Preaching to the Choir

I'm in Issaquah, Washington, attending the Byberg Preaching Conference, as I've done most years of my ordained ministry. It's often on the Oregon Coast, so this Seattle-area switch was nice because it cut down my travel time. Instead of a red-eye, I got to sleep in our own bed last night and leave early this morning.

Our guest speaker this year is Craig Satterlee, who teaches preaching at LSTC (Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago). Part of the gig is that attendees are preaching to each other in small groups and then evaluating others. I was asked to go first. I'm preaching at morning worship tomorrow, 9 am. Craig will evaluate my sermon as template for how we are to evaluate others. It's an understatement to say this is intimidating.

My assigned text is Mark 5:1-20, the story of Jesus healing the Geresene demoniac. It appears in Matthew and Luke, but only Luke's version makes it into the lectionary. It's been fun to wrestle with this text the past week. I keep thinking about the ways God meets us, interrupts us, heals us and how we are invited to respond.

I practiced this sermon for Erik last night. I told him I'm preaching it for pastors, so I've written it with my audience in mind. He said I was preaching to the choir, which I guess I am. But, as with so many sermons, it's also the one I need to hear.

I had one version when I came here this morning, and just now I've tweaked it and now it's a different version. Craig told us during plenary today that sometimes you just have to surrender on Saturday night (or Monday night in my case). The sermon is what it is and God can use it and me.

So, here it is. I'll let you know what the preachers say.


Sermon 1.31.12
Byberg Preaching Conference
Mark 5:1-20

Mercy, grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.


The Inupiat Eskimo people make their homes on the windy coastline of the Bering Sea in Northwest Alaska as they have done for more than 10,000 years. About 100 years ago, Lutheran pastors came to the area and now several of the tiny, mostly Alaska Native villages have ELCA churches and members proud to be Lutheran. If you visit the modest homes of one of these Alaska Native Lutheran families, well, you won't be alone. The doors of homes in the village are revolving, almost literally, with a constant flow in and out of elders, moms, dads, teens, kids and dogs. People generally do not call, knock or text when they are coming over. They just come over. Life, from the eyes of an outsider, seems like constant, messy disruption. When a visitor drops by and inadvertently disrupts dinner, an elder makes room at the already crowded table, tells you to pull up a creaky folding chair and offers you a bowl of reindeer stew. No matter that three children in precariously heavy diapers are crawling under the table, someone is talking too loudly on the phone in the other room and more visitors flow in and out during the meal. No matter the disruption, everyone is welcome and everyone is family here.


Many of us may not take well to interruptions and disruptions in our lives. For example, I don't know about you, but when I'm away from the parish, I try not to tell people what I do for a living. I try to slide by anonymously at social events or on the airplane, rather than answer probing questions or hear church horror stories. Sometimes, I just don't want to be disturbed. I was trying to be anonymous earlier this month at a week-long yoga retreat out of state. I lasted about two days, until someone asked the dreaded question: What do you do for a living? Sigh. During the course of the week, people offered me all manner of stories about growing up in church, leaving church, being ambivalent about church and/or God, or being wronged by the church (I.e: the person whose mom had a six-year affair with the priest).


Jesus can be so disruptive, in general, and in today's gospel account from Mark, in specific; and sometimes we just don't want to be disturbed. Even when we are living out our vocational calls as ministers, spouses, parents, friends, employees, volunteers and colleagues, we each have our routines, patterns, favorite prejudices and ideas about how the world works and our role in it. It's maddening when Jesus comes and throws our schemes off balance.


This story from Mark's gospel is found also in Matthew and Luke, though only Luke's appears in our lectionary. Mark's version is surprisingly longer than the other two evangelists' stories. Mark, who usually rushes through his narrative a driving urgency, slows down and gives 20 verses with lavish descriptions of the Geresene demoniac and the events that unfold.


The story of the Geresene demoniac takes place across the sea in a Gentile territory. Mark describes the demoniac as a wild man who cannot be contained by chains. He lives in a cemetery and howls all night, bruising himself with stones. When the demoniac approaches Jesus, the demons beg Jesus to leave them alone and not to torment them. The demons know who Jesus is and recognize his power. The demons realize they are in the presence of Jesus, the Son of the Most High God. This kind of power and goodness and light is just too much for them. Perhaps we react the same way. The goodness and mercy of God calls attention to our own misery and bondage. The light that we celebrate in this season of Epiphany also reveals the truth about our own brokenness. The light of Christ reveals our tendency to turn away from goodness and to cling to whatever we've always done or whatever we think will give solace. The light illuminates both the goodness of God and our insistence upon separating ourselves from it and from the person God created us to be.


The light that is Christ Jesus will not leave the demoniac to the demons. Jesus casts the demons into a herd of swine, who rush down a hill and drown in the sea. The swineherds, who have just lost their livelihoods, rush into city and nearby country to tell the people.


When the people come out to see what happened, the former demoniac is sitting there, clothed and in his right mind. The people may notice the healed man, but what they really see is the dead pigs. They see that Jesus has robbed the swineherds of their income. They see that Jesus has brought to the center what they had purposefully cast to the margins. They see that Jesus has totally disturbed their social and economic values. They see that Jesus has disrupted everything. They are afraid. They ask him to leave and so he does.


If I were those people, I'd be afraid, too. And sometimes I am. Maybe you are, too. I'm afraid God wants to disturb me. I'm afraid God wants people to know who I am so that Jesus can use me. I'm afraid that I might have to pay more attention to those on the margins or change my social and economic values. I'm afraid God will disturb and change my life. I'm afraid God will ask for everything I have.


Here's the thing, though. Jesus didn't hate the people in the land of the Geresenes. He didn't come to torture them, to disturb them for the sake of disruption. He came to liberate them as he did the man with the demon. Jesus' disturbing presence is a loving hand that longs to move us to freedom. Jesus transformed the former demoniac into the person that God intended. That man becomes a witness, telling people in the Decapolis what Jesus did, and how Jesus changed his life. Those who heard the story were amazed. Perhaps so was the former demoniac. For the people in the land of the Geresenes, though, the fear was too great and the cost of allowing Jesus to disrupt their lives was too high.


But no cost was too high for God, who allowed the ultimate disruption by giving his own Son for the sake of the world. The message of Jesus crucified and risen shows us that God will not stop loving us and will not stop disrupting us for the sake of liberation, wholeness and life as God intended. This God cannot be controlled; God can only be followed and trusted beyond all else.


Toward the end of the yoga retreat, a young woman approached me. She was a Christian, an adult convert, and said she was worried about being a Christian and practicing yoga. Further, she wanted to go back to school and get a degree in biology but was concerned about evolution and creation. What should she do? I admit, I didn't want to be disturbed. But we talked for a while and it was holy ground. I went back to my room, overwhelmed with a deep sense of God's presence, love and sense of humor.


There's a song from the Iona worshiping community in Scotland that starts with this line: “God bless us and disturb us.” Such is ministry and such is life: a tangle of blessings and disruptions. God bless us and disturb us. We can trust that both are true and good and bring us life in its fullest sense, a life that includes people who don't knock, revolving doors, creaky chairs and reindeer stews. A life where everyone fits at the table, where everyone is welcome and where everyone is family.
Amen.