June 22, 2025 Sermon

Anna is a wonderful traveler. She's excellent when it comes to being on the road, going and having adventures, and I absolutely love it because it's an opportunity for me to take her places and to experience the world anew through her.

A little while back, she and I had the opportunity to take a day trip to New York City where she got to see the big buildings and all the kind of bright lights and shiny things that she's seen in movies and books and other things. And then this past week for the Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, we had an opportunity to be with some friends at their beach house in Ocean City, Maryland.

And these two trips are connected because being Anna, being the age that she is, everything is kind of stereotyped now. When I asked her what things she wanted to do in New York City, her worldview was shaped by the imagination she's developed through these books. So we had to go get a pretzel from a pretzel cart. And we took a ride in a yellow taxi, and we went to Central Park and walked around, and we took the Staten Island Ferry so we could go past the Statue of Liberty.

And when we went to Ocean City, we, of course, had to get Fisher's popcorn, and we walked the boardwalk, and we did all the things that you kind of expect to do. And I was thinking about that this week because there's kind of a fun joy in experiencing the world through those stereotypes and seeing her experience of them. But there's also kind of a shadow side to stereotypes as well. Those times when we can get stuck in what we expect the world to look like or what we think the world could look like. And we get mired in our own obsessive clinging to these ideals.

The context, geographically and historically, of our gospel passage today is really interesting. This whole region around the Sea of Galilee, both... in its geographical location, which was the western side of the Sea of Galilee, and this region on the opposite side of the Gerasenes, this whole area was called the Decapolis. There were ten Hellenistic Greco-Roman cities, that's the Deca there in the Decapolis, that were scattered throughout that region, made it a place of intermingling. It was a... bridge between East and West. It was a region that was very, very involved in international trade and commerce. There were multiple people from multiple places and this huge melting pot of identities and cultures and traditions.

But it's not that everyone in that region experienced life in that way. There were many pockets of places that kind of clung heavy-handedly, strong-fistedly to particular ways of living, particular ways of being. And we know this, not just because of examples that we have in the narrative stories like this. community that was so resistant to what Jesus was doing in the gospel today, but we also have it in the material, archaeological evidence. There were communities, and actually, Nazareth in Galilee, where Jesus was raised, was one of these, where even though they were right next to your metropolitan center, all of the physical artifacts that we have from that community were explicitly Jewish, were explicitly connected to Jerusalem.

And just like today where we can look at certain stylistic elements of the plates that we own or the drinkware that we own or the ways that we design our houses. historians and archaeologists can look at the material remains and say ah it's noticeable that there aren't a variety of cultural artifacts in this community it's limited to this very narrow experience this very narrow culture Indicating that they were clinging on to a certain identity, a certain way of life. They were kind of standing as a bastion against this diversity that they saw around them.

And that's one evidence of this happening. But another is, like I say, the story we have today. We have this community that has a certain way of being. A certain way of thinking. a certain way of interacting with the world around them. And the moment that gets upset and flipped on its head, they get scared and fearful, and they want nothing to do with it. But they're not the only ones who are scared and fearful.

We have three communities, or at least three examples. of fearfulness in this narrative today. We have the community that this poor man lived in, the one that lacked compassion for him, the community that kept him at arm's length, not only that kept him at arm's length, but shackled him, kept him within bonds in order to prevent him from being more fully a part of the community. They showed no effort to help heal him. They just wanted him to go away and stop bothering them.

Then you have a second fearful community. If we pay close attention, there's the community of these demons living within this man. They don't want to go back to where they came from. They don't want to be sent back to the pits of shale. They would rather be destroyed. Then return. They too fear. And in that fear they consume this man's life. And then you have the one stuck. Stuck between all of these oppressive forces. The one caught in the middle. The one most powerless.

And what do we do with all of that? Well I think. What we see in the outcome is the power of transformation, the power of living differently, the power of witnessing to the goodness that God can bring out of even the most devastating of circumstances. But we also have a witness to openness. A witness to compassion. A witness to changing hearts and minds.

This man is living in fearfulness, quite reasonably so, if we look at where his life has taken him. But when Jesus heals him, when he is back in his right mind, His first response is to stay in that place of fear. He asks Jesus to let him depart with him. I have been healed. I am a new person. I want to get as far away from these people who have mistreated me as I possibly can. And oh, what a human reaction that is. How many times I have enjoyed and my own friends who have left oppressive circumstances for better climates, better communities, more supportive places.

But Jesus says no. He says go back. Go back into this difficult circumstance and proclaim what has happened to you. Proclaim the goodness of transformation. And I have to admit, that's a really challenging prospect for me. I would never in a million years want to tell someone who has suffered so significantly under the weight of such an oppressive community to return to it. To stay in it. To be in that place of challenge. But this man goes forward and does exactly that. He returns and proclaims. He stays and transforms.

And I want us... To really sit with that today. This continues, this developing theme that I'm working on and inviting us into over the course of this year. Of really, deeply, intentionally discerning what it means to be community. How being the community of Christ. How being the church in this day and age is a process of being witnesses and proclaimers of uncomfortable truths, of preaching transformation when society and the world around us is more and more tightly clinging to certainty. Conservatism not in a political sense, but a sense of resisting change, resisting being pulled, being stretched, growing anew into new realities.

Every day. Seems to present a new opportunity. A new impulse to circle the wagons. We're seeing that just in the last 24 hours. With this increasing anxiety over further military conflict. And yet, there's a place. There's a place. peace and resiliency that Christ offers us in reorienting us not to the struggle, but to the transformation. As my colleague, Father Robert Hendrickson, who I've quoted before, observed last night, it is possible to hold that war is terrible, that there aren't good faith actors involved in tension, with the knowledge that bad options are sometimes the sad payment we pay to forestall worse ones. This is why we are to put little hope in the powers of this world and to pray for a peace that passes human understanding.

So often, it is so easy to just get fixated. on all of the problems that the world is presenting us, to get mired in all of those difficulties. And yet our invitation today, always, is to hold those things gently. Not to shy away from them. Not to ignore the realities of the world. but to preach the transformed life, to show the better way ahead.

G.K. Chesterton, in probably his most famous poem, which has been set time and again to music as a hymn, says in this very first stanza, "O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry. Our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die. The walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide. Take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride." And that was over a hundred years ago that he penned that, and yet how prescient it is for us today.

In this season, of being stretched and pulled, of growing anew. May we, in preaching that transformation, ultimately find this great wellspring of humility that is so much a part of our faith, setting aside those places of pride, those places of anxiety, those places of fear in which we hold on to things so tightly. that we have fists to fight instead of open arms to embrace. And may we, as we are shaped and reformed today in this moment, be people of compassion and love, communities of openness and growth. May we be proclaimers of the truth of transformation that Christ offers. And in that, may we more fully and completely embrace the love and the presence of our God, who even now is transforming and breaking in anew to the realities and difficulties of the world around us. May we be healed of our demons of resistance, and may we be proclaimers of the transformation of new life. that we find in this place and always. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.