Coronavirus Talk 8
Pray the Our Father together
Last night, we met a man who was afflicted with the horrible disfiguring disease of leprosy which meant that he had to be separated from his family and from his whole community. He was incredibly lonely and deeply depressed. He could not touch anyone, and no one was courageous enough to touch him. But he had heard of Jesus. He had heard that Jesus healed people, so he braved being yelled at by the crowd following Jesus and took the enormous risk of putting it all out there to ask Jesus for healing.
We know what “being made clean” means on the physical level, but what has been going on in him spiritually that has prepared him to take that risk of faith? What has been going on in him that brings him to Jesus? What has he experienced in his soul that he can teach us about what makes the risk of faith worth taking? I think he would say that, for him, coming to Jesus involved five awakenings: awakening to his longing, awakening to his regrets, awakening to his need for help, awakening to love, and awakening to life.
I think he would say, first, “I had to wake up to my longing, to pay attention to my intuition that there’s got to be more in life.” He would remind us that every human being experiences deep longings – for love, for purpose, for meaning, and it is the quest to satisfy these basic longings that sends each of us on a journey. He would tell us that, ultimately, his longings were for God and from God.
Then he would say: “I had to become awake to my regrets, to the mistakes I made, to the ways I tried to satisfy my longing for God by pursuing something that is not God and when I found myself stuck in a cycle of saying “I’m sorry.”
The he would tell you: “I became awake to the help that was available to me. I became aware that something in my life had to change, and that I would not be able to accomplish this by myself.
Then he would tell you: “I awakened to the love I am now sure that Jesus has for me, that there is no way I can lose his love and that I know I am loved and accepted as I am.
And lastly, he would tell us that he discovered that, through following Jesus we have life and have it to the full. This man, whom we met yesterday as one of the walking dead, is now teaching us how we can embrace our own spiritual awakening. For most of us, it will happen, or better, is happening, in the same way he experienced it.
The healing we look at tonight is also from Mark’s gospel:
And Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the sea, to the land of the Gerasenes. And as he came out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs. And not even with chains could anyone bind him, because of he had often been bound with fetters and chains. And the chains and the fetters had been torn apart by him and broken. And no one was strong enough to tame him. And all night and day he was in the tombs and in the mountains, shouting out and cutting himself with stones. And seeing Jesus from afar he worshipped him, and shouting in a loud voice he says: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg of you, by God, do not torture me.” For Jesus was saying to him, “Come out, unclean spirit, from the man.” And Jesus asked him, “What name do they give you?” And he said to him, “Legion is the name they give me because we are many.” And he begged him many times over, not to send them out of the region. And there was there, near the mountain, a large herd of pigs feeding. And they begged him, saying, “Send us into the pigs, that we may enter them.” And Jesus allowed them. And the unclean spirit, and the herd rushed down the slope into the sea, about two thousand, and they suffocated in the sea. And those who looked after them fled and announced into the city and into the fields. And they came to see what had happened. And they came to Jesus, and they saw the possessed man sitting down, clothed, and sober, the one who had had the Legion. And they were afraid. And those who saw explained to them how it happened to the possessed man, and about the pigs. And they began to beg him to go away from their frontiers. And as he was going on board the boat, the man who had possessed begged him that he might be with him. And he did not allow him, but said to him, “Go into your house, to your people, and announce to them the things God has done for you and had mercy on you. And he went off and began to proclaim through the Decapolis district what Jesus had done for him. And they were all amazed. -Mark 5, 1-10
This healing is different from the one we took last night, but it is the same in the sense that the one healed is an outcast. This is another example of Jesus’ preferential option for the lost. When Jesus was asked about why he hung around with sinners, he said: “Those who are well don’t need the doctor. Sick people need the doctor.”
And he is clearly the doctor here as he and the disciples have sailed across the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gerasenes. These Gerasenes were not Jews, so Jesus is taking his ministry to the Gentiles. And just as he gets out of the boat, he is confronted by a man possessed with demons, a man who is unclothed, indicating a lack of human sensibility. Three other things to notice about him. First, he lives among the tombs, meaning he is alone and alienated from everyone in his village. Secondly, he cannot be held with physical restraints which means he cannot be controlled. Third, he is continually howling like an animal, and he is self-destructive, continually cutting himself with stones. Clearly, this man is in a bad way. But he is sensible enough to recognize who Jesus is, although, importantly, he does not ask to be healed. Jesus, however, sees that he is in distress and does not hesitate but acts immediately to expel the demons.
He asks the man his name, and he replies: “Legion, because there are hundreds of us.” The man’s personality has so disintegrated that he can no longer be called by just one name.
The demons are sent into the sea and they drown. The swineherds run to tell the townspeople who come and politely ask Jesus to leave because he has ruined their economy by drowning 2,000 of their pigs. But Legion is clothed and in his right mind, so much so that he asks Jesus if it would be all right if he joined the disciples, but Jesus declines yet gives him the mission instead to go back to his home and to tell everyone “what God, in his mercy, has done.”
This is a story about a person living with inner chaos and conflict, a story of being interiorly ambivalent, of deep-seated insecurity and of self-hatred and rage. This can just as easily be a modern tale as well. Inner chaos and conflict, deep-seated insecurity, self-hatred, and rage: there are signs of the presence of 21st century demons. But, now as then, this is also the story of how Jesus enters into that reality and rearranges the landscape to bring harmony, sanity and peace.
Unlike the healing of the leper, the healing of Legion is not about faith and its transforming power. This is about an invasion into alien territory and reclaiming it for God. A precious human soul was kidnapped and given over to a reduced and demeaned state but was rescued by the only one who could do it.
In these two healings, we meet a Jesus who overflows with compassion for anyone who needs acceptance, affirmation, recognition, love, meaning, and the fullness of life. We meet a Jesus who places the health and wholeness of a single person above any law or restriction, who heals simply because people need it.
Thank you for being here again tonight and for helping to build up this spiritual community of faith. Even though I really don’t know who is in here, and there are some of you whom I have never met, each one of you is important to me, and you are in my daily prayers.
Let us conclude with a Hail Mary and a blessing.