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.