What is Your Name?

 Luke 8:26-39 June 19, 2022

 

Just a warning – I don’t have anything in this sermon

to say about the pigs.

 

You ever watch Seinfeld?

If you have, you know in that show, they call people by names

like the “Soup Nazi”, or the “Low Talker”.

That’s not just a habit of the show,

it’s kind of a New York thing,

It’s probably not just a New York thing,

but it seems like I did it a lot more when I lived there.

 

Maybe it’s just because everyone walks around more there

and there are just a huge amount of people you see on a

regular basis who you never really know.

Many of whom have interesting traits or habits.

Often  these people had some mental illness and

that’s why they did things that were noticeable.

 

Around our neighborhood, I remember

Someone we called “Bucket Head man”

he went everywhere with a bucket taped to his head.

“Alleluia man” would stand on the corner and yell Alleluia for hours.

There was the “screaming lady” who lived across the street who  would argue loudly with herself.

And there was a man who would walk up and down

Broadway all day, he always wore a suit and tie

and he was always smoking.

He would always be looking at the ground

and sometimes run into people accidentally.

He would apologize and walk on.

He was known as “the Smoking Man.”

 

 

 

I think that referring to people by their habits,

makes it easier for us to not have to deal with them as people.

It’s easier to keep people at arm’s length  from us when

we make their problems their whole identity.

We don’t have to get any closer or know anything else

about them.

 

I wonder what they called this man

in Garasenes who ran around the tombs without any clothes.

I wonder what they called him keep him at a safe distance

and make him less real.

Maybe they called him “Naked Cemetery Guy”

 

When Jesus came to him, he asked him, “What is your name?”

it was probably a long time since anyone had done that.

And the man didn’t even say his own name,

the demons actually answered for him and said,

“We are Legion, because there are many of us.”

It was as if he had become his afflictions,

he couldn’t even remember who he was.

 

Today, we don’t worry all too much about demon possession.

We might think this story is irrelevant to us today.

but what if we see these demons that possessed this man

for the result they had on him and on the people around him,

maybe it’s still relevant.

 

They caused this man to act in destructive ways to

himself and others it kept him in isolation from other people.

Other people tried to ignore him and disregard him.

He had lost his real identity.

 

If we understand them that way,

we can understand what demons are.

We are possessed by many things in the same way today.

  

And these demons, whatever they are, can make the people

possessed by them, and others around them, act differently.

The people may be afflicted by mental illness, or addiction,

But we also become possessed by apathy, hostility, sadness, anger.

We can forget that there are actually people.

We define them by their shortcomings.

 

We call them crazy, weirdoes, junkies, alcoholics,

inmates, crooks, hobos, hillbillies, and worse.

We keep them away, we exclude them.

And we shut off part of our humanity in the process.

The demons possess all of us.

And all of us end up rattling around,

hanging out with the dead instead of the living

Healing of a Demon-Possessed Man
Julia Stankova

 

Whenever Jesus is healing someone, whether it’s

demon possession or physical illness, his final objective

is to restore people to their community.

Their problems made them isolated and separated.

And healing them restores them to community.

 

Being a part of a community was vital for people in

those days, it was necessary for survival,

for food, and protection, for connection with God

for personal and emotional wholeness.

Then you were part of a family and that family

joined together with other families to form a community.

Being isolated from the community was death in many ways.

 

So when Jesus comes to these people and heals them,

he restores them to community,

and he gives them back their life.

  

Today, in our society,

we kind of see things much differently.

We have become so self-sufficient and individualized

that we don’t actually need other people to survive.

So we isolate ourselves in our homes with our families or alone.

Many people identify themselves today as “spiritual but not religious”

which actually means, “I believe in God, but I can do it by myself.”

Which would have been unheard of a few generations ago.

 

Today, our default position is isolation.

It may be the demon that our society is possessed by.

The myth that we can do anything alone.

The illusion that we can be an island

That family, acquaintances and

one or two carefully chosen friends are all we require.

 

There is a lie we tell ourselves that being part of a community will

make us lose our identity, that if we’re forced to compromise at all

we won’t be our true selves.

The devil would love for us to believe this lie and keep us alone.

 

I think that this demon of isolation might be killing us.

 

But the truth is, we still need community.

We still need people around us that

we don’t share DNA with, and don’t share a house with

and that we don’t share every opinion and thought with.

 

We need to compromise with people and tolerate

people and learn to love people who are difficult to love.

That is where we realize our true identity.

And that where we can help others to find theirs too.

And maybe that’s still the way that Jesus heals us today.

 

Remember I told you about the Smoking Man?

One Sunday morning,

the Smoking Man came into my home church.

He stayed through the whole worship,

he just ducked out for one cigarette during the offering

the people who sat around him said he sang all the hymns 

and knew the liturgy. He was welcomed wholly and treated well.

 

He came back again and again and eventually every Sunday.

I don’t think he’s missed one worship in the last 20 years.

His name is Ury. He was a Lutheran in Korea.

He told us he came here to study for a PhD in physics

when he started hearing voices.

He used to work with children a lot in church when he was a teenager. 

After that, he was never “the Smoking Man”

for us ever again, We know him by his name – Ury.

And whenever people from the church passed him by,

we would say “hi Ury” and he would heartily and

happily say “hello, June”.

 

This is what Jesus can do.

This is what the body of Christ can do. The church.

The community gathered around Jesus can cast out demons

we can give each other our identities back.

We can free one another, in the name of Christ.

 

Finding ourselves is not a do-it-yourself project

And it is in communities, centered around Jesus

that we find our true identity and where

we find the healing that Jesus brings.

 

As a member of Christ’s body, we are not just our

shortcomings, not just identified by our maladies

or bad habits or problems.

 

God has named us, Jesus has saved us,

and the Holy Spirit has chosen each of us.

God of Relationship

June 12, 2022 
Holy Trinity Sunday 
John 16

 

Who is God? What is God? How do we know God?

That has been a question for humanity since the beginning of time,

whether they called God “God” or by some other name.

People have felt that there was something that created

ordered, and oversaw everything, and the human

desire to understand that has driven people of every culture.

 

Some have understood that there are many gods –

different gods for different aspects of creation and life.

And some, like our own, have understood God as one.

 

Today in the Christian church we celebrate

what we know and believe about God:

the doctrine of the Trinity, which often leaves us

with more questions than answers.

 

But basically, the doctrine of the Trinity says

we believe that God is one, but God also has three manifestations:

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

God, Jesus, and the Spirit. However you want to say it.

 

Some of you who have been going to church a long time

may remember reciting the Athanasius Creed on Trinity Sunday.

It’s one of the three creeds that we adhere to in the

Lutheran church, but we don’t say it as much as the other two.

 

If you don’t know it, it’s kind of long and repetitive

and doesn’t really trip off the tongue like the others.

The people who made the newest Lutheran worship book didn’t even

put it in there this time, which was probably a good choice.

And we’re not going to say it today.

 

 I’ve actually had nightmares about

leading a congregation and everyone losing their place

and the whole service disintegrating into chaos.

 

Athanasius was a priest and a Christian theologian,

he had a part in the council of Nicaea in 325 AD

and had a part in making the Nicaean Creed that we 

and many other churches do say regularly and will recite today.

 

The Athanasius creed was most likely

written in the fifth or sixth century,

about 100 years after Athanasius lived,

but it’s probably named after him because it was

based on his strong belief on how the Trinity should

be understood.

 

The Athanasius creed does start with the lines:

“Whoever desires to be saved

should above all hold to the catholic faith.

Anyone who does not keep

it whole and unbroken will doubtless perish eternally.”

Which is why we don’t read it aloud.

 

It was written at a time in the church when having the right

understanding about the nature of God and Jesus

was the most important thing to Christians,

it basically decided your faith.

 

Thankfully we’ve moved to another place today.

Where adhering to whole and unbroken doctrine,

is not as important as trust in God.

And condemning people to perish eternally

does not seem like a great tool for spiritual conversion.

  

But still and all, I’m glad that Athanasius was so

insistent on his understanding of God and

that the doctrine of the Trinity has been handed to us,

and that it is part of our faith,

because it tells us something very important

about the nature of God and who God is for us.

 

The Athanasius Creed says:

We worship one God in trinity and the Trinity in unity,

neither confusing the persons nor dividing the divine being.

For the Father is one person, the Son is another,

and the Spirit is still another. But the deity of the Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit is one, equal in glory, coeternal in majesty.

What the Father is, the Son is, and so is the Holy Spirit.

 

Which is just about as confusing as anything,

but what it basically says is that God is one,

but God is made up of three.

The creed goes on to explain this concept

repetitively and in great detail.

But the bottom line for me is that God the Trinity,

is a God in relationship.

 

God is beyond our grasp and understanding and

the best we can do to talk about the Trinity  is to use

metaphors and similes,

So when talking about the Trinity we often say things like:

God is like water, ice, steam, water.

God is like an apple,

God is like a three leaf clover.

  

But St. Augustine, another third century

church father, described the Trinity like this:

“Now, love is of someone who loves,

and something is loved with love.

So then there are three:

the lover, the beloved, and the love.”

 

So God is like a family, 

God is like a group of close friends,

God is like a congregation.

Completely separate identities, but at the same time, one.

 

God, in God’s self, is a relationship.

A table for three.

Not for two, so you might feel strange joining in.

But a table for three. The beginning of a party.

A conversation where there’s always room for one more.

Where there’s always room for us.

We are always welcomed into God’s conversation.

 

And my big take away from the Trinity and from

the Athanasian creed is this:

We have been saved by a relationship.

God, Jesus, and the Spirit.

And that means this world is saved by relationships.

 

We are not saved by adhering to doctrines, or magical spells,

or by worship, or liturgy, or rituals, or even prayer,

but we are saved by relationships -

across barriers, and walls that separate us from each other.

 

God, the Trinity, saves us, and gives us a model to live by,

to go back to, to recreate in our own lives.

 

In God’s own self, God shows us how we can

we can still be individuals,  

distinct and different from each other,

in our roles, cultures, thoughts, and understandings,

all unique in the ways we live and exist.

 

But still, we understand that we are one.

We live and move and interact as one.

My actions can affect someone living thousands of miles away.

We are joined together over time and space.

Even death cannot separate us.

We are linked together forever.

Each as important as the other,

each dependent on the other,

not existing alone, but together.

As said in the Athanasius creed:

“Neither confusing the person or dividing the being”

 

This relationship of God as it exists in the Trinity has saved us for eternal life.

And this relationship, reflected in our lives,

will one day save the whole world.

 

This Trinity is a relationship of love:

God the Relationship.

It is the foundation of the universe

It is the heartbeat of all creation.

 

Everything begins and ends in this relationship that is God.

All creation is part of this relationship.

We are all part of it.

Each one of us separate and together.

We are distinct and different.

and at the same time we are one.

Tongues of Fire

Acts 2: 1-21 June 4, 2022 Pentecost

 

Now, long ago after the time of Noah

and his children, the people

had one language and they lived in one place.

And the people said to each other,

“Let’s make some bricks” and they made

some bricks.

And then they said,

“Come, let us build ourselves a city,

and a tower whose top is in the heavens;

let us make a name for ourselves,

lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

 

That is the story that’s been come to be known as

the tower of Babel. Although it never mentions a tower.

The people wanted to band together for

their own glory, for their own power

and pride and ambition.

They thought they could be like God,

if they could just build an empire big enough to reach the sky.

 

But God knew that would not be good news for anyone.

So God made them all speak different languages,

so they couldn’t understand one another

and then they couldn’t build the city to reach the sky.

And the unfinished city was called Babel which means confusion.

And the people were scattered and separated

from one another.

Now this scattering has been seen as a curse:

God’s punishment for the human penchant

towards despotism and oppression.

It has also been seen as a cure:

The separation of languages

has prevented one power from taking over.

And it has been seen as a blessing:

diverse languages and cultures make

the world a more interesting place to be.

The richness and diversity of humanity is a gift from God.

 

But even with its beauty,

language has been a barrier between us humanity

and differences have lead to suspicion,

misunderstandings, and even hostility between nations.

 

Near the end of World War II, July 26, 1945

America, the UK, and China sent an ultimatum to Japan:

“Surrender or face utter destruction”.

It became known as the Potsdam Declaration.

The Japanese Prime Minister quickly responded, in Japanese:

“I have nothing to say at the moment.”

Since he was still consulting with his leaders.

But it was translated by international news agencies as:

“This is not worthy of comment”

And on August 6^th, the US dropped two atomic bombs

on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing over 200,000 people.

I’m sure there are other examples, known or unknown.

 

We are divided personally from others too:

The truth is I cannot understand

Swahili, or Spanish just because I want to

even though I have people I know who only speak those languages.

Hand motions and smiles and translations work to some

extent, but it’s not the same as having full nuanced conversations.

 

But the effort to erase different languages

Has been a way to abuse people and cultures,

to subjugate, to scold and control others.

 

In the early years of our country,

Native Americans were forbidden

from speaking their own languages,

or to teach them to their children.

This had devastating effects on their culture.

 

During the world wars, Germans in the US

were forced to hide their own language,

lest they be seen as the “enemy”.

 

And today, although on one hand we claim

to be a proud to be a melting pot,

there is sometimes suspicion and even hostility

towards those who speak different languages .

We often purposely don’t approach people who we know

can’t speak our language.

And we assume that people who can’t speak

the predominant language are not smart or are lazy.

 

Many people are not comfortable with the rich tapestry

of diversity that God has created in this world.

 

Like that city of Babel,

we want to build our own empires  to the sky

and to do that, we try to enforce uniformity,

and sameness, and we attempt to build towers

to the sky made of our own pride and prejudices.

 

But whether some people like it or not,

We live in a multi-cultural world that God has provided.

And one day in the morning, we can be

in a place where everyone speaks English

we can hop on a plane or drive in a car

and be somewhere where everyone speaks French,

or Mandarin, or Hindi, or Arabic,

or any number of languages and dialects.

And there are a slew of cultures that go with each one

of those languages and frankly that symphony is beautiful.

 

But when the day of Pentecost had come,

they were all together in one place.

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound

like the rush of a violent wind,

and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them,

and a tongue rested on each of them.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit

and began to speak in other languages,

as the Spirit gave them ability.

 

God is doing a new thing in this era.

 

Some have said that Pentecost is an undoing of Babel,

but notice this, everyone didn’t speak the same language,

they didn’t all just start speaking English or Esperanto

or some majority language that was convenient

for the dominant culture.

It says that they were filled with the Holy Spirit

and began to speak and be understood in other languages.

 

No one lost their identity,

they weren’t a homogenous group.

They were all there: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, 

and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, 

Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Romans, Cretans, and Arabs

all of them were still who they were, who God created them to be.

 

But their differences were no longer a barrier.

Their differences did not divide them.

Pentecost is the sign that diversity is not division.

Pentecost is the sign that unity of humanity is possible.

Pentecost is the unity of the Spirit of all people found in Jesus.

Language and culture doesn’t need to dominate or divide.

We are one in the Spirit of God.

That is God’s vision for us.

 

We are scattered over this world

to proclaim God’s peace, understanding and love

Instead of making a name for ourselves,

we build a servant community, to build up one another.

Instead of building a city as a homage

our own ambition and pride, we build a city of God.

 

And as we do that,

we see that God is breaking down all sorts of barriers.

God is breaking down the barriers of language, culture,

race, gender identities, sexual identities,

physical and mental abilities, age, economic status,

and all other barriers that we have created between people.

 

Often God has to break things down

before God can create new things.

 
We resist, but God goes right on breaking down

barriers to create the Kingdom of God on earth.


 After working on it for more than 2000 years,

We’re obviously on the long term plan.

We are always going back and forth between our will

and God’s will, but our faith tells us that

God’s vision will be done.

 

Pentecost is the birthday of the church.

The day that God put the vision of a new

kind of world into the hearts of believers,

and the day that God sent the Holy Spirit to help us do it.

 

So can we, the baptized people of God

help God make this vision a reality?

Can we do our part to welcome?

To break down barriers?

To love and accept all people just as they are?

Can we work to include all kinds of people and voices

in our worship and service to God?

 

We might have a long way to go,

and the way may be difficult and complicated,

but once we start working on God’s vision,

the Holy Spirit will help us in ways we never knew were possible.

 

God is doing a new thing today.

Jesus is opening our hearts and minds.

The Spirit is removing barriers.

God is giving us new challenges.

God is pouring out God’s Spirit on all flesh.

And with Christ’s love and grace,

we will all be saved.