Homily for the
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Luke 8:26-39) 19 June
2016
The Rev'd John R. Clarke, Rector
Our God comes and does not keep silence.
Psalm 50:3a
You would think the Gerasa City Council would pass
a resolution declaring it “Jesus of Nazareth Day.” After all, he rids the town
of its resident lunatic fringe, “The Wild Man of Gerasa.”
Yes, you would think. And you would be wrong. Not
even a Key to the City. Zip. Zero. Nada.
Because Jesus scares the, well, living bejeezus out of the people of Gerasa.
How come? He appears to drive demons out of the Wild
Man. Next, he lets the now free-range demons possess a mega-herd of hogs,
whereupon, like lemmings ─ in a panic ─ the herd stampedes into the nearest available body of water. And there
goes the lucrative Gerasa pork bellies commodities market.
The upshot? Like a herd gone-rogue themselves, the
Gerasenes panic. In their frenzy they drive Jesus out of town on a rail, proving
once more, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Now, whether you believe the Wild Man of Gerasa was
actually possessed by demons or you think that’s all shorthand for schizophrenia
or some other personality disorder, the fact remains: Jesus has just done the
people of Gerasa ─ and, obviously, the man ─ a great service:
from un-bathed, buck-naked, Jack-Nicholson-at-his-most-manic-type menace to virtual
Chair of the Chamber of Commerce.
With results like that, what’s to be afraid of?
Well, in one fell swoop, Jesus shuts down the local
economy. Run the numbers. If he hangs around and keeps this up, the Gerasene Dow
Jones? Kaput!
And when you exercise power like that ─ whether it’s
over demons or psychosis or the economy ─ you kind of weird people out. When’s
the next shoe going to drop?
Read: The Gerasenes wish Jesus had never set foot
in their town. They wish Jesus had never taken on the “legion” of demons in the
Wild Man or triggered the hog herd’s suicidal forced-march to the sea. They
wish they had silenced Jesus before he could disrupt their town.
Problem: It’s not in Jesus’ nature to be silenced.
It’s Jesus’ mission to be loud, confrontational, disruptive … because Jesus
knows that in the face of forces that imperil human flourishing, like whatever
was going on with the Wild Man of Gerasa, silence = death.
Unfortunately, in driving Jesus out of town, all
the Gerasenes hear is the fear pounding in their ears.
But does that make the Gerasenes bad people?
Not necessarily. They’re probably a lot like Mrs. Turpin in Flannery O’Connor’s
short story “Revelation.”
[Note: I have edited portions of the short story
quoted here out of homiletical expediency.]
Mrs. Turpin considers herself a good person. A pig
famer in the rural South of the 1950s, she describes herself this way: “When I
think who all I could have been besides myself and what all I got ─ a little of
everything, and a good disposition besides ─ I just feel like shouting, ‘Thank
you, Jesus, for making everything the way it is! Thank you, Jesus. Thank you.”
And this is the way “it” is, according to Mrs.
Turpin: On the bottom are most blacks.
Next to them ─ not above, but on a par with them ─ are white-trash. Then above
them are home owners. Above them are the home-and-land owners. And at the top of
the social heap are people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much
more land ─ people like Mrs. Turpin and her husband Claud.
One day, she takes Claud to the doctor. In the
waiting room, judging another woman sitting there to be her peer ─ a woman
accompanied by her puffy-faced, Ivy League-educated daughter ─ Mrs. Turpin speechifies
about how hard it is to be such a fine woman in a world of the less fortunate.
She then launches into a racist rant about how hard it is to get good help
these days.
On and on it goes. The woman’s daughter gives Mrs.
Turpin one dirty look after another, until red-faced, the young woman goes
postal. Without warning, she hurls the book she’s been reading at Mrs. Turpin,
clipping her right above the eye!
Well, the waiting room erupts and the girl is quickly
subdued. But not before getting up real close ─ face-to-face close ─ with Mrs.
Turpin.
Eyeball-to-eyeball, the girl hisses, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart
hog!”
That rattles Mrs. Turpin. But ─ good church person
that she is ─ she can’t shake off the idea that this is somehow a revelation
from God.
It troubles her and nags her, until one evening out
by the pig-pen, she cracks. She shakes her fist at God and shouts, “There will
always be folks at the top and folks on the bottom! So, go on. Call me a hog from
hell!”
A garbled echo (“hog from hell”) returns to her.
Taking that to be God’s answer, she roars, “Who do you think you are?”
No sooner than the words are out of her mouth, Mrs.
Turpin looks up and sees a streak in the dusk-approaching sky. And upon it, “a
vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven.
“There were whole companies of white-trash, clean
for the first time in their lives, and bands of black people in white robes, and
battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.
“And bringing up the tail end of the procession was
a tribe of people Mrs. Turpin recognized at once as those who, like herself and
Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it
right.
“She leaned forward to observe them closer. They
were marching behind the others with great dignituh,
accountable as they always had been for good orduh and common sense and respectable behaviuh. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their
shocked and altered faces that even these virtues were being burned away.”
. . . . .
Now, a week ago today, we all
awoke to news of the slaughter in Orlando. Unprecedented carnage: 49 dead from
the LGBT community, the gunman himself, 53 more injured at his hand.
What is now becoming a meme in
our country, the perpetrator was a seriously-disturbed young man. It’s not
clear now that he was a committed jihadist, as first thought. But what’s clear
is: he was deranged. A deranged person with a gun. A deranged person who could
purchase a gun capable of shooting over 20 rounds in nine seconds (the civilian version of
a military weapon designed to take as many lives as possible in a short amount
of time).
As with this ─ it can be argued ─ preventable-slaughter meme, the reaction was
equally predictable. Calls for prayer. Moments of silence declared.
But with one of the most
visible moments of silence ─ the one called for by House Speaker Paul Ryan ─ just as the moment of silence
ended and he attempted to resume the business of the House, the most
extraordinary thing happened: Members of the Opposition ─ refusing to be silenced by business-as-usual ─ stood up and shouted over the
Speaker: “Where’s the bill! Where’s the bill!” Meaning: the bill to consider
sensible gun-control legislation, shot down by NRA-backed members of the House and
their colleagues.
That eruption was followed by Christopher
Murphy’s 15-hour filibuster in the Senate. Of course, he ─ and his
colleagues ─ were
anything but silent; they fought silence. They sought to force the majority
leader into at least allowing the Senate to debate measures to tighten the
nation’s gun laws. And they succeeded.
Of course this organized and
just refusal to keep silent ─ or to tolerate silence ─ in the face of attempts to keep the rounds of ammo
firing on innocents has not gone over well. And we’re still hearing from a lot
of people who would feel right at home in Gerasa, where Jesus was silenced by being
driven out of town.
And these Gerasenes of our own, the ones we’re
hearing from ─ pundits, preachers, and politicos ─ maybe even some
of our neighbors ─ the fear pounding in their ears ─ they’re certain
of one thing. They’ve always known they would be marching ahead of LGBT folks (people
like me and so many in our parish family) … and the other always “less-than” in
their eyes: progressives, African-Americans, Latinos, immigrants, and
the non-violent, the peacemakers, the refusing-to-be-armed.
Like Mrs. Turpin, they’ve always known ─ they know ─ there will always be folks on
top and folks on the bottom. And they’re on top: the right kind of people who
“always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right” …
counting on the folks on the bottom to go along. To be docile. To be content
with “our prayers” and “moments of silence” to remember the slaughtered, as we
await the next mass shooting … while the guns sales go “ca-ching!”
But they will not have the last word, not this time.
Because the vocal and restless, life-giving and life-loving God is in our
midst, not to be driven out. Silence will not be the last word.
Ask reluctant Mrs. Turpin, as her “revelation” came
to a close:
“At length, she made her slow way on the darkening
path to the house. In the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had
struck up. But what she heard were the voices of the souls ─ the hordes of white-trash, the bands of black people, the battalions of
freaks and lunatics, all marching ahead of folks like her and Claud ─ souls shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs ─ climbing upward into the starry field and shouting ‘Hallelujah!’”
Amen.
