Abstract
After the Drama
Drama. Lots and lots of drama in scripture, and especially so today. Elijah fleeing from Jezebel and Ahaz, wishing to die until an angel of the Lord touches him and prepares him for the journey of a lifetime. An uncontrollable, demon-possessed man on the wrong side of the Sea of Galilee, hanging out among the tombs like a character from the Zombie Apocalypse. But they have nothing on Paul, railing at the Galatians for their disloyalty to him and to the gospel he proclaims until he suddenly explodes, as he so often does, not in anger but into doxology.
Many times our tentative answer to the Homiletical Question—What does the Holy Spirit want the people of God to hear from these texts on this occasion?—is in multiple parts. And sometimes preachers flat out get it wrong. A sermon three years ago on this Sunday concluded: God’s love for a hurting world is revealed in the ‘still, small voices’ around us, so our task as God’s people, one in Christ, is to silence the earthquake of empire, the wind of warfare, and the fire of inequality through our prayer and activism, which we can best do by making banners and joining the protest march down Broad Street next Saturday.
Okay. Can’t disagree with the intent, but please. In what universe did scripture anticipate the latest protest march in our towns? Might the theophany to Elijah be, well, the theophany to Elijah, not the outline for a four point sermon on finding God in silence? Is it possible that the healing/exorcism of the man in Gerasa is about the miraculous power of Jesus to heal and save, and not about the “shackles of empire”? And could Paul be talking to the Galatian gathering of believers in that same Jesus, and not about our own divisive issues in the Church today? Of course, on all counts. So then what? How is it that we should then care what these ancient texts are about? Excellent question.
Paul, late in midlife, has learned that all is not well in Galatia. What had seemed settled no longer was, and the consequences for his “gospel”—an admittedly tendentious way of putting it, but the man loved a good argument—was significant. He has lashed out in most of the first half of the letter, and now tries a more conciliatory tone. Unfortunately that tone is lost in most modern translations, so that the “law”, Torah, is depicted as a “disciplinarian” (NRSV), while the Greek, paidagōgos, means “teacher”—customarily a household slave, likely the very sort of first teacher Paul would have had in Tarsus.
He is arguing that now, as believers in Jesus—whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female—we do not need a teacher, a mediator, we have met the thing, the Word, itself. It is not a denigration of Torah, which by all evidence the Apostle rigorously observed until his death, but a celebration, a glorification (doxology) of Christ. Be it a baptismal formula of the earliest believers in Jesus, or a composition of the Apostle, it is glorious—all are one. Hold that thought.
What Jesus is doing in Gerasa is anyone’s guess. He does not stay long, and it does not go well for anyone except for the possessed man. Luke trims Mark’s account but retains the essence—someone completely out of control, out of bounds, outcast, in the very depths of demon possession, is healed. The “legion” is cast out and destroyed, an act and phrasing that Ched Meyers, the late Walter Wink, and others have shown is fraught with political implications, even as the townspeople deal with the economic fallout of losing the “large herd”. The now healed and whole man wants to come with Jesus, but Jesus says, “‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.” That happens nowhere else in the Gospels. Hold that thought too.
A detail can grab a hold and won’t let go. Jesus tells the demoniac to return home. God tells Elijah to return to Damascus. It sounds like some unfinished business, which is also what Paul finds himself dealing with in Galatians. Anybody got some unfinished business at home?
Merde. It is comfortable to keep things 2,000 to 3,000 years away. Safe. But life is not safe, and scripture is definitely not safe. Always remember Annie Dillard’s admonition that if we were honest the ushers would hand out hardhats with the Sunday bulletin, and Eugene Peterson’s caution that if the vestry, wardens, or elders thought we really believed what we were saying they would fire us on the spot. We have many ways to distance ourselves from the claim of scripture on our lives, but once upon a time there was teacher having trouble with the classroom in Galatia, and upon another time someone whose life was completely out of control reached out for help and said, “I beg you, do not torment me.”
Torment me with healing? Yes. Torment me with earthquake, wind, and fire? Yes. Torment me with the divine obliteration of my most prized prejudices? Absolutely. I promised you some drama.
We are tormented. Its form has morphed over the years, so it is not for most of us a question of being tormented by the lack of shelter, food, and clothing, although pray God we never forget our responsibility to those who are. Our demons are a terrifying combination of the global and the personal. Is it safe? No, it is not. We take our lives in our hands every time we step out the door, and every time we double lock the door behind us. We are cut off, petrified and paralyzed, and lacking the social skills to do anything about it even as we use social media to pretend differently. Tormented indeed.
But we have a choice. Helen, to her great credit and relief, made that choice. She reached out, not on a mountain of divine theophany, or in the midst of Galatia-like dispute between apostle and people, but at home. She realized, listening and wondering and praying, that the work she needed to do was with parents and siblings, nieces and nephews. “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Sure, Jesus, just ask me to do the most impossible thing in the world. But Helen did, not with tracts and proof texts, but with grace, and kindness, and the least appreciated of all the virtues, forbearance. Who knew?
Worlds collided, powers and principalities resisted; Helen persisted. And her family was transformed, to their utter surprise: acceptance replaced suspicion, kindness supplanted distrust, and love, a word rarely heard under that roof, began to be tossed about with abandon. I love you. I love you too. Whew.
Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you