Sermon: The Man Named Legion -- who are you? who? Who?
My fascination
with The Man Named Legion began in the summer of 1980. I was newly graduated with an M.Div. from
Emmanuel College, as was my wife at the time.
Long years of schooling were finally over and finally I was on the
threshold of becoming a minister with my own pastoral charge. We moved that summer from Toronto to the
lovely little town of Paisley in Bruce County – me to serve two Baptist
congregations, she, a two-point United Church charge.
From the outside
and on the surface life seemed good, full of promise, and hopeful.
But there was
another side to the story, and to the state of my soul. For me it was not a simple move to Paisley,
because after graduating in May and before starting work in September, I was
doing a three-month pastoral training internship at Queen Street Mental Health
Centre in Toronto. It meant that much of
the summer I lived in a friend’s house in Toronto weekdays and drove up to
Paisley weekends. Also, after three
years of marriage I knew I was still a beginner in openness and intimate
relationship, the days at the Mental Health Centre presented their own deep
challenges to my sense of myself as person and minister, and I already sensed
that pastoral ministry with two small, rural, fairly conservative Baptist
churches was going to be a challenge for me as well.
I was outside my
comfort zone, far from my childhood home and faith and sources of security, with
few friends and sources of support, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to be all
the new things I didn’t really know how to be, and manage all the new demands,
expectations and voices that I didn’t really know how to understand.
That summer in my
prayer times I was drawn to the story of the Man Named Legion and felt
something of him within myself and in my own not very integrated story. I was drawn to the affirmation of his healing
and his discovery of wholeness at the word and the feet of Jesus, and took
solace in this. But at that time and for
decades after, I didn’t really know how to get there – to the point and the
place of real healing.
I tried focusing
just on the good side – the nice side, the side that others saw from the
outside and that I tried to be on the inside – the side that knows how to pray
and read the Bible and be spiritual; that knows how to be nice and polite and
helpful; that knows how to swallow anger and doubt and fear, and offer insight
and answers and a positive faith instead.
I started going on prayer retreats to deepen my relationship with God,
and my understanding of God. I went to
workshops on ministry and theology. I read
books on marriage and personal growth, and did all I knew to exploit and
express and emphasize the good side of life and of my character. Over the years I explored different styles
and places of ministry. I even began training
to be a spiritual director for others.
Until in the
midst of that training I realized I could no longer avoid actually facing and
embracing the brokenness and disintegration I knew inside – could no longer hide
and hide from the other side of who I was, and am. Just focusing on the good side is not good
enough. The other side demands to be
brought to the surface and faced full on, as well.
In the story this
morning, Jesus takes his disciples on a journey to the other side. This is the only story in the Gospel of Luke
where Jesus travels beyond Jewish land to enter into Gentile territory – where
he leads the disciples intentionally into the realm of the unclean and unholy. Which suggests we're not meant or called to dwell there all the time. but there are times when we do need to go there. And when they get there, they meet a very
scary man – a person so torn and tormented he is the very opposite of all that true
human living is. He’s naked, he doesn’t
live in a house, he lives in cemeteries and in the wild, nothing can hold him,
no one can tame him, and he doesn’t even have a name
anymore.
This week I read this comment:
The
cause of the man’s affliction is undefined, but there is no doubt regarding its
intensity. His life is essentially out of his
control. When Jesus asks him his name,
[the heartbreaking reply is]
“Legion” [because] the influences upon him are many.
So it is for many of us…The
thought that we are in control of our lives, or even
that we allow God to be in control,
is often debunked by the realities around us.
Vocational [and professional]
concerns, financial pressures, broken relationships,
and even the day-to-day details of
life vie for our attention and eat away at both
time and resources, distracting from
the most important priority, being in
relationship with God [and right relation
with others and all life around us].
I can only
imagine how afraid the disciples are to see him and be with him. How they must wonder why Jesus wanted them to
go there. Why it isn’t enough just to
stay on the good side, to learn about and practice and grow into what’s there.
But then I
remember how little I was helped by thirty years of trying to focus just on the
good side of things and just develop the positive.
I also recall how
so many people stop coming to worship and to other things at church when they
begin to feel some of that other side of life – when they start to have real
questions and doubts about their faith as they’ve known it, when the good side
of things is no longer enough to hold it all together, when they just can’t do
it anymore, when they feel they can’t measure up – or maybe the church doesn’t
measure up, to what we like it to be – and the usual focus on just the good
side, the positive side of who we are isn’t enough – not deep enough, not open
and honest enough.
Because there are
two sides to our reality – just like there are two sides to the Sea of
Galilee.
There is the good
and holy side which, even for all its problems and humanness, is the side that
is clean and consciously religious, that has the answers and the formulas and
the right ways of being. That’s the side
we like to inhabit and dwell in – especially when we come here.
But there is the
other side as well – the side that is not so clean nor properly religious – the
side with more questions than answers, more mess than we like, more doubts and
fears and terrible torment than we think we can live with. And Jesus does call us to go there as well, as
scary as it is, because what are healing and hope and wholeness and growth that
do not include the whole of what our reality is?
It’s a
challenge. It’s not one we can face by
ourselves; it’s a challenge we’re called to face together as we walk with Jesus.
I wonder if we
ever feel the call of Jesus in this direction?
To make room in our worship and fellowship for the ways and times we and
others feel torn and tormented? To make
room and find time in our lives to fully face and embrace our own and others’
doubts and fears and questions about our faith, about ourselves, about others,
about the church and the world and life in it, and even about God?
For the sake of
knowing the fullness of the kingdom of God in our lives and in the world, Jesus
says, “Let us go the other side.”
