A power greater than ourselves…

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7, Year C (June 19, 2022).

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 7C (Track 2)

Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Jordan, New York

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here, and only truth be heard, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Please be seated.

Where to begin. I've actually been thinking about possession for a while. In another part of the Gospel of Luke, as well as in the Gospel of Mark, you might remember, and you might have heard about Mary Magdalene. In the Gospel of Mark, it says, "Mary, from whom seven devils had been cast out." I've been thinking about this for a while because there's this Episcopal priest and scholar, Bruce Chilton, who just wrote this new book, a biography of Mary Magdalene. I heard an interview with him. He said the significance of the seven devils is that seven is the number of perfection. Seven days for creation, seven days in the week. Perfection or wholeness. He said the fact that Jesus cast out seven devils means that she was "no longer under the influence of anything but God."

She was no longer under the influence of anything but God. Imagine what that helped Mary to do. Mary was with Jesus every step of the way. She followed him to the cross. She stood with him as he died. She was the first witness to the Resurrection. The power of what we can do when God is our influence is powerful. Mary was the first Apostle. She's called sometimes in our church, the Apostle to the Apostles, the first witness to the Resurrection. The Gospel today is not about her, but I just wanted to start from that concept of being freed of any influence other than God. That's what true freedom is.

I don't know if I've ever experienced being totally free from any influence other than God. I can certainly name all the influences that are not God, everything from my daily habits, my opinions, my desire to be right. Probably the number one thing that's underneath all of it is fear. Fear is probably the number one influence that drives me that is not God. Does that make sense? Yeah.

I think most of us know. We can at least imagine what it's like to be freed from any influence other than God. But we may never have experienced it. If we have experienced, we probably have not been able to hold onto it. But we also know what false freedom looks like. That's where I want to look at ... I don't have a copy of the bulletin, but look at the Gospel reading. What really struck me was the man was bound and guarded by his community. He was dangerous. He was a danger to himself and others, so he was bound and guarded. The demons would take hold of him, and he would break his chains and run off into the wilderness or into the tombs, and he would take off all his clothes. He's hanging out in the tombs alone.

I thought to myself, "What is this man thinking when he breaks those chains?" I'm free. I'm free. That's false freedom. We think we're breaking the chains that bind us. But the power within us that we think is granting us freedom is actually driving us into further harm and into isolation. In my imagining, I think of folks who have dealt with alcohol or addiction issues. I'm free to... I can do what I like. I'm free. But actually, we are driven. We are possessed.

I promised you when I came here that I would never be partisan. But sometimes, as a church, we are political because we care about the body politic. In this country, we struggle to know what is true freedom. I was here two weeks ago. I wasn't with you last Sunday. Two weeks ago, we talked about children being murdered in school. We talked about people being murdered in a church in California. We talked about 33 people dying in less than six days. Now I'm here again, two weeks later, and this scourge has come to our own Episcopal Church doors.

We already knew that we're part of this, that we are part of this country. When nobody is safe, none of us can be safe, truly. But it's come to our own doors, too. I found myself wondering. If you don't know, there were three people killed in an Episcopal Church in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, on Thursday night. They were having a "Boomer potluck." They were having dinner. A man who'd been in the church before sat down with them. He sat by himself. He was invited to come and sit with... A member got up and invited him to come over. From what I understand, that's when he got out his gun and began to shoot members of the church who were there for fellowship. I don't think it's a mistake that he was by himself.

I think, "What possessed this man?" How free did he think he was? Free and right. Had the right to do these things. What possesses us that we struggle to understand how to create a community where freedom just does not only mean what one individual has the power or the right to do, but also all of our rights to gather together, to care for one another safely. We are not free. We are possessed by violence.

Again, freedom. Today is Juneteenth. Juneteenth is the day that, as a country, we celebrate the end of slavery. It just became a federal holiday last year, which might give you something to think about. It certainly gives me something to think about. That gap between the end of slavery and when we finally came to a country to understand that maybe this is something we ought to celebrate about ourselves. The history of Juneteenth, in case you haven't heard it, the first Juneteenth was celebrated on June 19th in Galveston, Texas, when union soldiers came to that place and informed the community about the Emancipation Proclamation. Do you know when the Emancipation had been issued? Two and a half years before. Now, I bet you that the enslaved people living in Texas knew that, technically, under the law, they were free. Yet for two and a half years, they were still bound or possessed. In a country that hasn't really ever reckoned with how it is that one human being could do this to another human being, we are still possessed by white supremacy and racism.

We say, "Oh, we're free. We've done the work. We're free." But like that man possessed, we are still separated from each other. We're still under the influence of a powerful power that is greater than...

This has been true, I mean, since the Apostle Paul was writing. He said, "The powers and the principalities." He wasn't just talking about an oppressive empire. He was talking about ideals that grip us, sins that grip us. Again, this false freedom, which I think we almost always run around thinking is real freedom. But the clue is, do we find ourselves sitting alone at a table, angry at the people inviting us to a table? Or do we find ourselves suspicious and fearful of the person on the margin of our community? When we find ourselves separated from one another, that's a sign that we're in that false freedom. You can't tell me what to do.

But there is good news. The good news is... There's a Gospel song I love. He goes, "There is a healer." There is a healer who specializes in healing for the soul. In our false freedom, we can be like this demoniac who sees Jesus. He recognizes him as the son of God. But he says, "What have you to do with me?" That's what false freedom looks like. What would God have to do with me? What would love have to do with me? We're talking about Jesus here, who has so much to do with us that he came to be in a body like ours. He came to live and die under an empire, under a place that was possessed by violence and hatred, just like our world. He came to live like us, to die like us, to share our sufferings, and to show us that there is new life.

In coming to live as us and among us, that was God's final word, that there is nothing that can separate us from God. There's nothing that can separate us from God. We might break the chains and run off, but just like Jesus came to that man in the tombs, and his answer to this man saying, "What have you to do with me?" was to heal that man. That's Jesus' answer to us, too. The good news is that there is healing.

Now, there's a community that some of us might know that some of us might be intimately familiar with, the communities of Alcoholics Anonymous and the descendants of that program, that knows a lot about healing and a lot about possession. You might have heard of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I wanted to just wrap up by talking about the first three. Hopefully, I don't get these wrong.

Step one is, "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable." Step two is, "We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." And step three, "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God." Those are the steps of healing. As a country, as a people, as a church, I think we are starting to be at that step one place, where we wake up and we're like, "We are powerless over the hatred and the violence that possess and grip us. We have not been able to manage our way out of this situation on our own." We're waking up like that man, as though he were in the tombs, and he's always all of a sudden like, "What am I doing here? How am I here among the dead, separated from my siblings in Christ?"

Step two: came to believe that there was one who would restore us, that there is one who is not separate from us, who will heal us. And three: we make a decision to put ourselves under the guidance and the care of that God.

I pray that each of us in our own lives and our own hearts, and also as communities, that we will become willing to put ourselves in the care of God and to ask God to show us the way, because I think of that man, clothed and in his right mind, restored to sanity, sitting at the feet of Jesus. May we all be there. Amen.