On the Demons That Divide Us

            I’ve heard it said that what you see is what you get. But I don’t think that is always the case. So it may come as a surprise to those of you who know me as Pastor Emily, that to many people in the world, I do not fit the typical image that most people think of when they think of a pastor. And so often times I have found myself walking into pastoral situations where people are surprised to see me. Because let me tell you that in even in 2016 it is almost never assumed that the woman who walks in is the pastor. I will never forget one of my first funerals here at the church. The week before the service, I called the funeral director to introduce myself and see if they had any questions, and when I spoke with this particular director, she seemed to be very short with me, as if she didn’t know why I was calling and didn’t have time to talk to me. And so I wrote it off and thought maybe she is just having a bad day. But then the day of the funeral came, and she shows up to the church and I come out and introduce myself again and am showing her around the church. And once again, she just seems not very pleasant. And so once again I give her the benefit of the doubt and think, “well maybe she still isn’t having a good day.”

            After I do the service, I come out in my robe and lead the casket to the hearse and after we load the body in, I turn to go back into the church for the reception and she is standing right behind me and she looks at me and she says, “I am so sorry. I had no idea you were the pastor. I was so informal with you. I thought you were the church secretary.” Now I will tell you that it is in these moments that I have to remember that I am in fact a pastor because regular Emily had a few choice words that she wanted to share with thiat woman. I wanted to say, “first of all, what you call informal I just call being rude, and secondly if I was a church secretary why would you think it is okay to treat me like that?!” But I held it together and replied as graciously as I could, and I just said, “ Nope, I am the pastor. Not the church secretary, not the pastor’s wife, just the pastor.”

            What she saw when she looked at me and made her assumptions about who I was, was not what she ended up getting; and I wish I could tell you that this was the only time that has happened to me or my clergy sisters, but trust me when I say I could tell you plenty of other stories. And for the most part, I take it in stride and use it as a teaching moment, because we all have this tendency to judge people based on what we initially see and in doing so, we fail to see them for who they really are. Sometimes what you see is not actually what you get. Sometimes we have to cast aside our assumptions and be willing to go deeper.

            In our scripture today we read about Jesus’ encounter with a demon possessed man. And the text says that as soon as Jesus stepped off the boat he was met by a man who “wore no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs… and then later on it says that this demon would often seize him and he had to be kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.” And so my first instinct is to start asking questions…

- I wonder what would the people in his community have seen when they looked at him? -What are the names that they would have called him? Lunatic, madman, psycho.

- I wonder could anyone see deeper than the demon?
-Did anyone remember him from his childhood, before this demon had taken over his flesh?

-Did anyone see him for who he was or did they look no further than the demon itself?

And then I also wonder…

-If I had been Jesus, what would have been my initial thoughts when I saw this man? -How would I have responded to a naked and demon possessed homeless man if he walked up to me in the streets?

-Would I see him for who he was?

            If I am honest, I probably would have run in the other direction and gotten back in the boat. But this isn’t Jesus’ response. Because it seems like Jesus doesn’t have the same kind of vision that we have. He doesn’t make assumptions about people based on the first thing he sees because he knows that what you see isn’t always what you get and so he has this incredible ability to look beyond. To look deeper. He has the ability to see people for who they really are. And he doesn’t just do this here. Look at basically every single one of Jesus’ encounters with people who we would call sinners, outcasts, marginalized, rejects. And yet Jesus sees their whole self, not just the labels that everyone else puts on them. And it seems that it is the deeper vision that allows Jesus to befriend those who we would more than likely brush aside.

            And so after a brief conversation with the demon, who begs Jesus not to torment him, he asks the man what his name is, and his response was “legion.” Legion was a political term used to describe a military unit of the Roman government of about 6,000 soldiers that was used to occupy, control and exert power over occupied territories, so when I hear that the demon in this man’s body was named legion, it tells me that this man’s own flesh is no longer his own. It is occupied by something else. His flesh was literally divided against itself by the demons living inside of him. Because that is what demons do. They divide us against our very self. They turn us against our true self. Each one of us has our own demons that we battle each and every day. Battles that we fight internally on a daily basis whether anyone else can see them or not- the demons of addiction, mental illness, anxiety, depression, eating disorders. And our fear is that if people did see us, they would judge us and they wouldn’t be able to see past our demons.             And sometimes we ourselves cannot see past our demons. We define ourselves solely based on our fears, our failures, our struggles and do not see that much deeper than all of those things lies our true self. Our authentic self. But thank God that Jesus’ vision is deeper than ours. Thank God that when Jesus saw this man standing before him naked and raging, he didn’t just a demon possessed man. He saw through the brokenness and division that the demons caused and he saw who this man really was. Thank God that Jesus looks deeper into each one of us and sees something worth saving. Thank God that Jesus’ vision is not our vision.  

            So in verse 33, Jesus casts the demons out of the man’s body and they go flying into a herd of swine who drown in the lake. And when the people ran into the city to tell them what happened, everyone had to come and see for themselves. And when they got to the lakeshore, they found the man sitting at Jesus’ feet clothed and in his right mind. And so at this point I stop and wonder once again…

-I wonder what it must have felt like for that man to finally be free.

-I wonder what it felt like to finally be at rest from the demons that had been waging a war inside of him, exhausted, sitting at Jesus’ feet.

- I wonder what it must have felt like for him to face the people that had been afraid of him for so long, the people that had tied him up, called him names, tried to keep him far away from the community.

-I wonder what it felt like to be seen for the first time for who you really are and not just for your demons.

            And yet it tells us that even though he had been healed, the people were still afraid. Maybe they are afraid of Jesus and the power of what they just experienced. Maybe they are afraid that the demons will come back. Maybe they are afraid because fear is the one demon that we all struggle with and is the hardest demon of all to cast out. When you live in fear of something for so long, it is hard to let go of that fear, even if there is no reason to be afraid anymore. The truth is, it would be hard for anyone to welcome this man back with open arms. And maybe that’s why this man wants to go with Jesus. He begs Jesus to take him with him. Not only does he want to stay with this man who gave him his very self back, he is afraid that even now that he has been cured, he will not fit in… That he will still live divided from his community.

            Because here is the thing about demons. They don’t only divide us internally, against our very self, they divide us externally too, against others. Demons divide us against our community and keep us from experiencing the relationships that God desires for us to have. And so Jesus’ response to the man is, “go and tell everyone what God has done for you.” Go be a witness to what has happened. Go show people your whole self. Go show people that they don’t have to be afraid anymore.

            Friends I don’t have to tell you that we are living in a world where it is becoming easier and easier to let the demonization of other people divide us. All you have to do is turn on the TV and hear any piece of news about our upcoming elections or get on facebook to see that the demonization of the other is rampant in our country and it is tearing us apart. When I think about last week’s shooting in Orlando and the 49 gay and lesbian men and women who lost their lives, or in Charleston, which happened a year ago this week, and in the 9 African Americans who lost their lives in their very own place of worship, or when I think that even in 2016 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime and 2 out of every 3 female homicides, the victim is killed by a family member or intimate partner, these are the things that happen when we demonize others, when we think of them as subhuman or less than in any way… even to the point of taking their very lives away from them. And I am not just talking about extreme cases of life or death. I am talking about how in some small way that tendency lies in each of us. We all have the tendency to pass judgment, write people off, or jump on a soapbox instead of listening to the other side. Those are the demons that divide us and prevent us from being the people and the community that God wants us to be.

            This week as I was preparing for today, I came across a video on facebook from a woman named Amaryllis Fox, who was an undercover CIA officer who worked in the counter terrorism department for 10 years, and she shares in the video what she learned in her years of service. I want to read you some of the things she says, “The only real way to disarm your enemy is to listen to them. If you hear them out and are brave enough to really listen to their story, you can see that more often than not, you might have made some of the same choices had you lived their lives instead of yours. The truth is when you talk to the people who are really fighting on the ground on both sides, and ask them why they are there…. They answer with hopes for their children or specific policies that they think are cruel or unfair. While it may be easier to dismiss your enemy as evil, hearing them out on policy concerns is actually an amazing thing. Because as long as your enemy is a subhuman psychopath that’s going to attack you no matter what, this never ends.”

            Until we choose to listen to our enemies, this demonization that is keeping us divided will never end. And by enemy I don’t necessarily mean someone you are at war with- it can be anyone who you have judged, written off or refused to get to know out of fear or apathy. Until we recognize that we need a new pair of eyes, through which to see ourselves and others, we will forever be missing out on life as God created it to be. We will forever be hearing more news of violence, hatred, war and the walls that continue to divide us.

            So I wonder what it would look like for you to put on a different set of glasses this week. If you had the courage to look at yourself in the mirror and dare to look beyond whatever demon has come to define you. What would it look like to have the courage to look deeper, to find even a glimpse of someone else’s true self beyond whatever label it is that you can’t see past. What would happen if we sought out our Muslim brothers or sisters to listen to their stories of how they fear for their lives in public because of the backlash against the radical actions of a few that do not hold their beliefs but share their name. What would happen if we listened to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to hear how they also live in fear of violence when they express themselves in public or hold hands with the person they love. Regardless of what we believe about Muslims or the LGBT community, it is impossible to not see our common humanity as children of God when we take the time to listen to them.

            And for those of us who may be passionate about gun control and taking guns off the streets, how can we seek out to listen to those who do own guns and defend the right to carry them. What other point of view might we be failing to see? Who is it in your life that you feel most divided from? Whose is the story that you have never heard? Go find that person this week and ask them to come have dinner or coffee with you. Because until the first thing we see in ourselves and in others is something deeper than the demons that divide us we will never be whole.

            And here is the good news. If you have ever been baptized, at least in a Methodist church, you have either made a vow or someone else has made a vow for you. A vow that sounds like this- Do you accept the freedom and power that God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? We have the freedom to resist evil. Which means we have the power to resist demonizing the other and choose listen to them instead. We have the freedom to resist injustice, which means we have the power to be a voice for the voiceless. We have the power to resist oppression, both within our very selves and in the world. That is what these waters do for us. They make us a new creation and they give us new eyes to see deeper than we were able to see before. They give us ears so that we can listen like we never have before, even to the people who are the most different than us. That is the power of the Spirit that lives within the people who call themselves Christians. So my prayer for myself and for all of us as we face these uncertain times is that we would remember our baptism. That we would live into that kind of courage, that kind of love, that kind of power… so that one day we might all be free. 

Amen