23 June 2013

“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.