6-23-19 Readings & Sermon

A reading from 1 Kings, Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.

Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.

Then he was afraid.

He got up and fled for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah.

He left his servant there.

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree.

He asked that he might die.

It is enough.

Now, Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.

Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep.

Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, Get up and eat.

He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water.

He ate and drank and lay down again.

The angel of the Lord came a second time and touched him and said, Get up and eat.

Otherwise the journey will be too much for you.

He got up and ate and drank.

Then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horab, the Mount of God.

At that place he came to a cave and spent the night there.

Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, What are you doing here, Elijah?

He answered, I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.

I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.

He said, Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.

Now there was a great wind so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks and pieces before the Lord.

But the Lord was not in the wind.

And after the wind, an earthquake with the Lord, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.

And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.

And after the fire, a sound of sheer silence.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

Then there came a voice to him that said, What are you doing here, Elijah?

And he answered, I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.

I alone am left, and they are seeking my life to take it away.

Then the Lord said to him, Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus.

Therefore, the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian.

For in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free.

There is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise with the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to St.

Luke.

Jesus and his disciples arrived at the country of Geraisenes, which is opposite Galilee.

As Jesus stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him.

For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.

When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

I beg you, do not torment me.

For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.

For many times it had seized him.

He was kept under guard and abound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.

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.

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding, and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these.

So he gave them permission.

Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

When the swine herds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country.

Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus they found the man whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.

And they were afraid.

Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.

Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Geraisenus asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear.

So he got into the boat and returned.

The man, from whom the demons had gone, begged that he might be with him.

But Jesus sent him away, saying, 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.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Every day he surprises us.

I don't know how much more I can take.

We've been following him for a while now.

There's about twelve of us stuck by his side.

He is a dynamic teacher.

His words, they warm our hearts, enliven our imaginations, and bolster courage within us.

But every day we seem to trade answers with questions.

The last twenty-four hours have been just too much to bear.

I can't begin to get my head around it.

See, we were in a boat last night, sailing off to God knows where, when this storm comes up out of nowhere, our thought our lives would be lost forever.

But this guy, our fearless leader, was sleeping through the whole thing, until we woke him with our horrific cries.

And then he spoke and the wor and the winds listened.

The sea stood at attention, still as could be.

This man, whoever he really is, can even control the elements.

And now, not but a few hours later, we're sitting on top of a hill in Gentile territory.

The sea is off in the far distance.

And this man is now talking to some unclean guy, some guy living in the tombs.

Guy was kicked out of his community because he could not be controlled.

They said he was possessed.

So our leader told the demons to get out.

And they did.

They entered some pigs, and well, let me tell you, pigs flew today right off that cliff and into the sea that we had just come from.

Who is this man?

He seems to disregard many of the Jewish customs as if the rules don't apply to him.

He seems to hold great authority as if a God, instead of being under the authority of God.

Who other than God can perform such miracles?

We knew this guy was special.

I mean, that's why we started following him in the first place.

But how special can one man be?

We, his followers, are sitting here now scratching our heads.

We know the God of our ancestors is trying to reveal something great to us.

But we haven't yet been able to put the pieces together.

We can't yet make sense of it all.

But we've seen enough to know that this man is a great leader.

No, in fact, I think he might be the greatest leader ever.

And we are going to keep following him until we get some answers.

Who does he think he is?

This Israelite?

Coming here without any invitation.

He's a Jew.

Let him stay with the Jews.

We don't need or want his miracles here.

We've heard some rumors, sure, they sounded pretty amazing, some out-of-the-world acts he's been doing.

But we assumed they were long tails, outlandish stories to be shared around fires at night.

Look, we don't need any of those stories here.

We are simple villagers trying to get our lives back together.

While it's been a couple of generations, we still feel the impact of that massacre when the Romans came here under the command of Vespassian.

We were the few lucky remnants, the few families that have been able to carry on to the next generation.

Many families were lost, now buried in those tombs over there.

We don't want any more drama.

We just want to feed our children and live our quiet lives up here on the hills.

But this man comes along and changes the demon-possessed tomb dweller.

When the man first became ill, sure, we tried to help him.

We would chain him up so he wouldn't hurt himself.

But in the end, we kicked him out of the city to dwell with the dead.

We didn't want to, but we had to think of our children.

We had to keep them safe.

Now the tomb dweller supposedly isn't possessed anymore.

But can we trust that?

What happens when he has another episode?

People don't really change, do they?

And next time, the Jewish man won't be here to save him.

We can't risk it.

We don't want the tomb dweller here.

I'm not sure if we even remember what family he came from to return to anyway.

No, we don't want him.

He can go off with the Jewish man or go back to the tombs.

We have to think about our safety.

And to make matters worse, that Jewish man somehow had a whole herd of pigs run off, never to return.

Some say the pigs ran all the way to the far off sea, but that's miles from here.

Hard to believe it could happen.

Maybe it did.

Either way, the pigs are gone, and now the herdsman has lost his livelihood.

How is this herdman herdsman gonna feed his family?

Don't get me wrong, I mean I have a few new piglets I guess I could give him.

And I know my neighbor has a few pigs he could spare to help this herdsman start over again.

But we shouldn't have to.

This is my family's livelihood.

We fare this man.

The things he can do, the way he can flip our world upside down.

We've had enough flipping in this community.

We'll stick to the status quo, thank you very much.

It's safer that way.

The Jewish man can leave.

Take his posse of do-gooders with him.

We'll pass.

It's about this man named Jesus.

But first, let me introduce myself.

Jesus gave me the name Hariah.

It means freedom in my mother tongue.

Jesus gave it to me after my transformation.

See, I wasn't always like this.

For a long time I was pretty ill.

I don't remember it that well.

To be honest, it is as if I was living a bad nightmare.

But what I can make of it from my memories and from those of the few who have begun to tell me what was happening.

It seems that I was held captive by a possession so strong that I could not tell where it ended and I began.

It was as if I was lost to it.

I was a humiliation, living naked in the tombs.

I was cut off from my family and from my whole community.

I was left alone to live with the dead.

And believe me, the dead are not good company.

But Jesus came along with his disciples.

I could feel the unclean spirit at that moment, all of the spirits and their nervous energy dwelling up inside me as Jesus approached, and he commanded that those unclean spirits leave me.

And no lie they did.

And in that moment, it was as if a great fog had lifted, and I could think again.

The heaviness that was in my chest was gone, and the depression that weighed down my heart was removed, and I could feel joy.

I was alive, I was free.

One of the villagers who witnessed this brought me some clothing, and another a small meal of bread and wine.

It was as if I was feeling again for the first time that cool touch of fabric on my skin, the sweetness of the bread as I ate it, and the warm sensation of the wine slipping down my throat.

But most of the villagers seemed to want nothing to do with me.

They shouted angry accusations at Jesus and at me.

I've been away from my family for so long, to be honest, I couldn't even pick them out in the hostile crowd.

But yet I'm so elated by this awakening of my senses, and I am drawn to this Jesus man.

There's something special about him, and I feel like I'm being tugged towards him.

I ask him who he is and if I can join his band of merry men.

I long to be living in a community again.

He speaks to me privately for a little while.

He shares some beautiful truths.

The whole time my heart warms more and more until I swear it's about to burst out of my chest.

He finishes with telling me to stay, that this place is my community, and that in time they will welcome me once again, that they will realize that they no longer have to look after me, they'll no longer have to protect their children from me.

Instead, I will be a living witness to them of the new life that this God that he speaks of that is being offered to all of us.

He tells me that his God is not only the God for the Jews, but he is the God of all of creation, including my people.

When he finishes talking to me, I take in a deep breath, enjoying the sensation of air in my lungs.

And I felt a strange sense of courage and inspiration and love.

I felt the love I once had for my community return to me once again.

And I felt the call to share with my community the good news of this loving God of life and freedom, the one who frees people from bondages of all kinds, this God of Jesus.

I've been given a second chance, and I will not waste it.

I have been freed from oppress from what oppressed me, and now with new life and a grateful heart, I share with all of those who listen the true story of Jesus.

I, Hariah, am a little bit older now.

A couple of years have gone by since that wonderful day.

Word has come to us that Jesus was killed back in Jerusalem.

But not too long after that, we were visited again by some of his disciples.

They seemed much braver now, much wiser leaders.

Before, they were quietly lurking in the background.

And if you had asked me then, I would have speculated that they did not know who Jesus really was any more than I did.

Now, though, they return and tell us about Jesus, and tell us how they were finally able to put two and two together to realize that Jesus is not only a great teacher and a great miracle worker, but is actually the Son of God and God God's self.

Now all the pieces are beginning to fall into place.

It's starting to make sense.

When they return this time, the villagers, they warmly welcomed them.

While it took a while for the community to welcome me back, eventually they saw for themselves that I indeed was a changed person.

And they loved to hear my retelling of the story of how I was freed from the prison of possession.

Some even thank me.

They realize that while I was the one possessed with demons, that they were possessed with fear.

We are all discovering what freedom means.

Even the herdsman who lost all those pigs, well, he's my friend now.

Together we were able to find a new livelihood for the family.

One day, the herdsman and I went off to the edge of the cliff.

Not off the cliff, but to the edge.

And we put a marker there with the engraving, where pigs fly.

We love to bring the village children there.

See, most of them weren't born yet, and we tell them this crazy story.

Most of them aren't sure what to make of it or if they can really believe us, but they ask us to tell the story again and again and again.

Now that the disciples have returned to us with this good news, we warmly embrace it.

All of us are feeling stirrings of new life springing up within us.

We know that this is the way to move from possessions in our own lives to freedom, to move from fear and death to hope and life.