|
|
“Unmasking Oppression”
Mark
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Three years
ago this month, I joined 200 other gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender
activists and their allies in an historic event of unmasking oppression. It happened at
Jerry
didn’t keep his promise. He has
continued to spread untruths about the GLBT communities. So two weeks from now, I will join 200 other Soulforce volunteers in
We don’t unmask oppression in order
to make the other person pay for what they have done wrong. We unmask oppression in order to bring about
the reign of God, in order to make an enemy a brother, and abuser a sister. Jesus said, “love
your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” When he hung on the cross he said “Forgive
them for they know not what they are doing.”
Sure, Jesus turned over the tables of the moneychangers, but he also
wept for
Today’s scripture is a great one to
help us figure out how to deal with demonic powers out there. Jesus crosses over into a foreign land and
even there the demons know who he is.
Like the first evil spirit, which Jesus cast out in the synagogue in
chapter one, this demon knows who Jesus is. “What have you to do with me Jesus, Son of
the Most High God.”
Which is a Greek way of saying “messiah”. You see, Jesus was in Greek territory. And when in
This demon so possessed the man that he lived among the tombs, he broke the shackles and no one could restrain him. In order to set him free, Jesus had to bind the strong man. He had to set the man free from the demon. The strong man was the demon. But Jesus, we know, is the stronger one who can liberate even the most gruesome demon among us.
What demons control you? What so preoccupies your mind and your spirit that you cannot think about anything else? Is it a past hurt? Is it a grave injustice? Is it an abuse to which you have been a victim?
Many of us are stuck around the tombs. We are stuck like the Gerasene demoniac in the stench of past hurts, the place of hopelessness. We feel, many of us, that we are not in our right minds.
What keeps you amongst the tombs? That’s another way of saying full of gloom and doom, full of morbidity. What so holds you that you cannot be in community with anyone?
Demons control many of us. They sap our energy. They keep us cynical. They disguise themselves in the faces of practicality. They consume our energy, our soulforce.
The Gerasene demoniac was wild and uncontrollable. He was the crazy bugger in the street that everyone stayed away from. He was our shadow side, as the Jungians would say.
The demon was powerful, very powerful. In fact it had the name legion. In other words an army of demons. This was a hopeless person who felt that any power around was not powerful enough to squelch his demons.
Governments can feel like legions, with their laws and their propensity for injustice and power-grabbing by the controlling elite.
Corporations can feel like legions as they snub their nose at laws and are too often in bed with political legions, all the while putting their profits above human rights.
Warmongers from whatever country feel like legions.
Sometimes the Christian right feels like a legion with all of their television stations, their radio shows, their voter guides, their hate-speech.
The Christian left can feel like a legion, too with their self-righteousness and seeming lack of spiritual depth.
Our own violence can seem like a legion of disaster and disgust.
Sometimes families feel like legions. They stick together and dare not let anyone or anything bring them down, especially if it means dealing with a hard truth about one of their own.
Compulsory heterosexism can seem like legion forcing people into legion-lined closets and too often living a lie in order to survive.
But the word of God today is that we follow one who is stronger than legion—stronger than any faction or lie. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,” said Jesus. It will free the demon which eats you from the inside out.
And Jesus says to the legions that are possessing all of us, “Come out. Torment my sister, my brother, my child no longer.”
We know what happened. Jesus called out the demon, sent it into a
herd of pigs and they flew off the cliff.
This gives new meaning to the phrase, “when pigs fly.” Pigs fly when they have our demons in their
bones and we are set free from them.
Like the legions of Egyptian armies being smothered by the
It makes a great story. A great sound byte. A great headline. Foreigner casts out demons. Pigs fly, but don’t swim. The town is in shock. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, and now the sporting news…
But that is not the end of the story. It is not the end of the story when one side wins, no matter how noble the cause. We all know of revolutionary societies who are victorious over a tyrant, only to become tyrannical a few years after taking control.
You see, Mark knew the reality of the world. So he told us about the aftermath of the war with the legions and the pigs. This is the story behind the story: the real story.
You see, the people had to now deal with the one who had lived in the tombs, shackled most of his life possessed with demons. Do you think they would have just accepted him into the community? Back into the family? Of course not. They had made up stories about him. They had called him names. He was not Tom or Bill or Chloe or Karen. He was the Gerasene demoniac, the “G.D.”. He was the one who was always to be feared. He was the one about whom folks used to say, “I may have it bad, but at least I’m not like G.D.” He was the scapegoat. The pariah. He was the outcast. Prejudice? You bet they were.
Now, we all know people like that. We know people possessed with demons. We know what that’s like. But when someone is healed from a demon, we deal with them like they are still a bit of a demon, don’t we? We might forgive, but we seldom forget, and for good reason in many cases. That’s why ex-cons can’t get hired. That’s why we register sex offenders. That’s why we haven’t seen a movie starring O.J. lately.
And we still hold our own prejudice against them. We don’t trust that they are truly in their right mind. We expect the demon to reemerge. We have learned not to trust the demon-possessed. The problem is that we are all demon-possessed and no one seems to trust anyone else.
The people were shocked and horrified by this person, the G. D. in his right mind.
It distorted their way of looking at the world. No longer could they pretend that they were better than that crazy bugger in the street. No longer could they cast all of their sins upon him and call him the scapegoat. He was a person in his right mind. Someone they had to deal with. Someone they had to for once in their lives treat like an equal. This was scary business.
The man sensed the anxiety of the people. Jesus had upset their way of looking at the world. If there is no enemy, then what do we rally around? Who is right anymore? Who is wrong? The people began to run Jesus out of town.
What would we do if Jerry Falwell and his church were in their right mind? Would we simply create another enemy? Would we trust Jerry to change his ways? History might tell us not to. What if Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Dick Cheney and even Bill Clinton were in their right minds. Would we trust them?
Remember that after years as a militant
segregationist, even George Wallace knelt down on that bridge in
This is where Jesus really makes a case for creating the beloved community. And this is the hard part of the gospel.
The former demoniac wanted Jesus to save him from the angry mobs. He wanted to go with Jesus back across the sea of Galilee and face an unknown people, for he knew that they were safer than his own people. The man begged Jesus to let him go with him. “Save me from my own kind, for an unknown enemy is better than the enemy I know in my own family.” Many of us have pleaded that same prayer to Jesus.
And here’s the rub.
Jesus said, no.
He said go home to your “friends.”
Tell them how much God has done for you.
And he did, right to the center of
Jesus called the people who had demeaned and hated him as his friends—his family, his kin, his own kind. He said in essence; “make your former enemies your friends.” That is what the gospel is all about.
Don’t you see, Jesus did not say make the people pay for what they did to you. He did not say let the legions win. He did not say be healed and run away. He said go home and tell your story. Make them recognize you as a member of the community. Make them into your friends. When you do that, you unmask oppression. You expose the blind-spots of people. You make them deal with you in your right mind.
When I go to
But I still have demons that control me. I still have hurts that I hang on to.
Don’t you?
We can’t do the work of reconciliation until we name the demons and trust the one who tells those legions to come out. On this Coming Out Sunday, I invite you to prayerfully think about the demons that might possess you. Think about the legions that hem you in, that control you. Think about those strong ones that hold you back from being all you are meant to be. When you think about those, I would like to invite you to put the name of those demons on the pig-shaped piece of paper which you will find in your bulletin.
Remember that we follow one who is stronger than those demons. This one calls those demons to “come out of us and torment us no more.”
Who are your demons? Your legions?
They don’t have to control you.
They don’t have to keep you by the tombs any longer.
Cast them out, sisters and brothers.
Send them into the swine, where they can torment you no more.
Then you will have the power to live a new, more powerful, focused and maybe even blessed life.
For you are now ready to join your creator in the work of spreading the good news to a world in need.
Name those legions.
Take off its mask.
And cast out those demons.
They need control you no longer.
(We then took the pigs and burned them in a
ritual of release as we sang: “Silence, Frenzied Unclean Spirit”)