Sharing in the reconciliation

a Sermon for Proper 7C
Text: Luke 8:26-39

GOD of Hope and Wonder, it is often so easy for us to see the brokenness and separation—that we can’t see your work in us and for us. Help us to better see and know your dream for us. Amen.

GOD longs to reconcile the world. GOD longs to make us whole and bring us back together. Verna Dozier calls this “The Dream of God” in her book of the same name. This dream is to reunite the people in a profound new kingdom that is very different from the way the world is now. It’s a beautiful dream—a dream that GOD invites us to share in over and over…in Scripture, in revelation, in worship. We might not want to think of GOD as a used car salesman, but He keeps pitching it to us, talking it up, wanting us to want it too. And to be perfectly blunt, the Kingdom of GOD is actually a pretty good deal.

This work of reconciling has been everywhere in our Scripture readings lately, especially in the gospel lessons from Luke. Last week—the woman who cleaned Jesus’s feet with her hair and Jesus forgives her of her sins—that’s about reconciliation. Two weeks ago—Jesus raises the widow’s only son from the dead—that’s about reconciliation. Actually, that’s a double reconciliation, restoring both the son to the community, and also the mother. A reconciling two-fer. Today’s gospel about a man possessed by demons is about reconciliation: about restoring this man to his community. This is a big part of GOD’s dream: our reconciling with one another. GOD longs to reconcile the world.

We know separation, don’t we? Separation here, separation in the world, separation between one another, and separation from GOD. We know separation. We don’t like it and we don’t want it. We know Jesus doesn’t like it and doesn’t want it. We know GOD doesn’t like it and doesn’t want it. That’s where the Spirit comes in. That’s why we can trust: GOD longs to reconcile the world.

We get in this reading from Luke a picture of reconciliation. A man possessed by demons is healed and restored to community. We know this is complete because toward the end of the gospel, these people, who hear about this crazy event are brought out to see this man, who was naked and talking craziness was now “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” Resist the temptation to ask where the clothes come from—think about the visual here, the symbolism. The man, who was naked, is now freshly clothed and restored to humanity. He is brought back in. All that separates him from the community is gone. The very picture of reconciliation.

This man was once like everybody else. He no doubt has a family, maybe kids, maybe a good job and a home in the good part of town, but when Jesus shows up, he’s naked and living in the tombs. Could there be a more vivid image of this man’s separation from the community than his living among the dead?

For us, this naked man lives on in the lives of those victims to evil and injustice who also at one time had families and loved ones and a job and home and mattered to people until that fateful day in which they looked around and they were living in the subway tunnel and don’t remember the last time they saw their children or the last time they wore a suit or the last time someone looked at them with respect and love. Many of us have seen that person and felt pity or repulsion or perhaps both at the same time. And almost in the same way, that person remains to us as nameless as the man in the gospel lesson—but just like him, we probably still remember them—or at least our brief time together. A nameless man becomes our anecdote—the easy reference for a person that has lost everything. But GOD promises reconciliation: which may or may not be in that person’s lifetime, but is eternal and hoped for here on earth. He can be reconciled with his family and the world just as surely as we can be reconciled with one another and with GOD: right here, this morning. All it takes is a first step.

When Jesus set foot on the soil, at the beginning of this pericope, this was soon after a crazy boat ride from Capernaum that rocked the little fishing boats that they crossed in and Jesus had calmed the storms—another big miracle. But when he steps out of the boat and onto this shore, he has left the safety of his home territory and, for the first time in the gospel of Luke, walks into gentile territory. He is met by a gentile, filled to the brim with demons, naked, living in tombs, and the demons are frightened and want to make a bargain. And Jesus gives them permission to leave the man, and the demons are soon vanquished. But after saving this man and restoring him to his community and reconciling him with GOD, other gentiles come back to Jesus and tell him to get out.

It might be easy for us to see in Jesus’s ministry an obviousness that everyone would get him, and see his miraculous acts as the very works of GOD. But not necessarily to gentiles and not to all of the people that lost a bunch of pigs in a mass swine slaughter. They don’t yet see a benefit to keeping Jesus around. But the man with the new clothes does. He wants to be with Him. Makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Stick with the person that saved you. Jesus has a different idea.

Just as the man is restored to his full humanity—reconciled with the world community—he is restored to his home community. As much as he wants to travel out into the world with Jesus, he is reconciled to a specific community—to these particular people from whom he was separated. And then Jesus went home.

We are a community of reconcilers. In baptism, we are called to a ministry of reconciliation. In gathering every Sunday, hearing the word, confessing our sins, receiving absolution and then sharing in a great act of reconciliation—we greet each other with the sign of GOD’s peace. Each Sunday, we reconcile with one another and we bring the kingdom closer. This is our bold proclamation.

GOD longs to reconcile the world; all of it. The big parts and the small parts; the cities and the farming communities; the mega-churches and the people meeting in a living room; the down-and-out and the people that are just down; everyone gets to be a part of it. There is even the promise of sending someone to make it happen, even in hostile territory.

Like the man sent home to proclaim the good news of what was done to him, we are called to do that very thing—to share what GOD does for us. We all have a place in this bold and beautiful dream that is both simple and challenging: to love one another and describe what GOD has done for us. To love and to share. Remember that the man was naked? He was vulnerable. The good news requires our own vulnerability—our own metaphoric nakedness. This is the first step, our chance to get out of the boat onto foreign soil and, with GOD’s help, begin the great reconciliation of the world.

From dead to living

a Sermon for Proper 5C
Text: Luke 7:11-17

GOD of Hope and Wonder, your compassion for us is immeasurable; continue to bless us with compassion and community. Amen.

If ever there was a ‘Wow!’ event in Jesus’s ministry, this would be it. That’s what Bill called it on Wednesday: a ‘Wow!’ event. Jesus strolls into town and raises a man from the dead. I’m thinking something on par with a Western where the hero rides in, sees the damsel in tears, and tells the man to “get up” and the man springs to life. He then asks for directions to the nearest saloon.

From dead to living.

What catches me as I read this story, however, isn’t the miracle: it’s where Jesus’s attention is. Jesus has compassion for the mother and then does what he does. He does it for her.

Who is worth this?

Worth a ‘Wow!’ event?
Worth being given her son back?
Worth the transformation from dead to living?

Who is worth this?

A woman with no name. Apparently nobody bothered remembering her name—just her condition. She goes by ‘the widow’.

For Jesus, The Widow is worth this.

There is a bunch of stuff that we know about widows, right? We know that they were married to a spouse who has since died. Historically, the moniker of ‘widow’ has been given primarily to a woman. This says a great deal about cultural priorities. In the patriarchal Palestine of the 1st Century, men were the primary source of work, ownership, and representation. Therefore, if a man’s wife were to die, he still remains a man—his social worth is unchanged. But for a wife, that connection to society evaporates.

We also should note the attempts made to help widows. One example is the Jewish law that allowed for a widow to marry her husband’s brother, granting her the ability to return to society. The Widow’s son apparently afforded her some place, even without a husband. For as strange as this sounds, they were actually trying their best to help.

What else do we know about widows? There is a further clue in the word’s origin which essentially means a woman who is “separated” or “solitary”.

For the 1st Century Jewish woman from Nain, this couldn’t be truer: she was in political solitary. For a 21st Century Christian woman from Newnan, we might have a closer understanding as emotional solitary.

It seems to me that these ideas: ‘separated’ and ‘solitary’: represent the reason Jesus believes the widow is worth this ‘Wow!’ event. “How can we change solitary into community? How can we regain community?”

Jesus answers this with resurrection.

Truthfully, I’m not sure whether Jesus thought of his own mother when he saw The Widow or not. I’m sure he thought of her in that ‘what if’ sense that we do when we think of scenarios that make it easy for us to plug in ourselves and loved ones. In the same way, though, death precedes a ‘Wow!’ event: when Jesus goes from dead to living.


Moving from solitary to community—

Placing people out of solitary and into community—

Changing community to eliminate solitary.


Just as Jesus restores The Widow to the community by resurrecting her connection to community, GOD longs to restore each of us to community from the solitary that confines us. From the stuff that separates us from grace. The health issues, soccer practice, chauffeuring kids, preparing for guests to arrive, work and more work, and all of the distractions—all these things separate us—they are our solitary. And truth be told, we know, deep down, that this is honestly more sin-full than taking a drink of scotch. Sin isn’t an act—it is that which separates us from GOD. This is GOD’s hope for us—to be back—to leave the exile we put on ourselves. To rejoin community. And for those of us in the community, to make room in ourselves for those that aren’t.

And we know that GOD wants something else. This something else has to do with the community. For me, the most important words in the Gospel are these: “and with her was a large crowd from the town.” By the common interpretation of the law, The Widow was now destitute and subject to the mercy of the city. But here was a large crowd that were there out of support, out of love, out of compassion for her. In resurrecting a dead son, Jesus doesn’t simply restore this community, he breaks the established order: the dead can become the living.

We know that GOD doesn’t want us to put our interpretation of the Law before our love of Him or one another. And that interpretation created separation and solitary more than the death of the husband or the only son. GOD wants us to be a certain community: a community of compassion and reconciliation, where none are relegated to solitary because of human reasons, even because of life and death.

I’ve only been in this community now for eight months, but St. Paul’s radiates that compassion. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, and sometimes some of us get off track, but the heart of St. Paul’s is this compassion. I’ve been a part of moments of welcome and of support—in which the Spirit moves us to act as Christ to one another. I’m reminded daily of the hunger for justice and missional opportunities here, near here, and far away from here. This is the St. Paul’s I know. This is the community GOD continues to call us to be.

GOD has big plans for us: all of us. That’s the Kingdom; and it gets closer every time we show compassion; every time we do things out of love for GOD and our neighbor. We pull the Kingdom a little bit closer. This is why we are worth it.