matter where you are on the economic hierarchy. Today he might say, “It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, we are all one in Christ.”
And then he made the most outrageous statement for his time, there is no male or female. That was a very radical concept in that culture. It is still a radical concept in much of the world even in our country we don’t have full economic equality between males and females. We all know that women get paid less. In Jesus’ time and in Paul’s time males and females were as separate as could be. Jesus went against convention by having women among his followers, and Paul said it doesn’t matter whether you are male or female. It doesn’t make any difference because we are all one in Christ. Our gender doesn’t matter. And today I think Paul would probably say, “It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female or gay or straight. Because we are all one in Christ.”
All these distinctions don’t matter because Christ taught us that we are to love one another as he loved us. And he loved all of us and continues to love all of us. When he was walking around on this earth he made no distinctions. He had compassion and love for every human being, with no distinctions. He even asked forgiveness for the soldiers who put him on the cross. It’s not about “us” and “them”. In Christ it is all “us”.
But we have voices in our heads and there are voices in the culture that tell us that there are distinctions. Depending upon where you are raised which distinctions are most important may differ. We learned while growing up those people that we could trust, and those people we shouldn’t. We learned that our people are pure and good, and those people are bad. That our race is better than that other race. There are lots of distinctions in our culture that we were raised with, and we have some of those voices within us. We all have to admit that we do have those voices within us. But we have other voices. We have other voices that call us to love and to care for everyone. And we have a choice. We are not schizophrenic and unable control the voices. We have choice as to which voices we listen to. Do we listen to the voices that make distinctions? The voices that judge other people? Or will we listen to the voices of love, to the voice of Christ and of Paul? Which ones will we use to base our actions? That’s the choice we have today and every day. Do we make distinctions, or is it all “us”?
Do we love one another as Christ loved us?
