Little Budworth, Trinity 4, Proper 7, 23/6/2013
...they found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. (Luke 8.35) [1]
But they weren’t afraid before. When the man who they knew well was roaming naked on the outskirts of their village, their lives went on as normal. They weren’t afraid at all, when the man in question, with an immense strength, would break free from the chains and shackles with which he had been bound. On those days when the mad strongman, the strong madman, was on the loose again, there was no fear in the village at all. But after Jesus healed him, and the madness left him and peace descended on the man, then, in those moments, fear struck the villagers. Why would this be?
Now, I don’t know about Little Budworth, but I think it’s true to say - and it features strongly in our society’s collective imagination - that many villages have their madmen, or their village idiots, their people who belong to them but only to be treated as freakish, or regarded as evil, and cast off to the outskirts. In some deep, unspoken way, they are so much part of the life of the village that the community would not be itself without them.
I vividly remember a cycling holiday in Shropshire where one evening, on a stroll through the village of Clun, the still summer air was punctuated by the most awful yells and cries, similar to the sound of a cat in deep distress, and barks harder and deeper in tone: it was clearly a human voice and it was very disturbing indeed. But in the village store and the local pub and at the reception desk of the B&B no-one local blinked when those awful sounds wafted in through open windows. Only when the source of the cries emerged from the background and came through the door of the pub, did anyone flinch. ‘Evening George,’ said the publican to the howling man, ‘Time you were on your way now,’ and he gently turned the man around in the doorway and sent him homewards, howling at the sky, barking at people he passed on his way out to the edge of the village. This man, I suggest, performed precisely the same role in the village of Clun as the demon-possessed man of Geresa did in his.
This is how communities keep life ticking along as normal, when so often the delicate balance of life threatens to be upset. This is how communities smooth things over when underneath the surface of community life dark, dangerous creatures linger and threaten to erupt. We keep our sense of belonging to something sane, solid, supportive, strong, by casting out of our company the unstable, the broken, the weak - anyone who threatens our sense of normality. Those who are difficult or different from us we cast out to the edge, to keep our identity strong and our well-being intact. We tell them they don’t belong to us; but deep down we know we wouldn’t be the same without them. In a very real way they do belong to us - for they are our ‘safety valve’; without them we would have to find other ways to deal with the dark side of ourselves.
Religion justifies this social behaviour. At the very heart of our Christian story there is an example of it, in the words of the high priest Caiaphas: ‘It is better that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ (John 11.50) Cast out the mad ones, the bad ones, the broken ones, and things will continue to be all right for the rest of us. It’s easy enough to find examples of this today.
Consider how the Christian community keeps a lid on the difficult, disconcerting area of life which gets called sexuality: how the Christian community keeps up the appearance of having control over all the disturbing compulsions, cravings, appetites, and desires which linger beneath the surface of our common life. This is how we do it - by expelling those who bring sexuality to the surface. Specifically, by excluding homosexuals from our company, calling them godless, evil, denying them the opportunity to share the sacraments the rest of us take as given. Because we say they don’t belong to us, we can go on belonging to each other without fear of being disturbed by our own sexuality, unruffled by whatever secrets that may hold.
Life is even harder for gay people who are confessing Christians, for not only do they feel themselves cast out by the Christian community but many find themselves ostracised also by the gay community, for being Christian. Is this the gay community keeping up the appearance of being liberal, open and inclusive by casting out those who represent more conservative opinion? The effect of rejecting Christians from their company is to galvanise the gay community; the effect on those they reject, must be terrible.
What happens to those who society casts-off? Surely a sadness will descend on them, for we are all sociable creatures, and all we want to do is to belong. If they feel this rejection time and time again, if their head becomes full of those many many voices repeating to them the mantra: ‘Time you were on your way now George’, a Legion of voices condemning and excluding them, then surely after a while a madness will descend on them too.
As they begin to question themselves, they begin to believe the voices; like the tormented man of Geresa who Jesus met, they begin to beat themselves up; like the tormented man of Clun, they begin to howl alone at a world that no longer wants them, and can’t and won’t explain why. The gay Christian, longing to belong to the wider group, gives up their Christian faith so they can be embraced back into the gay community; or they give themselves to be treated by a Christian prayer ministry, to ‘heal’ them of their sexuality, to cast out the so-called ‘spirit of homosexuality’ from them. It might look like a healing but it is more of a humiliation. The pain these people suffer is part of the process of reinforcing the cycle of belonging and rejection which is so much part of our human societies that we don’t even see it most of the time.
This is the cycle which Jesus broke that day in Geresa, when he rid the man of his demons, and because he broke it is the reason why the villagers became afraid. Because if you break this cycle then how do you now deal with the demons in your village? If you can’t put those demons onto the back of the one who doesn’t fit, and cast that person out, then your demons now have to stay at home for you to deal with. And that is frightening.
The man who Jesus healed followed Jesus as he made to leave, and asked Jesus if he could travel on out with him. But Jesus sent him home. ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you,’ he said. By doing this Jesus forced the people of Geresa to face their demons, to find new ways of talking about who they were and how they belonged to each other, to stop dealing with the difficult issues by scapegoating vulnerable ones and sending them away, to listen to the one they had previously rejected, and learn from him.
Two current news stories from the world of religion throw new light on this gospel story of old.
The Pope has broken a silence which may have existed for centuries by speaking of ‘a stream of corruption’ in the Vatican. The corruption of which he spoke includes the presence of ‘a gay clique in the Vatican hierarchy that has successfully lobbied for positions of influence, and then been targeted by blackmailers’, which surfaced two years ago. The silence had its victim, as ‘sleaze is thought to have been a key reason for Benedict’s resignation’. It was better for one pope to leave the Vatican than for the whole establishment to begin to crumble. But Pope Francis has done the the frightening thing, the Jesus thing, by forcing conversation about these issues. Now the Catholic hierarchy will have to find new, and positive ways to address the question of what it means to belong together. [2]
And Alan Chambers, previously head of Exodus International, a fundamentalist Christian ministry that preached a 'cure' for gay people, has issued a letter of apology to the gay community, saying, "For quite some time we've been imprisoned in a worldview that's neither honoring toward our fellow human beings, nor biblical. From a Judeo-Christian perspective, gay, straight or otherwise, we’re all prodigal sons and daughters." [3] He too has done the frightening thing, the Jesus thing, for now the members of the 200 Exodus International churches which have now closed, can find news way to face their demons, revisiting the scriptures to ask what new thing God may be telling them about what it means to belong to him.
Jesus’ healing of the Gerasene demoniac tells us how compassionate he is for those who society cast out, casts off: scapegoats. Noting- the people’s fearful reaction to the man’s healing, is an invitation for us to consider our own society’s hidden fears, those things which drive us to scapegoat others. And Jesus sending the man home to talk with the people about what God had done, shows us that he insists that we can find other ways to belong together, ways which enable us to become communities of sincere fellowship and love.
Notes
[1] This sermon owes a great deal to James Alison, ‘Clothed and in his right mind’, Ch 6 of Faith Beyond Resentment, p.125-143, which in turn is ‘entirely indebted to Rene Girard’s ‘The Demons of Geresa’, Ch 13 of The Scapegoat’.
[2] Pope Francis ‘confirms Vatican gay lobby and corruption’, BBC News, 12 June 2013
[3] 'Gay Cure' Exodus Ministry Closes After Leader, Alan Chambers, Admits Being Attracted To Men, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk, 21 June 2013
Comments