A couple of weeks ago, Kileen and I watched the biopic movie, Respect, about Aretha Franklin. It really struck me that even though the African Americans, up until the 1960's were second class citizens under the segregation laws, they could praise God and believed that God was on their side, all evidence to the contrary. They would gather in the church every evening during their marches and protest and sit-ins to be filled with love, courage, and even joy. It was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's words, "I may not get there with you, but you will enter the Promised land." to the sanitation workers in Memphis, the night before he was assassinated. Today is the celebration of Juneteenth, commemorating the last of the slaves freed in Texas as the Civil War ended and the news being brought by US troops. Of course, those who were slaves did not become free as equal citizens and people in our society after the Civil War and there are still laws on the books today that discriminate against people of color even after the great Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 60's.
I admit to my entitlement and wrong way of thinking that I often doubt God's love and justice when I see the wrongs in this world and the suffering in my life and those whom I love. I often expect God to be a top down type of god to fix everything and wait to praise God for when things are good. It is much harder to live by hope, work with patience, and believe in a better future when so much is wrong right now.
In the Gospel of Luke, this is the only time when Jesus goes out of the country of Israel. The area he goes to is under the control of the Roman Empire, and not free. In this situation, he finds a man possessed, a man disturbed, someone who is on the margins of an country and people who are on the margins. This man whose name we don't know, because when asked by Jesus, he names his condition, he is possessed by many demons and he is possessed by the Roman Empire, his name is 'Legion." In this system, he has no name and because he refuses to live in the shackles and bound by oppressors and conventions of just go along to get along survival. It is too much for any one sermon to work through how we talk about demons and what is going on here in this story. But we have to recognize and name that there many layers in this story and it is not just simply about a man who is possessed or mentally ill. This is revealed when the townspeople come and find him sitting fully clothed and in his right mind. They are not joyful, they are not relieved, they are afraid, even more afraid of this man now that he can rejoin society, than when he was ranting and raving, breaking his chains and naked. They can no longer blame him for their troubles; they can no longer make him the scapegoat for what is wrong in their lives; and they now have to face their own injustice and their fears and problems. They would much rather blame him and keep their heads down. They demand, plead, and desperately need Jesus to leave and leave soon.
This man, whose name we don't know, wants to leave with Jesus, his healer and restorer back into the world. However, Jesus tells him to stay with his people, his family(?), and share what God has done for him. We don't know what happens, if he finds friends, community, if he starts a church. He will continue to have struggles, but now he has a chance, being freed some inner struggles and demons. And he has found joy and a connection to God that will stay with him as long as he continues to carry gratitude and love in his heart.
In our reading from Galatians this morning, we hear Paul write to the churches in Galatia that, "In Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female." In Christ, we are all one, all children of God, and loved by God and loved by each other. In Christ, in our churches, there is to be no distinction in terms of who can pastor, who can lead, who can serve, or who a member or not. Worldly identities or status symbols have no place inside the church. And we remember in the Lord's Prayer, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." So, in our world, there should also be no distinctions about who can be President, CEO, or where one should live or work.
We still have many cultural values and indoctrinations that come from slavery and segregation, from patriarchy and white supremacy. We, in the United States, still value white people more than we value people of color. We, in our nation, still value same-race marriages over mixed. We, in our nation, still hold that the traditional family of man, wife, and kids is the foundation of our country rather than recognizing the variety of families including those found the in the LGBTQA+ community.
Out nation still has bonds to be broken in our nation that hold all of us back, that hold people down, and people would rather see shackled than living in our community. It is enough to bring us to despair and cry out, "When will we ever learn, when will it ever end?"
But, however, nonetheless, we worship and follow a God who freed the Hebrew people from slavery over 3,000 years ago. We worship and follow a Messiah who looked upon the oppression of not just his own people but traveled outside his comfort and country to free others from their bonds. We follow a faith though helped start this country where there was white and colored, where there was slave and free, and there was a legal separation between male and female, but has continued unrelentingly to free all and claim its promise that "All people are created equal."
So let us have faith, that any bonds, any shackles, any unjust laws and social mores will fall. And the fear of those who want to keep the status quo or go back to the "good ol' days" does not match, cannot match, the love of God, the power of God, and the justice of God. No, it does not come quick enough, but if we have faith, if we have hope, and if we follow Jesus of Nazareth who sees the whole person, the whole community, and the whole world as God's love creation, then progress will still continue, more and more bonds will be broken until we will react not with fear, but with joy, with gratitude, and with praise, the praise that comes when encountering the real of God of love and justice.
God is good. All the time.
All the time. God is good...
Amen.
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