Sermon text: Luke 8:26-39
We all know Donald Trump’s slogan for his campaign is “Make America Great Again.” Well, the New York Times decided to ask people a question, “When do you think America was the greatest?” What year was that? They collected the answers and as might be expected there was a wide variety of responses. But the winner, the year that garnered the most response by far, was 2000.
In truth, that’s actually a really good answer. 2000 was a good year. We were still in the dot com bubble. Our country was prosperous. The economy was strong. People had good jobs. We had dodged the apocalypse of Y2K. Clinton was president (I’ll let the irony of that sink in for a moment.) And, perhaps most importantly, it was before the nightmare that was 9/11 and its aftermath.
It was before we were afraid.
Yeah, there had been terrorism before 2000, including most famously the Oklahoma City bombing and the first attack on the WTC. And yeah, Y2K was a little scary; not knowing what our computers would do, but it also didn’t seem very real to us. 9/11, as we well know, changed everything. Suddenly the fear was real. Suddenly, we’d woken up to a very scary world.
It’s interesting to note that two words that are commonplace today largely did not exist in our language before then: Islamophobia and homophobia. Odd, since we all know there had been prejudice against Muslims and gays before 9/11, but now it has a name. That name is of a phobia, of a fear. That’s telling.
We are afraid of these people.
The shooting last weekend at Pulse in Orlando is, in many ways, a perfect storm of these fears. A deranged shooter attacks a nightclub, claiming allegiance to numerous Islamic terrorist groups (many of whom hate each other as much as they do us. No intellectual consistency in this guy.) But it also was a gay nightclub, a place where LGBT people gather to do what people typically do at any nightclub: dance, drink, have a good time, hook up, and all that. What was supposed to be a place of fun and frivolity was turned into a nightmare by a madman with a gun.
The end result is a whirlwind of confusions for many people. They hate gays, but they didn’t hate them that much. Or maybe they did, but it was a Muslim who did it. Is he a monster or a hero? Should we be afraid? Should we pin a medal on this guy? Should we feel bad for those who died? Or should we celebrate the deaths of so many abhorrent people?
Some of these questions are very offensive, to me and to most decent folk. But look across the width and breadth of how people are responding to Orlando and you’ll see all of it, the ugly and the beautiful. The local Chick-fil-a, a business who gain some notoriety for its anti-gay stance, opened last Sunday (which is never done) to serve those who stood in line to give blood. The internet exploding with expressions of solidarity and sympathy from folks all across the political spectrum.
And also people celebrating the massacre because it was gay people that died, people saying they deserved it. People saying (again) this is proof that Muslims cannot be trusted and we should bomb them some more or prevent any more from entering our country; that we should conduct surveillance on their mosques and prevent any more from being built.
Along with every other reasonable or ridiculous conclusion in between these.
But what are we really afraid of? What is it about these two groups of (and here’s that phrase again) “those people” that make us so crazy? Are we really afraid of the violence they can do? Is that it? Are we afraid that gay people will rape us or that Muslim people will blow us up? I don’t think so. Not really.
I think they represent something more visceral. Their threat is more existential. It has to do with our very identity. Who we believe ourselves to be. I think what we’re really afraid of is that they’ll somehow force us to become like them. They’ll force us to “convert” (whatever that means) and we’ll lose who we are.
And that brings us to our Gospel lesson today. This is always a bit of an odd story. Jesus sets out to cross the sea to the land of the Genesaret. When he arrives, he is immediately greeted by something out of Stephen King’s worst nightmares. (scary voice) My name is Legion, for we are many.
Boo!
THAT fear right there, I believe, is what is really behind all our homophobia and Islamophobia today. We fear that we’d lose who we are and become something else.
But Jesus is not afraid. He even toys with the demons; makes deals with them, knowing full well that the end game of this is going to be their destruction no matter what. He is unafraid. The demons, he knows they cannot harm him. They cannot do anything to him. So he is not afraid.
If only we could move through life with such confidence...
The truth is, we can. Each one of us is a unique creation and we are who we are. God made us as the person he wanted us to be. He welcomed us into his kingdom in Baptism and made his beloved child: gay, straight, or even somewhere in between. And he loves us. As I’ve been saying, he loves us as we are, not we think we should be.
What threat is a gay person to you or me? He’s not going to change me. I’m straight. That’s the way God made me and, even if I wasn’t, God wouldn’t love me any less. I’d still be that beloved child of God. I’d still be his precious one. I’d still be loved. It wouldn’t matter who I was attracted to. I belong to God.
What threat is a Muslim to you or me? I know what I believe. That’s not going to change. But even if it did, God wouldn’t love me any less. I’d still be that beloved child of God. I’d still be his precious one. I’d still be loved. I belong to God. Nothing will change that.
Here we go again...
When we see things clearly, as Christ does, suddenly these people are no longer a threat, but potential allies, even friends. Look at what the man does once the demons are gone. He can’t shut up about how great Jesus is. Jesus saw in that demoniac the human being behind the monster. A human being that he loved and did not fear.
Can we do the same? Can we finally stop with the fear and recognize that these are human beings, beloved of our creator, people for whom Jesus Christ came to this earth to live, die, and rise again (just as he did for us)? Can we stop being afraid and start loving as our Lord commanded? Good question. I leave its answer to you. Amen.
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