Righteous Anger, Justice, Forgiveness and Unity, by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer
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Trinity Episcopal Church
Hartford, Connecticut
Proper 7 – The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 19, 2016
It was almost exactly one year ago today (Sunday, June 21, 2015) when I stood at this very pulpit, in this very same place, and read to you the names and personal information about the nine victims of the mass shooting during a Bible Study at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Those who died were victims of their own Christian hospitality – inviting in a stranger who appeared to be a seeker, inviting him to participate in their sacred act of studying Sacred Scripture.
The anniversary of that event was two days ago on Friday. But that anniversary was overshadowed earlier this week by yet another mass shooting, this time at a club in Orlando, Florida, once again involving assault weapons intended for military use and not use by civilians. This time the establishment targeted was not exclusively Christian and the people targeted were not specifically African American. This time the targeted victims were members of the LGBTQ community during Pride month. While the location was not a church this time, it was another type of sanctuary – a social club that served as a safe haven for members of the LGBTQ community. And there may have been another targeted community – the evening was advertised as Latin night, so most of the patrons were Hispanic. To magnify the sense of violation, it turns out the perpetrator himself regularly socialized at that very club, so he was known to the staff and many of the patrons.
The killer complicated attempts to figure out his motive when, in the midst of the attack, he proclaimed allegiance to ISIS, although there is no evidence that organization or any other terrorist group played any direct role in the attack. Ironically, although he claimed Islam as his motive, his violent act of hatred profaned the very faith he claimed during this holy season of Ramadan – a season of peace. It now comes to light that the man’s own father has been a persecutor of the LGBTQ community, and that the perpetrator himself has a long history of violence and behavior issues dating back to his kindergarten years. Who knows what some type of early intervention may have been done that might have avoided the events of last Sunday? Clearly this was a man fighting lifelong internal struggles and at war with the world.
So perhaps it is more than coincidence that this week’s Gospel lesson from Luke recounts the story of Jesus’ healing of the Gerasene demoniac – a man plagued by so many internal demons that he has assumed their name – Legion. As I think of the perpetrator of the Orlando massacre, I think of the demons that he must have been wrestling with and how his way of resolution was mass murder. I wonder how the story of the Gerasene demoniac would be different if he had access to an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon.
As an aside, I have to echo what so many of my colleagues in the clergy and our political leaders have been saying through all of the vigils and press conferences of the last week. I am sick and tired of attending vigils after mass shootings. I am tired, frankly, of having to write sermons about a travesty to which our elected leaders pay lip service but do nothing about. You know, when those brave members of congress walked out of the seemingly mandatory “moment of silence” that their so-called “leaders” called following the shootings, I at first thought it showed disrespect. And then I said, no, these moments of silence, the now-routine statements that our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families have become almost pro-forma, done out of courtesy. It’s a routine that may seem genuine to those offering it but in fact makes a mockery out of the deaths of the victims when offered by the only people who can actually do something about it, but do nothing. Like the families of the Charleston church shooting victims, I find to my own surprise that I am more troubled by those who allowed a weapon like the AR-15 to fall into the hands of a troubled man than I am by the actual shooter himself.
But let us return to the tortured man in this morning’s Gospel story. As the story is related, Jesus heals the man by calling the demons out of him. My colleague the Rev. Kate Heichler observed this week that Jesus had a gift for separating disease, sin and evil from the person afflicted by them. He did not confuse people with the problems that they manifest. “Confronted with this terrified and terrorizing man,” she notes, “Jesus saw inside to what was really going on, and addressed the forces of evil oppressing the man. He did not condemn him.”
How different is the way he had been treated by his neighbors for lo those many years. He wore no clothes and lived not in a neighborhood but among the tombs. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles – and the demons were so powerful within him that we are told the man could break the bonds. His neighbors dealt with him by seeking to control, subdue and isolate him.
So Jesus doesn’t do what conventional wisdom suggests; he once again becomes a source of grace and healing. He sends the demons into a herd of swine – which would have been unclean to Jesus – and the demons run the entire herd into the lake where the pigs are drowned and the demons are destroyed. And yet, the man’s neighbors can’t accept this new reality. Rather than celebrate the miracle, the surrounding community asks Jesus to leave! It’s interesting to note that while Jesus has power over the demons, he does not have power over the people. He who commands the wind and the sea does not even command their respect. What is it they fear? Is it that he disrupts their social order – “the way we do things around here?” They were unable to control the possessed man, but at least they knew his place and they knew theirs. They felt safer with the demoniac in their midst – and contained on their own terms – than they did with a miracle worker who could transform lives and change the social paradigm.
Who are the demoniacs in our time and place? Who are the people we feel more comfortable keeping out of our lives and at a safe distance than we do actually interacting with them? Yesterday many of us served at Church by the pond with the homeless, the mentally ill and the destitute – how might we, through the power of God, change their lives? Or is it teenagers hanging out on the streets of Hartford –their spirits diminished by years of poverty and failure, without any hope for a better future and angry at a world they see as unfair? Where as a society do we put our resources and energy? Do we allocate resources to keep them off the streets and in prison and, like the Gerasene demoniac, away from us? Or do we allocate resources to alleviate the conditions that make them that way in the first place?
Or is it perhaps the groups of people who are included in all of our “isms” and “phobias.” For Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, it was his HOMOPHOBIA, an aversion to the LGBTQ community, even though there is plenty of evidence that he himself struggled with issues sexual orientation. How might our own societal resistance to making the world safe for LGBTQ folks have contributed to the demons that Omar Mateen struggled with?
Or might it be another phobia, ISLAMIPHOBIA? Somewhat ironically, the fact that Mateen is a Muslim who mentioned ISIS as he was committing his crime and whose family ancestry is Afghani (even though he himself was born in New York City) has led to an intensification of Islamophobia as political leaders and talk show hosts looking to gain political advantage among a certain segment of American society now look to separate out anyone who professes Islam as their faith. You know, the first person who reached out to me following the shootings last Sunday was Imam Sami Aziz from the Bloomfield Islamic community, inviting me to the vigil at the State Capitol. And yet, for many in our country, people who profess Islam are the new Demoniacs.
Mateen’s parents emigrated from Afghanistan, though he himself was born in New York. What about the sin of Xenophobia – the fear of people from other countries. Immigrants and refugees, too, have become collateral damage of this latest mass shooting. Because the perpetrator’s parents were from Afghanistan, we are hearing all kinds of calls from those same political leaders and talk show hosts to stop accepting refugees from any country that, using various code words, has a significant population of Muslims. How sad that we hear this prejudice when tomorrow is World Refugee Day. It is this very prejudice that members of this congregation and other congregations are working to oppose in trying to support a refugee family in immigrating into the United States. Just last Sunday we heard the Hebrew Bible story of Naboth and his family: Naboth was killed and his family forced from their homeland by a ruthless king and his wife. Refugees from Syria, to some in our nation, are the demoniacs of our time, to be resisted and refused entry into our communities. Do we join that chorus – or do we instead become the instruments of Jesus’ loving, healing grace for those who seek to assuage the terror of being a person without a country.
Let me be clear: As the new pastor of Emanuel Church the Rev. Dr. Betty Deas-Clark has said, forgiveness does not preclude feeling righteous anger, which is justified, nor does it remove the requirements of justice. Forgiveness IS a theological decision following the way that God changes the world. And here is where the end of today’s Gospel story is so powerful for us this morning. After his miraculous healing the now healed man wants to follow Jesus, and Jesus tells him, “No. Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.” In other words, let your neighbors see and be confronted with the fact, day by day, of how God’s love can change lives, how God’s love can transform the world.
WE, my friends, are those 21st century neighbors of the Gerasene demoniac. The fact is, we as a society are often more comfortable with the devil we know than the healing we cannot imagine. As Jesus ministry illustrates, changing society can be more difficult than calming storms or casting out demons.
Just as Black Americans felt unsafe after the Charleston shootings, so members of our LGBTQ community are feeling unsafe now. That club and others like it serve as a safe space for an LGBTQ community that too often feels unwelcome and threatened in our houses of worship and in many parts of our nation. Faithful, peace-loving Muslims also feel unsafe. Those who come from other countries, those whose cultural dress is not traditionally Western, feel unsafe, in this, the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” For people of faith in particular, Pastor Jim Wallis reminds us, this is a moment to consider our own complicity in a culture that “otherizes” whole swaths of our population. And that, when you come right down to it, is the denial of the image of God in those human beings we have decided belong on the margins, when we rather that they live among the tombs instead of living life to the fullest.
Our Scriptures this morning, read in the light of the events of the past week, pose the question to us, How can our Christian faith help us to understand and come to grips with our own fears, our own biases, our own unwillingness to fully embrace God’s people, God’s creation? How can we as a community of faith, along with other people of faith, transform a society that, rather than being rooted in fear and resorts to violence, seeks and serves Christ in all persons and respects the dignity of every human being?
Our passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians this Sunday reminds us that Jesus calls us into oneness with God and creation: There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3:28-29). You see, my friends, St. Paul is not saying that the unity we share in Jesus the Christ makes our differences disappear; it’s just that in Him they become sources of strength to unite us with God and all creation rather than sources of division. Lord Jesus, make us your instruments that it may be so. AMEN.