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Third Sunday after Trinity
A sermon preached by Revd Maggie Guillebaud on 20 June 2010
"RE-CLOTHE US IN OUR RIGHTFUL MIND"
A sermon preached by Revd Maggie Guillebaud on 20 June 2010
Third Sunday after Trinity
Galatians 2:23-29
Luke 8:26-39
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind.
'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?'
I suspect that few of you will ever have heard of the Upper Cloth Riots of 1827, which took place in Travancore in southern India. At the time they were very serious. What had happened was that an English missionary called Charles Mead, who had waded ashore to join the fledgling mission in Travancore in 1817, had taken on the ruling authorities and managed to get abolished the law whereby Untouchable women were forbidden to cover their breasts. Untouchable women who in the past had attempted to cover their breasts could, as a punishment, have them cut off. This barbaric practice was, in Mead's eyes, even worse than the law itself.
The trouble was that those of the local populace who were not Untouchables, or Dalits as we would call them today, were outraged and plotted to kill Mead, who had to be protected by the local Resident and British troops, and general ensued. I'm happy to report that the riots were quelled, the law upheld, and Mead survived, which is just as well as he was my great, great Grandfather, and without him I would not be standing here today.
Today's Gospel tells the profoundly disturbing story of the Gerasene demoniac. At this distance of time, with our modern way of thinking about mental illness and disordered minds, the subject of demonic possession can seem strange and far removed from our everyday experience. But for the first century Christians it would have been very real: no mental hospitals, no mental health teams, no drugs, no talking therapies.
But as invariably happens in these miracle stories, it is what lies behind these fragments of stories which opens up the texts for us and reveals God's action in the world, revelations which are of far more lasting interest and importance than that of, for example, the exact placing of the miracle - you would be surprised how much has been written as to the exact location of Gerasa, one of which insists that the town lies some twenty miles inland and therefore implies that the swine would have had a terrifically long run before their fatal plunge into the sea. Trying to be too literal can at once both diminish and confuse the message of the story.
No, what we have rather in this miracle apart from a miracle of healing is, I believe, a subtle and complex commentary on power, which works at many levels.
As Walter Wink points out in his book 'The Powers That Be', the New Testament makes a strong connection between political power and the 'powers that be', the supernatural powers which were believed to stand behind them. This is, for example, well exemplified in The Book of Revelation. So let's tease out this strand of power and 'powers that be' in this story.
The demoniac, who is powerless at the hands of his tormentors both spiritual and human, is a Gentile, living in what was known as the Decapolis, an area forbidden to devout Jews. And yet this is the place where Jesus, a rabbi, chooses to exercise his ministry in a most dramatic way. Restored, this Gentile outsider will be the first missionary to the Gentiles. Demonic power has been overcome in by spiritual power.
The demoniac claims that his name is 'Legion', and bearing in mind that one of the putative places where Gersa was said to have been located had been the place of a Roman massacre of 1000 Jewish rebels, we have here another layer of meaning: God, through Jesus, has the power to re-order and heal not just a diseased man, but he has the power to overcome all systems of political power which seek to corrupt and deform communities and lives.
And the demons which enter the swine are sent crashing into the sea, the place of chaos and disorder as experienced by Noah, and a vivid symbol of such for Luke's hearers, a fitting end indeed for the spirits who had tormented and destroyed the poor man's life.
But what I like most about the story is how it Luke tells us that the man became 'clothed and in his right mind', seated at the feet of Jesus. Normality, and presumably cleanliness, restored, and in that phrase about sitting at Jesus' feet, the picture of discipleship, like Paul at the feet of Galmaliel, or Mary, sister of Martha, at the feet too of Jesus. The man who in his madness, unlike the sane, recognized Jesus as the Son of God is now a disciple and left by Jesus to witness to Jesus in his own community.
So what possible relevance can this life-enhancing but distinctly weird story of a miracle have for us today? Let us first look at the challenge to power.
Christians everywhere have for centuries both colluded with power and authority and challenged it by shining the light of the Gospel on it when it got out of hand. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Father Kolbe - all these paid with their lives, as did, and continue to do, countless unsung Christian heroes and heroines throughout the world. Charles Mead got away with challenging the prevailing way of doing things. Many of his fellow Victorian missionaries did not. He went on to champion the education of women - unheard of even in enlightened England except for the lucky few - to set up schools, colleges, a hospital, an invaluable printing press, and he is still revered in that part of India, as we discovered to our delight when Hugh and I visited a couple of years ago. As a result of his and his colleagues' indefatigable energies all those years ago, the province has the highest literacy rate for the sub-continent. Mead for one simply never took no for an answer when it came to promoting and living out the Gospel among his predominantly Dalit congregation.
I believe we too today are called as Christians to challenge power when it becomes self-serving, or what Geoffrey John calls a self-replicating system of domination and oppression. When such authorities become uninterested in matters of social justice, the dignity of the individual, equality of opportunity, and the equality of all before God, then Christians must speak out. On the whole the church is quite good at this, but Christians must always be wary when their own institutions become more interested in self-preservation and in cranking the institutional handle rather than in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and helping the oppressed go free.
Secondly, this miracle speaks to us of the restoration to wholeness of an individual. Not just physical and mental wholeness, but spiritual wholeness too. The demoniac was released from his demons, restored to his community, but more importantly he was made spiritually whole. As in so many Gospel stories, the outsider, the despised, the feared, recognizes Jesus for who he is, accepts him, and is accepted by him. The challenge for us too is to recognize the uncomfortable stranger in our midst, the sand in the shoe we would rather not own, and accept and cherish them and help them to spiritual wholeness.
'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the most High God?' The demoniac's question remains as pertinent now as it did then. Charles Mead answered the question in one way, and devoted his adult life to living the answer. We have, individually and as a church, to work out what it means for us. As we prepare to meet our Lord in bread and wine, let us pray for the courage to live our lives in the light of the answer to that question.
Amen
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Galatians 2:23-29
Luke 8:26-39
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind.
'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?'
I suspect that few of you will ever have heard of the Upper Cloth Riots of 1827, which took place in Travancore in southern India. At the time they were very serious. What had happened was that an English missionary called Charles Mead, who had waded ashore to join the fledgling mission in Travancore in 1817, had taken on the ruling authorities and managed to get abolished the law whereby Untouchable women were forbidden to cover their breasts. Untouchable women who in the past had attempted to cover their breasts could, as a punishment, have them cut off. This barbaric practice was, in Mead's eyes, even worse than the law itself.
The trouble was that those of the local populace who were not Untouchables, or Dalits as we would call them today, were outraged and plotted to kill Mead, who had to be protected by the local Resident and British troops, and general ensued. I'm happy to report that the riots were quelled, the law upheld, and Mead survived, which is just as well as he was my great, great Grandfather, and without him I would not be standing here today.
Today's Gospel tells the profoundly disturbing story of the Gerasene demoniac. At this distance of time, with our modern way of thinking about mental illness and disordered minds, the subject of demonic possession can seem strange and far removed from our everyday experience. But for the first century Christians it would have been very real: no mental hospitals, no mental health teams, no drugs, no talking therapies.
But as invariably happens in these miracle stories, it is what lies behind these fragments of stories which opens up the texts for us and reveals God's action in the world, revelations which are of far more lasting interest and importance than that of, for example, the exact placing of the miracle - you would be surprised how much has been written as to the exact location of Gerasa, one of which insists that the town lies some twenty miles inland and therefore implies that the swine would have had a terrifically long run before their fatal plunge into the sea. Trying to be too literal can at once both diminish and confuse the message of the story.
No, what we have rather in this miracle apart from a miracle of healing is, I believe, a subtle and complex commentary on power, which works at many levels.
As Walter Wink points out in his book 'The Powers That Be', the New Testament makes a strong connection between political power and the 'powers that be', the supernatural powers which were believed to stand behind them. This is, for example, well exemplified in The Book of Revelation. So let's tease out this strand of power and 'powers that be' in this story.
The demoniac, who is powerless at the hands of his tormentors both spiritual and human, is a Gentile, living in what was known as the Decapolis, an area forbidden to devout Jews. And yet this is the place where Jesus, a rabbi, chooses to exercise his ministry in a most dramatic way. Restored, this Gentile outsider will be the first missionary to the Gentiles. Demonic power has been overcome in by spiritual power.
The demoniac claims that his name is 'Legion', and bearing in mind that one of the putative places where Gersa was said to have been located had been the place of a Roman massacre of 1000 Jewish rebels, we have here another layer of meaning: God, through Jesus, has the power to re-order and heal not just a diseased man, but he has the power to overcome all systems of political power which seek to corrupt and deform communities and lives.
And the demons which enter the swine are sent crashing into the sea, the place of chaos and disorder as experienced by Noah, and a vivid symbol of such for Luke's hearers, a fitting end indeed for the spirits who had tormented and destroyed the poor man's life.
But what I like most about the story is how it Luke tells us that the man became 'clothed and in his right mind', seated at the feet of Jesus. Normality, and presumably cleanliness, restored, and in that phrase about sitting at Jesus' feet, the picture of discipleship, like Paul at the feet of Galmaliel, or Mary, sister of Martha, at the feet too of Jesus. The man who in his madness, unlike the sane, recognized Jesus as the Son of God is now a disciple and left by Jesus to witness to Jesus in his own community.
So what possible relevance can this life-enhancing but distinctly weird story of a miracle have for us today? Let us first look at the challenge to power.
Christians everywhere have for centuries both colluded with power and authority and challenged it by shining the light of the Gospel on it when it got out of hand. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Father Kolbe - all these paid with their lives, as did, and continue to do, countless unsung Christian heroes and heroines throughout the world. Charles Mead got away with challenging the prevailing way of doing things. Many of his fellow Victorian missionaries did not. He went on to champion the education of women - unheard of even in enlightened England except for the lucky few - to set up schools, colleges, a hospital, an invaluable printing press, and he is still revered in that part of India, as we discovered to our delight when Hugh and I visited a couple of years ago. As a result of his and his colleagues' indefatigable energies all those years ago, the province has the highest literacy rate for the sub-continent. Mead for one simply never took no for an answer when it came to promoting and living out the Gospel among his predominantly Dalit congregation.
I believe we too today are called as Christians to challenge power when it becomes self-serving, or what Geoffrey John calls a self-replicating system of domination and oppression. When such authorities become uninterested in matters of social justice, the dignity of the individual, equality of opportunity, and the equality of all before God, then Christians must speak out. On the whole the church is quite good at this, but Christians must always be wary when their own institutions become more interested in self-preservation and in cranking the institutional handle rather than in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and helping the oppressed go free.
Secondly, this miracle speaks to us of the restoration to wholeness of an individual. Not just physical and mental wholeness, but spiritual wholeness too. The demoniac was released from his demons, restored to his community, but more importantly he was made spiritually whole. As in so many Gospel stories, the outsider, the despised, the feared, recognizes Jesus for who he is, accepts him, and is accepted by him. The challenge for us too is to recognize the uncomfortable stranger in our midst, the sand in the shoe we would rather not own, and accept and cherish them and help them to spiritual wholeness.
'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the most High God?' The demoniac's question remains as pertinent now as it did then. Charles Mead answered the question in one way, and devoted his adult life to living the answer. We have, individually and as a church, to work out what it means for us. As we prepare to meet our Lord in bread and wine, let us pray for the courage to live our lives in the light of the answer to that question.
Amen