Sermon: "Bonfire of the Vanities"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

August 4, 2013

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21

“Bonfire of the Vanities”

There’s an old story about a stingy old rich man who was bedridden in his final days. He had heard the saying, “You can’t take it with you,” and was determined to prove it wrong.

He instructed his wife to go to the bank and withdraw enough money to fill two pillowcases.

He then told her to take the bags of money to the attic and leave them directly above his bed. His plan? When he passed away, he would reach out and grab the bags on his way to heaven.

Several weeks after the man died, his wife was up in the attic cleaning, when she came upon the two forgotten pillowcases stuffed with cash.
“Oh, that darned old fool,” she exclaimed. “I knew I should have put the money in the basement.”

The message of both of our scripture passages this morning is that we can’t take it with us.  

Anyone who has ever moved, downsized to a smaller living space, or inherited a household worth of stuff after the death of a parent, knows this.

All that we work so hard to accumulate in this life will be left behind – left as a joy or burden to our families, to gather dust in someone else’s attic, or to gradually decay, rust, and be reclaimed to the earth by the ravages of time.

Nothing in this world lasts forever.

Jesus has much to say about putting undue value on things that are in reality, temporary and worth much less than we think they are.

The Parable of the Rich Fool is a signature Jesus parable in this regard.

Now, any time a rich man talks to Jesus or asks him a question we know it’s not going to end well.  As I said earlier in our introduction to the gospel reading, Luke in particular loved pairing the words “rich” and “fool” together.

The gospels are full of tales of rich men hoarding their possessions and not getting into heaven, widows giving their last nickel to the church while the rich give very little, money changers having their tables overturned, and greedy land owners not paying a fair wage.

But while the rich are the focus if all of these stories, what Jesus is lifting up here is not the evil of having money and possessions, but rather the evils that result when we place too much value upon them.  

The focus of these stories is greed.

The rich man in our parable today is looking for a way to store his crops for future use. His concern is that without a larger barn to store his goods, he will not feel secure enough to relax and enjoy life.

And we might ask, what’s wrong with that?

The man has done nothing illegal to gain his bounty. He didn’t steal it, he didn’t manipulate anyone into giving it to him, and there is no mention of him not treating his workers well or tying to cheat anyone out of a fair wage. His land produces a bountiful crop. The soil, sun and rain worked together to make him a rich man. He simply builds bigger barns to hold what he rightfully harvested from his land.

Would it be better for him to let it go to waste?

We might answer that what God has given us is not for us to hold onto for ourselves. The man should give the excess back to God, by giving it to those in his community who have less.

But perhaps the message that Jesus has for us here goes a bit deeper than our need to give back to God.  It’s hard for us to pour out God’s love if we haven’t made room to receive it.

The man’s life has been taken over with worry and concern over how to store his possessions. He believes that he cannot relax into the joy of living as long as his future is insecure. He does not acknowledge the gift that God has given him and he does not trust that God will continue to provide.

In a world ravaged by drought, floods, unstable economies, and food insecurity, many of us might have cause to doubt that “God will provide” as well.

When children in our own communities go to bed hungry at night and families have to choose between rent and groceries, telling them that God will provide may not be enough to keep them from imagining how they might build their own bigger barn, to ensure they have enough to feel secure.

When I was in seminary, I traveled to Kentucky with twelve of my classmates to learn how poverty affected children living in the poorest parts of Appalachia.

We visited a church that gathered as a community every Thursday night to pack bags full of food to be given to local schoolchildren.  During the week these children relied on the free meals offered at school and would often go hungry for the 68 hours between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.  What was striking is that the children receiving the food bags were instructed to hide the bags from their parents, as too often the food was taken away from the children, hoarded for another day, or sold to fund a parent’s addiction.

Greed is fed by insecurity and fear.

It is not limited to one socioeconomic class and it comes in many forms.

We might place undue value on our possessions, the size of the land that we own, the number of people under our influence, and our ability to exert power over others.

Greed also comes into play when we withhold our time, attention, respect, and love from those whom we deem unworthy of receiving it.

Jesus sees and calls out the fear that is at the root of our greed.

Our fear of not having enough.

Our fear that we are powerless.

Our fear that we ourselves are unworthy of love.

But too often what we desire, what we long to possess, what we hoard because without it we feel insecure, is something that is perishable and temporary, and once it’s gone we fall into fear yet again.

The author of Ecclesiastes writes,

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity   and a chasing after wind.

When we hear this text, our modern ears translate the word vanity as meaning self-centeredness, narcissism, or pride.

But the root of the word vanity is emptiness.

In fact, the word that appears in the original Hebrew text is hevel,

  which means “breath, vapor, impermanence” –

Hevel is a fleeting vaporous apparition that is easily blown away.

Perhaps this text from Ecclesiastes is better read as:

“Vapor of vapors. All is vapor. All the deeds that are done under the sun are vapor, and a chasing after wind.”

Now we might argue that we accept that our material possessions are fleeting and temporary, but our work – all the deeds and toil that we’ve done under the sun – are not.

What we do now has the power to affect generations to come – socially, economically, environmentally, and spiritually; and while our human legacies will not live on for eternity, there is still value in what we create and leave behind for future generations.

All is not vanity. All is not empty.

All is not foolish toil left to wither under the sun.

But perhaps too much of it is.

If we all took out a sheet of paper and listed everything that we do in a typical week, we might be forced to defend the necessity of a good number of things on the list.

Work is necessary. Play is necessary. Time spent with family and friends is necessary. As members of a church community, we might add that time spent serving others and serving God, is necessary.

But how much is too much?

How far can we stretch the reasoning, the rationalization, for the necessity of every thing that we do?

The average adult in our society leads an increasingly overscheduled life, add a couple of kids to the mix, and one’s life quickly becomes an endless parade of lacrosse practices, soccer games, dance recitals, violin lessons, doctors appointments, teacher meetings, and school assemblies.

Even without school age children, when we string together work commitments, plans with friends, trips to the gym, caring for adult children or elderly parents, and various boards, committees, and organizations that we choose to serve, we quickly see why the mantra of our modern world has become, “I’d love to, but I have no time.”

Earlier this week I saw a posting on facebook that read,

        “Stop the glorification of BUSY!”

Too often we wear our busyness as a badge of honor.

As we list all those things that we do in a typical week, we may feel a sense of pride in what we’ve managed to accomplish.

Our busyness can add to our sense of importance and value, to the point that when a friend asks us how we’re doing and we respond with a breathless rundown of all the things we’ve done, and still have yet to do – perhaps we’re not complaining so much as bragging.

For many of us, beneath the feeling that we’re exhausted, overworked, and overstressed, is the fear that if we don’t have a full schedule, we will cease to have value….or will be thought of as unimportant.

We worry that our kids will fail to keep up with those who have a multitude of extracurricular activities to add to their college applications.

Or we believe that we are too important to lessen our pace.

We imagine all that would fall through the cracks and ask ourselves,

“What would the people at work do without me?”

“What would my family do without me?”

“What would my church – and God – do without me?”

What is so wonderful about our scripture texts today is that they both give us good reason to yank ourselves off the treadmill that we’re struggling to stay on.

Because all those things on our to do lists are really not as important as we think they are.

And all our toiling under the sun is not going to make us live longer or live happier.

And all those things we have stored up in our barns are not going to keep us secure, or healthy, or safely out of harms way.

Jesus said to the rich man, “You are a fool. You could die this very night. And the things you have set aside, whose will they be?’

What Jesus offers as an alternative to all our toiling and storing up, is the love of God.

What makes us feel powerful, what makes us feel secure, what makes us feel connected to others, is love….and God’s love, God’s unconditional love, is the greatest love of all.  

But we can’t feel, experience, or seek concrete ways to respond to that love if we haven’t created a space in our lives for it to take root.

In 15^th century Italy, it was a common sight to see priests gathering up and publically burning items that might tempt one to sin  – books, works of art, musical instruments, fine dresses, and even mirrors. These public burnings were known as bonfires of the vanities.

It was believed that the removal of these items would cause people to turn back towards God.

But as we know, removing the temptation doesn’t reduce our desire or need for the love and security that we seek. And we if don’t seek those things in God, and in our relationships with each other, then we’ll find something else, some other vanity, to fill in the void.

If we empty our barns of possessions but don’t seek to fill our lives with love, then it won’t be long before we fill those barns back up again.

If we reduce or commitments and clear our schedules to create a day of Sabbath for us and our families, but don’t fill that space with love, then it won’t be long before we’re seeking something else to do to keep us occupied.

Filling that space with love doesn’t mean that we have to take on yet another community service project or church commitment, if we’ve already made space in our lives for such things.

But if we haven’t made space for such things, we may be surprised how rewarding it is once we do.

Filling that space with love will look different for each and every one of us. It could entail spending more time together as a family, visiting a friend we haven’t seen in a while, taking longer walks at a slower pace, setting aside time to mediate or pray, opening up a creative channel and learning how to paint, sculpt, or sing.

Remember this is not a challenge to add more things to our lives, but to actively reduce how much we are doing and how much we are holding onto and creating a space for God’s love, mercy, and grace to work it’s way into our lives.

All of life is vanity.

All of life is hevel – a fleeting breath, a passing vapor.

Give yourself time to experience it while it’s here –

   in all its fullness,

        and in the loving company of God.

Amen.

Sermon: "The View from the Ditch"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

 July 7, 2013

Luke 10:25-37

 “The View from the Ditch”

The morning sun had just appeared over the horizon, when the man regained consciousness.

The smell of wet grass and rotting vegetation quickly overcame him.

It was then that he realized that he was face down on the ground,

…lying in a drainage ditch on the road down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

The man used what little strength he had left to roll himself over.

And when he did he screamed out in pain.

It felt like a thousand knives were tearing through his body as the pain shot through his back, his chest, and the hip that he must have landed on when he fell.  He tried to open his eyes but they were swollen shut.

His head was pounding, and as he reached up to touch his face he could feel the dried blood caked around his nose and mouth.

“How did I get here?” the man wondered aloud.

Did he trip and fall? Was he hit from behind by a runaway cart, or animal?

Then it all came flooding back.

It was approaching dusk the night before when he came around a bend in the road and there they were. Men with cloaks concealing their faces.

First one, then two, then three more, leaping out at him from behind a large rock.

The men descended upon him and began pounding on him with their fists.

He instinctively covered his face and turned to get away, but one of his attackers pushed him to the ground and soon they were all kicking him as hard as they could. What happened next was a blur.

The last thing the man remembered was being stripped of his clothing and his belongings.

The coat that his mother had insisted he take to guard against the chill of the dessert nights.

The sandals his wife had woven for him with loving care.

The lucky pendent that his youngest child had slipped into his belt pouch the night before he left home.

But worst of all, his attackers took the money purse he had hidden beneath his cloak.

Six months worth of wages that he had earned working in Jerusalem.

Money that was earmarked as the final payment on a fishing boat that he desperately needed to support his family back in Jericho.

And now it was gone.

His friends had warned him about the road down to Jericho.

The twisting, desolate mountain road that descends for 17 miles from the hills of Jerusalem to the valleys below was prime territory for ambushers. The locals called it the “The Bloody Pass.”

Now he knew why. He had ignored the warnings, and here he was, lying motionless and left for dead in a ditch.

The rising sun burned on his face, and it was hours before he heard the footsteps of an approaching traveler on the road.

Finally, help had arrived.

The man turned his head and with shear will forced one of his swollen eyes to open, just in time to see a man wearing the cloak of a priest cross over to the opposite side of the road.

Perhaps the Priest didn’t see him because he was too far down in the ditch.

The man weakly called out for help, but the Priest continued on, never once looking back.

The sun continued to beat down upon the man.

Another hour had passed before he heard footsteps on the road once again.

He recognized the approaching figure of a Levite, a member of the caste who assisted the Priests in the Temple.

This time the man did not have the strength to make a sound, but again he pried open one eye and to his relief he saw the Levite looking right at him.

But that relief quickly turned to horror as the Levite too crossed over to the other side and hurried off leaving the injured man alone once again.

The man could not believe what was happening.

It was possible that Levite and the Priest had feared that touching his beaten and bloodied body would render them unclean for the Temple rites, but they were both heading away from the Temple in Jerusalem towards Jericho. They had no reason not to stop and help an injured man, and a fellow Jew at that!

It was then that the man realized that it was NOT obvious that he was a fellow Jew.  All of his clothing had been taken; including the prayer shawl he had draped across his shoulders under his cloak.

The Priest and the Levite must have thought he was a God-less gentile, or a clumsy drunkard, or worse, a Samaritan - One of those blasphemers from up north who dared to claim that they too are descendents of Abraham, even though their blood is not pure, and they deny the writings of the prophets. These Samaritans even made the heretical claim that God resides not in Jerusalem, but in the Temple that THEY built on top of Mount Gerizim. As if the noble God of Israel would ever enter the filthy land of Samaria.

Now the man understood why the Levite and the Priest had passed him by.

He could have been anyone. 

Perhaps they were afraid that the robbers were still in the area.

Or they feared he was one of the robbers, posing as bait and just waiting for some unsuspecting fool to stop and offer help. 

“You can never be too careful on a road like this,” the man thought.

Wouldn’t he do the same if he was passing through a bad neighborhood and saw someone in need? Only a fool would let down his guard and risk his life to help a stranger on the road to Jericho.

With a heavy heart, the man resigned himself to his fate.

He would die anonymously in this ditch, with his family left to wonder what ever became of him.

It was late afternoon, when something, someone, caused him to stir once again.

He felt a hand cradling the back of his head while another hand tended to his injuries - First washing the blood off his face and then bandaging the wounds on his body.

He could feel himself being lifted up and gently, he was draped across the back of a donkey, with a blanket laid across him to protect him from the sun.

The man drifted in and out of consciousness for what seemed like hours before the gentle rocking motion of the animal ceased.

Strong arms lifted him off the animal’s back, and the air cooled around him as he was carried indoors. 

The chatter of voices and the scent of a simmering pot of stew filled the air. The man was carried up a set of stairs and placed on a soft bed, where he promptly fell into a deep sleep.

 In the morning as he awoke, he heard a stranger’s voice summon an innkeeper. The next sound he heard was the tinkling of silver coins, and the stranger’s voice saying, “Here are two denari, take care of this man; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”

With the voices receding into the distance, a young boy entered the room to leave water by the man’s bedside.

“Who was it that saved me?” the man whispered through his parched lips.

“Was it the Levite? Or the Priest? Did they summon help?

Did one of them return to dress my wounds and bring me here?”

“No,” said the boy.

“The man who saved you was not a Levite or a Priest, in fact he was not a member of any local sect by the looks of his dress.”

“But you can ask him yourself,” the boy said. “The stranger said he would be passing through here again…on his way home to Samaria.”

*****

We don’t know how the man reacted to this news.

To the realization that his most hated enemy was the one who saved him.

The end of the story is left to our imagination.

But then again, many of the details in this version of the Good Samaritan tale that you just heard are the product of imagination.

The author of the Gospel of Luke does not tell us who the beaten man is.

He doesn’t tell us how the man reacted when the Priest and Levite passed him by, or how he came to accept the help of the Samaritan.

We’re left to imagine how we might feel if we were in his place…but the view from the ditch is one that we don’t often envision for ourselves.

When we hear the tale of the Good Samaritan, we typically enter the story from one of three familiar perspectives:

We put ourselves in the place of the hypocritical Levite and Priest who give into busyness or fear and walk away from someone in need;

We put ourselves in the place of the traveling Samaritan, who puts his prejudices aside and shows compassion for a stranger;

And we put ourselves in the place of the conniving lawyer in the story’s introduction, who prompts the tale by asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” when what he is really wants to ask is: “Who is NOT my neighbor. Who can I continue to fear and distrust AND STILL inherit eternal life?

Through the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus teaches us that we should not let our fears or prejudices get in the way of honoring God’s greatest commandment:

To love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, AND to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

The message that we typically derive from this parable is that we are to be like the Good Samaritan and show mercy to all. And we are NOT to be like the Levite, the Priest, or the lawyer, who failed to do so.

But what about the man who was left to die in the ditch?

How might we be more like him?

What if Jesus told this story because he intended for us to put ourselves in the ditch most of all?

Perhaps we’re less inclined to take on this perspective because the parable of the Good Samaritan has lost its sting over the last 2000 years.

Most modern day Christians have only a vague awareness that the Samaritans and the Jews did not particularly like each other….and we don’t fully comprehend how shocking it was for Jesus’ followers to hear a story that cast a Samaritan in the role as the righteous and merciful rescuer.

A first century Jew would be repulsed to hear that they were called to accept help from, or imitate the behavior of a Samaritan.

This story forced them to recognize and confront life-long patterns of learned hatred and fear.

In our time, however, the phrase “Good Samaritan” has taken on a completely different meaning. The phrase has worked its way into our secular vernacular and has come to describe anyone who stops to help a stranger.

In fact, we no longer need to use the word “Good” as a qualifying adjective because the name “Samaritan” itself has come to describe someone who is “merciful,” “compassionate,” and “selfless.”

If a first century Jew heard us using the word Samaritan in this manner, he or she would cringe.

For us it would be like redefining the word “Nazi” or “Terrorist” to mean a person of good intentions and good will.

As in, “My car broke down on the highway last night, but thankfully a Good Terrorist stopped to help me.”

If this comparison sounds overly harsh to our ears you can imagine what the people of Judea heard when Jesus descried their hated enemy as “good”.

To garner the full effect of the parable as Jesus intended it, we need to turn it upside down. Instead of putting ourselves in the place of the Levite, the Priest, or the Samaritan and imagining whom WE would be reluctant to help, we might instead see the story unfold from the perspective of the person needing the help.

If we were the one lying in the ditch who would be our Samaritan?   

Who do we imagine would NOT stop to help us?

Who do we imagine would be indifferent to our pain or delight in our misfortune?

And can we picture that person being the one whom we most need to come to our rescue?

We may fully believe that we as faithful Christians are capable of extending love and mercy to our enemy, but do we also believe that our enemy is capable of extending love and mercy to us?

Just as it was healing for the people of Judea listening to Jesus’ parable to see their enemy as being capable of feeling love and mercy for a stranger, it is healing for us to see our enemy in the same way. Our enemy is our neighbor.

By reversing the perspective of the parable of the Good Samaritan, we begin to see that our only hope for healing is to open our hearts to the people we most fear and distrust.

Martin Luther King Jr. lifted up the parable of the Good Samaritan in his famous “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” speech, given the day before he was assassinated, in April 1963.

King noted that the first question that the Levite and the Priest asked was,

"If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"

But when the Good Samaritan came along, he reversed the question and asked, "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

We might extend King’s reversal of perspective by asking yet another question, “If we do not stop to help each other, or accept help from each other, what will happen to us?”

The Kingdom of God, the reign of God, the building of God’s inclusive and loving world here on earth is fully dependent upon our willingness to open our hearts to one another.

So we must ask ourselves, who are the people in our time that we most fear and distrust?

And how might they be the source of our healing?

If we look up from the ditch and see the face of our enemy – whoever that enemy is to us – Jew or gentile, male or female, gay or straight, Christian or Muslim, Conservative or Liberal, native or immigrant, black, white, brown, yellow, or red - this is the person whom Jesus calls to love as our neighbor.

This is the person who holds the key to our salvation.

Because as long as our relationships with each other remain broken and wounded our world will remain broken and wounded.

Healing comes only through love.

Compassion and mercy comes only through love.

Understanding and forgiveness comes only through love.

The lawyer said to Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

And Jesus pointed to the ditch and said,

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”

The man answered, “The one who showed him mercy.”

And Jesus said to him, “Yes. Now go and do likewise.”

Amen.

Sermon: "Follow the Yellow Brick Road"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

The Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

June 30, 2013

Luke 9:51-62

“Follow the Yellow Brick Road”

Have any of you ever tried to bargain with God?

Have you ever lifted up a prayer and promised God that you would become a more faithful servant in exchange for an answer to your prayer?

Have you ever said, “If you do this one thing for me, God, I promise I’ll go to church every Sunday” or “I promise I’ll pray every day and give more of my time and money to those in need.”

Some of us may even take it to the extreme and say, “God, if you get me out of this bind, I promise I’ll become a priest or a nun or a missionary and dedicate my life in service to you!”

I sometimes wonder if people look at us in the clergy and think, “Dang, I wonder what kind of trouble she got into to make that deal.”

In our gospel story today, one of Jesus’ prospective disciples makes the promise that we all make as Christians. The man sees Jesus walking along the road and he calls out to him,  “I will follow you wherever you go!”

But just as with us, Jesus knows this is a promise that the man is unlikely to keep.

We make a lot of promises like this in our lives, not just to God but also to each other.

We make those in-the-moment commitments that we swear we’ll live up to from this day forward - Assurances spoken in earnest with a genuine belief that we will never fall back on our word.

It starts when we’re young.

“Mom, if you let me get a puppy I swear that I’ll walk him and feed him every day!”

 “Dad, if you let me borrow the car I swear I’ll never ask for anything else ever again.”

As adults the promises we make to each other may not be explicitly contingent on what we expect to receive in return, but the expectation is there all the same….even if we don’t say it at the time.

I promise I will love you forever….(unless you fail me in some way, or stop loving me).

I promise that I will always be there for you….(unless I’m distracted by what’s going on in my own life, or if it’s too painful for me to be present with what you’re going through).

I promise that I will never hurt you or let you down in any way……(but you know I will, because as human beings this is an impossible standard for us to live up to).

We break our promises to each other because rarely is life as simple as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Human relationships are messy, complicated undertakings, as we drag all the baggage of our upbringings, expectations, and past hurts into every encounter that we have.

If we have so much difficulty honoring our commitments to each other, how much more difficult is it for us to honor our commitments to God?

In our gospel reading this morning, we encounter three newly minted disciples who shout out to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go!” and one by one Jesus turns to them and says, “Are you absolutely sure that’s what you really want to do?”

Jesus has turned his face towards Jerusalem.

Which means he is preparing to journey to his death.

He knows that what he has done up until this point and what he is about to do in the holy city of Jerusalem will ultimately get him killed.

And here he has three fresh-faced disciples in front him ready to sign on without truly understanding the cost.

We too are eager to walk in the ways of Jesus and yet most of us have no idea what it is we’re getting ourselves into.

We’re like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, who joins the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion on an adventurous search for love, wisdom, and courage.

All we need to do is follow the Yellow Brick Road to find the One who will give us everything that we seek.

But while some may view Christianity as a roadmap to happiness, Jesus is quick to point out that following in his footsteps is a dangerous undertaking. The road to Jerusalem is chock full of roadblocks and landmines, and there is no marked path of golden bricks to keep us from wandering astray.

As with the novice disciples in our gospel story, before we even leave the comfort of our homes to step onto the road to Jerusalem, Jesus issues us three warnings about the conditions that we will face along the way….and the level of commitment that is necessary to see it through to the end.

Warning #1:

“Although the birds have nests, and the foxes have holes, the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” On this journey don’t expect to stay in four-star hotels, or even one-star dives in the sketchy part of town, because like Jesus, the message we have to share about God’s inclusive love and grace is not one that many people are willing to hear.  We will have plenty of doors slammed in our faces, and we will spend many a night sleeping on the side of the road. This is not a life of power and comfort that we are committing to, but rather one of destitution and rejection.

Warning #2:

“Let the dead bury the dead”… because as disciples of Jesus we have been resurrected and given new life. There is no time to waste. There will always be one more thing that we need to do before committing to the road of discipleship.  One more bill to pay, one more loose end to tie up. Let those who remain attached to their old lives stay behind and tend to the dead.

We are called to preach the coming of the Kingdom of God, to ensure that one day death itself will be no more.

Warning #3:

“Do not put your hand to the plow and then look back”… for those who turn away from their work end up plowing a crooked furrow.

We must keep our eyes ahead and watch where we’re going. We must detach ourselves from whatever it is that we’ve left behind, as these things only serve to distract us: Our home, our family, the responsibilities that have kept us rooted in place. We must let go of all of them to be a true disciple of Christ.

Now after hearing these harsh warnings many of us may be inclined to respond like the three hopeful disciples by saying, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Instead, we’ll return to our homes, our families, and our obligations, while doing our best to be observant Christians in our every day lives.

After all, the requests that these potential disciples made of Jesus were not unreasonable. Didn’t Jesus preach about love and compassion?

Shouldn’t he understand why one should be allowed to bury one’s father?

Or say goodbye to one’s family?

Isn’t it selfish to walk away from those who love us to go on a religious quest? What kind of person does such a thing?

In the mid 1980’s, American journalist Steven Newman left his life and family behind and became the first person to travel by foot around the world.

In his book, titled World Walk, he documented what turned out to be a four-year journey across the United States, Europe, northern Africa, southern Asia, and Australia.

Newman felt called to embark on this journey because he had a desire to learn more about the world and its people, but he also viewed his walk as a spiritual pilgrimage. 

Newman’s decision to strike out on this journey was not an easy one.

His father was seriously ill at the time and was not expected to live the 3 to 4 years that the journey would take. 

And yet, on a cold April morning in 1983, Steven Newman strapped on his backpack, said goodbye to his family and friends, and walked away from his home. He looked back only once, to notice the frail form of his father in his upstairs bedroom window, wiping away tears as he watched his only son leave home.

Newman spoke of the pain and sadness that turned his stomach as he walked away.  He knew that it was most likely the last time that he would see his father alive, and that his mother would be left to deal with her grief on her own. But he walked away all the same.

We may think that Newman’s decision to leave his family and walk around the world on a spiritual pilgrimage was selfish and unwise.

If he was leaving home to follow some controversial religious guru we might judge him all the more harshly.

So what would be running through our minds if we were living in first century Palestine, standing with one foot on our family’s property, and the other on the road to Jerusalem? 

Before us stands a man named Jesus, a religious guru touting controversial beliefs - beliefs that will most likely get him killed - and he’s looking us straight in the eye and saying, “Follow me.”

What would we do?

We’ve already watched him rebuke three men simply because they had other ideas about was expected of them as disciples.

Would he do the same to us if we wished to say goodbye to our families? Or bury a loved one? If we hesitated to respond because we didn’t like the idea of not having a warm bed to sleep in every night?

The cost of discipleship is something we hear a lot about in our churches.

But how many of us know what that means in modern day terms?

If it was hard for those in 1^st century Palestine to walk away from what little they had, how much harder is it for those of us living in 21^st century America?

Are we expected to give up our homes, our families, and all of our worldly possessions to be true followers of Christ?

Are we all supposed to live like Francis of Assisi or Mother Theresa?

It may reassure us to know that many scholars believe that Jesus did not intend for his words to be taken literally in this text.

He was most likely using hyperbole to make his point, as he did many times before. Jesus was not averse to employing exaggerations to get peoples attention - to break them out of their rutted way of thinking, to help them to imagine a new way of living in the world.

Perhaps Jesus’ objective in this text is not to tear his disciples away from their homes and families, but rather to stress the importance of getting the word out about the all inclusive Kingdom of God, and the role that we’re expected to play in bringing it about.

If Jesus could get some of his more casual followers to make the same commitment that his 12 disciples had then he could get the word out that much faster.

But before accepting any new disciples into his fold he had to determine whether they were up for the challenge.

Jesus’ words may seem harsh, but if we were about to set out on a journey that would take us far from home through potentially hostile territory, wouldn’t we want to know ahead of time what we were getting ourselves into?

Admittedly, committing oneself to following Jesus in 21^st century America is much less fraught with danger then making the same commitment in 1^st century Palestine.  

Or is it?

Would you feel safe walking into a war zone, unarmed, carrying only a sign that read, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”

Would you risk arrest and interrupt a state sanctioned execution by standing up and saying, “You have heard it said, an eye for an eye, but I tell you, we are called to turn the other cheek – to practice forgiveness, not revenge?”

Would you be willing to not just serve up meals at a soup kitchen or volunteer at Anne Marie house, but to take it a step further by inviting a homeless person to live in your home? Or provide sanctuary to an undocumented immigrant? Or publically witness as a person of faith who stands up against racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and discrimination and injustice in any form?

These are hard questions, and truthfully, most of us would struggle to answer “yes” to any of them. But when we consider Jesus’ teachings, this is what the cost of discipleship looks like in our time, or any time.

Whether we stand in 1^st century Palestine or 21^st century America, with one foot in our front yard and the other on the road to Jerusalem, the commitment that Jesus asks of us is the same.

Perhaps you’ve seen the bumper sticker that reads: “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

Discipleship means living in ways we might not otherwise live.

When we make a commitment to follow Jesus we should be prepared for him to step right up to us and ask, “Do you know what it is you’re committing to?”

Because what we’re promising to do is hard, hard, stuff.

And it’s not just about participating in a church community and giving generously to those in need.

And it’s not just about standing up and publically speaking out for peace, equality, and justice.

Following Jesus is primarily about opening our hearts and treating every person we encounter with compassion, understanding, and grace.

It’s about swallowing our pride, not getting lost in our sorrow or anger when others have let us down, and being able to say to others, “I’m sorry I hurt you…what can WE do to move towards healing.”

To speak and act as Christians in our personal relationships is possibly the hardest requirement of discipleship.

Because it’s something we’re called to do every day of our lives.

We may be in search of a yellow brick road to follow, but Jesus has led us onto a road that will bring us to a much greater reward:

The healing of our human relationships.

The healing of our relationship with God.

The healing of our world.

The Good News is that all we need to do to get there is to answer Jesus’ call…

 by saying, “I WILL follow you… WHEREVER you may go.”

Amen

Sermon: "I Am Legion"

Rev. Maureen Frescott

The Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

June 23, 2013

Psalm 22:19-22; Luke 8:26-39

“I Am Legion”

Before I begin the sermon I want to address one question that I suspect popped into many of your heads as we heard this gospel story today – and if you’ve read or heard this story of Legion before it’s likely that you’ve had this question lingering in the back of your mind ever since.

In fact, a friend of mine asked me this question just the other day after I told her what the gospel text was for this Sunday.  She said, “I get that this story of Legion is about demonic possession and Jesus healing a very troubled man…but tell me Reverend, why did Jesus have to kill the pigs?”

We can’t seem to get past the pigs.

It’s hard enough to sift out a meaningful, modern-day message from a story about demonic possession, but if we’re picturing Wilbur and Babe leaping off a cliff to their deaths, it can really get in the way.

Yes, the pigs are innocent bystanders in this story.

There they are grazing on the hillside minding their own business when suddenly they become a convenient home to a legion of demons.

The pigs are so troubled by this development that they choose to run down the hillside and drown themselves in the lake – effectively sending the demons into the very abyss they were trying to avoid.  And what we end up with is a lot of dead pigs and a group of angry pig herders who have just watched their livelihood destroyed right in front of their eyes.

So before we talk about the man named Legion, or Jesus’ extraordinary healing abilities, or the extensive reach of God’s love….

let’s talk about the pigs.

The traditional explanation is that in first century Jewish culture the pig was considered to be an unclean animal. They were not to be eaten or touched. There were no pig farms in Judea.

Jesus and his disciples encountered these pig herders in Gentile country.

So it stands to reason if you have a hoard of evil demons on your hands, why not send them into the nearest unclean and therefore expendable animal that you see?

Middle Eastern mythology also held that demons could not survive in water. So the frightened and stampeding pigs offered a convenient vehicle to get the demons into the watery abyss where they would ultimately reach their demise.

While the death of the pigs in this story may ruffle the feathers of our 21^st century, animal loving sensibilities, I assure it was not Jesus’ intention to anger the folks at PETA.

(I promise you, no animals were harmed in the telling of this gospel story)

What may be more troubling to some about this story, is that Jesus seemed to have no regard for the pig herders - who most likely had families to feed, and who were now left without a source of food and income. 

The possibly unsatisfactory answer to this objection is that when we live out the radically inclusive message of the gospel in the world, the results are sometimes painful.

Systems of power and commerce are overturned and we as a people have to make sacrifices and painful adjustments to ensure that everyone is included at the table.

Jesus asked many of his followers to make difficult choices and to give up their livelihoods to spread the hopeful word of the gospel.

But some, like the pig herders, end up as unwilling participants in the destruction of systems of imbalance.  Unfortunately, in order to raise some up, others must be willing to take a step down.

I said that this answer might be unsatisfactory to us because we don’t like the idea of having to suffer a loss to allow others to gain, even if we all stand to gain so much more in the long run.

But what is it that we gain from the healing of Legion?

Now that we’ve set the pigs aside, it’s time to tackle our demons.

When Jesus steps out of the boat in the land of the Gerasenes he is immediately smacked in the face with the stench of overwhelming evil and fear.

And all of it is contained in the form of one man -

a naked, screaming, wild-eyed man who hides in the shadows of the tombs on the outskirts of this Gentile city.

We’re told that many times he has escaped the chains and shackles of those who’ve tried to tame him, as his internal demons drove him over and over again into the wild.

His name is Legion.

But Legion is not the name of the man who cowers at Jesus’ feet.

It is the name of what possesses him.

The version of the story that appears in the gospel of Matthew says it best:

Jesus asks the man, “What is your name.” and the demons respond,

“I am Legion: for we are many.”

In the Roman army, a Legion consisted of up to 6,000 men, and it believed the gospel story invokes this name to drive home the point that this is no ordinary demon possession that we’re talking about.

This is not about one man wrestling with one demon – which today we might define as an addiction, or a physical or mental illness that causes one to behave erratically and disruptively.

This about all of the demons that we encounter when we step into the world.

This story is a foretelling of what the disciples can expect to encounter when they take their message of the gospel to a world that is for the most part unprepared and unwilling to endure the changes and the sacrifices that must be made to build the kingdom of God – a kingdom where oppression, poverty, and systems built upon fear and control are no more.

These are the systems that permeate our world.

We don’t know how to function without them.

We live in a world where some are leaders and others are followers, and this inevitably creates imbalances of power that lead to oppression and tyranny.

We live in a world where individualism and personal achievement are rewarded, which leads us to lift up those who succeed and cast blame and judgment on those who are struggling – telling ourselves that they fail because they lack ambition, discipline, or have become too reliant on the support of others.

We live in a world where our differences are alternatively celebrated and feared; where we pride ourselves on our tolerance for diversity while at the same time remain suspicious of those from other cultures, countries, races, and religious traditions.

The evils of this world are inevitable.

They are a product of human fear, free will, and brokenness.

These are the demons that possess us all.

We each have our personal demons as well. Our addictions. Our traumas. Our physical, emotional, and spiritual scars that influence how we treat one another and how we treat ourselves.

These are the demons that we wrestle with on a daily basis.

And like Legion, we resist God’s efforts to drive them out of us.

When Jesus encounters the cowering Legion, the demons within him say, “What have you to do with me?” “I beg you, do not torment me!”

These are the voices of the demons speaking, for they of course fear their own demise, but we can imagine we also hear the faint voice of the man trapped within. This is the only life he has known. As much as the demons have forced him to the edges of society – to be bound up in chains and feared and mocked – to be free of the devil he knows and be left to wander in a world he does not know and has few skills to navigate, is much more frightening than being chained for life.

Many of us have been there or have loved one who have been there.

Some of us are there right now.

We feel at home amongst the tombs, hiding in the shadows, resisting those who reach out to help, because we’re so deathly afraid of letting go of what has become comforting and familiar, even it’s slowly killing us and we know it.

Drugs. Alcohol. Depression. Abusive and unhealthy relationships.

Impossibly high standards that drive us to work more, earn more, buy more, and achieve more while our health, families, and sanity crumble around us.

What the gospel gives us is hope.

In this story of Legion, this poor withering soul of a man weighted down by the force of thousands of demons, comes alive at Jesus’ command.

He did not cast the demons out. Jesus did.

But in their absence it would have been easy and expected for him to continue to cower in the shadows in fear of a world that he barely knew.

Like an ex-con just released from prison, an addict transitioning into sobriety, or a woman living on her own for the first time after a lifetime of dependence on abusive men, taking that first step into the glaring light of the free world is both exhilarating and terrifying.

Which is why this man healed by Jesus does not leap up and run into town shouting in joy and amazement – a small detail that makes this story ring truer than many others.

Instead the man sits at Jesus’ feet, now in his right mind, but silent.

Until Jesus moves to leave and the man begs Jesus to take him with him.

His instinct is to cling to Jesus, just as many of us who find healing wish to cling to the people or place that helped transform us.

But Jesus tells the man to return to his community, to serve as a living testimony to the power of God’s love and healing.

Return to the people who knew and loved you before you started spiraling downward. Your story is inspiring to strangers, but it is all the more powerful when told to people who know the battles you’ve faced, who see themselves in you, who look at you and think, “He overcame his demons with God’s help, maybe I can, too.”

At the end of this gospel story, Jesus gets back in the boat with the disciples and returns home.  He traveled all the way to the land of the Gerasenes and never made it past the shoreline.

It’s as if the entire trip across the sea of Galilee was done to meet this one man. The calming of the stormy sea, the casting out of a legion of demons, one man’s life is changed for the better, a new disciple has been set loose in the land of the Gentiles, and the stage has been set for the building of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus’ disciples are witnesses to all of this, as are we.

There’s a reason why the gospel writers felt this story was worthy of inclusion in their accounts of Jesus’ life.

I’d like to imagine that they hoped their Gentile readers and their future readers from other cultures and other lands would see their way past the drowning pigs and the fleeing demons and see the joy of the gospel message contained within.

This is a story of transformation.

The kind that only be found in the power of faith.

If we’re going to work together to transform this world – to cast out the demons of systemic poverty, oppression, and inequality, then we need the power of God and the belief that God is willing us to do this to get it done.

If we’re going to transform ourselves, to seek help to cast out our personal demons and to ultimately help others to do the same - then we need the power of God and the belief that God is willing us to do this to get it done.

The only way to achieve transformation is to stand toe to toe with the Legions that possess us and our world and lean on the strength of God to pull us out of the abyss.

As writer Suzanne Guthrie puts it, “Healing requires Confrontation - and bold truth telling. If you can't name the disease, how can you find the proper cure? Perhaps it takes a radical withdrawal into the desert, or living naked among the tombs to isolate a problem so enmeshed with everything else in life and culture. Here, evil finds its name revealed, and, shouting and protesting in fear, it trembles in the presence of Holiness.”

The people who witnessed the healing of Legion reacted with fear.

They asked Jesus to leave because they were afraid that he might do the same to them.

How do we respond when confronted with the gospel truth that we have something possessing us that needs to be released?

That there’s something inside of us in our heart, our something outside of us in our common culture that has us bound and chained in fear?

How willing are we to let Jesus reach into our lives and turn them upside down so that we all might be healed?

We are Legion, for we are Many.

The good news is that God is much bigger than the fears that we hold onto.

The good news is that love conquers fear.

Always. Always.

Thanks be to God, and Amen.