A Demon by any Other Name: A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Rob Lee

A Demon by any Other Name

Mark 5:1-20

"They came to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes.And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ For he had said to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spiritsbegged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned in the lake.

The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it.Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighbourhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused, and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’ And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed."

Won’t you pray with me?

God, in whose name demons quake and are fearful, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight. For you and you alone are our strong rock and our redeemer. Amen.

            This past April, I spent six days in the hospital just up the road from this beloved Divinity School. I fought against a demon of my mind, and I had to give voice to how I was feeling to get it under control. Today I confess that I struggle with, fight with, deal with bipolar disorder, a crippling mental illness that causes me to live in a topsy turvy reality where left seems right, up seems down, and wrong seems right. It is a scary disease that can strike at any moment, but it is one that I have found is nothing compared to what God has done and continues to do in my life.

Now I can see some of you hesitantly trying to figure out where I’m going with this. I think Mainline Protestantism from which I come has many problems, but one that sticks out to me is our inability to give voice to what is going on in our world and in our individual lives. Today we hear a story from Mark’s Gospel where Jesus challenges us to name the name that we all fear and let it leave us and be cast into the sea.

You see today in our lesson Jesus confronts a man who had an unclean spirit in him. He lived among the tombs and no one could restrain him. He had been restrained with shackles and with chains but to no avail, this man was without hope and cast out to be with those who are dead. I think the most interesting part of this text is when Jesus asks for the demon’s name. In ancient culture if you knew the name of the demon or evil spirit you had power over it, you could control it. Names are important and naming our demons are just as important.

I think it would be easy for us in our modern-day sensibilities to excuse demons as mythological creatures best left for the history books and Bible stories we hear ever so often in the lectionary. But this mainline Protestant is here to say that there are powers at work in your life that are nothing short of demonic. Whether it be alcoholism, that gambling or drug addiction, mental illness, or anything that comes to your mind right now, you know it’s true that there are things at work that keep you in isolation at the tombs. They are the chains and shackles that keep you dead. But I come today to proclaim a God who knows how to loosen shackles. I know a God who can bring us forth from the tombs and into the light of God’s dream for us.

Now of course I must say here that we have things that help us deal with our own demons and giving them names like Jesus did. We have medicine and psychology and other means at our disposal that I believe God has given us to give voice to that demon we face. I also want to be clear that unlike the demoniac in this story I will never be fully healed from my bipolar disorder, but I do know that God created me ultimately to be good, and though bipolar is a part of my story it has lost its power over me because it has a name.

But perhaps the most challenging part of this text is not the possession by a demon, but the command Jesus gives the demoniac after he has been set free of his demons. Jesus commands the unnamed man to go home to his friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for him, and what mercy he has shown him. Could it be that this man is unnamed for a reason, could it be that Jesus is speaking directly to us?

You see throughout the narrative arc of scripture we place ourselves within the story, we may identify with David when he is facing Goliath, Moses when we’re called to speak up or speak out, or Mary when faced with daunting circumstances. But here, in this text, does anyone want to identify with the demoniac? Does anyone want to be the one who lives among the tombs of dead people? I think if we’re honest with ourselves we’d rather not be. We’d rather be the people who watch the swineherd go over the hill and into the sea. But today I’m pleading with you to let your demons have a name. I’m asking you to give voice to this unnamed man and proclaim that your issues are big but we serve a God who is bigger. A God who knows the terror of schizophrenia, or the horror of bipolar, a God who recognizes anxiety and depression and gives us tools to fight and to heal.

You see this unnamed man is more than just a storybook character. This unnamed man is me. And when I turn over the keys of my illness to the Lord of time and space I know that God can take a demon and make it a blessing. God can turn the demoniac into a proclaimer of the wondrous deeds God has accomplished in the lives of God’s beloved children.

Now you could easily stop me here and say I’m off base in calling mental illness a demonic possession, and I recognize the consequences a statement like that might make. But I also realize that this is not child’s play or something to shy away from. We cannot confront the power of mental illness until we give it a name and a face and say you do not have the power you think you have.

This could cost us everything. My uncle never did conquer the demon he faced and succumbed to suicide. But I know throughout it all the God I have come to know embraces and stands with us in our weakness. That is our greatest and highest hope.  We ultimately will not win against some demons on this side of the Jordan, but the God who has destroyed death will destroy even the most crippling mental illnesses we could ever face. The hope of the resurrection is that we will shed these illnesses, these demons and find our stories restored to their former glory of goodness.

When I was in the hospital for six days in April I knew that I could get through this setback because of my friends, my family, and those surrounding me in love and support. Since today I stand as an unnamed man in Mark’s Gospel I come to you today to proclaim that the Lord has done wondrous things, and shown me mercy that I didn’t deserve. That is now your commission and your mission as well. You can’t un-see what you have seen. This is now your time to leave the tombs and find Jesus ready to heal and to redeem your story. Take the shackles off and find anew that there is nothing, no height or depth or anything at all that can separate you from Christ Jesus.

There’s this prayer I’ve been praying for years when bipolar tries to get the best of me. So perhaps today as it closes you might join me in hearing the prayer of St. Francis de Sales, a saint who lived in the 1500’s but whose words still right true today.

Let us pray:

"Be at Peace, do not look forward in fear to the changes of life; rather look to them with full hope as they arise.  God, whose very own you are, will deliver you from out of them. God has kept you thus far, and God will lead you safely through all things; and when you cannot stand it, God will bury you in God’s arms. Do not fear what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting God who cares for you today will take care of you then and every day. God will either shield you from suffering, or will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination. Amen."

It's Already Started

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

- From Psalm 46

Just like that, it’s started… Y’all don’t have to believe me, but I have receipts. This morning I made the following post:

            It was all going well until I received the following email from a “concerned reader” of my columns and a person I haven’t been in contact with since high school

Rob,

We have known each other for years but I just wanted to let you know that I am disappointed that you have now started to attack Christians that love our country. I honestly have no idea why you would support a racist and bigoted candidate like Hillary but it is your business not mine. 

Christians have now saved America from a baby killing pro homosexual administration. I highly doubt you will even read this but I will pray for you. A friend forwarded me your comments on the results and that type of bigotry you displayed should never come from a Christian's mouth. Pray for you leaders. We are blessed to have President-Elect Donald Trump. Change your tune, God's will has been shown. God bless. 

Best Regards,

Now I know I am a cis-gender, straight, white, middle class male on his way to a master’s degree in theological studies but I am concerned because if I can receive an email like that from someone, what might others receive today in the light of President-Elect Trump? If it means anything to anyone, as a baptized person my parents committed to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in any forms that they present themselves. As an ordained minister of the Gospel, I am accountable to God in a different but similar way. I use my voice and whatever privilege I have for the in-breaking of God’s kingdom.

That means that I’m accustomed to getting flack for what I do. But this time, in a moment of personal lament on social media in a community I have come to love I was criticized by a fellow Christian. Well if that is what this person’s definition of Christian concern is I want nothing to do with it. We all have work to do but we must allow for moments of frustration and holy anger to come out.

 I’m not sure I have a response for this person but I’m going to say this: do not try to justify this outcome with any other moniker than the fact that a person has come to power whose very presidency threatens so many now has the power to destroy with nuclear bombs, deport with deportation squads, and build a wall bigger than his ego.

But I do commit to pray, because that’s all I have. I will pray for the next president with fervor, but I will also call him to task when he begins his policies that will affect so many I have come to love. Who knows, perhaps this is our nation’s moment to show that we will not be quiet when we have been told to shut up. This is our greatest challenge and our bounden duty. I’m praying for our nation today, and you should too.

Lovers In Dangerous Times: A Sermon Preached by Rob Lee

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Rob Lee

Bethesda Presbyterian Church

October 9^th, 2016 | The 21^st Sunday after Pentecost

Won’t you pray with me?

            Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come. And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought us when a stranger wandering from the fold of God, he to rescue us from danger interposed his precious blood. May I speak in the name of him who interposed his blood for us. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            This past week, my fiancée’s company lost a co-worker to addiction. The realities of this complex issue of dying to addiction have played out in Stephanie’s life now twice, one in her place of business and the other with her best friend’s brother, and Stephanie and I were sitting with one another after the funeral and she asked me a question about the intricacies of life, death, and God’s place in it all. I didn’t have an answer, and I was ashamed that I didn’t. I mean, I’m a second year divinity school student at one of the most prestigious universities in the county, shouldn’t they be teaching these things? And I couldn’t even offer comfort to the person who I want to spend the rest of my life with. I ask you to hold that image of me being totally and completely lost when asked a question about faith as we move through today’s lesson. We’ll get back to it, I promise.

            I have two friends who I’ve gotten to know pretty well over the past year. I have the privilege of officiating their wedding next August. But if we had lived in the South before 1967 when the Supreme Court struck down the laws barring interracial marriage, this couple could not get married. In my counseling with them preparing for the marriage I asked some initial questions and pondered with them if it would be hard today to be in an interracial marriage in 2016. While we agreed that times have certainly changed since the Jim Crow South, they still are the victim of comments and jokes that strike at a very real reality: We live in dangerous, and unsettling times.

            I don’t have to tell you about our presidential campaign, where hate is being spewed and bigotry uplifted as a means to degrade an opponent. I don’t have to tell you about police violence, I don’t have to tell you about the streets of Chicago. I don’t have to tell you about how the Presbyterian Church is still dealing with the fallout over the gay marriage debate. Now before you tune me out as a rebel rouser who is just here to stir the pot, let me offer you these words from Jeremiah and then I promise I will be a good preacher and know when to sit down.

            Nebuchadnezzar believes he is a god, much like some of our politicians believe. He has taken the Israelites into exile in Babylon and all hope is lost. In Psalm 137 when they talk about the exile by the rivers of Babylon the Psalmist writes, “There we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”

            Perhaps you’ve been in this situation, perhaps you’ve felt so far from the love of God that you yourself could not love. This is precisely where we meet the Israelite people today, and this is precisely where we find our country and Church today. We are broken, we are in exile, and we are defeated. The great recession left our nation broken economically, two of the longest wars this nation has seen have left our nation’s spirit broken, and to compound all of that, racism is rearing its head in the ugliest way since that of the Jim Crow laws. And we the church have failed miserably in this exile. We are broken, bruised, and bloodied from low attendance, poor financial planning, and failed church polity. We have buried our heads in the sand and hoping this stuff will pass. So where is the good news in all of this? Where is God in exile?

            God is in Babylon. I think the beautiful part if there is any beautiful part about the exile story in Jeremiah is that though God’s Spirit may have rested in Jerusalem, God was fully with the people by the waters in Babylon. God sent Jeremiah as a prophet to remind the people to love where they are, and love the people they are around, even if they don’t look like you, sound like you, and act like you. You see people will tell you that Nebuchadnezzar is God when the Israelites are in exile, and God has news for Babylon: God will restore the fortunes of Zion. As one of my seminary professors said, “The Babylonians don’t know the rest of the story.”

            My friends if the Babylonians have taken you into exile how are you responding? If you are faced with crippling debt in an uncertain economy, if your son or daughter has gone off to war, if your political party of choice has taken a turn for hate how are you going to act? Jeremiah makes it clear: Pray for the welfare of the city you have been exiled to. That doesn’t mean that you give up what God has given you, it means simply and directly you live in this world and you have to make the best of it.

            If you don’t believe me, look to the Apostle Paul. Paul makes it clear that our citizenship is in heaven and not on earth, we’re exiled here and now. Though we are here we are destined for something different. Now Paul took it to a new level and warned people not to marry due to that impending citizenship of heaven, but I think Paul, for all of his faults, does a good job of saying “Do not be conformed to the image of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

            I want to caution you though, in this Pauline reading of scripture sometimes we get so heavenly minded that we do no earthly good. I think that God of the whole of creation, the God revealed in Jesus Christ in the incarnation and sustained by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost wants Christians, you and me to pray for the welfare of the city in which we have been planted. We must be lovers in dangerous times.

            Now you may ask what does that mean? Well that line, lovers in a dangerous time comes from a song that has lyrics such as these, “You’ve got to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.” You’ve got to plant yourself here, at Bethesda Presbyterian Church and pray for the welfare of your city. You’ve got to plant gardens, and take husbands and wives. God wants you to thrive.

            In my own denomination, the United Methodist Church we are going through a debate that the Presbyterian Church had a few years back surrounding human sexuality. And in the midst of the debate, not speaking to the merits of either side, I just wish both sides would pray for the welfare of our city, pray for the welfare of our denomination. I wish we would break bread with one another, and drink wine. I wish we would gather at a table and instead of throwing insults we would pray and plant gardens.

            Don’t hear me wrong, we have real issues in our time, this is a dangerous time with real problems. But we must be lovers, we must be people who love in fellowship, friendship, policy and understanding. I promise you, if you pray for the welfare of another person who may torment your very soul, your reality will change. For God redeemed us through Jesus Christ, so that we might plant gardens in exile. To be a lover in a dangerous time is to be lost in wonder, love, and praise as that old hymn goes. This is true, even as our churches are failing and dying in mass numbers.

            I have a book coming out here in a month or so, it’s a book on Millennials, people my age who are investing their lives in the institutional church like I am. I don’t know about Bethesda Presbyterian but many of the churches I have encountered are nervous about their future and whether the church will be committed to posterity. Well I want to offer you this: don’t be nervous.

 In my book I interview a friend named Rhody, and in our interview I asked Rhody why she is giving her life to a dying organization like the Church. She said something profound, she said, “There are some holy things, quite simply, that one cannot get outside of the Church. While I can drink wine in community with friends and call it fellowship, I cannot access the sanctified blood of Christ at any ole’ vineyard. While I can bake bread with my grandmother and feel that these moments with her are sacred, I cannot partake of the body of Jesus in her kitchen. And while I can marvel at how clean and renewed I feel as I step out of the shower and call the sensation a moment of grace, I cannot baptize myself. There are moments of fellowship, sacredness, and grace throughout our daily lives, and for these moments, thanks be to God. But I do not believe that these moments are substitutionary for Church and the ways we are blessed specifically through it. And if it is indeed, as you say, a dying organization, then I will sit by her bedside as she moans in pain. I will wear my Easter dress to her funeral and attend with wet, braided hair so that I will feel in all of her looming dampness what she has done for me.”      

Friends, these are dangerous and unsettling times for the church. To borrow from an old song of Americana, the old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be. We are in exile, and we’ve done it to ourselves much like the Israelites did. But take heart, because what you don’t get in today’s lectionary text is the verse that follows immediately after that.

God says through Jeremiah, “Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to [Zion].[1] For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” If I can offer anything to you today, to you who are lovers in dangerous times, “kick at the darkness until bleeds daylight.” God has not brought us this far to leave the Church here alone. And that is the greatest and fullest hope we have.   

Back to that theological question Stephanie asked me that I couldn’t answer about the realities of life, death, and God’s place in it all. I won’t bother you with the intricacies of the question or theological platitudes that seek to explain away our exile here on earth or why bad things happen to good people, why my friends have to worry about the comments made due to their marriage, or why addiction is even a word in our vocabulary.

But what I do know is this: we are lovers in exile, we are people whom God will visit and bring to the land that God has promised. Take God for God’s word. Keep the faith, and be lovers in dangerous times. Because in our love, in our time, in our sacred space, we will find the welfare of the city we are exiled to, this, our island home. All glory, honor, and power be to the one who was, who is, and who is to come. AMEN.

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[1] Zion in here inserted instead of “This place” for clarity.