Our Own Devices

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for today are here.

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Today is one of those Sundays when the readings from the lectionary are so beautifully and obviously connected with a golden thread that as I read them I want to raise my coffee mug in salute to the committee that selected these passage to go together. Did you hear it, the guiding phrase connecting all four of our readings? It’s from Isaiah. Are we following Jesus or our own devices? And by ‘devices’ I don’t mean our gps systems or smart phones. It’s an idiom that Webster defines as “a rejection of guidance or wisdom, leading to poor decisions or negative consequences.” Isaiah says its people who provoke God by elevating themselves saying, “do not come near me for I am too holy for you.” So hang on to that thought.

Today also marks the beginning of what we call ‘ordinary time’ in the church calendar. From now until Advent we will journey with Jesus and the first disciples as they invite everyone to join them in the kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven and to live as God created us to be. To begin this journey we appropriately read of Jesus traveling into gentile territory and encountering a man with a legion of demons: he’s naked, unhoused, isolated, shackled, and considered “unclean” by jewish standards and even the gentiles have banished him to the graveyard.

Then Jesus shows up and everything changes. Jesus doesn’t tell those with him to fear this man. Instead Jesus see a beloved child of God and compassionately helps him. The legion of demons that possessed this man – personified anger and hate that leads to evil – wanted to be left to their own devices and beg Jesus to leave them alone. The author leaves it unclear whether it is the man or the demons speaking and by doing so gives us the freedom to ponder our own willfulness to stay with the demons in our own selves or to do the painful work of letting Jesus help us release our anger and hate that leads us to evil. Evil in this world isn’t only the globally horrific things – genocide and war and human trafficking – evil is personified in us every time we behave in ways we know are harmful to others and ourselves and we choose to do them anyway.

The story doesn’t stop with the man; the author takes this lesson outward to the impact within the broader community. The people of this town didn’t want to face the hard challenges of personal growth and self-awareness that comes with accepting and following Jesus so like the demons they ask Jesus to leave. They saw the man healed and ‘in his right mind’ and they didn’t want to have to reassess how they had thought about and treated him. That is too much work, too hard. What if this man they had demonized was actually a really good person, what if he was intelligent and hard working and could do some things better than they could? What if his changes required them to change? They preferred the comfort zone of stagnation; they were afraid of the challenge of growth. And they asked Jesus to leave.

The man who was freed from his demons wanted to go with Jesus and Jesus asked him to stay and model for these stuck people what it is to walk the challenging and rewarding journey of becoming who God created and calls us to be. To show them what it is to be freed from the demons that cause harm to ourselves, others, and our wider communities. That’s what evil is in this world, the ways we cause harm to others because we stay intentionally stuck in our wounds. Evil distorts reality and tells us life is a competition where only one can win. Evil tells us that others exist for our own benefit and that we’ll be happy at the top of the pile of those we’ve beat down.

Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, tells us that in the body of Christ there is no longer separation by our cultural or societal ranks. In the body of Christ there is no one higher or lower ranking than anyone else even with our distinctions. This is the countercultural life we are to live as the Church. We aren’t supposed to define success by how many people we manage or are in charge of. We aren’t supposed to define success by how much money we have. We aren’t supposed to define success by how smart or powerful others think we are.

In the Psalm appointed for today, the writer prays to God to protect him from the false uses of power in this world. He’s not talking literal dogs and lions but the people who seek the kind of power that both dehumanizes others and themselves in their attempt to live according to their own devices with power that dominates others instead of the power of God that builds up others.

Success in the kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven is the humility and willingness to sit at Jesus’ feet to learn to love as he loves and then to follow him out into the world to heal wounds instead of cause them. Success in God’s kingdom is knowing that only when we are guided by God’s love are we in our right mind.

When Jesus shows up, everything changes. When we choose to follow Jesus, we are changed. Life is no longer about competing to be the best but about lifting each other up as the unified body of Christ as we all with God’s help do the work that builds each other up. Life is no longer about demanding others conform to our ideal of a person but seeing the image of God in others. Life isn’t about controlling others but learning self-control so we keep our egos in check. Life following Jesus isn’t about gaining power over others but living in the power of love with each other.

When we follow Jesus our lives are guided by love. And love is hard work. Love is keeping our commitments to each other even when they are difficult, even when it’s harder than we imagined when we first made the commitment. Love is being honest about who we are and what we are willing to do in the first place and when our relationships get challenging to never lose sight of the equalizing image of God in each other so that we don’t assume a posture of power over but live in the authority of God’s love with each other.

Y’all know that I’m happy to embrace the mysterious aspects of our faith: God is beyond our understanding; the Trinity is a relational mystery we are to live into through our relationships; and pondering how Jesus has been with God forever and ever makes my brain hurt. But one thing I know for certain, as the body of Christ we are all equal in God’s eyes; we are all God’s beloved children, and when we attempt to hold power over others or need to prove we are better or more holy or righteous than others, we are living by our own devices and not as Jesus teaches us. As we talked about two weeks ago, being the body of Christ doesn’t mean we are all identical but that we are unified in one purpose: building each other up for the benefit of God’s Kingdom and the glory of God.

The power of God’s love enables all of us to be in our right mind, transformed at the feet of Jesus so we are equipped to follow Jesus on this life-long journey of growth, equal heirs of God’s promise. Amen.