In our right mind; longing for God
When Jesus heals a man beset by demons, the man’s community asks Jesus to leave. Healing the man has upset the system they had adapted to, tolerated and even profited from. How do we exist in a system of dysfunction and toxicity, and how do we nurture the quiet voice of God through that speaks beneath the spectacles all around us?
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Transcript
The name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
So I had an entirely different sermon written. And then a lot changed last night. So we’re going to come at it in a different way this morning and try it this way, and just highlight some things from the text that I think really do speak to where we are, where we find ourselves.
So just to lay the groundwork. What I’d like to do is to highlight, pull some pieces of these stories out, look at them, let them look at us, and then we’re going to close, actually with a practice, a guided meditation that I will introduce to you with the hopes that there’s something that we can take from here that you can use for the rest of this week and going forward to help ground ourselves, which is very much something, if I’m the only one in the room who needs to be grounded, lucky you.
So I want to start by looking at this gospel story that we have in front of us this morning, this fascinating story. There’s so many layers and parts of it, but I want to highlight one particular dynamic. I use this story when I’m working with seminarians and with others who are training and studying to be priests, because it really is such a useful story to help highlight these complex parts about what it means to be human. It raises and highlights for us some tendencies that we have within ourselves.
And I hear the birds, too. They sit up there.
So if you look at the story, at the dynamics of it, you see something very peculiar. You see a group of people, some community, who in their midst, have had and have dealt with for who knows how long, a man possessed by demons. And they’ve worked to put together a containment plan, something that they have been able to use. It has made sense to them. Right? And it involves binding him and using shackles to somehow restrain him. He won’t live in a house. He only lives in the tombs. So they’ve done what they can do to try to contain that, so that their life can go forward in some way, and have some sense of rhythm and pattern to it.
That tells you something just from the outset. It tells you that human beings will do what we can do to contain, restrain to a certain level, dysfunction and toxicity. So we are wired within ourselves to find some status quo, some equilibrium that helps us go forward in our day, and in that being the humans that we are, we set that system up. And what happens is that certain ones of us within that system continue to receive a benefit from the way that the system is set up.
So all of that is the groundwork, if you will, of this community that Jesus steps into. And they come to Jesus and they lay all of this out, and then Jesus goes and heals the man, which if that were the case, if that were our life here, just hypothetically, if we lived in a place where there was a certain level of dysfunction and certain level of toxicity, and someone came into it and healed it and brought hope and a sense of grounding, what do you think our response, what someone’s response would be? Gratitude. Relief. There’s a whole sense in, you know, the category of positive things on this side that we might think, just at a glance, might have been the response of the people. But what was theirs? Fear.
The text says they were afraid. Of what? Sit with that for one second and be curious about what they were afraid of. It tells us something about who we are, because the way our systems work, both within ourselves, within our families, within our country, within our world, the way that the systems work, we being the humans that we are, we acclimate toward a certain level of stasis equilibrium that involves managing dysfunction and toxicity, and we become accustomed to it. And some of us even reap a benefit off of it, which is a tricky part about being humans. We’ll find some way to get a benefit, even off of a very unhealthy system that is outright toxic and abusive and oppressive. Someone is reaping a benefit from that, and us being the humans that we are, we don’t want it to change. “Better the devil that you know.”
And into that mix Jesus comes and of all the things heals the man. Heals the man, and they don’t like it. Not only do they not appreciate it, they ask Jesus to leave. It would be better that you just go because the deep truth is what they were really afraid of: I could be next. My own demons could be the next ones that are named. And we better get this man out of here as soon as we can, before all of our demons are named. Because that’s the last thing that we want. So they come back. They walk in and they find this person who had been possessed. And I love how it describes this: clothed, sitting at the feet of Jesus. And what does the phrase say? In his right mind. Oh, that we could nurture a space in our world where people could be in their right minds. So they walk in and that’s what they encounter, a man sitting in his right mind and they don’t know what to do with it. They’re afraid of it. So they push out the source of healing from their mix.
It’s a fascinating story and it speaks so much. So you can see why we use it in classes for people who are studying and training to walk into parishes with different contexts and saying, not that we tell them that all of their people are going to be possessed by demons, but that to be aware within yourself. To be aware within yourself, those parts that need to be named and those parts that need to be healed and why we resist that so much.
So it’s that phrase “in your right mind” that has me hooked after last night. In your right mind. In my right mind. In our right mind. And I’ve chewed on it and it’s chewed on me to say, what… how do we nurture that? How do we nurture that space, that grounding? And that’s where I think our first story from this morning can come into play and can really help.
So look at that one. That archetypal evil queen Jezebel, we’ve all known one, out to get Elijah. He goes, runs out, tries to find, take cover somewhere and holes up in a cave. And he hears a voice saying, “go stand at the mouth of the cave and you’re going to encounter God. You’re going to encounter God.” And he goes, and of all things, the band Earth, Wind & Fire walk by. Of all the things they walk by at that moment. No, it said this great earthquake, a rushing wind and a mighty fire all come by. And we, being the humans that we are, think I need to be impressed by spectacle. There’s something about spectacle that I should pay attention to because that spectacle, loud noises and booms, mighty winds and raging fires and earthquakes, that’s what power looks like. That’s what power looks like. And I need to pay attention to the thing that I perceive to be most powerful. And the thing that must be most powerful is the thing that makes the most noise.
But that’s not what happened. That’s not what the story teaches us. The story teaches us. And there’s two ways to translate this. One way is what we heard this morning: the sound of sheer silence. Another way, its close cousin, is a still, small voice. Both of those are true. That’s how we nurture our right mind. That’s why the story teaches us this. To nurture our right mind, we have to put ourselves in a posture of silence, a certain stillness within ourselves, to listen for the things that we should really pay attention to. Not the noises, not the spectacles, not the loud crash and booms and raging fires and mighty winds, but the whisper, the still small voice that comes from that silence. And only in that silence can we hear it. It gets swallowed up in the noise.
So our practice, and that’s what we’re called to do, that is, to nurture within ourselves a posture that is receptive to that and is open to that and can listen to it, can hear it, can discern it.
So what I want us to experiment with, each with each other this morning, is if you look in your bulletin at the Psalm, this is why we picked this focus this summer, on the Psalms, because they actually offer us a way to practice, to nurture that stillness within ourselves, to nurture that groundedness within ourselves.
So this morning, what I’d like us to do is to actually try this together. For some this may be old hat, and for others, this might be the only silence that you have all day. And we need it. We need it right now. So there’s a practice the monastics, not only in the Christian faith, but the Jewish faith, the Muslim faith, the Hindu faith, the Buddhist faith, this is a universal practice, it’s to find and pay attention to an image or a phrase that stands out to you and can become a mantra for you. So the one for me this morning when I sat with it, was just in verse one. That’s just as far as I got, was verse one. And because it sums up how I feel:
As the deer longs for the water brooks,
so longs my soul for you, O God.
So that becomes my mantra. My soul longs for God. So what I invite you to do is to sit with your back against the pew, your feet on the floor. Take a moment, and we’re going to guide ourselves through this just for about 45 minutes.
The congregation laughs.
Just baby, baby steps.
But take a moment and sit. Close your eyes if you’d like. And bring your attention to your breath. And when you bring your attention to your breath, you might be surprised that you’re breathing from your throat. See if you can relax enough that your breath falls into your chest and even down into your belly, and take a few deep breaths.
And the bird says hello.
Deep breaths.
Feel your feet on the floor.
Thoughts will come. That’s what they do.
Imagine your thoughts like a boat on the water or like a balloon. Let go.
And then bring to mind, bring to heart, that phrase: my soul longs for God. And slowly repeat it within your heart.
My soul longs for God.
Beneath the anxiety. Beneath the fear.
My soul longs for God.
Feel your shoulder relax.
Come, Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.
Amen.