Proper 7 C

We all have voices within us. Which ones will you listen to?

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?

Proper 7 C 2016

Paul wrote to the Galatians that there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus. This is a message that is as important to hear today as it was almost 2000 years ago.

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.”

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, 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?

Proper 7 C

Proper 7 C

Transcribed from a sermon given on

June 20, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Luke:26-39

Psalm 42

1 Kings 19:1-15a

Galatians

  What is it that you long for?  What do you really yearn for?  A lot of people might say they want more money, but is that what they really want?  Do they really yearn for more money?  If that’s what people really yearn for, then once they had some money they’d be satisfied, but I’ve yet to find somebody who said, “Well, as soon as I have ‘X’ amount, then I’ll be fine.”  There’s always something more.  So, what is it that someone’s yearning for when they say they want money?  Well, maybe they want security.  Maybe they want toys.  But is that what you’re really yearning for?  What is it that your heart really wants? 
  The Psalm today is so beautiful, “As a deer longs for the water brooks, so longs my heart for you, O God.”  You think of a deer out in the middle of the summer, and it’s hot, and it’s thirsty, and all it wants is some fresh, cool water – that yearning.  What is it in your heart that you really yearn for? 

  In the Gospel story today we hear of Jesus going across the Sea of Galilee leaving the Jewish area and going into an area that was Gentile, to a Roman city, one of the Decapolis. It was a place where the people were were called Hellenists or Greeks, which meant they worshiped lots of different gods, they had a pagan sensibility, not a Jewish sensibility. Jesus, numerous times, goes into areas where there are no Jewish people around

  When he gets there, he encounters someone who is described as being possessed by demons.  That was the diagnosis in that time.  It was a time period where people were very literal in how they interpreted things.  These days, we would probably diagnose this person as having schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. We know with schizophrenia people hear voices.  Often people with mental disorders hear voices, and sometimes these voices that tell them to do things that aren’t good for them. 
  So, this person was hearing voices in his head that told him to rip his clothes off, voices that told him to break his bonds, voices that drove him away from his home. In that time period, the only way they could understand such behavior was that those voices represented beings in his mind, demons that had possessed him.  He had all of these voices going on, voices that weren’t good for him, and my guess was that what he yearned for was some peace and quiet, and that’s what Jesus gave him.  He quieted those voices.  He stilled the voices so that he could listen to the truth within him, and put clothes on, and sit quietly, and rejoin society. 
  We all know what it’s like to have those voices.  If you’ve ever gone through a period of time where you’ve been depressed, you may have found that you are thinking like a broken record about something that’s concerning you.  You know - things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse.  Oh, things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse.  And it doesn’t really matter what the particular thing is, but the mind just keeps going round and round.  Somebody may have hurt you.  You might be afraid of something, but it’s like a voice in your mind that you can’t control.  We’ve all felt that way.  Or we’ve all had experiences where we’re trying to make a decision, and it seems like there’s an argument going on inside of us, different voices talking. 
  So, we’ve had smaller experiences of the extreme experience of this person that Jesus healed. What Jesus gave him was he quieted the voices within so that he was able to receive the love and care and healing of Christ. 

   We all know those voices.  They’re very familiar.  Father’s Day may even bring up some of those voices, after all. How many of us walk around and have our father on one shoulder and our mother on the other. Sometimes they’re whispering, “Good job, great.  I’m glad to see you doing so well.”  And other times they go, “I can’t believe you did that.” 
  We carry within us lots of different voices, which brings us to the Old Testament reading where Elijah is in the cave waiting for God.  Now, let me give you a little background of how he came to this situation. There was a conflict within Israel between worshiping Yahweh, the one God, or worshipping the other gods like Baal and other idols.  When you read the Old Testament this conflict goes on for centuries where one side gets stronger and than the other. At this point the king had married a worshipper of Baal, Jezebel, and Baal was taking ascendancy. Worshippers of these various “gods” would make idols.  They would make a cow or some other idol, and then they would go and worship it and thought that that temple and that idol represented God.  Other times they would worship on a hill because they thought that was how to connect with God – or a pillar or a tree. 
  So there was this conflict, and Elijah was speaking up and the representing Yahweh. They to have a big contest.  This was the Superbowl of contests between prophets, and you probably remember it from Sunday School or reading the Bible.  It’s quite a story.  Elijah challenged the prophets and priests of Baal to a competition, and they got two bulls to offer to their god, and one bull was cut in half and put on wood to be offered to Baal. Then Elijah said go offer that to Baal but don’t light the fire; let Baal do it.  If he’s god, if Baal is so powerful, let god take the offering.  So, the followers and priests of Baal spent all day chanting and singing and praying and dancing around this sacrifice that just sat there, and nothing happened.  Then Elijah took the other bull and put it on some wood, and he told them to pour some water over it to make it extra hard. Then Elijah prayed to Yahweh, to the one tru God, and Yahweh sent down fire to burn the offering and consumed it. 
  So the people of Israel realized that Yahweh is a real God who can really do something, and they grabbed all the priests and prophets of Baal and gathered them together. Now this is the part of the story that’s really hard for us to read because Elijah had them all killed.  Well, of course, Jezebel didn’t like that, so Jezebel – this is where the reading comes in – says, well, I’m gonna kill Elijah for doing that. Elijah is scared, and he runs off into the wilderness. He is there waiting for God. At one point he gets the sense that God is coming.  And so he waits, and then there is this huge storm, this windstorm like a hurricane.  Things are being blown over.  It’s very dramatic, and the scripture says, “But God was not in the wind.”  And then there was an earthquake, and the whole world trembled, “but God was not in the earthquake.”
  Now the worshippers of idols would have considered these as omens that represented god, but not for Elijah. God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake.  And even when the fire came, Elijah knew that God was not in the fire.  Elijah knew that God was not just in dramatic things.  “And then” – and in this translation, the New Revised Standard Version translation - it says, “And then came the sound of sheer silence.”  I love that alliteration, “the sound of sheer silence.”  You may have heard it in the King James Version as “a still, small voice,” or, “a quiet whisper.”  But I really like this “sound of sheer silence.”  God is in the silence.  God is in the silence. 
  Think about it. If you have a friend, and you go out to coffee, and at coffee they talk nonstop.  They don’t even breathe.  They just keep talking, and they tell you about their children, and they tell you about their grandchildren, and then they tell you about the movie they’ve seen, and then they talk about politics, but they never listen to you because they’re too busy talking about themselves, and you’d really love to tell them something that you think might be helpful for them to hear, but they’re just talking on and on, and they don’t even have time to drink the coffee because they have so much to say, and by the time your coffee is over you’re exhausted listening to them, but you haven’t said a single word.  It’s not much of a friendship, is it? 
  But that’s what our relationship with God is often like.  When we sit with God how much time do we spend chattering, and how much time do we spend really listening to God?  God speaks to us in that still, small voice.  God is known to us in those moments of sheer silence.  If you’ve ever tried to quiet your mind, if you’ve ever tried to sit still, you’ll notice, like when we have a brief moment of silence before the service, the first thing you’ll notice is all the sounds outside. You’ll hear the sound – the buzzing of the lights, and the sound of the birds and cars going by, and then you’ll start noticing your body, and how it doesn’t like the pews ‘cause they’re, kind of, uncomfortable, and then you maybe have an itch here or there, and then you’ll start thinking, and you’ll notice all the voices in your mind.  One goes, “Oh, gosh.  How long are we gonna have to sit in silence?  When is this gonna be over?  “Gee,” you know, “after church we need to stop at the grocery store.  Now, what did I need?  I needed” – And then it’s, “Well, what am I gonna make for dinner, or I have this to-do list.  It’s Father’s Day.  Hopefully I won’t have to actually do it today.”  And, you know, you have this whole chatter that goes on, all those voices. 

  How can we hear the whisper of God through all those voices?  God is speaking to us always with love and care and support and wisdom, but the noise sometimes keeps us from hearing.  God is not out there in the idols.  God is in the sheer silence, in the still, small voice, and the gift of healing we can receive from Christ is that peace that passes understanding, that peace that quiets the worry, that quiets the concern, that quiets all those voices and gives us a chance to just be with God because as the deer longs for the water brooks, our souls long for the living God.