Legion: All Sorts Of Demons

Poem and Reflection for 2nd Sunday After Pentecost               Thomas E Wilson. Guest Celebrant St Mary's Episcopal Church, Gatesville, NC                              June 19, 2022 

 LEGION: All Sorts of Demons 

 From the Gospel lesson for today: “Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.” 

Why did the people ask Jesus to leave? Their neighbor was a man possessed with demons; so many demons that they were called “Legion”. A Roman Legion at that time had 6000 soldiers. Jesus healed him; isn't that a good thing? Except the cost of the man's demons leaving is that a whole herd of swine was destroyed. Maybe the cost of getting rid of demons is too high a cost to pay for one healing. Where would they be without their swine, or without their demons?

 It is not that they don't believe that Jesus can cast out demons, but there is always a cost to pay for freedom. In a letter that C. S. Lewis wrote to a minister; “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” 

 Legion; there are all sorts of demons. Today is the Holiday of Juneteeth, a commemoration of the end of slavery in Texas, the last Confederate state holding on to slavery. Slavery was the demon, but the allied demons of racial segregation, inequality and prejudice were untouched; finding refuge in swine, who continue to work to enslave this country over the next 160 years. Legion; there are all sorts of demons. 

There are the Gross demons of fairy tales, books and movies. Books and movies with lots of gross images, which usually make a lot of money. So, maybe we hold on to a suspension of disbelief because it helps the Gross National Product. An interesting thing about the word “Gross”: a word that can mean either quality or quantity, “disgusting” or/ and “a whole bunch of” National Product. But my definition of a demon is that which makes it difficult to see God's love of, or work for the care of God's creation, God's people and our neighbor. 

 Legion; there are all sorts of demons. There is a story by English author Stella Gibbons in 1932 and later made into a couple movies called “Cold Comfort Farm”. It is a comedy, like all life really is. The rural farm is like a send up of English rural setting life stories by the Brontes or Thomas Hardy. The family farm is in the shadow of a hill which never gets sunshine. This farm is ruled by Aunt Ada Doom who gets her way by reminding every one that as a young child she “saw something nasty in the woodshed”, She manipulates them to live in fear and darkness because they were afraid to face her and live without their demons. In the story, they are only freed when they face the demon of Aunt Ada Doom's manipulation, and speak the truth to each other. The family is now allowed to live in the light, rather than cower in the dark. 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons. Shakespeare in last years of his life writes King Lear, a tragedy, like much of life is feared to seem to be, of manipulation and deceit where the characters try to control each other, while pretending their goal is to please the other. They have no joy in life, just the burden of trying to keep existing. The author Jack London said: “ At the end of my life I want to be ashes not dust . . . The proper function of a human is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” One of the last lines of King Lear contains the warning to step out of the demons of manipulation: 

The weight of this sad time we must obey; 

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. 

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young 

Shall never see so much, nor live so long. 

 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons. One is a demon who keeps chanting, “How much is enough?” Let me start off with myself first. I am one of those who lives as if he was in a trap when enough is not enough. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, went from preaching to meddling when he wrote a poem about eating too much, which I am reminded when I try to get into pants I can still wear. It is called Hymn To The Belly which ends: 

Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste, 

For fresh meats or powdered, or pickle or paste! 

Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted or sod! 

And emptier of cups, be they even or odd! 

All which have now made thee so wide i' the waist, 

As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced; 

But eating and drinking until thou dost nod, 

Thou break'st all thy girdles and break'st forth a god. 

 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons that “break'st forth a god”. Not THE GOD, but gods we would't mind living with; the kind of demons that stays inside a person when an evil has been done to one of us, a spirit of resentment. The usual answer we clergy types say is that forgiveness is way to get rid of that demon. The usual answer I hear from parishioners a lot is that the perpetrator doesn't deserve forgiveness because it hurt the victim so much. So they hold on to the hurt, in the vain hope to teach the formerly trusted person, through the magical mechanism of resentment, a lesson. As the saying goes, “It is like taking poison in the hope the other person dies.” 

Legion, there are all sorts of demons, but one thing they have in common; Demons want to just exist while robbing us of full life. What is the price to pay to get rid of that demon who is taking the joy out of our life? The price is to stop exercising the demon but rather exorcise the demon of resentment. I know the other person doesn't deserve it, but Grace is given freely, not based on reward. The process of forgiveness is three fold: 

1) Hurt; either psychological, social or physical; it had to be real. If there is no hurt except your feelings - then get over it; the world does not revolve on your feeling. Was it was caused either through malice or inattention by the other party? If it was a true accident outside anyone's control, then get over it; accidents happen.

 2 ) Hate: What was done was unacceptable, inexcusable and important. You need to be honest with yourself that you hate what was done. If it is safe, you need to confront the other person and tell them you hate what was done. One way or another you need to deal with the hate. The refusal to deal with or acknowledge the hate means that you stuff things down, those unhealed hurts, those hate filled hurts, year after year, decade after decade, they are pushed deeper until we get a belly full of hurts. I am an old person and like all old people and I have had a lifetime of hurts and dealt with other I know that if they are not dealt with until they reach a point when hate, like the belly in Jonson's poem, “break'st forth a god” of the demons of hate. Four days ago, on Thursday night at a Potluck Supper for Boomers, people my age, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Birmingham Alabama; someone decided to bring a pot luck gun to the supper, killing three people. A man my age, old, was able to restrain the killer until the police arrived. 

3) Heal; you ask God to heal you of your hate. Again, the poison reminder. You ask God to lead you into what kind of relationship you may have together. This may take time. You may have to limit your connections to the other person, your relationship may have to change if trust is not available, but your healing comes first to get rid of any demons. Forgiveness is the price we pay to get rid of those demons.

 Legion; there are all sorts of demons. Right now our economic system is undergoing tremendous inflation, the highest inflation rate in 40 years. The fear that we will not have enough petroleum products is driven by the fear of changing the kind of life we have led where we are dependent on them because we have a fear of not having enough.. The petroleum products companies are posting windfall profits as prices go even higher. Corporate Profits are up 25% with the highest corporate profits in 50 years.The fear is further complicated by the fear a world leader had that he did not have enough control over his neighbors and wanted to go back in time, to a delusion that never was. So he invades his neighbor, which also begins a shortage of wheat to feed the hungry of the world, which drives up the cost of food. People are starving and yet the obesity level is also high as we throw away food. Even without a war, we want to keep buying as if we cannot get them soon enough, we are willing to spend more because there is a fear there will never be enough. With this understanding, the point of our existence is to have more than enough stuff. 

Legion; there are all sorts of demons. There is the fear of our neighbor with the understanding that we must defend ourselves from our neighbors who want what we want. There is a fear of letting go of ways of defending ourselves especially in the use of military grade weapons/guns/ammunition, weapons of slaughter. The 18th century writers of the US Constitution imagine the right to bear arms as the right to have a flintlock rifle for protection of the community. In their wildest imagination they could not envision the weapons of mass slaughter to tear little children to shreds on the market today as helping the Gross National Product in the 21st century. We have more mass shootings this year than we have had days. We fear people who might be isolated and angry, so in our fear, we isolate ourselves, we speak in echo chambers, only listening to those with whom we agree. Learning how to hate our neighbor more and holding on to the hate; again the poison metaphor. Apparently we are willing to lower our flags half mast for all those who died because we want to be safe to live in fear of not having what we want. 

Legion, there are many sorts of demons and we often want to keep them close to our hearts. Getting rid of those demons begins with asking a higher power to help us get rid of these demons in our hearts. Instead of asking Jesus to leave us alone; ask him to stay for awhile. If you keep him there, the demons will ask to be given a better host, some swine somewhere. It is the truth of God's love that sets us free. 

Legion; All Sorts of Demons  

How easy to have demons for us to cuddle up with, 

who'll teach us to really hate this person or that, 

because if we're fearful we won't risk time for a chat; 

time, that should be easier to cuddle up with a fifth. 

If we'd just numb ourselves with viewpoint echoes, 

of how we deserve this, or that we are denied else, 

so that opportunity to take on responsibility melts, 

into fetid puddles, where once love, to drown goes. 

Demons sing we should end our race with stuff, 

and convince ourselves we must avoid decisions, 

carefully fudging the call to take brave positions, 

not at all hindered by having spines of cream puff. 

Yet scripture reminds, if push come to shove, thine 

will; will demons reject in order to entertain swine.

Telling The Story

A Poem/Reflection for Trinity Sunday                                            St.Thomas Church, Ahoskie, NC Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant                                                 June 12, 2022 Telling The Story Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31       Romans 5:1-5        John 16:12-15

 In the Broadway show Hamilton, George Washington raps to Alexander Hamilton:                                             Let me tell you what I wished I known 

        When I was young and dreamed of Glory 

        You have no control Who lives Who dies 

        Who tells your story. 

 When I looked at the lessons for today I saw a theme of how the writers heard the story being told. In the Proverbs selection, God's Spirit of Wisdom is heard singing the story of God's continuing Creation. She sings of God's delight in all of creation as God is blessing all of creation. She is calling us, created in the image of God, to bless as God blesses. 

 In place of the Psalm for today, I substituted the Celtic Prayer Wednesday Morning by Phillip Newell who sings that the story of God's continuing blessing of all things, even you and me, is being told all around us, urging us to kindle our will to bless as God blesses. 

“There is no creature on the earth/ 

There is no life in the sea / 

But proclaims your goodness./ 

There is no bird on the wing / 

There is no star in the sky/ 

There is nothing beneath the sun/ 

But is full of your blessing./ 

Lighten my understanding/ 

Of your presence all around, O Christ/ 

Kindle my will. 

Phillip Newell, “Wednesday Morning” in Celtic Prayers from Iona: The Heart of Celtic Spirituality (Paulist Press, 1997) 

In the Epistle, Paul is writing to the Romans that he and his companions have had a rough time, but in how he tells the story he is telling is of the Holy Spirit of God's Grace in the middle of all those hardships allowing them to grow in faith. In the Gospel selection for the Gospel of John, the author remembers Jesus is telling his story to the disciples that he will be betrayed, and killed; yet in the middle of this deep trouble God will be redeeming all things. Jesus tells them that God's Spirit of Truth will come to them after his own death telling them the story to lead them into all truth. 

For the next couple of centuries, disciples became apostles and spread the Good News, telling the story of how God's spirit is alive and living in and through our lives. People lived and died by hearing the Story and telling it, not in words alone. but in deeds of love. They told the essence of the story wherever they went; using the understanding of the people to tell the story. 

The essence of the story was the same but there were different ways they told the story. The different sections of the known world would understand the story in different ways. The differences ranged on the question of Jesus. If there is only one God; if so who was in heaven while Jesus is on earth? Was Jesus a God, who visited the earth in human form, and when his human outer form was killed, returned to his God like form? Or, was Jesus a human whom God raised up and gave life after death, sitting next to the Father God as a secondary God? Or, was Jesus, what they called a “tertium quid”, a third thing, neither human or divine? And the answer of course in the public mind of most followers of Jesus was “Yes”. 

Then, in the 4th Century, the Roman Emperor Constantine grew up hearing the story from his mother, Helena. He was a soldier and he attributed his victory as a sign of God's desire to tell Christ's story unfettered. He decided that the Christian faith should be tolerated and later he put Christians in charge of some of the religious life of the Empire as paid bureaucrats of the state. There is some debate if he ever got baptized, because it was believed that if you were baptized you promised to no longer sin and to love your neighbor as yourself and to treat every human being with dignity and respect. All these were seen as barriers to a successful long career path as an Emperor to be feared. 

There is a painting in the Vatican of Constantine's baptism by one of Raphael's students, a thousand years after Constantine's rule, showing Constantine kneeling before the Pope. A lovely painting of a story, but more propaganda that fact during those times of political tension between the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors. Now Constantine was a soldier, and like a soldier he decided that the Christians should have uniformity. So, he called for a Council of the Church leaders. He invited them to straighten out the details of the story. 

 One of the problems was that the members of the church in the Empire spoke different languages. The official languages of the Empire were Greek and Latin. Constantine understood Latin and could read Greek out loud if it were sounded out to him by his scribes. Greek, with a long history of philosophy, had access to a greater subtlety of language than Latin. Constantine did not have a theological bone in his body but he noticed that the pride filled Christian leaders from different parts of the Empire would argue with each other with the subtlety of a Duke- Carolina basketball game; calling each other heretics and arguing that “heretics” should not be paid salaries as religious bureaucrats by the state. Constantine really could care less who was right as long as there was unity. Constantine wanted order and the Councils at Nicaea and other places came up with Creeds and created official doctrine for all the Empire. 

Faith has a tendency to evolve into doctrine rather than the way we live life. Telling the Story was often reduced to a series of recited formulas rather a way of life lived in Christian Grace. Over the centuries there has been a series of re-discovering the story and telling it in the way we live- in seeing it all around us. 

The Hymn we will sing at the end of the service goes back to the 8th century and it purports to be a way that the legendary St. Patrick in the 4th or 5th Century Christianized the ancient pre- Christian Irish spirituality; binding oneself up in the Spirit of the God. It is not about the creed but about how we faithfully live each day 

Another one of those re-discoveries was by the son of a cloth merchant in Assisi in the 13th Century, a failed soldier named Francis. A prayer attributed to him, telling the story, is what we will use as the post communion prayer. “Lord make us instruments of your peace . . .” 

 In every time and in every place, the story is being told and rediscovered in the lives of everyday people; saints and sinners touched by grace. The story is bigger than could be contained in any one creed. How are you telling the story in your life today? 

“Let me tell you what I wished I known When I was young and dreamed of Glory You have no control Who lives Who dies Who tells your story.” 

Telling The Story 

Did you ever wonder who'd tell your story? 

Would it be a comedy of manners perhaps, 

with pratfalls of missing marks and maps, 

or tragedy as egos slip away from glory? 

Would there be a phrase of remembrance

 of reach achieving, or of exceeding grasp, 

or traits like a warm and firm handclasp; 

hint of having hero's strong resemblance? 

Would they see courage in being sailors 

together on the stormy crashing waves 

of odysseys taken on way to our graves, 

will they be kind to many moral failures? 

Will they remind us the spirits were alive, 

redeeming all, until we, finally, in love arrive?

Speaking With Not At

A Reflection and Poem for Pentecost Sunday              St. Andrew's Church, NagsHead,    NC            

June 5,  2022                                                                 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant                                                                                                                                                            

  Genesis 11:1-9     Acts 2:1-21     John 14:8-17, 25-27     Psalm 104:25-35, 37 

 I know that you have heard me tell you that there are different ways to translate words from Hebrew or Greek because some words have multiple meanings. In Hebrew, the word “ruach” and the Greek word “pneuma” can be translated into at least four different English words: wind, breath, soul or spirit. From the beginning of creation in Genesis the writer says that the “Ruach Elohim”, the wind, breath, soul, Spirit of God, hovers over the formless mass and waters. It will be God's wind, breath, spirit which will bring forth words of creation. It is the God's breath, wind, spirit that is breathed into the lump of clay to become human, a being made from humus, that has breath and spirit. A being in whom the movement of air, the wind, in our lungs will allow humans to speak, reflect and project the spirit that is within us. 

 In the first lesson for today, the mythic story of the Tower of Babel is told about having the freedom to speak, reflect and project God's spirit within in us humans. The people gather together, but there is a spirit of arrogance inside them. That spirit brings into being a desire to build a structure to rival God. The people were declaring war on God to show who was the biggest, meanest SOB in town. The writer wants to attribute the division into differing languages as a reaction by God. However, what usually happens with humans having an arrogant spirit is that we end up speaking AT people rather than WITH people. The Tower of Babel fell apart as people stopped listening with each other and they were speaking at each other. Winston Churchill said, that it is always better to talk jaw to jaw than to have war. However, when we arrogantly refuse to talk jaw to jaw, heart to heart, soul to soul; it is just a matter of time until we start the whole exercise of lowering our flags to half staff in honor of the victims lost to our arrogance when we refuse to listen or try to understand, Of course, we don't listen because that gets in the way of our freedom to pursue our own agendas. We think freedom is a vacuum of responsibility to our neighbor.                       

In the Hebrew Scriptures, after the Babel story, there comes an awareness that pure freedom without relationship may not be the best way to run a universe; so the religious leaders came up with Law; a list of things we were not allowed to do like: steal, kill, sleep with someone's wife, lie in court, not make religious idols etc. But law breaks down when it is only applied to people without power. The religious authorities usually went along and turned a benevolent eye toward the rulers of the nations. As Gibbons warned in his study of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar. that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people.” 

In almost all the stories that are in the Hebrew Scriptures there is a theme about the centuries of people following their own agendas for their own freedom, that arrogance of an “no one can make me do anything” attitude, and people just talking at other people rather than with them, not trying to understand each other. Then, in tension with that attitude, almost all the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures try to talk with the people inviting us into that Holy Space that exists between each person and their neighbor; where each person has a responsibility for the other. They suggest that we are like Moses who when he meets with God, he must remove his shoes, because wherever God is, is Holy Ground and nothing should get between us and God. The Shalom, the Peace of God, is not a just cessation of outward conflict but a change of life where we stop stomping on people, places and things. We have prophets like Micah who in his conversation with people advises; “What does the LORD require of you. To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” 

 Another prophet, Isaiah, laments the tendency of economic, political and religious systems in which he lives to hinder a faithful relationship with the Holy. Isaiah sings a song it which he hears a lament of God: Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood of innocent victims Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. Many of those prophets ended up imprisoned for undermining the authority of the economic, legal or religious institutions. “I mean after all”, the authorities say, “what kind of economy would we have if people forgive debts, or cared for people who are drains on our gross national product. To care for the poor is wasting precious time and resources which could be spent on our own economic or religious interests?” The prophets still speak with us. 

Last Sunday, on May 29th, at 8:20 AM I heard a prophet speak with us, not at us. Your Rector was speaking about what it was like as a parent to be confronted with the horrible news of the slaughter of children in Texas. He told about what it was like to stop working on next week's sermon and go home and hold his children and his wife. Love of our children and our neighbor, which is the work of all of us, is much more important than sermons. I was sitting in the pews and I heard a prophet speak with us in moments of absolute honesty. 

 Later that same morning, Senator Cory Booker was speaking on a television program, Meet The Press, where he said: “I’m sorry we are at a point we have to mobilize a greater movement than just expressing regret and sorrow. until the redemptive power of love for all of our children is greater than the destructive power of the love of our guns and money and power, until that redemptive love of our children turns into action, then nothing is going to change.”

 The message of the Hebrew prophets is “Where is our love?” They warned about the un-official national message of arrogant self-interest. Their nation became like any nation, alienating many of its own people by fawning to their own power brokers. Eventually, nations lose out to nations who practice that same arrogant self-interest but who are bigger than them. 

On a sabbatical in 1994, Pat and I were studying in Jerusalem and on different walks we would see the signs of the different nations that came to overthrow the governing parties; first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans, than the Byzantines, then the Arabs, then the Crusaders, then the Mamluks, then the Turks, then the British, then the Zionists, then . . . who knows? And all the time, they are speaking at each other. 

Yet, the prophetic voice continues to urge a deeper conversation with God. Jesus continued that Jaw to Jaw conversation in the Gospel for today: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." The community around Jesus held on to this Peace even after Jesus was no longer in their sight for they understood that Peace of Christ is in the midst of them. And it is turned into action. 

Centuries later Teresa of Avila wrote about this awareness: “God of love, help us to remember That Christ has no body now on earth but ours, No hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world. Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now. Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, Ours are the eyes with which he looks. Compassion on this world. Amen.” 

The lesson from the book of Acts for today remembers how the disciples acted by enter into into the wind, spirit, breath of the Risen Christ dwelling in and among them, driving them out into the world in order to enter into conversation with people who have decided that life is too short to have people speak at them instead of with them. 

Pentecost Poem 2022 

All right! Uh uh! Get it over with! Please 

just stop talking AT me. Banging on of God 

being pleased we're putting bodies in sod 

as a way of reaching someday some peace. 

We all dutifully lined up to spew some hate 

on the enemy de jour; who are just like us 

under the labels and languages that we cuss, 

so we'll get more to stuff into one more crate. 

Can't we stop making a lot of volume sound, 

dial back our language by at least two-thirds, 

finding instead hopeful, loving, gentle words, 

to speak together as we walk on Holy Ground. 

The Holy One's Spirit has not left the building, 

but rather is singing for us; Shalom rebuilding.