5th Sunday After Pentecost: Luke 8:26-39
Yet there can also be a quick and dangerous shift. There is a fine line, at least in my own ego, between what serves God and what serves myself. I want to work hard and be liked by all. See it taking place? Hopefully, most of us are aware of these fine lines. They define our individual identity. And we probably know when we begin to cross that line. And from time to time, that line can be crossed so far that we have no other possibility but to turn to God and beg like the man we just encountered, to be left alone. We demand to be stripped down to nothing else than a follower of Jesus Christ. We lose so much of what we desire to be because we have become what everyone else wants us to be.
“Jesus then
asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered
him. They begged him not to order
them to go back into the abyss.”[1]
What is your
name? A powerful question indeed. It is not a question about the man’s
health or his illness. It is not a
question about his physical or emotional wellbeing. The story tells us about his demons, and the response we
hear is, “What is your name?”
Jesus has just finished calming storms and the seas, and he stops
opposite of Galilee. He enters new
territory. The reader is aware of the life changing power of Jesus. So today we fully expect to encounter
Jesus the healer. Instead we
receive a probing question about a man’s identity. Who are you? How
are you known? What is your name?
And the man’s
response is Legion. Not at all
what we expected. Not a name at
all. The actual Greek is the Roman military unit, a collection of 5000 to 6000
soldiers. The answer to the
question suggests that the man has figuratively become a mass of people. He is overwhelmed with the voices of
others. Is he no longer an
individual because he has been consumed by a multitude of personalities? Possibly the Gospel is suggesting that
this causes him to wander, not only being tormented, but becoming a danger and
threat to others. He wanders
naked, unable to live in his home, wandering the tombs of despair, completely
devoid of his own self-identity. Who
is he we ask? He is now a
multitude of everyone else. He is
a man who has been plagued with the images of society that call him to be who
he is not called to be. And the
response is to be tormented, drifting, and utterly lost.
Do we know this
man?
Sometimes I
wonder if there is a temptation in our world to be this man. Out of our own desire to please everyone, we attempt to be
everything for everybody. So often
we take on the identity that someone else demands from us. We want to the perfect spouse or
friend. We want to be the perfect children (well not when I was a teenager, but
before and much later). We want to
be successful in our jobs. We want
our church to experience a renaissance of growth and renewal. Individually, these are all really good
things.
Yet there can also be a quick and dangerous shift. There is a fine line, at least in my own ego, between what serves God and what serves myself. I want to work hard and be liked by all. See it taking place? Hopefully, most of us are aware of these fine lines. They define our individual identity. And we probably know when we begin to cross that line. And from time to time, that line can be crossed so far that we have no other possibility but to turn to God and beg like the man we just encountered, to be left alone. We demand to be stripped down to nothing else than a follower of Jesus Christ. We lose so much of what we desire to be because we have become what everyone else wants us to be.
And this is where
we stand today. We are seeking to
understand what it means to have a self-identity, one that is grounded in the
truth that has been disclosed to us.
Christianity is rather counter cultural because our self-identity is not
unique. Our Gospel story today
reminds us that our only identity is only to be a follower of Jesus. We let go of the multitude of other
expressions we seek, and we turn our lives towards the cross.
I want to tell
you a little story about an Anglican priest named Michael Lapsley. I first
learned of Michael last year when my seminary conferred an honorary degree for
his lifelong work of reconciliation and healing. Michael is from New Zealand yet he moved to South Africa in
1973 to be active in the anti-apartheid movement. He fought for the rights of all and became a chaplain to the
African National Congress. In
1990, less than three months after Nelson Mandela was released from prison,
Michael received a package in the mail containing a bomb. The bomb took off both hands, sent
shrapnel through his body, and destroyed one eye. Yet his voice remained strong and powerful. Michael became an advocate for healing
and opened a trauma center for victims of violence and torture in Cape
Town.
When Michael
celebrates the Eucharist, he stands at the altar and raises the bread and the
wine with two cold metal prosthetic arms.
I share the story of Michael with you because the image of his own
celebration of the mass helps me understand what it means to be stripped of one’s
self. In his celebration, he
physically has lost so much of his physical self that it is visibly clear in a
transformative way that his manual acts represents the identity of Christ. He is broken, wounded, and lost so much
of who he is that all in his presence can more fully see him as a Vicar of
Christ.
Friends, I find
this to be remarkably good news. As we begin our journey together today, many
of you have been on a lifelong faith journey, others somewhat new to the faith,
yet all of us attempting to grow into the identity of the person that God has
called us to be. And we do that by
letting go of all the baggage the covers up a life radiant of Christ. We don’t have to worry about who the
world wants us to be. We don’t
have to worry about making mistakes, the cars we drive, the jobs we
desire. We don’t have to worry
about our exams scores, or grades or who are friends are.
I think at some
fundamental level we all desire healing.
There are times in our life when our souls ache for healing. There are other times when our life
seems to be moving along at the pace and direction that we desire, yet we still
acknowledge that underneath the surface, there is a desire for a deep healing,
a reconciliation with God, that only God can enable. We expect to encounter Jesus the Healer.
Today however,
our Gospel reminds us that healing comes through self-discovery. Healing comes from discarding what is
not at our core and showing forth what lies underneath. Underneath the surface, we are all
nothing more than beloved children of God. It becomes our task then to turn our attention to making our
self-identity grounded in being a disciple of that God. We can hand the baggage of our lives
over and show the world that we belong to God.
And Jesus said,
“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done
for you.” And we can remain right
here, each week moving forward to the altar, Sunday after Sunday, moving a
little closer towards being who God has called us to be, disciples of Christ,
proclaiming throughout the city about the Good News of God in Christ. Isn’t that just what Annunciation is
all about? Isn’t that the identity we are called into?
Sermon Preached
at Church of the Annunciation
June 23, 2013
