O God of our future, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

Some days there is just too much to preach about, and I’m not just talking about the terrible news reports from last night or this past week. This is one of those days that makes me think there should be a rule about not having too many great readings from scripture on the same day: the story of Elijah hearing the still, small voice of God; Paul’s letter to the Galatians asserting that in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female, because all are one; and then the Gerasene demoniac story. I mean, come on; what preacher can resist that? And we are celebrating the baptism of Hudson Grey Meinero, whose parents were married at Emmanuel and whose mother and uncle were baptized here, too. Hudson will embody hope for the future today as his baptism calls us to recommit ourselves to peace with justice.

There are many ways to understand our Gospel story; and, in my opinion, the best way is as a riotously funny political satire, designed to reveal underlying injustice and truth. To get the joke you have to first imagine that this was not a story that was trying to be realistic, factual, or even fair. This is a tall tale that gets at the deep truth of how oppressive and frightening the Roman occupation of Palestine was. To get the joke, you have to know that Gerasa was a mostly Gentile city sacked by the Jews in the revolt against Rome between 66 and 70 C; and then it was brutally recaptured by Rome shortly after that. (The Gospel of Luke was probably written around fifteen years later.) To get the joke, you have to know that Gerasa wasn’t right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, so the herd of pigs had quite a long stampede: “the most energetic herd in history” is what Joseph Fitzmeyer called it! [1]  To get the joke, you have to know that legion is the word for a unit of the occupying Roman army comprising thousands of soldiers. You have to remember that for Jews, pigs were considered unclean. They carried disease. Eating them was against the law. Jesus was negotiating with the spirits of thousands of occupying soldiers about to be stopped from tormenting a poor man to the point of insanity; and Jesus agreed to the demons’ request to be put into a herd of swine rather than being sent to the abyss. Apparently even the pigs didn’t want the legion of demons, so off the cliff they went, drowning themselves in the sea. This is a story in which Jesus has outwitted evil, in which a man has been saved from the torment of a legion of demons; and in which an unclean herd has been decimated!

This is a story that would produce belly laughter for early Jesus followers, the kind of cathartic laughter that often happens when times are the toughest. It’s highly subversive and thoroughly entertaining slapstick comedy. It gave Jesus’ hearers (rather, Luke’s hearers) respite from taking themselves and their problems and even their terrifying oppressors so seriously. Belly laughter is good medicine and good exercise especially for a community bound together by fear, like the community of Jesus’ and Luke’s hearers, like the communities we live and move in even today. [2]  Luke the Evangelist was a good dramatist; and any good dramatist knows that the way to get an important message to sink in deeply, is to get people laughing.  When we are laughing, our guard is down:  we are opened up. 

What happens when we are opened up? What happens in this Gospel story? Once the Gerasene man has been freed from the legion of demons, and the area has been cleared of swine, we find the man fully clothed, in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. And the story continues. The people were afraid. They saw what had happened and instead of celebrating, they asked Jesus to leave; and so he did.  This is a curious thing: the man who had been freed of the demons begged Jesus to take him with him and the other disciples. He was ready to leave everything, but Jesus’ instruction was, “Go back home and declare how much God has done for you.” This man who has been had his sanity, agency, and his dignity restored by Jesus was sent back to spread the good news to his frightened community. According to Luke, this is the beginning of the mission to the Gentiles, which started long before the apostles received the spirit of holiness after Jesus’ resurrection.[3]  

Jesus tells the man to “declare how much God has done for you.” And what did the man do? He declared how much Jesus had done for him. Was he not following instructions? Or, is this about what the demons knew, the man knew, and what Luke wants us to know: that Jesus is the Son of the Most High God. When we tell what Jesus has done for us, we are telling what God has done for us. If we’re shy or hesitant to tell other adults what God or Jesus has done for us, listening to or talking with children can be a good way to practice. Thinking about Hudson being with us this morning reminds me of that. What will we tell him about God?

A few weeks ago, my 4-year-old granddaughter was overheard asking her older sister, “What does God look like?” And her older sister explained that we can’t see God, but that God makes the flowers; and we can see the flowers. To borrow the words of one of my rabbis: [4] 

God is in the beginning….God is in the endings, and all around us….God is inside of you and all around you.  God is in your baby sister’s tiny hands, and God is in your grandfather’s eyes.  God is in the cookies fresh from the oven and in the first day of a new season.  God is in the end of the day and in the last kiss goodnight. 

That’s what God looks like; and that’s where God is.

Perhaps you remember the story about a sad little boy who wanted to meet God.  He knew it was a long trip to where God lived, so he packed his backpack with a sandwich and a couple of cans of root beer and started his journey. When he had gone about three blocks, he saw an old woman.  She was sitting in the park on a bench like one in the Public Garden.  She was just staring at some squirrels.  The boy sat down next to her and opened his backpack.  He was about to take a drink of his soda when he noticed that the old lady looked hungry, so he offered her half of his sandwich.  She gratefully accepted and smiled at him.  Her smile was so pretty that the boy wanted to see it again, so he offered her a root beer. Once again she smiled at him.  The boy was delighted.  They sat there eating and smiling, but they never said a word. They sat together quietly for a long time. As it started getting late, realizing  how tired he was, the boy got up to leave.  Before he had gone more than a few steps, however, he turned around, ran back to the old woman, and gave her a hug. She gave him her biggest smile ever.  When the boy opened the door to his own house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on his face. She asked him, “What did you do this afternoon that made you so happy?” He replied, “I had lunch with God.” Before his mother could respond, he added, “She’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!” Meanwhile, the old woman, also radiant with joy, returned to her home. Stunned by the look of peace on her face, her son asked, “Mother, what did you do today that made you so happy?” She replied, “I ate a sandwich in the park with God.”  She added, “You know, God is so much younger than I expected.”[5] 

That story makes me think about how we so often imagine that we are nearing the end of the world. We often imagine that universal time is mostly behind us and not mostly ahead of us.  What if that is not true at all?  What if God is so much younger than we expect, and the future is so much longer than we imagine?  What if the future is still so much longer than the past?  What if, instead of this being the beginning of the end, it’s just the end of the beginning? If you don’t know the story The End of the Beginning by Avi about Avon the snail and Edward the ant, I highly recommend it! [6] 

It seems to me that our Gospel story in Luke is about the lengths to which Jesus will go to do the impossible: to rid a community of demons and restore health to a foreign territory and to a person who has come completely untethered again and again.  It seems to me that some of the demons in our society have names like misogyny, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, Islamaphobia, transphobia, addiction (to alcohol, drugs, guns, or whatever).  We can get overwhelmed by fear and despair at what seems impossible to change. I wonder what will be said about us a thousand or two thousand years from now?

One reason some of us are here today is that we believe that nothing is impossible with God.  And maybe others of us are here because we desperately want to believe that nothing is impossible, so we need to be around other people who can help make the impossible come true. In the Mishnah Pirke Avot (Ethics of the Parents: 2:16), Rabbi Tarfon taught: “It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.”  When you leave here today, return on your way, get back to work on the path that heads toward deliverance and redemption for all.  Say to the children and remind each other that God is Love; and tell what Love has done for you.  Remember that Love is very near even in unspeakable sorrow; and Love might be much younger than we expected.

1. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke” in New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. ix (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 186. 
2. Thanks to Mark Davis’ blog for this idea:  http://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com.2.
3. Culpepper, p. 187.
4. Paraphrase of Rabbi Lawrence Kushner and Karen Kushner’s board book, Where is God? (Nashville: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2000).
5. Adapted from Moral Stories.
6. Avi, The End of the Beginning : Being the Adventures of a Small Snail (and an Even Smaller Ant) (Orlando: Harcourt, 2004).