Monday, August 03, 2015

Reading:  Luke 8:26-39
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.”

No comments:

Post a Comment