“Pigs off a cliff”
Luke 8:26-39
12th Sunday in Ordinary Time C
23 June 2013
So here we are, it is Nativity Annual Meeting Sunday once again; if you haven’t already picked up your annual report then you can in a bit, and you’ll get to read in it all the great news that is Nativity’s year just past, a year of ministry and mission in our Fairwood community. And we’ll get to hear more of that in a while at the annual meeting … and discuss and vote on approving a new year’s congregation budget.
It’s a fine, fine day in the life of our congregation, that’s for certain.
We would hope for a fine celebratory text for this day as well.
HA!
Instead … we get Luke’s version of the Magical Mystery Tour. Jesus and the disciples, crossing the sea of Galilee, being met by this man possessed by demons, who runs around the graveyard naked … from whom Jesus sends out the demons … their number being Legion … and then, there’s pigs off a cliff.
Crazy stuff, man. Unbelievable.
Sounding very much like epic-mythical-fanciful tales of old.
SO WHAT DO WE DO WITH A TEXT SUCH AS THIS?
It seems to me that there are a few options.
Two of these have been the “tried and true” methods for as long as I can remember.
The first, is that we would simply suspend our belief system in the here and now, and just accept and love this story whole-cloth as a sweet, loving, lovely Word of the Church. Like our bulletin cover art for this morning suggests ... a “This is the way it is” approach to the story … since we’re Christian, we’re the Church, this is what we believe, and we don’t question the strange-ities behind the Word, and moreover, we don’t let anyone else who may not be part of the Church question them either. We can’t be critical; if you’re part of us, you’ll love this word ... like you’ll love our symbolism, our liturgy and music, and our traditions, whether they make any sense to you or not.
The second is more critical. We will strive to explain the text. We will talk about how the trip in the boat over to the land of the Gerasenes is metaphor for the church going into the cold, cruel world of the Gentiles and sinners. We will point out how the man possessed with demons was really mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia or psychoses, but the primitive people of that day and time – including Jesus – didn’t have language for that, so they chose to see it as demonic possession.
Now, some of this work is good – very good, actually. We need to be understanding of the place and time of the text from then, so we can be thoughtful readers today.
But we must be careful. For example – how does a mentally ill person feel if we imply that their illness, their disease, is like demonic possession? I mean, yes, for those of us who have been there and suffered with others, it can certainly seem that way ... but what of those who actually are mentally ill? What do they think, what do they say?
And some of this explaining, as we know, can be like “turning over rocks.” You know about this ... if you’ve ever picked up a rock and spent some time looking at all the creepy crawlies on the wet underside of it. So overly critical Scripture reading can be like this ... isn’t this interesting??? What about this little nuanced point??? And thus we can get sidetracked from the real message of the text for us.
And ... certainly, looming most large, especially for us, here, in this place and time, is the consideration of how the rest of the world that, who are not the Church, hear this text.
Think about it. A demon-possessed man! Demon possessed. Yeah right. And I’m supposed to believe this, here in the 21st century? Give me a break.
And this demon possessed man gets healed – the demons are cast out – by this Jesus. Yeah right. When have I ever seen this? NEVER.
And then the demons go into a herd of pigs who run down into the lake and drown. Ha ha! Pigs off a cliff! Ha ha!
THIS STORY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ME.
Well, yes, and I’d argue they’d be right, if that’s the way we insist on telling it. “That’s the way it is, accept it or don’t belong” ... or “You need to listen to, and understand, my historical-critical explanation about what’s going on here.”
Pigs off a cliff, man. Pigs off a cliff.
You see, telling this story, telling ANY Bible story, in this way, it might be nice, it might be entertaining, but it’s a big Adventure in Missing the Point.
Because the point – in this story today, here, for us – is right there in that last verse:
Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.
That’s the point of this whole story, the for us, the starting point for this and a myriad of other texts in the Scriptures.
Be personal.
Speak from and in and with relationship to the listener totally in mind.
And, in the words of St. Francis, “use words if necessary.”
This, this is the way, the only way, that those who have not heard, who have not seen, who have not felt, tasted, touched, the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, WILL ... through us.
Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.
Otherwise, it’s all pigs off a cliff.
And thus, where this particular text crosses with us today ... when we start with proclamation ... is quite obvious.
On such a day as today, our annual meeting day, we can, we should take stock, look back, celebrate the year just past ... but with a critical eye ... thinking, assessing, processing this whole year just past for vision, for clarity, for sense of purpose; asking that one salient question: why, how have we gotten here, here to where we are today?
For us, that here is one dripping with blessings.
This congregation has continued to grow ... growing in numbers of people touched by our outreach ... growing in giving and sharing of time, talent, and treasure ... growing in blessings realized and poured out into our communities ... in our families, with our friends, into our Fairwood area and beyond, with other faith communities, into our NW Washington Synod, the larger Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ... stretching outside our borders to an orphanage in Haiti and through Operation Christmas Child, to children across the world.
In the focus words of our “Story Matters” project:
“Nativity has been through times when there was no wine. Now there is much wine … much to celebrate … Jesus has turned our water into wine … so now it is time to share it with our
community.”
So the thinking, assessing, processing ... visionary, purposeful question with which we must follow all this, is why?
And I think the answer is quite clear.
It is because we’ve heard God’s call, and moreover, answered God’s call through Jesus Christ, to do precisely what the man in this text does ... in other words, we have kept the focus on God and what God has done and is doing and will be continuing to do here, through us, through this place and us people ... God is at work daily through this place and us people who are called Nativity, and that is what we have been and are and, I pray, will continue to be proclaiming, through our living and giving, our serving and sharing and, yes, speaking.
Pray that we will continue to be about this, people of Nativity, people of new birth, new life.
Because it is oh, so easy, to slip back into talking pigs off a cliff.
I think you know what I mean.
Proclaiming models instead of doing ministry.
Talking up our credentials, our clubhouse, and our committees before we say one word about Our Christ.
Extolling the virtues of the Christendom long past ... the forties, the fifties, the sixties or seventies or eighties as the time when “wow, it was just right, and can’t we go back?”
We have to have worship like it was then ... Sunday School like it was then ... committees like we had them then ... Church like it was then ... and then it will be right once again.
A stubborn insistence that only the world has to change, and not us ... that we must dig in our heels and defy the world, the world has to come around to our way of thinking and doing because of course, we’re right, we’re the church and they’re not, and Jesus only works through us and not them.
And the world hears all this as ... buzzing and popping. Nonsensical. Pigs off a cliff.
Jesus hears this … and just shakes his head.
Aren’t you reading in my word the exact opposite this morning? While the religion of my day, my religion, was stuck … stuck in the mire and mess of preserving and protecting its organization and structures … I was out, going out, across the Sea of Galilee, to people who were not Jews … going to, speaking with, healing one who was an outcast …! And I’m still out there, still active in the world today. O Church, claiming my name … please don’t believe you have a corner on me. Because you don’t. Sometimes you couldn’t be further from my truth.
Indeed. And – although it’s a complicated question with a complicated answer … I’d hold that those congregations, of our own denomination and others, who don’t find much to celebrate these days … congregations for whom their annual meetings are sullen, somber affairs, full of talk of shrinking budgets and contracting ministry ... the majority of congregations in our NW Washington Synod of the ELCA ... I’ll hold that they are spending far too much time, and effort, and money, trying to explain those pigs off a cliff, rather than starting with the place Christ calls us to begin …
Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.
How we answer that request, that charge given to us by Jesus, answer it into the world … authentically, honestly … differently, for we are all different and Christ has met us differently in our many different places in life … but how we answer that question, has everything to do with our future … our future as disciples, as followers of Jesus … our future as Nativity congregation, here in Fairwood, in our NW Washington Synod, in our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
So here we are … Annual Meeting Sunday. A day, a time, a place to celebrate. To reflect. To give thanks for all that God has done for us in the past year.
It can, it should be a place where we take a breath, pull up a seat, share a meal, listen, speak, smile, embrace, give thanks.
So let us do just that. Let’s speak and listen, honestly, truthfully, with one another. And let us pray that we would not hesitate in our faithfulness, our walk, our journey with our Lord, as he calls and invites us:
Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.
That’s the word Christ calls us to today.
For God knows, we don’t need more pigs off a cliff.
Amen.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Monday, June 03, 2013
2 June 2013
“The story matters ...”
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 / 2 Timothy 4:1-5 / Matthew 28:16-20
OT 9C
2 June 2013
Many, perhaps most of us have one of them in our lives. A person who tells magnificent stories … stories which capture you, draw you in, keep your interest, and keep you coming back for more.
For me, that person was Phil Mudgett … he who invented the LD-3 airline container-shippable video broadcasting system … he gave me my first job in Seattle, back in 1985, hiring me away from a large broadcast equipment and facilities provider in LA, bringing me up here to help him form the same kind of company in the (at that time, still broadcasting frontier) of the Pacific NW.
Phil had stories. Hundreds and thousands of stories. He’d lived a rich, full life, packing a lot into his then 45 years.
Over the course of the four years I worked for and with Phil, he told me many of his stories.
His dad was the first chief engineer Dorothy Bullitt hired for her new television station, KING-TV, so he had old KING stories. Like climbing the tower on Queen Anne every year with his dad to string the Christmas lights. Like sitting with his dad in the primitive KING-TV remote truck, broadcasting live from Seafair 1955, and watching Tex Johnston barrel-roll the first Boeing 707 over Lake Washington.
Phil followed his dad’s lead into the video business, working as a video engineer in Seattle and in LA. And so he had more stories ... working with Bill Cosby when he was a local TV show host here in the 1960s. Living in LA and video engineering TV shows such as “Hullabaloo” and numerous sporting events, in California and all over the country.
And then there were stories about his family, and his personal life. I’ve met his family, so I have no doubts as to their authenticity. Phil was married four times, but according to him it should have only been three because “my second wife left me for Ed Asner.” My favorite was the story about his brother, who bought a car in Everett (where he lived) but then came to find out that it only turned right. So he had to plot his commuting trip into Seattle making only right turns ... no lefts.
And there were even some Phil stories which intersected with mine. One day, actually the day after Kathleen and I had decided to get married, she had called her parents and told them the news, but I hadn’t called mine yet. So she called me at work to “ahem” remind me.
Except ... and this is the story of what happened next … Phil happened to answer the phone, Kathleen thought it was me (our voices sounded quite a bit alike), and she immediately said, “Call your mother.” And then she realized it wasn’t me ... got a little flustered (as we hadn’t told anyone else yet) and hung up.
I of course had no idea what was going on ... and didn’t till she related her side of things to me years later. What I do remember from my end was a rather dumbfounded Phil walking into my office and saying, “The weirdest thing just happened. Some strange women just called and told me to call my mother.”
So what did you do, I asked.
“Well, I called my mother,” Phil said ... Mrs. Mudgett was at that time still very much alive and well and living on Wetmore Avenue in Everett. “And she’s fine. Perhaps it was some kind of a heavenly reminder to me.”
After I left his company – Modular Video Systems - to go to seminary, Phil kept on inventing … he devloped TVW, the state television network that airs the legislature live on cable when it’s in session ... then, later, he became ill with cancer in the 90’s and died about 15 years ago. But he’s still very much alive to me ... and the hundreds of people in the video industry around the country ... through the memory of his stories. In many ways, Phil Mudgett was his stories ... his stories, making his story, alive in the hearts and minds of all those who heard him, who heard them told.
Stories. Each of us have them ... our own stories which we share and tell individually ... funny, sad, or lessons learned, and so on. And the sum total of those stories make up The Story that is each one of our lives. This is a very human attribute we all share.
Our stories make up Our Story ... the story of who we are as individuals. One could even say that Our Story is who we are. Certainly Phil was made up of the sum total of all his stories. And so are each of us. Nowhere is this clearer than at the end of our lives ... when friends and family gather to grieve, and to comfort each other ... with what? Story. The story, told at wakes and memorials, funerals and burials, of this person whose life we shared.
We each have our individual stories which make up the One Story of our lives. But we also have shared story ... shared story in family, shared story as part of a group, a community, state or nation. Veterans who have shared the horrors of combat. Communities who have survived natural disasters, like the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the Nisqually earthquake, the Moore, OK tornado. The story of national resilience in trials like the Cuban Missile Crisis, or rejoicing, as when we first landed humans on the moon.
And as people of faith, we most certainly also have Story. Our story as God’s people has many, many layers. As followers of Jesus Christ we have been adopted as children of God, grafted into the old, old story of God’s continual care, protection, and love for his people ... a story which begins long, long ago in the accounts of creation, flood, rescue and salvation, deliverance and destination into the land of God’s promise.
Our text from Deuteronomy is a fine example of how story shapes a people. These words come from the instructions that God is giving Moses before they enter the land God has promised them, but they look forward to a time when, settled into that land, that memory has become story which has shaped, is shaping, and will continue to shape God’s people.
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor ...
In this beautiful story, both the one telling the story, and those hearing the story-teller, are re-hearsed, re-born into the story of God’s faithfulness to his people ... from Abraham and Sarah, through Moses and the Exodus, to this very day ... and that “very day” indeed varies. It could, can be the day Moses heard the story from God ... it could, can be the day Moses re-told it to the people of Israel ... it could, can be the day those who heard, who hear it, retell it again ... and again ... and again.
Such is the way of story. Story creates, and re-creates, those who hear it, once, and again, and again.
Now this story in particular, is a particular people’s story ... the story of the people of God’s promise ... to be sure ... but through their telling and re-telling of the story, others are drawn into it ... and look how great is the love and promise and hope of God for his people, and through his people, for the rest of creation ...
Thus we who are not Jews are drawn into this story as well ... drawn into it first because the story is told to us ... and then, we are grafted into that story through our adoption as God’s children, through Jesus Christ, born of water and Word, baptism and forgiveness, confession and promise, meal and life everlasting.
That part of the story, their story, our story, is what we receive in both the Gospel text from St. Matthew, as well as the words of 2 Timothy:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit ...
I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message!
God’s story makes Israel’s story, and then, crosses us and makes us into God’s people as well, through the Cross ... through Jesus’ story to and for us, we are brought in to God’s everlasting, ever loving story for his beloved creation.
Creation ... protection ... faithfulness from God despite unfaithfulness from God’s people ... right on down through the ages ... to God’s sending his very self, his only Son, to share our life in all its sorrow and all its rejoicing, in all it suffering and even in its life-end ... God has done and is continually doing all this for us. And more ... not letting the story end with death, but, through death itself, through Jesus’ own death, bringing him life, bringing us life, bringing all the world and all of God’s creation, LIFE ... rich, full, abundant, as God has always intended it for us.
And this story ... it is not a passive story. It is not a story we simply sit back and enjoy, of which we are spectators, onlookers, an audience at a show.
NO.
This story is a “make, take and share” story. God’s story, Jesus’ story, it draws us in, it makes us part, part of the story, part of all those who have been part of, who have shared the story from the beginning, and then, and then, it sends us out, out into the world, to share that story with those who have not heard it, to bring others into the story as well ...
Now I know that you know that Lutherans are not so good at that last part ... proclaiming the message. Sometimes I think it’s because we don’t want to (because we don’t want to call attention to ourselves) but most of the time I think it’s because we just don’t know how to do it.
That’s what we’ll talk about next Sunday, as we discuss a story-based approach to proclaiming the message into which Nativity has been invited ... called “Story Matters” ... a word, a way to help us overcome our “Lutheran Laryngitis.”
But that’s next week. For now, simply remember that God’s story, Jesus’ story for this world, for all of creation, is FOR YOU ... you have been grafted in to that story ... and your story, and where it crosses God’s story, is a story worth sharing ... and it is a story people want to hear … friends, family, people who have heard and people who haven’t.
Your story IS you. And you are Christ’s, you are part of his story ... and Christ is God’s, and he is part of God’s story.
So ... your story, and God’s story, are all wrapped up together ...
... together, waiting to be told ... together, wanting to be heard.
May THAT Word today give you the faith, the courage, the strength, the willingness and the joy, to share your story, Christ’s story, God’s story, into other people’s stories, in the week ahead. Amen.
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 / 2 Timothy 4:1-5 / Matthew 28:16-20
OT 9C
2 June 2013
Many, perhaps most of us have one of them in our lives. A person who tells magnificent stories … stories which capture you, draw you in, keep your interest, and keep you coming back for more.
For me, that person was Phil Mudgett … he who invented the LD-3 airline container-shippable video broadcasting system … he gave me my first job in Seattle, back in 1985, hiring me away from a large broadcast equipment and facilities provider in LA, bringing me up here to help him form the same kind of company in the (at that time, still broadcasting frontier) of the Pacific NW.
Phil had stories. Hundreds and thousands of stories. He’d lived a rich, full life, packing a lot into his then 45 years.
Over the course of the four years I worked for and with Phil, he told me many of his stories.
His dad was the first chief engineer Dorothy Bullitt hired for her new television station, KING-TV, so he had old KING stories. Like climbing the tower on Queen Anne every year with his dad to string the Christmas lights. Like sitting with his dad in the primitive KING-TV remote truck, broadcasting live from Seafair 1955, and watching Tex Johnston barrel-roll the first Boeing 707 over Lake Washington.
Phil followed his dad’s lead into the video business, working as a video engineer in Seattle and in LA. And so he had more stories ... working with Bill Cosby when he was a local TV show host here in the 1960s. Living in LA and video engineering TV shows such as “Hullabaloo” and numerous sporting events, in California and all over the country.
And then there were stories about his family, and his personal life. I’ve met his family, so I have no doubts as to their authenticity. Phil was married four times, but according to him it should have only been three because “my second wife left me for Ed Asner.” My favorite was the story about his brother, who bought a car in Everett (where he lived) but then came to find out that it only turned right. So he had to plot his commuting trip into Seattle making only right turns ... no lefts.
And there were even some Phil stories which intersected with mine. One day, actually the day after Kathleen and I had decided to get married, she had called her parents and told them the news, but I hadn’t called mine yet. So she called me at work to “ahem” remind me.
Except ... and this is the story of what happened next … Phil happened to answer the phone, Kathleen thought it was me (our voices sounded quite a bit alike), and she immediately said, “Call your mother.” And then she realized it wasn’t me ... got a little flustered (as we hadn’t told anyone else yet) and hung up.
I of course had no idea what was going on ... and didn’t till she related her side of things to me years later. What I do remember from my end was a rather dumbfounded Phil walking into my office and saying, “The weirdest thing just happened. Some strange women just called and told me to call my mother.”
So what did you do, I asked.
“Well, I called my mother,” Phil said ... Mrs. Mudgett was at that time still very much alive and well and living on Wetmore Avenue in Everett. “And she’s fine. Perhaps it was some kind of a heavenly reminder to me.”
After I left his company – Modular Video Systems - to go to seminary, Phil kept on inventing … he devloped TVW, the state television network that airs the legislature live on cable when it’s in session ... then, later, he became ill with cancer in the 90’s and died about 15 years ago. But he’s still very much alive to me ... and the hundreds of people in the video industry around the country ... through the memory of his stories. In many ways, Phil Mudgett was his stories ... his stories, making his story, alive in the hearts and minds of all those who heard him, who heard them told.
Stories. Each of us have them ... our own stories which we share and tell individually ... funny, sad, or lessons learned, and so on. And the sum total of those stories make up The Story that is each one of our lives. This is a very human attribute we all share.
Our stories make up Our Story ... the story of who we are as individuals. One could even say that Our Story is who we are. Certainly Phil was made up of the sum total of all his stories. And so are each of us. Nowhere is this clearer than at the end of our lives ... when friends and family gather to grieve, and to comfort each other ... with what? Story. The story, told at wakes and memorials, funerals and burials, of this person whose life we shared.
We each have our individual stories which make up the One Story of our lives. But we also have shared story ... shared story in family, shared story as part of a group, a community, state or nation. Veterans who have shared the horrors of combat. Communities who have survived natural disasters, like the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the Nisqually earthquake, the Moore, OK tornado. The story of national resilience in trials like the Cuban Missile Crisis, or rejoicing, as when we first landed humans on the moon.
And as people of faith, we most certainly also have Story. Our story as God’s people has many, many layers. As followers of Jesus Christ we have been adopted as children of God, grafted into the old, old story of God’s continual care, protection, and love for his people ... a story which begins long, long ago in the accounts of creation, flood, rescue and salvation, deliverance and destination into the land of God’s promise.
Our text from Deuteronomy is a fine example of how story shapes a people. These words come from the instructions that God is giving Moses before they enter the land God has promised them, but they look forward to a time when, settled into that land, that memory has become story which has shaped, is shaping, and will continue to shape God’s people.
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor ...
In this beautiful story, both the one telling the story, and those hearing the story-teller, are re-hearsed, re-born into the story of God’s faithfulness to his people ... from Abraham and Sarah, through Moses and the Exodus, to this very day ... and that “very day” indeed varies. It could, can be the day Moses heard the story from God ... it could, can be the day Moses re-told it to the people of Israel ... it could, can be the day those who heard, who hear it, retell it again ... and again ... and again.
Such is the way of story. Story creates, and re-creates, those who hear it, once, and again, and again.
Now this story in particular, is a particular people’s story ... the story of the people of God’s promise ... to be sure ... but through their telling and re-telling of the story, others are drawn into it ... and look how great is the love and promise and hope of God for his people, and through his people, for the rest of creation ...
Thus we who are not Jews are drawn into this story as well ... drawn into it first because the story is told to us ... and then, we are grafted into that story through our adoption as God’s children, through Jesus Christ, born of water and Word, baptism and forgiveness, confession and promise, meal and life everlasting.
That part of the story, their story, our story, is what we receive in both the Gospel text from St. Matthew, as well as the words of 2 Timothy:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit ...
I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message!
God’s story makes Israel’s story, and then, crosses us and makes us into God’s people as well, through the Cross ... through Jesus’ story to and for us, we are brought in to God’s everlasting, ever loving story for his beloved creation.
Creation ... protection ... faithfulness from God despite unfaithfulness from God’s people ... right on down through the ages ... to God’s sending his very self, his only Son, to share our life in all its sorrow and all its rejoicing, in all it suffering and even in its life-end ... God has done and is continually doing all this for us. And more ... not letting the story end with death, but, through death itself, through Jesus’ own death, bringing him life, bringing us life, bringing all the world and all of God’s creation, LIFE ... rich, full, abundant, as God has always intended it for us.
And this story ... it is not a passive story. It is not a story we simply sit back and enjoy, of which we are spectators, onlookers, an audience at a show.
NO.
This story is a “make, take and share” story. God’s story, Jesus’ story, it draws us in, it makes us part, part of the story, part of all those who have been part of, who have shared the story from the beginning, and then, and then, it sends us out, out into the world, to share that story with those who have not heard it, to bring others into the story as well ...
Now I know that you know that Lutherans are not so good at that last part ... proclaiming the message. Sometimes I think it’s because we don’t want to (because we don’t want to call attention to ourselves) but most of the time I think it’s because we just don’t know how to do it.
That’s what we’ll talk about next Sunday, as we discuss a story-based approach to proclaiming the message into which Nativity has been invited ... called “Story Matters” ... a word, a way to help us overcome our “Lutheran Laryngitis.”
But that’s next week. For now, simply remember that God’s story, Jesus’ story for this world, for all of creation, is FOR YOU ... you have been grafted in to that story ... and your story, and where it crosses God’s story, is a story worth sharing ... and it is a story people want to hear … friends, family, people who have heard and people who haven’t.
Your story IS you. And you are Christ’s, you are part of his story ... and Christ is God’s, and he is part of God’s story.
So ... your story, and God’s story, are all wrapped up together ...
... together, waiting to be told ... together, wanting to be heard.
May THAT Word today give you the faith, the courage, the strength, the willingness and the joy, to share your story, Christ’s story, God’s story, into other people’s stories, in the week ahead. Amen.
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