June 21, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
So just like Bird Flu jumped from chickens to the human genome, Jesus forces the Legion of demons to hop like a flea from Big Urban to Miss Piggy, Pumbaa, Porky, Wilbur, Babe and the three little pigs. By the way, it is another non-coincidental detail that the swine herd happened to be nearby. The swine are a symbol – a metaphor – that what is going on in this story is something taking place among foreigners… those who are spiritually unclean.
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“This Little Piggy”
Proper 7, Year C
June 20, 2010 @ 10:30am
by The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
Good morning,
and welcome back to the courtyard!
Some of you know, without my even saying so,
that Jesus and the Gerasene Demoniac
is my favorite Jesus story.
It’s weird, I know,
because for most people
this might be one of their least favorite stories,
since it has all the elements
which can drive modernist’s like us, to distraction.
But if you thought last week’s
very sensual massage-story was cinematic,
Jesus-and-the-giant is a summer blockbuster.
But here’s the thing.
I got trigger-happy and used this story as an illustration this past spring,
so some of what I am about to tell you,
if you happened to be in Church that day, is repetitive.
On the other hand,
a truly good story can never be told too often.
I am going to annotate this story
as the three-act play that it is.
Act One: Border Crossing
Jesus takes his students to the country of the Gerasenes, or Gadarenes as some (including today’s poem) translate it.
Only someone who would allow a hooker
to massage his feet at a banquet thrown in his honor,
would visit the Gerasene.
Seriously, there is a preponderance of evidence
that Jesus was a lot less concerned
about his reputation than
the Church and clergy today are about ours.
Jesus would also have driven image-handlers nuts
if he were a politician in our world.
Going to the Gerasene is the smoking gun.
If yucking it up with whores,
and the first century social equivalent of
crack-heads, sex offenders, terrorists and spies
wasn’t evidence enough,
then taking his young, impressionable students
to the Gerasene was proof positive
that Jesus was morally suspect, if not demented.
The Gerasene’s were pig-eaters;
Goi – like us, gentiles.
They were, like us,
people who did not know how to keep clean…
as in, ritually and morally pure.
They were barbarians without knowledge
or grace, or any socially redeeming attribute.
They were not part of the covenant,
nor did they exhibit the least interest in knowing
about the covenant,
or in any other way being in relationship with God.
They ate pigs,
and probably wore clothing made from pig flesh.
No one with an ounce of spiritual wisdom
went into Gentile country –
an automatic defilement that made one spiritually unclean and required reclamation through the temple.
And we can add a little more
cultural texture
to this clean versus unclean dynamic:
The demoniac is a city boy
while Jesus and his pals are country folk.
The first thing we need to know
when reading these Bible stories is,
details like that are not coincidental.
The details tell the story.
Luke thought it important to tell us
that the strong man who could not be bound,
was an urbanite. Why?
Because Jesus, from Galilee, was…well…
he was more like someone from…well…Indiana.
Now you know, Illinois claims Lincoln;
Kentucky claims Daniel Boone;
and Ohio gets a bunch of Presidents.
So I’m just saying, you know,
that Galilee would have been like my home…Indiana
(or even North Carolina) – why not claim Jesus.
Anyway, Act One comes to an end
with the dramatic appearance of Big Urban,
which is what I have been calling him for years.
Big Urban is buck-naked.
No tan lines even.
He walks around about as ‘Commando’ as you can get.
I know that some of you probably vacation
at nude beaches, right?
So you wouldn’t be too scandalized
by Big Urban showing up naked in the story,
but public nakedness was a huge no-no
in 1st century Judean culture.
While the Romans were known
for great parties and public nakedness,
the Law of Moses made it clear
that public nakedness was a violation and taboo.
So Jesus’ students would have been shocked,
scandalized even
when confronted with a huge naked maniac.
And let’s face it,
most of us look way better with clothes on,
so even beyond the shame and scandal of it all,
Big Urban couldn’t have looked all that good
having lived in tombs,
never showered or shaved,
and engaged in self-abuse.
Act One ends then, with Big Urban
running toward Jesus with arms flailing
and Jesus’ gaggle of students cowering at the sight.
Big Urban is yelling chaotic words
in the parlance of schizophrenia
and Jesus yells back for the demons to leave the man.
The stage lights cut to darkness
and black out the stage.
We, the audience, wonder what will happen.
Act Two: Power & Boundaries
The curtain opens,
the darkness slowly fades into light,
and there sitting in the middle of the stage
on cemetery tombstones,
and facing one another, are Jesus and Big Urban.
They are quiet and clearly at ease
in one another’s company.
Suddenly, from every direction,
the students come running on stage
with a cacophony of
“What happened?”
“Are you alright?”
“Jesus, what happened?”
Clearly the students had scattered in fear.
But Jesus, in the face of a terrifying attack,
does something very interesting.
Again, it is one of those details that tell a story.
In our world,
or should I say in the pretend world
of Disney and Hollywood and video games,
any hero worth their salt
would have shot, stabbed, blown up
or otherwise zapped Big Urban
when confronted by such a menacing figure.
In our world,
and through the lens of pretend
for which we have all been fitted,
heroes show their strength
and moxy
and courage
but vanquishing their foes.
Instead, in the face of threatening violence
and overwhelming odds,
Jesus asks Big Urban his name.
“I say, mate, what’s your name?”
To be honest,
Jesus was not just being polite.
In the ancient world,
knowing the name of someone or something
is to know its essence…
it is to know its power…
to know its name is to have power over it.
And in case you haven’t guessed already,
this is a story about power.
So as Big Urban bears down on him,
arms flailing,
lips slobbering,
mouth broadcasting loud grunts, groans
and salacious blasphemies,
Jesus asks his name.
Here the story-teller gets deliciously subversive.
“My name is Legion” he says.
Legion, of course, is the name of the oppressor.
If you are a 1st Century Jew
living at the margin of the Roman Empire
you hate Romans with every fiber in your body.
Legion is the name, the very word-sound,
that personifies your hatred.
It is said with a spit through the lips.
It’s as if the very word evokes a bad taste
that must be immediately expectorated:
Legion.
A Roman legion was 4,000 to 6,000 soldiers
which was more than enough
to subdue a rural backwater like Galilee.
6,000 Roman soldiers
could crucify, rape and pillage
more peasants than a dog has fleas.
6,000 Roman soldiers
could tax, bankrupt and dispossess
enough peasants to clear the land
for rich Roman Senators to purchase and deed.
So for the Story-teller to call the Gentile demon, Legion,
served as both a description of its power
and a way to demonize the Empire.
This is the point at which the demons,
all of them,
plead with Jesus to be compassionate.
Now that is an interesting turn in the story.
Suddenly it’s Jesus, rather than Big Urban,
with the strength and power;
all because he knows their name.
He knows what manner of evil it is,
and they recognize in him, the power to expel them.
Just so you know,
I do not believe in evil spirits; Satan,
or any other form of supernatural evil.
I love this story in spite of such characters.
I think we human beings
have demonstrated plenty of times,
and in plenty of ways,
that we are fully capable of unspeakable evil
all by ourselves.
But it doesn’t matter what you or I believe.
In order to understand the story,
and to get the wisdom embedded in it,
we have to go along with its vision of reality.
It is exactly the same thing you do
when conversing with someone who is psychotic –
you don’t challenge their sense of reality.
Or closer to home,
when watching a movie
you share its assumptions about its characters
as you watch it.
Likewise,
Luke is the story-teller and he’s telling the story,
and if we are to garner what he is trying to pass along,
then we have to take the story at face value.
It doesn’t mean that we moderns and post-moderns
have to accept or believe
a first century worldview for ourselves,
simply that we receive the story as it was told.
According to the story,
there are demons
and they inhabit all kinds of things –
paper, rocks and scissors along with people.
So just like Bird Flu jumped from chickens
to the human genome,
Jesus forces the Legion of demons
to hop like a flea from Big Urban
to Miss Piggy, Pumbaa, Porky,
Wilbur, Babe and the three little pigs.
By the way,
it is another non-coincidental detail
that the swine herd happened to be nearby.
The swine are a symbol – a metaphor –
that what is going on in this story
is something taking place among foreigners…
those who are spiritually unclean.
As I said at the beginning,
it was bad enough that Jesus was even there,
but the fact that he is healing a Gentile
was a big, fat, radicality.
The fact that he had anything to do
with people like us – pig eaters –
was mind-bogglingly radical.
The metaphor of the swine
was a clear challenge to purity-minded
1st Century Judean’s that all borders can be crossed.
If landing among the Garasene was not enough,
then healing one,
in a cemetery,
in close proximity to swine,
was a very loud
and a very clear message:
no boundaries will be kept at the table of community.
No limits will be acknowledged to the love of God.
Not baptism, not confirmation, not any doctrine;
not sexuality, not nationality, not race or any bigotry.
So, long story short,
Jesus sends Legion off into the sweet little piggies
who immediately freak out
and go running off a cliff to their eternal demise.
And this little piggy had none…
Act Two ends with the swine herders running for their lives as a cheer goes up among Jesus’ adoring students.
Act Three: It’s not about Jesus
Again, the lights fade up
to reveal Jesus sitting on a big rock
and a smattering of students
sitting on the ground all around him.
Sitting directly at Jesus’ feet,
as if afraid he might loose him,
Big Urban’s monstrous silhouette comes into focus.
Then, from all around the perimeter of the stage,
appearing one at a time through a wall of lifting fog,
emerge dozens and dozens and dozens of people.
If it were a musical,
they’d be dancing to an African drum,
circling in on Jesus ever-so-slowly.
They are the villagers
coming to check out the new gun-slinger in town.
Slowly, tentatively, inching forward
as if Jesus were a cobra with its head reared up
from out of a basket,
the villagers gather all around.
When suddenly they can see Big Urban
they stop, gasp, inch forward again.
Big Urban is now fully dressed,
washed, cleaned up,
bandaged up and smelling a lot better.
Some of the villagers poke Urban,
sneak up and touch him to see if he is real.
They can see that he has changed.
They don’t know whether to trust their own eyes or not.
They murmur and grunt,
and as they grow more comfortable,
they start to complain.
They encourage Jesus to go home.
They agitate his students
and tell them to make him leave.
“What ingrates” the students grimace.
Now this is an interesting detail
that Luke never unveils:
why are the people are angry?
My suspicion is,
although it does not say so in the story,
is that they resent Jesus’ impact on the economy.
If Jesus could so easily
allow the devastation of private capital
for the sake of one whacko demoniac,
who had already been successfully isolated
on the outskirts of town,
then there would be no telling
where his influence would lead?
Clearly Jesus had upside down values
if he thought the cost-benefit ratio,
of the demoniac-for-the-heard-of-pigs,
was acceptable.
You don’t want someone like that around,
especially if you already have the money and power.
So Jesus leaves.
In response to the public resentment for his efforts,
he leaves.
It says that they asked him to leave,
and then it says: “so he got in the boat and returned.”
Just like that.
The great drama would end there,
except for an epilogue.
It’s like the last little scene in Camelot,
where King Author encounters a symbol of the future
in the figure of a small boy.
Jesus and his students have climbed into the boats,
the crowd has dispersed
and the late afternoon sun
is wandering among the clouds.
A gentle breeze is blowing
and Jesus’ students are distracted
with thoughts and conversation
about where they will eat dinner.
The lights fade to a dusky tint
with the spot light enshrouding Jesus
and Big Urban.
The big guy wants to go with Jesus,
the one act of kindness he may have ever known.
It’s a little bit like the scene in Charlotte’s Web
when Charlotte the spider has finally died
and Wilbur the pig is left alone –
all alone with his un-magical,
less than “terrific” self.
Jesus places a hand on Big Urban’s shoulder
and looks into his glistening eyes,
tells him “No.”
Crestfallen,
pained at the rejection,
tearfully saddened…the big guy’s shoulders slump.
There’s no perfuming this pig –
he’s been rejected.
“Go home,” Jesus says,
“go home and tell your people
how much God has done for you.”
Off Jesus sails with his happy students
that delight the presence of their teacher,
another successful day of miracles done.
Alone on the beach,
Big Urban watches them disappear across the water,
to the other side where he is not welcome.
He turns,
the last act of the last scene,
his eyes directly on the audience.
His face is flat,
his mouth a straight line,
his eyes fierce.
“Amazing” he says.
Speaking to us,
his lips curl upward,
his shoulders rise
and his arms extend as if taking us in his embrace.
“Amazing…that God saved a wretch like me.”
The theater darkens and the curtains close.
Now isn’t that a fantastic story?
Act One tells us that Jesus crossed even the most fundamental border
that those with authority
had prescribed as morally absolute.
He was more concerned about
embodying the mercy of God
than living within the lines.
Act Two reminds us that naming out loud
the evil that is around us,
and the evil within us,
diminishes the power of that evil,
while enhancing our own ability to influence change.
Never allow the fear of evil
to dissuade us from naming it.
And it is often the boundaries we keep
or that are kept for us,
that are the sacraments of evil
that we need to name the loudest.
Finally, Act Three reminds us
that it is not about Jesus.
As someone has said,
Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God
and what came along
was the Church proclaiming Jesus.
The clear message at the end of Act Three
is that it is not about following Jesus,
it is about fostering the love of God,
and demonstrating the mercy of God.
While Jesus is the teacher,
only God is God.
Thank God for the mercy and love of God.
So that’s a pretty darn good story
told with a little sugar and spice,
some salt and vinegar,
and just a healthy dash of good old subversion.
Amen.
