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Fearing the chaotic abyss: A sermon for Proper 14A, August 9, 2027

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It was the summer after my junior year of college and I was doing what I had done every summer since I hit my teens—I’d given up my books and schoolwork for a hammer and nail apron and took my place on the jobsite where my dad was building or remodeling houses. This summer, the first job was to frame a two-story house and I found myself walking around on the second floor joists as we began hanging rafters for the roof. All of a sudden, I looked down and realized where I was, twenty feet or more above the ground. My legs began to tremble and I had to get down on my hands and knees to stabilize myself. It had been nine months since I had found myself in a similar position, and even though my body remembered it, my mind was playing tricks on me. I was scared, and it would take a couple of days of working up there before I got comfortable again.

I wonder if Peter had a similar experience, walking out on the water, suddenly realizing where he was, and freaking out about it. There’s actually a backstory about my fear—I had to overcome fear of heights to work with my dad. I remember as a younger boy, maybe ten years old, climbing around on a half-framed house and falling. I didn’t hurt myself. But years later, when I started working for my dad, I had to overcome that memory before I could function fully on a ladder or a roof.

This morning’s thunderstorm put me in mind of another incident from that same summer. We were finishing the metal roof on a large pole barn, 40 or 50 feet above ground, when a thunderstorm suddenly popped up. I’ll spare you the details. It was quite possibly the scariest experience I’ve ever had.

So many of us are fearful right now. The old certainties on which we relied seem to have fallen away; the safety net is being dismantled; our very sense of who we are as a nation, a people dissolving in front of our eyes. It often seems like we are hovering over an abyss of chaos.

I know that many of us come to church in search of reassurance and hope, to hear words of inspiration and comfort in these troubled times. Today’s gospel lesson speaks directly to fear. It’s the familiar story of Jesus walking on the water. And no doubt, those of you have attended church all your lives, going all the way back to Sunday school as kids, could tell me about this story—that it’s about Peter’s impulsiveness, his lack of faith, and of Jesus saving him in spite of himself; a lesson that we can transfer to ourselves. And so it is, but it is also, or could be, about so much else.

First, a note about context. This story is set immediately after the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand. But there’s another event that may offer additional perspective. Chapter 14 begins with the account of Herod’s execution of John the Baptist. After receiving word of this from John’s disciples, Matthew reports that he “withdrew to a deserted place.” But time and space for grief and reflection were not to be. The crowds followed him, Jesus had compassion on them, and healed their sick. It was that evening that Jesus took five loaves and two fishes, and from them fed the crowd.

Our story picks up immediately after that event. Again, Jesus withdraws after sending the disciples ahead. He needs time to grieve, to recharge and reflect on what John’s death might mean for his own ministry. The disciples begin their journey across the Sea of Galilee. They were sailors, at least four of them were, and the Sea of Galilee was their home. They apparently spent the night on the lake, their boat was battered by wind and waves—the Greek is literally, “tortured” so we’re meant to imagine the disciples had to struggle mightily against the great danger they faced. What I find surprising in this brief account is that Matthew doesn’t say anything about the disciples’ emotions until the moment they catch sight of Jesus walking on the water. They may have struggled in the storm throughout the night, but Matthew tells us that they became afraid only when they saw Jesus, thinking he was a ghost.

Similarly, when Peter takes out after Jesus, he is fine until he notices the wind. Then he becomes frightened begins to sink, and calls out to Jesus, “Save me.”

There are other dimensions to this story. One of the most significant is the sea itself. Throughout biblical literature, the sea is a symbol of chaos. It is the primordial stuff, present at the beginning of creation, out of which God creates order. For Jesus to walk on water is another proof of his power over evil and chaos, demonstrated as well by the fact that the storm ended when he entered the boat. And the disciples responded appropriately, worshipping him and confessing him to be the Son of God. 

To make another connection with ancient understandings, walking on water certainly symbolized divine power, but when humans attempted it or claimed the ability, it was seen as hubris, arrogance, and tyranny. The Emperor Caligula, for example, who reigned from 37-41, had a temporary bridge built across the bay of Naples so he could cross on foot, as befitting a God, and not cramped in a boat. So this event, coming after Herod’s execution of John the Baptist, after Jesus fed the five thousand, is another example of God’s reign breaking in, to provide food, to bring order out of chaos, to initiate God’s justice and peace.

And the disciples respond accordingly. It’s worth pointing out that in Mark’s version of the story, which doesn’t include Peter’s attempt to walk on the water, ends with this description of the disciples: 

“And they were utterly astounded,for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”

By contrast, Matthew’s story ends very differently. The concluding verse reads: “Those in the boat worshiped him, saying ‘Truly, you are the Son of God’.” Two things here. First of all, the use of the word “worshiped.” When we hear that word, we think of what we do on Sunday morning: sing hymns, read scripture, pray, all of that. It’s all quite respectable, rather staid. But the word translated as “worshiped” literally means “prostrated”—to get down, not just one’s knees but to lie prone before the one being worshiped. It’s the sort of bodily gesture that would have been expected when approaching the throne or person of the emperor. You might well wonder how the disciples could have done that in a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee.

The second thing is the confession—Truly you are the son of God—the one able to feed five thousand, to calm the seas, to demand the kind obeisance normally demanded by the Emperor: an alternative ruler, an alternative kingdom.

In so many ways the world in which we live is chaos. We may feel like we are the disciples in the boat struggling against a mighty storm. We may feel like Peter, sinking as we notice ourselves suspended amid chaotic forces. We are afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid for our planet, for the human race, for this nation, our city. I fear for American Christianity that has been complacent and complicit in the sins of white supremacy, racism, and the violence of war. 

But if, like the disciples, we truly confess Jesus to be the Son of God, then our allegiance to him supersedes all other allegiances, including that of our nation. If we confess Jesus to be the Son of God, we need to name and fight the sins and evils that surround us. We need to call out and confront all those who conflate flag and cross; we need to confess our sins and complicity in the racism of our nation and out city. We need to call out and condemn the hatred and evil that that we’ve seen in too many other places across America over the last couple of years.

As followers of Jesus, as his disciples, we are at a moment of decision. We can confess him to be the Son of God, we can take up our crosses and follow him into the chaos that surrounds us. We can share his message of love, proclaim the justice of God’s coming reign, or we can turn away, look away, in disbelief and silence, and allow those forces of chaos to overwhelm us a church, a city, and a nation.

Jesus is reaching out his hand to us. Do we have the strength, the courage, the faith, the moral clarity to grasp it? For in that hand lies our salvation.

What demons bind you? What fears affect you?

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“Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.” Luke 8:37

Are you afraid?

I am. I am afraid for our community and our nation. I fear for the future of the world. I am especially afraid this morning for our immigrant neighbors. While the Administration has delayed for two weeks its promised mass immigration raids across the country, the fear of many of our neighbors has not lessened. Many of the targeted families have lived here  most of their lives and risk death if returned to their countries of origin. Many analysts agree that the primary goal of this campaign is to terrorize immigrants who have come here seeking better lives. Meanwhile, the expansion of and wretched conditions in the places where immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are being held continue to worsen. I am full of fear, not just for the fate of all those people but for our nation.

At the same time, as if this weren’t already too much, we seem to be on the brink of another war, this time with Iran. It’s not enough that we have been at war for 18 years now in Afghanistan and Iraq. It isn’t enough that we have seen the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the devastation of whole nations, and see daily the effects of the war on returning veterans. The prospects of war with Iran, a much larger and more populous nation than either Iraq or Afghanistan, and one with significant military capacity, is a frightening thing.

Those larger fears can affect us powerfully; and many of us have been in a state of fear or anxiety going on years. But there are also personal fears that beset us, fear for our families, for jobs, for our futures. We worry about catastrophic illness, for example.

Fear is a powerful emotion. It can lead us to do things we might not have been able to otherwise, it can change our personalities and the way we look at life. It can overwhelm our rational faculties, rendering us incapable of making wise decisions. It can lead us to strike out. It can blind us to the humanity of people we don’t know or who different than us. It can even lead us to abandon our most cherished values and principles.

There is a great deal of fear in our gospel reading today. There is the fear of the unknown and the demonic that compelled a man to live in the tombs, to be bound and shackled to protect the community from his rages. There is the fear of the demons when Jesus encounters them; and the demons’ fear of returning to the abyss. There is the fear of the swineherds and townspeople when they learn of Jesus’ power over demons and his ability to restore the man to his right mind. And we see the effects of fear—as the demons in fear enter the herd of swine, and instead of returning to the abyss, the pigs drown in the lake. The townspeople’s fear leads them to reject Jesus and the possibility of new life for themselves, and return to their old lives, their old world.

This story, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac is the lengthiest of all such exorcism stories in the gospels. Its details and language invite deeper inquiry and exploration. Its rich symbolism operates on several levels—personal psychology, the dynamics of religious difference, imperial occupation, and cosmic conflict between Jesus and demonic forces are all worthwhile avenues of discovery.

It  begins rather simply, un-dramatically. Having crossed over the Sea of Galilee, though that in itself was full of drama because they were caught up in a storm during their crossing and Jesus miraculously calmed it, Jesus steps out on land and is confronted by this man possessed by demons. But when Jesus steps out on land, it is the first time he enters largely Gentile territory in the Gospel of Luke (the presence of a herd of pigs makes that obvious). He and his disciples have crossed over the Sea of Galilee, and at the end of the story, they will return to Galilee. It’s almost as if the point of the journey was the encounter with this man.

Then there is the demoniac. His description: naked, living among the tombs, is the description of someone who has lost his identity. He has no home, no family, no place in society. He might as well be dead, which may be one reason he’s living among the tombs. But in that description, we may be reminded not only of people who suffer from mental illness, but it may be an apt description of some of the homeless men and women who walk the streets of Madison.

There’s something a bit odd about the description of the exorcism. In verse 29, Luke tells us that Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. It’s only later, after Jesus asks his name that he seems to be able to cast the demons out.

And that name, “Legion.” With that reference, we are no longer dealing simply with an encounter between Jesus and a possessed man. Legion in the first century can only mean one thing—the Roman Army. Coincidentally, the legion based in the area of Gerasa in the first century had as its symbol a boar. During the Jewish Revolt of the 60s, Gerasa was the site of a brutal massacre. The Romans killed a thousand young men, imprisoned their families, burned the city, and then attacked villages throughout the region. Many of those buried in Gerasene tombs had been slaughtered by Roman legions.

While the symbolism of Jesus’ confrontation with the forces of Roman Empire is important, we shouldn’t lose sight of the larger battle here. Because Jesus’ encounter with the possessed man is not simply a healing story or a symbol of the conflict between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world, it is also a cosmic battle between Jesus and the forces of Evil.

To explore all of these levels of meaning is not to downplay the importance of the healing, or of the man who is restored to himself and to his family. Instead, it invites us to think about all of the ways that Jesus confronts the forces in the world that claim our allegiance and bind us in possession to them.

As Americans, we live with the powerful myth that everyone can succeed in life and that if we don’t it is somehow our fault. But there are forces far beyond our control: racism, sexism, an economic system that rewards the winners and punishes everyone else, student debt, a healthcare system that threatens many with bankruptcy. Here in Madison, we have a crisis of affordable housing—average rents increased by 14% last year. The chains that bind us, the demons that possess us are powerful indeed.

Yet Jesus comes to challenge those demons and break those chains. He comes to free us from all those forces that prevent us from living fully in God’s image, that prevent us from flourishing. Many of us are like those townspeople who feared Jesus’ power and feared the freedom that he offered. May we abandon our fear and like the Gerasene demoniac, may we know the true freedom of relationship with Jesus Christ, and may we proclaim that power of that freedom to the world.

The Tender Compassion of God: A Sermon for Advent 2, Year C

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A couple of months ago, the great American novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson published a profound reflection on fear in the New York Review of Books. She begins with a two-part, very simple thesis: “first, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” Later, she writes:

Granting the perils of the world, it is potentially a very costly indulgence to fear indiscriminately, and to try to stimulate fear in others, just for the excitement of it, or because to do so channels anxiety or loneliness or prejudice or resentment into an emotion that can seem to those who indulge it like shrewdness or courage or patriotism. But no one seems to have an unkind word to say about fear these days, un-Christian as it surely is.

Though published in September, these words seem oddly quaint and old-fashioned today. They were written before Paris, before the Planned Parenthood shootings, before San Bernardino. However prevalent fear was in our society three months ago, it is overwhelming today. A Sikh woman was taken off her flight this week because other passengers feared the breast pump she was carrying with her. Islamophobia runs rampant and on Black Friday, the day of the Planned Parenthood shootings, the number of firearms sold broke all previous records. Our presidential candidates are fanning the flames of fear and xenophobia and are benefiting from the fears of the voting public.

This leads to absurdities. On Friday, Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, the institution his notorious father founded, asked his student body in a public address to purchase weapons and apply for concealed carry permits. He is quoted to have said, “I’ve always thought if more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in.” That this would be said by the president of what is likely the largest Christian university in the nation, probably the world, is a sad symbol of what America has become in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and also, even more sadly, of what Christianity has devolved into. As Garry Wills pointed out in a brilliant essay in the wake of the shootings at Newtown three years ago, as Americans, we worship guns and we sacrifice ourselves and our children to Moloch.

We do that, in large part because fear is all-pervasive. It’s not just terrorism, however. Some years back, I remember preaching a sermon at the church I was then serving in Greenville, SC. For some reason, I can’t find the text, but my memory puts it in Advent. There had just been several incidents of random shots fired onto I-85 from pedestrian overpasses, in fact quite near the church. A newspaper reporter interviewed commuters about the shots. One man was quoted to say that he said a prayer every time he left his house because of his fear of what might happen to him in the outside world. That was so memorable to me because I couldn’t imagine having that sort of worldview—mind you it’s not that I don’t think prayer is a good thing, but because of the underlying sense of the evil and danger that lurks just outside of the safety of one’s home. That was over ten years ago, and I would guess that fear is even more pervasive, more present, for many in our society.

It may be that fear is an appropriate way to approach this season. As the world darkens around us, as hate and violence seem to surround us, the nights grow longer and the light of the sun dims with the approach of the winter solstice. For all the joy that our season of Advent and Christmas proclaim, the real world promises sadness and danger.

Nevertheless, in this very world, this dark and gloomy place, we go forward with the rituals of the season. In the darkness of night and gloom of day, we light the candles of Advent; we listen again to the promises of salvation proclaimed by prophets long ago. Our faith may falter; our hope wane, but the good news of the coming of Jesus Christ can continue to make a difference, in our lives and in the world.

We can hear the hope in our texts today, especially in the canticle we said together a few minutes ago, the Song of Zechariah. It is a song that looks back to Israel’s salvation history, reciting the mighty acts that God performed on behalf of God’s chosen people. It looks forward to a future when once again God has intervened to make things right. As Luke tells the larger story of the birth of Jesus, he sets it in an even larger story, the story of Israel’s salvation. We see that clearly both in this song and in the story of Zechariah, which we do not hear today. You may recall some of it.

Zechariah is an elderly priest. He and his wife Elizabeth are childless. One day, it is his turn, perhaps the only time in his life, to enter the sanctuary and offer incense. While performing his duties, an angel appears to him. Zechariah is terrified, but the angel, as always, says to him, “Be not afraid. You and your wife Elizabeth will have a son.”

Zechariah points out to the angel that he is old and his wife is barren, that a child is impossible. Gabriel strikes him mute and indeed, Elizabeth becomes pregnant. Zechariah remains speechless for the length of the pregnancy. One can imagine that during that time, he has the opportunity to figure out what he might say when his voice is restored to him. After the birth of the child, and after Zechariah writes the name “John” on a tablet when asked to name him, his voice is restored, and he praises God.

This song is what comes out of his mouth. As Luke puts it, Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel…”

This canticle is appointed for morning and evening prayer so it is very familiar to me. We read in the translation provided in the Book of Common Prayer which differs slightly from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible that we ordinarily use in worship. There’s a phrase in it, near the end, as Zechariah moves from praising God for God’s action in history, and begins to speak of the present and future: “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us.”

It’s an image I love because of its simplicity and tentativeness. We think of God’s power and might. Even in this season of Advent which is as much about Christ’s second coming in power and majesty as it is about Christ’s first coming in the incarnation, we tend to focus on God’s promises to make things right, to undo the evil in the world in one fell swoop. But the image of God’s tender compassion coming as the dawn breaks is a very different thing. Dawn comes like the light of advent candles shining in the darkness. The first signs of the sun are subtle, barely detectable. It’s only later that it becomes clear that the light we see is the rising sun. Dawn breaks, one might say, tenderly.

And so too, perhaps, God’s compassion or mercy. We may live in despair of the dark, terror-filled world in which we live. We may despair that injustice and oppression reign, that violence holds sway not only in distant parts of the world, but here in our country, in our city, in the hearts of people overwhelmed by fear. But the dawn from on high leads to a new day, a new world. In those faint signs of light, we can also begin to detect God’s tender compassion. It can take away our fear and heal our violent hearts. Through us, God’s tender compassion brings light and hope to a dark and hurting world.