Cathedral News
A Sermon by the Rev. Cn. Dr. Jane Shaw
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Photography by Robert Taylor www.taylor-photo.co.uk |
July 14, 2010
Preached on June 20, 2010 at New College, Oxford
Texts: Galatians 3: 23 – end; Luke 8: 26 – 39
In one of the weirder healing stories of the gospels, which we heard tonight, Jesus drives the demons out of a man and transfers them into a herd of pigs who – unfortunately for them – happen to be grazing nearby and then, driven literally crazy, rush off the cliffside, hurtle into the water and drown. This is so far from our experience, so far from our understanding of mental illness today, that it is hard to take the incident very seriously.
And even at the time, people had something of a problem with this story as it spread around. They became afraid. But it wasn’t the crazy pigs that frightened them – though a charging herd of swine might be terribly alarming – no: it was
the sight of that formerly ill man, sitting at Jesus’ feet, now clothed and in his right mind, now healthy, that made them nervous.
What Jesus did made them wonder. Who was this man? Who was this person who could restore to health the crazy guy, well known around town, who occasionally emerged from the tombs where he lived, always naked.
Even the man himself preferred to be left alone rather than be made well – at least initially. On seeing Jesus, he shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” In other words, leave me alone.
What the people in this story – except for Jesus himself – all feared was change. And we can understand that. We might think we want change, but we often resist it. We might grumble about office politics or the dysfunctional branches of our families but it is often easier to leave things as they are rather than under take and undergo the changes that would make things better. Sometimes we have to change – we have to change schools or get a new job or walk towards an unknown future, and some of you here tonight will be doing those things at the end of this term – and that change can be both painful and exciting.
At the heart of the Christian story, if we take it seriously, is change - not just change for change’s sake, but transformation. In going around healing people, in sitting and eating with tax collectors, in touching dead bodies, Jesus offered life, life in all its fullness. It’s what David Stancliffe, the Bishop of Salisbury who conducted the confirmation and baptism here a couple of weeks ago, calls “getting a life”.
And what is the mark of “getting a life”? It is the transformation of ourselves and of our communities. Paul gives us a glimpse of what that transformation might look like in our first lesson tonight, taken from his letter to the Galatians. He writes that in baptism “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”. In baptism we die to self. And, if we have been baptised as infants, in confirmation we confirm that commitment to look outwards, to look to others and their needs. By joining the body of Christ, we make a decision to acknowledge that God loves all and that we choose to reflect that love in what we do and how we do it.
Learning to love as God loves us, learning to put into practice the idea that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male or female, is a lifelong process of transformation, of changing our preconceptions, challenging our prejudices, and learning to see in all people the image of God – even the naked crazy guy who lives in the cave on the edge of town. We don’t get it right all the time. Paul certainly didn’t. He could write this passage to the Galatians, he could work happily alongside female co-workers almost all of the time, and yet he could also fall back on his traditional views of what he believed women should do – especially when the going got tough and he was trying to keep order in a community. Like Paul, we are all torn between transformational change and sticking to the familiar.
So really, no wonder the people of Gerasenes were afraid when they saw the healed man. They were comfortable with the way things had been. They might have complained about the mad man who lived in the caves, but he was harmless, and while he lived on the edges of their community they knew what to expect. But what might he do now he was well? How would he be incorporated into the community? How would the society need to re-make itself to include him, and, in doing so, how would they be challenged to think about who they were? In other words, they saw in the formerly ill man not just a change – he was now healthy - but a transformation. This man was now sitting at the feet of the Son of God with the knowledge that he was included and loved.
And more than that – he was the one whom Jesus sent to proclaim the news of that love. As Jesus turns to get in the boat and go, the man begs him to take him with him, but Jesus has other work to do and so he passes the work of healing and transformation onto this man. “Return to your home”, he says, “and declare how much God has done for you.” And so the man returns to the city where he had formerly been outcast, living on the edges, and walks boldly through its centre, proclaiming to everyone what Jesus had done for him.
So this seemingly opaque story, of a mentally ill man healed, which at first glance seems to have so little to do with our lives, turns out to be paradigmatic of this “getting a life”. It tells us the whole story of a transforming and transformational faith. And I think it goes something like this. We are healed by God; we learn that we are loved by God; we learn that others are loved by God and begin to practise our faith accordingly; and in so doing we realise that we are charged to do God’s work here on earth. As the sixteenth-century mystic and reformer of the religious life, Teresa of Avila, put it:
Christ has no body but ours, no hands, no feet on earth but ours.
Ours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
Ours are the feet with which he walks to do good.
Ours are the hands, with which he blesses the world,
from now to the end of ages.
Whatever the summer holds for you, whatever you are doing next year and in the years to come, may you go out from this place knowing that God loves you, and may you do God’s work.
Amen.
We are anxious for you to get to know our new Dean so we have posted a number of articles.
To read the announcement of her appointment, click here.
To read her first letter to us, click here.
To learn more about Dr. Shaw, click here.
To learn more about the dean search process, click here.
To read an essay she wrote following the 2009 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, click here.