disciples | Michael Valliant

You are witnesses of these things

Background: At the healing service on Wednesday, April 10 and for the Zoom prayer service and discussion on Sunday, this is the text/basis for a homily and discussion we had on Luke 24:36b-48, where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his Resurrection, per Luke’s account. (artwork: “Jesus’ Appearance While the Apostles are at Table,” by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319))

“You are witnesses of these things.”

Today’s reading gives us Luke’s version of a story similar to what we heard from John’s Gospel last week. The disciples are gathered in a room and Jesus appears to them. In the course of their encounter, they go from being terrified and afraid, thinking they are seeing a ghost, to being witnesses, inspired and charged up to share their testimony.

How does this change happen?

Does Jesus make some rousing speech? Does he scientifically explain what happened to him?

He gives them his body. He says “look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see. That’s a line I want to let sink in for a bit.

Over the different Gospels we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me” and “Come and see,” now this is the most personal, most intimate invitation he could give, “Touch me and see.”

They are starting to come around, still not sure about all this—they know he died, there is no way this can be… Jesus looks around and says, “Got anything to eat?” And then eats fish to show them he’s legit.

I love the encounters with the risen Jesus in Luke—this story and the Road to Emmaus—there is a light-heartedness about Jesus, there is humor even in the serious work that he is there to do.

In light of the Resurrection, everything takes on new meaning. In the Road to Emmaus story, it’s just two disciples walking and Jesus comes upon them, and they walk and talk and he teaches them and then breaks bread with them, and their lives and hearts are changed. In a way that didn’t happen before. Things are different.

In today’s reading, for the disciples it is conversation, it is Jesus’s bodily presence, it is teaching, all things they have experienced before, but this is different. This changes everything.

I want to ask a question here and see what you think. Why does Jesus come back to his disciples? What’s his purpose in appearing to them and spending time with them?

To fulfill his mission; to do what he said he was going to do. To show them he is who he said he was; to show them that love conquers death.

It’s also this: to give them living and credible proof. To help them take the next step in their learning.

He is going to ascend and it is going to be up to them. His life, his love, his teaching, he is placing it in their hands to pass on to others.

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,” … he goes back over what he told them before he was killed, but it all has a new significance; it means something different now.

Then he opens their mind to understand the Scriptures. Wow, that would be a lovely gift, wouldn’t it? Hey, Jesus, what does this mean? How do I make sense out of this? Like a phone-a-friend lifeline to Jesus.

In coming back, in appearing to the disciples, in teaching them, and being with them, in them touching him, Jesus says:

“You are witnesses of these things.”

If the disciples aren’t credible witnesses, it will never work. If they don’t believe, if they aren’t convinced and convicted, how will anyone else come to believe?

But not just credible witnesses, they have to be fired up, they have to be motivated, they have to want nothing more than to share their testimony, to share the good news. It has to be part of their core purpose.

Imagine if after Jesus leaves, the disciples are sitting on this amazing, life-giving story that can change the world, and they decide, “Okay, well, we’ve got this church here, a house church, and if anyone new comes in, we’ll tell them. That’s what it means to be a disciple, right—that we proclaim the word within the walls of our specific church, we celebrate Communion, we pray for others, and Jesus is happy, right?”

Jesus knows his work, his purpose, his life, his love for us hangs on the disciples becoming apostles—being sent out to spread the good news. So he supercharges them, gives them everything they need to succeed, including the Holy Spirit (that comes in Luke, Part II, Acts).

Let’s look at how Jesus gives them what they need in this story. He doesn’t come in and say, “Great to see you guys, would you please pick up your Bibles and turn to page 42 for today’s lesson.”

He shows them his scars, he says, “touch me and see,” he eats with them. He is vulnerable, intimate, and authentic. Explaining Scripture doesn’t come until later.

I love this quote from Debie Thomas in the book we studied last year, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says:

“Maybe when the world looks at us to see if OUR faith is authentic and trustworthy, it needs to see our scars and hungers, too. Our vulnerability, not our immunity. Our honesty, not our pretenses to perfection. What would it look like for us to offer our stories of scars and graces, hungers, and feasts, in testimony to this world? How might our embodied lives become a way of love? Naming our hungers, widening our tables, sharing our scars and our feasts—what if THIS is practicing resurrection? Maybe more is at stake in a piece of fish, or a glass of water, or a loaf of bread, than we have imagined.”

Another question I want to ask you, and if it is something you feel like you have an answer for or want to talk about, wonderful, if not, ponder it over the week:

What is YOUR witness?

What is it from your life, your scars, your hunger, your passions, your relationships that might speak to others?

We are all different witnesses. The good news is the good news, but we connect to it in different ways, and we connect to other people in different ways. My witness, my testimony, is different than yours.

Part of this whole line of thinking came to me yesterday while I was skateboarding. I had been sitting at my desk for the afternoon, I needed to go to the grocery store, and there is a paved trail down next to Easton Point that goes across Papermill Pond, right on the way to Harris Teeter or Target. I wanted to stretch my legs.

And I got to thinking that the joy that I get from cruising on a skateboard, a joy I found when I was 13 and almost 40 years later is still there, is part of my witness. Writing is part of my witness. Discussing the Bible, laughing, asking questions, building friendships while wondering about Scripture, is part of my witness. Sitting outside in nature and feeling like a part of Creation is a part of my witness.

What things are a part of yours?

I want to mention one more aspect to this Resurrection story. Jesus is changed. The disciples are changed. Something has happened, they have received something from Jesus that has made them witnesses.

What is it and how can it help our witness? This is how Debie Thomas puts it:

“The resurrection is not a platitude or a line in a creed. The resurrection is fire in our bones, steel in our blood, impetus for our feet, a song of lamentation, protest, and ferocious hope for our souls. The resurrection is God’s insistence that we speak, stand, and work for life in a world desperate for fewer crosses, fewer graves, fewer landscapes littered with the desolate and the dead.”

This is the season of the Resurrection. This is the Easter season of new life. That power and love and energy is for us, it is supposed to be a part of our witness. Is it a part of yours?

Time to Follow

Background: This is a homily given in response to a reading from Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 1:14-20, where John the Baptist is arrested, Jesus begins his ministry proclaiming the word, and calls his first disciples to follow him.

How many people have a favorite character—movies, books, TV? Anyone want to name them? And how many of you can tell me his/her first lines, the first thing they say in the story?

My favorite character of all time in any media is Chris Stevens, the radio DJ from the 1990s TV show “Northern Exposure.” His first words, he is on air, and he relates a coming-of-age story of breaking into a house and while he is stealing a gold-leaf pen and a silver humidor, he finds a copy of the Complete Works of Walt Whitman and it changes his life. If you watched the show, that’s a solid indication of his whole character.

In Mark’s Gospel, these are the first words Jesus says in the story, “The time has come (or the time is fulfilled), and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Hard to have first words that are more indicative of who someone is. There is the key, there is the game plan, spelled out in front of us.

It sounds very similar to what John the Baptist was saying, right? Jesus is continuing where John left off, after John was arrested. Jesus’s ministry begins as John’s ends. But there is a nuanced difference in their messages. John was saying, “repent, and wait for the one who is to come.” Jesus says, “the time has come, repent,” and then “follow me.”

We’ve got just six verses here, but there is a lot going on. Let’s dig in a bit. First, let’s look at TIME.

The word Mark uses for “time” as Jesus talks is the Greek word, “kairos,” which means something special is going on, not the word “chronos,” which describes sequential time, the way we tend to think about it.

This is how rabbi, New Testament scholar, and author Amy-Jill Levine puts it in her book “The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News”—

“Kairos time is on God’s watch; it’s not a minute-by-minute concern but a recognition something special is happening. When I look at my watch, I can do more than determine how much time I have to finish a project. I can think about God’s time: what should I have done that I failed to do? What can I do to make every moment more meaningful?”

Fr. Bill Ortt (our recently retired rector and mentor) talks about chronos as minutes and kairos as moments. I’ve always appreciated that as a kind of short-hand way to remember the difference. And I love that kairos is among Jesus’s first words here. JESUS is moving us from MINUTES into MOMENTS. He’s clueing us in that something special is taking place, that this is something we want to pay attention to. And as he begins to call his first disciples, it’s something that they want to sign on for.

Let’s remember that we are in Epiphany, a season all about the manifestation of Christ to the people of the world. If you look up definitions of the word epiphany with a lower case “e,” Merriam Webster gives you: 1) “a sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something,” or 2) “an intuitive grasp of reality through something simple or striking.”

Epiphany.

I’ve come across a book that has me thinking more about how this whole opening chapter of Mark works. We know that Mark is:

the shortest of the Gospels,
the earliest of the four Gospels,
that Mark doesn’t add superfluous details, he tells the story straight,
and that if he had a copy editor in today’s world, they’d have the red pen all over the word “immediately” or “straightway” for how many times he uses it.

For the record, Mark uses “immediately” more than 40 times, more often than the rest of the New Testament combined. He is stressing the the urgency of what is happening.

Mark’s Gospel is also referred to by many scholars as “a passion narrative with an extended introduction.” Mark goes through Jesus’s teaching and healing, his ministry, and gets us to the point: his arrest, crucifixion, suffering, death, and empty tomb. We’re told that’s the meat of the story for Mark.

Saying that, in a book called “Mark As Story,” by David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, they turn that idea around. They look at the opening of Mark’s Gospel and say what is happening here is the arrival of God’s rule.

“The arrival of God’s rule—the heavens opening, the defeat of Satan in the desert, and the announcement by Jesus—is the key watershed event in the narrative (storytelling) world. Mark, then, may be described as “the arrival of the rule of God with an extended denouement (fancy literary word meaning the final outcome, when everything comes together and is made clear)—that is, all events in the story are manifestations and consequences of God’s activity in establishing God’s reign.”

Mark’s whole Gospel is a series of epiphanies, or an ephipany working itself out, clarifying itself over the story. Jesus’s incarnation is the Epiphany. And Mark is rushing us headlong into this realization.

The world Jesus has come into, has come to change, has come to save, is moving in the wrong direction. The priorities are wrong, morality is wrong, the actions of those in power are wrong, even the sense of time needs help, and he’s got to set things in proper order. There is work to be done… immediately.

So right away, Jesus spells out what has to happen: “The time has come and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the good news.”

For our way of thinking today, one of the most problematic, confusing words and phrases in the Gospels is “the kingdom of God.” When you hear the word “kingdom,” what do you picture? A place. Somewhere to go. Kingdom of God? Sweet, let’s go! How do we get there? Who’s driving?

The way it was meant is better said as the reign of God. The king-ship of God. My other favorite Fr. Bill-ism is, “the kingdom of God is RELATIONAL, not locational.” It’s a way of being, a way of relating, not a place to go.

Let’s think about Jesus’s words that way, “The reign of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.” What that reign looks like, Jesus is going to show them. How compelling is it? Compelling enough to get fishermen to walk away from their livelihood, their families, and everything they know when Jesus walks by and says, “Follow me.”

“Follow me” is the a-ha moment, the sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of who Jesus is for his first followers. Jesus’s presence and his invitation or command are all the epiphany they need. And the rest of the story will break it wide open.

If we move our attention to the beginning of the narrative instead of racing our way to the passion, what does that do for the story? Here’s what our friends in “Mark As Story” say:

“This shift in focus to the beginning of the narrative does not diminish the power and climactic force of the execution of Jesus—an event that reveals more fully the nature of God’s reign and seals a covenant with all who would embrace God’s rule… the shift does place the entire narrative firmly in the broader framework of God’s activity in establishing God’s rule over all of life.”

Here’s Jesus at the beginning: It’s time. God’s reign, not the world’s, not Caesar’s. It’s here. Stop what you are doing, you are going the wrong way. Turn around. Believe in this good news. Want to see for yourself? Want to be a part of it? Follow me.

“Stars and Sea at Night,” by Bill Jacklin RA (monoprint), Royal Academy of Arts exhibition

Everything that happens in the story from there shows us manifestations and consequences of what it looks like, of what happens, in establishing God’s reign.

Mark’s story itself is an epiphany for those who first heard it and for us. He means for it, in itself, the telling of it and the hearing of it, to be a transformational experience, showing us, calling us to be a part of establishing God’s reign, in our own lives, and those of others.

Jesus’s call to “follow me” wasn’t just for the first disciples. It’s for us.

Will we?

Sounds like a good way to spend our time. Kairos time. God’s time.

The time has come.

Amen.

Believe

Lead in: I am in my second year of seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are going to school. April 15-16, with a last minute switch, was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for April 16 was John 20:19-31, which most people know for “Doubting Thomas,” the disciple who won’t believe that Jesus has been resurrected until he touches Jesus’s wounds for himself. We are all a bit like Thomas. The reading is where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his death.

“Do Not Doubt, But Believe”

I’m a big fan of John’s Gospel. On the one hand, he’s a bit like the Rodney Dangerfield of the gospels—not enough respect to get his own lectionary year like the synoptic Gospels; on the other hand, every lectionary year is made better because we have John peppered throughout them.

For John, “believing” is a big deal. He uses the word “believe” 98 times in his Gospel, always as a verb, as something active and dynamic. He tells us at the end of today’s reading that these stories are written that we might believe that Jesus is the Messiah and through believing have life in his name.

Today’s reading is John’s version of Jesus giving the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Remember, John didn’t write Acts, that was Luke, so we don’t get the Pentecost telling of the story here.

There are scholars who say that John’s Gospel is the one most likely to have originated with an eyewitness account. We read the author describing himself as being there at the crucifixion and later, on the beach with Peter and the others. There are details in John that we don’t find in the others.

Let’s look at two stories of the giving of the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, he says that after investigating everything he wants to write an orderly account of all that went on, talking to everyone he can. Each Gospel sets out its witness to the good news of Jesus Christ, and I love Luke (he gives us the prodigal son, the Road to Emmaus, etc). But when I think humorously about the way stories get passed down over time, there is some part of me that thinks about Luke asking everyone for their recollection of Pentecost:

“And there was FIRE! Fire? Yeah, FIRE! It was intense! And then people were speaking in tongues, remember that? And people thought we were drunk, and Peter was like, noooo waaaayy, it’s only 9:00 in the morning…”

In Luke’s telling of the story in Acts, it is a public event, a spectacle.

In contrast, listen to John’s account:

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’”

Maybe it’s because I tend prefer being understated, but I love the simple, straightforward, intimate and understated way John gives us the Holy Spirit. No crowds, no fire, no speaking in tongues. Jesus breathed on them and gave them a new Spirit. A new life in Him. A life that has overcome death.

Does that sound familiar? This is from Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 7:

“then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”

I love that John sees what Jesus is doing and connects it back to the beginning (remember he starts his whole Gospel account with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”) John wants to make sure we don’t miss what’s happening. This is new life, that comes through Jesus, which is giving us a direct connection to God.

I get excited about the Holy Spirit.

But let’s backtrack to where the disciples are in the reading and what’s going on.

Jesus has been arrested, crucified, and was buried in a tomb. The disciples scattered, afraid for their lives. Just before today’s reading, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and found the stone rolled away, she ran and got Peter and the one whom Jesus loved (who we think of as John, the author) and they went in and found the tomb empty. And then the men left and went home. All Peter and John saw was the empty tomb.

Mary Magdalene stuck around, talked to angels, then encountered Jesus, who told her to go and tell the disciples, which she did. But none of them have seen Jesus for themselves yet. They might dismiss her story as being unbelievable story, saying she was overly excited at finding the tomb empty—she could have been hallucinating.

Now, they were hiding out together in a locked room, hoping not to be found or found out. As writer and pastor Frederick Buechner describes it:

“They had bolted the door and were listening for the dreaded sound of footsteps on the stair when suddenly Jesus was among them. He stood in their midst—always in their midst, this man, turning up when they least expected him—and told them to breathe his breath, his holy breath and spirit, so that they could go out into the world again and perform his holy work.”

6th century mosaic in the Church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna

Knowing that they are going to be scared out of their wits, Jesus’s first words to them are “Peace be with you.”

He reassures them. He shows them his hands and his side, so that they know it’s him and that this is real. And the disciples rejoiced. Of course they did. If there are scenes out of Scripture that you would want to be there for—this has to be one of them! This is massive. It’s transformative. It’s life changing. It’s death conquering.

Jesus gives the disciples what they need to believe. And then he gives them his Spirit and gives them work to do.

But Thomas isn’t there. The other disciples tell him what happened, but he isn’t having it. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hand and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

On the one hand, we can say, sure, everyone talks a big game when Jesus isn’t standing there, just you wait… But I think this is true to life. How many of us, when hearing friends tell us an unbelievable story, decide, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Even if it comes from people we trust, we still want proof. Thomas wants the same experience the others had.

So what does Jesus do? He comes back. He shows up again, just for Thomas. He gives Thomas what he needs to believe. Jesus doesn’t scold him, he is there for him and tells Thomas, “Do not doubt, but believe.”

Notice, Thomas doesn’t get kicked out of the club for doubting. That is one of the wonderful aspects of this reading—there is room in our faith for doubt. It is okay to want to see for ourselves. It’s okay not to believe just because everyone else tells you to. Jesus works with Thomas.

And Thomas believes; seeing is believing as they say. Jesus then delivers the showstopper of lines, a line so important to faith: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

That’s us. I don’t know about you—I haven’t encountered the bodily resurrected Jesus in the flesh. But I have come to believe. How?

Think of the work Jesus is asking the disciples to take on. To help people believe, when they haven’t seen him for themselves.

Here is Frederick Buechner again:

“The risen Christ is risen in his glory, but he is also Christ risen in the hearts of those, who although they have never touched the mark of the nails, have been themselves so touched by him, that they believe anyway. However faded and threadbare, what they have seen of him is at least enough to get their bearings by.”

Believe. What does that mean here? Is that an intellectual affirmation? Is it convincing ourselves and never doubting? Is this just a box we have to check off? I don’t think so.

For the disciples, their belief was foundational to the mission Jesus gave them. If they didn’t believe, what kind of witnesses would they be? If they don’t believe, why would anyone they meet want to believe?

Jesus’s life and love and good news are dependent on the disciples to continue to spread it out into the world. He was inviting them into an intimate, dynamic relationship with him.

And the same thing is true of us now. If people are going to come to believe in Jesus, it probably won’t be because they have had a bodily encounter with the resurrected Christ; it will be through the Holy Spirit, which is carried and passed on by the NEW body of Christ, the church, US.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in his book, “Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief,” talks about a young Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum. She was in her 20s when the Germans occupied Holland. She watched her world turn into an utter nightmare. She was sent to a concentration camp at Westerbork before being shipped to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

She wrote in her diary: “There must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?”

Williams describes her attitude and commitment like this:

“She decided to occupy a certain place in the world, a place where others could somehow connect with God through her. She took responsibility for making God credible in the world. She took responsibility for God’s believability.”

What if THAT is what believing in God, believing in Jesus, means. That with and through our lives, we take responsibility for God’s believability. How many of us would say that we believe if that were the standard?

That’s what Jesus is asking of his disciples. But he doesn’t leave them on their own to do it, he doesn’t abandon them. He shows up. He brings them peace. He breathes his Holy Spirit into them.

The fact that we are gathered here in a church worshipping and loving Jesus, trying to understand his life and example, and bearing witness to the good news of his Resurrection says that the early disciples, with God’s help and the Holy Spirit, were up for the task.

I wonder: are we?

Let me give a brief witness. Over the past month, my daughter Ava has been in and out of A.I. DuPont Hospital, three times, first for surgery, then with multiple ambulance rides for seizures she couldn’t come out of. She’s home now and we’re hopeful she’ll be back in school this week and going to her senior prom next weekend. But epilepsy is challenging at times, and it’s been a rough, slow, frustrating go of things.

Not once going through it, have we, or I felt alone. Through so many text messages, phone calls, people checking in before or after classes, the school systems offering help, prayers, hugs, you name it–I have felt the Holy Spirit and God’s love at work through friends, through this congregation, through family, sometimes through strangers–volunteers at the Ronald McDonald House or, nurses, doctors, and people working at the Einstein Brother’s Bagels at the hospital, who can tell you are beyond tired this morning.

My experience is not unique. One of the things that touches my heart the most is to hear how people have shown up, how people have been there, how people have been LOVE in the lives of others. The way we love one another, even as Jesus loves us, can help make God believable for others.

We can see the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world. We can be the Holy Spirit being God’s love in the world.

In the dark and confusing times that we are in the middle of in the world right now, can our belief, can our lives, can our love, be a witness for God’s believability in the world?

Yes, we can be that witness. Yes, God’s love, moving through us, through our belief, and our lives, can be credible in the world. That’s how the Holy Spirit works. No fire required.

Amen.

Our Iona Eastern Shore seminary class with professor, Fr. Dan Dunlap and guest presenter, Dr. Tom Long, one of the United States foremost preachers. That is how we started Saturday.

A Sermon in the Books

Prologue

Sunday morning, I walked up to the church about an hour before the 8:00am service. The evening before, I preached a sermon–still a very new-to-me experience–on Luke’s gospel story of Jesus healing a man possessed by demons.

Christ Church Easton has multiple worship services each weekend and Saturday is the most casual. People in the service, priest included, wear regular clothes. I was myself–talking in jeans and a Hawaiian-ish shirt and Vans. On Sundays, those serving are vested/robed. I was on my way inside to get robed up for three Sunday services.

The sunlight was dancing in the garden next to the church and I almost walked by it, feeling like a needed to be on task. And then I thought about being in the moment, for as many moments as we can, and I stopped and walked over. And perched on a flower was a dragonfly, who stayed, and didn’t fly away.

The dragonfly, the sunlight, and the flowers set the tone. Be in the moment.

A little background.

This past year, I became a first-year seminary student discerning a call to the priesthood. I’ve been a full-time church educator for the past five years. Our rector/pastor is giving a co-worker/fellow seminarian and I opportunities to preach, each of us being scheduled one weekend every other month. We have an incredible congregation/community, who are encouraging us.

So there’s that.

In the Episcopal Church, what the readings are each week comes from a common lectionary, which rotates over a three-year cycle. Generally speaking, an Episcopal service on a given weekend anywhere you go, will likely have the same Gospel reading. And if you are preaching, that is the Gospel you want to make sense of for folks in some way.

The reading for my preaching weekend was Luke 8:26-39, the story of Jesus healing the Gerasene demoniac. You know, a story that anyone would be keen to talk about 🙂

But as I thought about the reading during the week, an angle presented itself–talking about why a seemingly dated, archaic reading, which to many people might not seem to be at all relevant, actually matters here and now.

So I set out to look at demon possession through a modern lens. And here is what I came up with.

Personally, I retain more by reading than I do from listening. So the text is below. A friend was able to record the sermon portion of our 10:00am traditional music service, which you can watch here. Bear in mind that this is among the earliest sermons of someone not inclined to speak in front of gatherings of people.

An alternative to being demon possessed

Leading up to today’s reading, in Luke’s Gospel story, Jesus has been walking through cities and towns “proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God.”

The crowds are everywhere around him, so much so that when his mother and brothers come to see him, they can’t even get to him.

So Jesus does something that plenty of people on the Eastern Shore can relate to: he gets on a boat.

And he says, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” Jesus falls asleep in the boat, and Luke gives us his account of the storm coming up, the disciples waking Jesus and Jesus calming the storm. The disciples are blown away that he can even command the wind and the waves.

So in our reading for today this boat ride takes them to the country of the Gerasenes. Jesus has gone over to the other side of the lake to get away from the crowds. And as soon as he steps on land, a man with demons meets him.

The funny thing, reading about the demon-possessed people in Scripture is that I think we dismiss these stories. Because we don’t talk like that anymore. Most of us aren’t worried about demons when we go into the grocery store or walk across town. So we say, okay, this story doesn’t apply to me. It’s not relevant.

Let’s think for a bit on this man and his demons. Here is a guy who is not in his right mind. His mind has been taken over by so many demons, they identify themselves as “Legion.” Here is a man on the opposite side of the lake from Galilee, meaning he is a gentile, not Jewish, which we further see by the fact that there are pigs around, which anyone Jewish wouldn’t have had. But what this area did have in common with Galilee, Jerusalem, the whole region, is that it had been taken over by Rome. And legions of Roman soldiers. So here is a man whose people had been conquered by foreign powers, and whose lives would have been affected accordingly. We might say that he was dealing with the spirit of the times.

Do we feel like the spirit of the times, of our times, might take over our minds sometimes? As Fr. Bill mentioned last week, do we feel like an unholy trinity of fear, leading to anger, leading to violence might carry us away with it sometimes?

Social media offers us more than a peek inside something like this. I have seen people who I know to be loving, caring, do anything for anyone people, say things on social media that certainly point to something taking over their minds and hearts—things full of blame and hate and anger and fear. Those are things, especially when they take over people who are otherwise loving and giving and caring, that lead us nowhere we want to go. And I get it, I feel those things too, I can be overcome with thoughts and feelings I don’t know where they came from and I wish they weren’t there.

We have dear friends and brothers and sisters at Christ Church who have shared their addiction stories and their journeys in recovery. Addiction is a disease that takes over someone, in a way that someone in Jesus’s time might well have described as demon possessed.

And when we look around the country at a new mass shooting each week, now including St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Alabama—it is not hard to make the case that we have people, here and now, who are not in their right minds; we are struggling and trying to understand and to help people through mental health crises, to help them know that they are loved and valued, at times when they are having trouble finding themselves.

We can see all around us that there are forces at work that have nothing to do with love, grace, forgiveness, or God.

All of this is to say, when we run into the demon possessed in Scripture, don’t be so quick to dismiss these stories—they still happen today, to us, just as much—with things taking over the way we think, feel, and act—which cause us to act in ways we normally wouldn’t.

And so in today’s reading, what do we see immediately with Jesus: these demons know him, and know that he has authority over them. They know he can get rid of them. Which he does and puts this man back into his right mind. And that is a great line, I think, when the people came out to see what happened, “they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

And then there is one of the most curious, interesting lines. Seeing this guy back in his right mind, how did this make the people feel? “They were afraid.”

Let’s circle back to our times. If we know that love conquers all; if somewhere in our hearts, we know we could live differently, be more loving, but we would have to put down this armor, this way of seeing and being that we’ve become accustomed to… if we were asked to stop blaming people we disagree with, if we were asked to love our neighbor who lives differently or votes differently than we do: would we? If we are asked to love and forgive and do something about the state of the world around us—will we?

If we get so used to looking at the world through certain lenses, taking those lenses off, and trying on a different way of seeing, of living, can be scary. It requires us to change. It asks something of us.

So into this demon-possessed way of being, Jesus comes, and frees this man from the legion of things that cloud his heart and mind. Jesus, with power and authority, gives him, and gives us, an alternative way to be. A different way of seeing things and being in the world.

Jesus restores the man who was possessed by demons. And in the next chapter of Luke’s Gospel, we see Jesus calling the twelve together and giving them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases and sending them out.

We are called to be disciples of Jesus, right? I am going to speak for probably most of us, when I say I don’t know how well equipped I am for casting out demons and healing the sick. But there is some good news for those of us who don’t feel up to those tasks. And this season of Pentecost gives us a clue: He hasn’t left us alone to do this kind of work. He has sent us the Holy Spirit as our advocate, as our comforter, as our helper. We are never alone, especially when we are doing the work that God has given us to do.

A number of us have begun a three-week study of former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’ book “Being Disciples.” And at the end of the first chapter, Williams has this profound thing to say about discipleship. He says:

“A disciple is, as we have seen, simply a learner; and this, ultimately, is what the disciple learns: how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.”

We are learning how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.

No pressure, right?

Let me tell you a quick story. Over the past month and a half, I have taken 20 minutes each morning for centering prayer. What that is, at base, is breathing, clearing my mind, and being in the presence of God. One of the ways I try to keep that focus is when I breath in, I think about breathing in God’s love. And that makes me smile. And when I breathe out, I think about filtering God’s love through me, and breathing out compassion, empathy, and love for others. And if I sit with that for a minute, and wrap my mind around spending more time breathing love into the world, than I do fear, or hate, or anger, that should certainly change how I act, how I see other people, and how I treat others.

This is maybe the exact opposite of demon possession. Instead of taking in all these things of the world that keep us from God, I try to take in, to dwell on, to feel God’s love and grace.

I’m not saying that centering prayer is the answer to evil in the world. But let’s ask ourselves, what are those things we can do to help us focus on God, on love, on healing and forgiveness, rather than the different forces at work that want to keep us from the power of God’s love.

Rowan Williams has a few suggestions as to things that can help. He says: 1) attending to Scripture, following the Gospels so we can better understand this life we are called to live. 2) He says coming together to worship, to baptize, to celebrate Communion together and to welcome others to do the same. 3) And he says looking to the lives of others around us that help us to have faith. We need each other for that, to help us focus on God.

And so what if all of us who think of ourselves as Christians spent even a little time each day trying to focus on God’s gifts for us; on God’s grace and his love, in whatever ways we find most nourishing.

And then what if, by our breath, by our thoughts, by our actions, we tried to put more love into the world—taking in God’s love for us—and putting that love, in our own special and unique ways, into our community, into our world. Would that make a difference? And if it would, are we willing to put the time in, to put the work in, to do it?

We are called to be those people. We are called to be that community. We are called to further this work.

Today’s story of a demon-possessed man should resonate with us in today’s world, if we use the language of our time. And Jesus having the power to heal, to drive out the demons that tormented this man, and many others, is still as true today as it was then.

The world we live in is a frightening and heart-breaking place too much of the time. Helping to set it right, helping to be places where the acts of God can happen in the world is the work we have been given to do.

But we don’t do it alone. We have each other, and we have the Holy Spirit. And that is enough.

Amen.

Oh, also. It helps to wear your preaching Vans.