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the 4. Sunday after Pentecost, 06/24/2007
Sermon on Luke 8:26-39, by David Zersen
Then they arrived at the country of the Ger'asenes, which is opposite Galilee. And as he stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons; for a long time he had worn no clothes, and he lived not in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and said with a loud voice, "What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not torment me." For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him; he was kept under guard, and bound with chains and fetters, but he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the desert.) Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion"; for many demons had entered him. And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them leave. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled, and told it in the city and in the country. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and 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. And those who had seen it told them how he who had been possessed with demons was healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Ger'asenes asked him to depart from them; for they were seized with great fear; so he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but he sent him away, saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.(RSV)
IDENTIFYING WITH THE SCAPEGOATS
One of the interesting things that we've noted about the assassins in the Blacksburg, Virginia, and Columbine, Colorado, school shootings is that they felt like scapegoats. They believed that other students condescended to them, disregarded them, and treated them as outsiders. In their particular situations, they ultimately fought back, believing that they had been wronged and that they were right in retaliating.
While the whole world was horrified by such an attitude as a result of the media presentations, the perspective that created the scapegoats was not unique. Whole social and even religious systems employ this kind of scapegoating, identifying someone who can be singled out as worthy of disdain or sacrifice. Such sacrificial systems have ancient roots, but also very modern counterparts. While we often fail to realize it, the Christian faith seeks to reject such systems and place us on new and emancipated ground. Jesus' own life and sacrifice provides the turn in human history that takes us in a new direction. Not to grasp this is to miss the point of our heritage. Today's sermon seeks to help us rediscover this truth.
Ancient Sacrificial
Many ancient religious systems employed a type of scapegoating which involved sacrifice. One of the most colorful modern presentations of this occurs in the Mel Gibson's movie, Apocalyptico. The apocalyptic character of the story lay in the realization for the viewer that the mistreatment of the native peoples at the hands of the Mayan religious leadership was soon to be repeated with the arrival of the Christian leadership. The end was nearer than could be imagined.
The point at which this oppression was most appalling to the viewer, however, occurred when the high priest on the top of the pyramid cut out of the heart of the sacrificial victim to appease the gods, and then chopped off the head and threw it down the steps, followed by the body. And this took place all day long until "enough" blood had been shed and the priest said that the gods were satisfied. This was a scapegoating process. Someone, ideally a person who lacked power to protest, in ever-increasing numbers, needed to be captured and killed so that blood could provide an expiation to satisfy the angry divine temperament. Of course, the sacrifice never involves those who identify the scapegoats. People of power are excused from mistreatment. "Brutal people, those Mayans," we like to say. However, their approach is echoed in many other religious systems.
It is well known that the Greeks had such a concept in the pharmakos. Typically, a slave or cripple or criminal, the pharmakos was identified as the one who in times of disaster or plague could provide social or physical catharsis. At the feast of Appolo, two chosen ones were led out into the wilderness where they were beaten. Some authorities say they were thrown off of a cliff, to satisfy the need for purgation.
Now, does any of this sound familiar? Such practices are a part of our own Judeo-Christian heritage. Perhaps from Sunday School, we can remember that on the Day of Atonement, an ox and a goat were killed, the blood sprinkled on the Mercy Seat, and the sins of the people confessed over the scapegoat who took them away forever out into a forsaken, solitary land. Early Christian theologians sought to apply this concept to Jesus, who because our scapegoat. But more on this later.
The scapegoat in ancient and modern times
In our text this morning, we are confronted with a classic example of the scapegoat. We are told about a man fillled with demons, thousands (legion) of them. A chain tied him, yet only secure enough that he was capable of regularly getting free. It's easy to say, as we often do about someone today, "the man is crazy. He's loose again. He needs to kept away from us." However, this was the village scapegoat. The much-beloved and hated scapegoat. As long as the village had him, they had someone to whom they could condescend and talk about. "Well, how is the village idiot doing today? Did he get loose again last night? Did he break into your food storehouse or terrorize your children? Must have been him. Who else? That guy really is crazy. Sure glad we have him under control." With time, the scapegoat internalized the condescension and torture and began throwing stones at himself, imitating what had been done to him by all the heartless people.
Here in the United States we play with such condescension in funny ways. People who live in one State like to feel they are better than their neighbors. The people in Arkansas, criticized for having low scores on their school tests or a low standard of living say, "Thank God for Mississippi!" It's always good to find someone worse off than yourself. Sometimes, however, such condescension, such scapegoating, is not so funny.
It's not funny because it can be intellectually dishonest and morally wrong. If the only way you can deal with your own guilt or failure is by saying that someone else is worse than you, then you have not been honest. And if you think that by addressing the shortcomes in others, you have freed yourself, then you are not just theologically wrong. As St. Paul would have said, "you are still in your sins." You are evil. And this evil can express itself at personal and collective levels.
In recent years, our president has found it popular to identify certain countries and certain leaders as the "axis of evil." This is scapegoating in the classical sense. If you have the power, and you can rally others around you in your condescension, you can seek to drive the evil out-sometimes militarily. However, this system does not work, because it allows the critics, whether at Columbine, Blacksburg, or Washington to go scot-free. Have you noticed how we are doing this in the media currently with the defendants in the infamous Duke University rape trial?
First, we needed to blame some young men. Now that they are exonerated, we need to blame the former District Attorney. We need a scapegoat. Ignore the fact that the real issue is that a La Crosse team was having a drunken party with strippers on campus during the sport's season! There is no innocence there. However, the media can avoid identifying the larger guilt if it can find a scapegoat. And so can we.
A well known religious leader, Jerry Falwell, did this with respect to 9/11. All of us struggled to find a scapegoat in that travesty. The administration finally resorted to blaming Iraq (and we know what a fiasco that turned out to be.) Most believe that Osama bin Laden had responsibility for it. Falwell, however, said, in an interview with Pat Robertson on Sept. 13 of that year,
The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way--all of them who have tried to secularize America--I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
Now, I am not trying to pick on our president, or on Jerry Falwell (may he rest in peace).I am trying to point out how common it is-not just in ancient times-to try to blame someone for things. Perhaps we all bear some blame for 9/11 in our world, for failing, already years ago, to try to work at approaches to mutual understanding between peoples and nations. Perhaps we all bear some blame because we did not think we were involved when our government and Great Britain cared out carelessly a land we now call Iraq or supported Sadaam Hussein in his rise to power. But how much easier it is to point the finger, to be judgmental, to identify blame. To close the door on the past and to say "someone has got to pay for this-and it's not going to be me!"
In realizing that this is not just a political or social problem, but at the heart of it a theological problem, is to come to grips very personally with today's Gospel lesson. Jesus says to the scapegoat, and to those who are his persecuters, the ones who keep him as a kind of pet on a leash, "I set you free from all this craziness that has made you what you are. Now go home and tell everyone what God has done for you." The losers in this situation were all those who like to blame others for the evils in their community-and they are legion. The winners are the socially crippled, the disenfranchised, and all those lack the strength to oppose the financially and politically powerful.
Accepting guilt and living in forgiveness
Now lets ask where all of this reflection is taking us. The era in which you and I live is the New Testament era. I think we often fail to grasp how different our self-understanding should be in this era. Jesus identified with the scapegoats in his time and place. All those who the religious right of his time had excluded were embraced. They were told that they were children of God and God's grace was their greatest possession. They, even they, were set free: the physically maimed (crippled, blind, lepers, deaf-all those who had no place on the religious right's holy ground) and the morally bankrupt (prostitutes, dishonest tax collectors, self-righteous). They who had every right to be mocked, scorned and abused by the morally sound, were not called sick, but well. They were invited to come home from the far country and rejoice in the Father's forgiveness.
This was too much for the religious establishment, so they made Jesus their prime scapegoat. They took him to the cliff and did away with him, so they could go about their business as morally upright people. And Jesus allowed this, not because he believed in scapegoating, but once and for all, he wanted to be the means of removing scapegoating from the world's religious systems. Once and for all, he wants to lead us into a new era in which people no longer seek to blame others for their own failures and faults. He wants us to own up to our sins and own the forgiveness which God supplies so that we can be free to live as God's own emancipated children.
Living free and identifying with the scapegoats
What can it mean for you and me to live as God's emancipated children? I think, first of all, it invites us to look back at Calvary and understand how the world's social and religious systems changed there. At the point when Jesus allowed the demons of the world to scapegoat just one more final time, at that point a change took place. When we now look at it for what it was and is, we realize how empty and foolish and useless such scapegoating was and is. It never accomplished anything except to boost the tortured and misguided egos of the perpetrators. But now we are freed from such a misuse of our time and purpose. Christ Jesus has set us free. We are free to look at our lives in new and emancipated ways. We are free to name our sins and our demons, to recognize our culpability, and to embrace the forgiveness which God freely supplies. We have entered a new world, as the hymn sings, "redeemed, restored, forgiven."
How does one live life differently with such a new self-understanding? The message of today's text would tell us to identify with the scapegoats, with all those marginalized people in our acquaintance at work, at school, at church, in our families. There are minorities whom we may not fully understand, but our previous willingness to see them as different has too often encouraged us to blame them for problems in which we actually have complicity. And now, in this new free era of ours, we will look for ways to express our joy over God's grace. We are not being blamed, nor should we blame any other. We are no longer scapegoats in a sacrificial system. We are God's free children empowered with a grace that wants to embrace the least and the lowly.
Who is it that you will touch today? And tell what God has done for you and for them?
Who in your acquaintance scorns and condescends to people that you know? And are they not the very people that you will count as your friends? And will not your own embrace of the least of these demonstrate your victory over a sacrificial system that has come to an end?
This is the new era in which we identify with the society's scapegoats. This is our day, my fellow Christians. We live, yet not we, but Christ lives in us.