(Mark 5.1-20)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time – September 27, 2009

The comedienne Anna Russell is most famous for her routine about Wagner's opera Ring of the Niebelung. The Ring is a 15-hour opera about a gold ring that gives whoever has it the power to become master of the universe. It's an amazing story. And it's very, very involved. In her telling of it, Anna Russell talks about how the ring was made by Alberich the Dwarf. And then she's off, describing gods and humans and the children born of couplings of gods and humans, and talking about how they get all mixed up with each other. After about 15 minutes of detailing the machinations, Anna Russell says, "Then Siegfried gets the ring….D'you remember the ring?" The story has gotten so involved that the audience can be excused for forgetting about the opera's main attraction.

I kind of feel that way about my sermon this morning. Between January and June I preached on the same gospel. Then this summer, I preached about questions you wanted to hear a sermon about. Today we return to that same gospel. But after having taken a break from it for over three months, I feel like asking, "D'you remember Mark?"

Because it's been so long since we took a detour from our leisurely walk through the gospel of Mark, I thought I'd remind us where we've been.

Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark's gospel has no story about the birth of Jesus. At the beginning of the story, the adult Jesus comes from Nazareth to the River Jordan. John the Baptizer baptizes him. As Jesus comes out of the river, he hears God's voice saying, "You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life" (Mark 1.11, The Message, Eugene Peterson, InterVarsity Press).

He's hasn't had a chance to dry off before the Holy Spirit drives Jesus into the desert. For 40 days, the devil tries to get Jesus to turn around from the hard path God has called him to walk. The devil says, "Look, Jesus, where is a life of sacrifice, compassion, and non-violence gonna get you? People will look at you and think you're a pathetic weakling. And they'll think your naïve for believing God's love is gonna get you anywhere. Jesus," the devil says, "take the easy road. Power, wealth, intimidating people and keeping them afraid of you: that is how the world works. Worship those values. Worship me." Jesus refuses.

Jesus returns from the desert with one message, "Repent, for God's kingdom is here" (Mark 1.14-15). Repent means to turn your life around. And the kingdom of God is any time and any place people live the compassion, sacrifice, and non-violence of Jesus. Mark spends the rest of the gospel telling the story of how Jesus keeps inviting people to turn their lives around. And how he keeps showing them what the kingdom of God is like.

Jesus spends most of his time with the people who'd never show up on anybody's 'A' list. He heals sick people. He eats with tax collectors and prostitutes. He gathers a truly unimpressive group of followers who usually don't have a clue what he's doing or why. Why does Jesus hang out with people like this? He knows they know what others think of them. He knows they know people see them as losers and nobodies. He knows they know people look at them as people they wish they didn't have to look at. Which means they aren't ashamed to admit their lives are pretty miserable. They aren't ashamed to admit how hungry they are for love. They have been locked in the prison of their loneliness long enough. They have no one to impress, they have no reputation to defend. So when Jesus calls them out of the darkness of loneliness, and calls them into the light of his love and the love of his followers, they scream, "YES!"

Mark wants the Jesus he tells stories about to free us. So when we hear Jesus calling out to us, "Follow me," we say the same thing.

So we come to our reading for this morning. Listen for a word from God.

Jesus and the disciples reached the territory of the Gerasenes on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And when he disembarked, a man with an unclean spirit at once came out from the tombs towards him. The man lived in the tombs and no one could secure him any more, even with a chain. He had often been secured with fetters and chains but had snapped the chains and broken the fetters, and no one had the strength to control him. All night and all day, among the tombs and in the mountains, he would howl and gash himself with stones.
Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and fell at his feet and shouted at the top of his voice, "What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the Most High God? In God's name, do not torture me!" For Jesus had been saying to him, "Come out of the man, unclean spirit." Then Jesus asked, "What is your name?" He answered, "My name is Legion, for there are many of us." And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the district.
Now on the mountainside there was a great herd of pigs feeding, and the unclean spirits begged him, "Send us into the pigs, let us go into them." So he gave them leave. With that, the unclean spirits came out and went into the pigs, and the herd of about 2000 pigs charged down the cliff into the lake, and there they were drowned. The men looking after the pigs ran off and told their story in the city and in the country round about; and the people came to see what had really happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there – the man who had had the legion in him – properly dressed and in his full senses, and they were afraid.
And those who had witnessed it reported what had happened to the demoniac and what had become of the pigs. Then they began to implore Jesus to leave their neighbourhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed begged to be allowed to stay with him. Jesus would not let him but said, "Go home to your people and tell them all that the Lord's mercy has done for you." So the man ran off and proclaimed in the Ten Towns all that Jesus had done for him. Everyone was amazed (Mark 5.1-20, adapted from The New Jerusalem Bible © 1985 Doubleday & Co.).

Mark could not have painted a more painful picture of someone locked in a prison of loneliness. In Jesus' day, contact with the dead and with graves made people unclean. Demon-possessed people were unclean. No wonder he howls at night and strikes himself with stones. With no one to love or be loved by, he has forgotten he is a human being.

Jesus refuses to leave us locked in the prison of loneliness. Jesus refuses to leave us locked in any prison. Remember what he said when he came back from the devil's temptations. Repent. Turn your lives around. The kingdom of God is right here. Make it real with your lives. So prisons of loneliness are burst open . . . and every person is welcomed into a home at whose only hearth is love.

Repent. Turn your lives around. The kingdom of God is right here. Make it real with your lives. It's Jesus' invitation to us. (The choir sings these verses)

"The Love Burning Deep" (Words © Kathy Galloway; music © 1981 Ernest Sands, OCP Publications)
(1) Come out of the darkness, come out of the shadow, come out of the endless night,
all you who are poor now, all you who are broken, all you who are bowed by fight.
Come into the light of God's sacred intention, come under the shelter of Her hand;
here you may find riches, here you may find healing, here now you may rise and stand.

(2) Come out of your prisons, come out from your ghettoes,
come out from behind your walls.
Leave all your distractions, leave all your derisions, and answer Her when She calls.
For She is your end as She was your beginning, She is the desire of all your days,
in Her love is fullness, in Her love is wholeness, holy will be all Her ways.

Come out. Come out, Jesus calls. What binds you? What scares you? What oppresses you? What keeps you stuck? What keeps you from soaring? Or dancing? Or smiling? Jesus calls to us: Come out of your prison. Come into my presence. Come into my heart. Come into my love. Follow me. And be free.

So why doesn't Jesus let this newly-freed, newly-healed man get into the boat with him? Jesus tells him, Go home to your people (5.19, The New Jerusalem Bible). Which means this left-for-dead man once had a home. Maybe there are people in his village who still remember him. Maybe there are even some people who once loved him, and who will run out to me him when he walks back home. Like he's been raised from the dead. Whole. On fire and in love with the God who sets us free.

But what kind of freedom is this? Is it like a having a for-all-eternity condo on Waikiki? Listen to the rest of Christ's freedom song.

(3) No more will you rest now, no more take your ease now,
no more let your life go by;
always you will seek Her, forever desire Her until the day you die.
Her love will consume you, blazing deep within you, burning away all that is not true,
until you embrace Her, in flesh and in spirit holy you and wholly you.

Dorothy Day, who started the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality in the poorest areas of this country, knew following Jesus wasn't about the rest and ease that is an escape from life. She knew when Jesus calls us out of our prisons, he calls us into a ministry of love. Dorothy Day said, "Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer" (Robert Ellsberg, ed., Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1992, p. 339).
When God call us out of our prisons, God does not call us into lives of rest and ease. But Jesus doesn't call his followers to burn ourselves out, either. He practiced Sabbath. He took time away from the crowds. He ate with friends and sat by the sea and danced at wedding feasts. He's not calling us to outdo each other in becoming martyrs. What Jesus is doing is saying, I want to free you from whatever imprisons you. I call you out of your prisons . . . into a new life. A new life of following me, and following people who follow me . . . so we can call others out of their prisons, into new life. We cannot rest and be at ease when so many people remain locked in prisons of poverty, war, addiction, fear, and oppression.

And in Sammamish and Issaquah, where so many are wealthy, people can find themselves locked in their own kinds of prison. One Christian writer puts it this way: "I know enough rich folks to know the loneliness that is all too familiar to many of them. I read a study comparing the health of a society with its economics. [A]nd one of the things it [said] is that wealthy countries like ours have the highest rates of depression, suicide, and loneliness. We are the richest and the most miserable people in the world" Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution, Zondervan, 2006, p. 133). And he adds, "I feel sorry that so many of us have settled for a lonely world of independence and riches when we could all experience the fullness of life in community and interdependence" (p. 134).

When Peter and I were in Scotland last month, we hiked to the top of a hill. We looked across the valley at a couple of mountains that had nothing on them but rocks and heather. Peter said, "Man are those barren." I said, "To me, those mountains are open. Wide open. I don't think they're barren at all. For me, barren is when I look out the dining room window and see two big apartment buildings, and realize I don't know anybody in any of them."

What prison are you in? What prison is God calling you out of? What prison doors does God call Spirit of Peace to commit ourselves to fling open . . . so newly freed people can join us in our version of the kingdom of God . . . in this home whose only hearth is love. Amen.