June 22: The Second Sunday after Pentecost

Welcome to ordinary time.

I say we are in ordinary time, knowing that it may sound out of touch, when our current times seem anything but ordinary. But we are in ordinary time. For the next few months, we will wear green stoles. We will hang green markers on the lectern. And we will mark this new season of life together by naming how long it’s been since Pentecost.

Technically, the Church calls today the “Second Sunday after Pentecost.” And next Sunday will be the “Third Sunday after Pentecost.” …And so on after that. Over the past six months or so, we’ve walked from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Easter to Pentecost. These seasons have been full of the dramatic, world changing highlights of God’s presence with us: his birth, death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit. During these months we’ve zoomed out so that we could see in full the narrative arc of God’s work in this world.

Now, we get to zoom back in, filling in the rest of the story. Now we get to live into the world after. …The world after the Holy Spirit first came and filled those early disciples with such grace and power. We are in the after, listening for the Holy Spirit’s work now. In this season, we wear green to remind us that this is a time of growth. The seeds have been planted, roots have begun to dig, and now it’s time for the green leaves of summer to begin doing their daily work of feeding and nourishing. And I’m thankful to be back with you all during this season because the first few months I was with you were a bit hectic. I’m ready to slow down with you and listen deeply for what God has for us to hear.

And this is one of the reasons why I wanted us to reach back into the Book of Common Prayer this summer. When I first visited the Episcopal Church almost 15 years ago, this book was completely foreign to me. I was used to projector screens in church, and sermons that took up all the rest of the time we weren’t using the projector screens. But as I sat in the worn-out pews of that old, little Episcopal Church, week after week, holding this book, I began to notice where oil from people’s fingers had stained and wrinkled commonly used pages. These pages had forever been marked and anointed by their prayer. And this practice of opening the book began to ground me in my walk with Jesus. It was an anchor of sorts as the waves of life crashed over me. It was the stillness I needed. It was constant. No matter what the week offered me, the book was there for me. The people who prayed with it for decades before me were with me. The saints who wrote the prayers, the saints who carried them on for hundreds of years, they were with me. And the beautiful prayers I kept finding as I flipped through the often-forgotten pages held me in difficult times. They gave me words when I didn’t have any. When I felt heavy and disquieted, as this morning’s psalm reads, I could turn to Psalms 23 or 121, and I could let its prayers of comfort wash over me. The consistency and constancy of the BCP grounded me. It offered and still offers words of healing to me when I most need it. And I pray that as we pick up these books again this season, they will offer you this grounding, some ordinariness in unordinary times, and even healing.

I find it no coincidence that the first reading we get during this ordinary time is a story about healing. Jesus and his buddies are just stepping off a boat. On their way to where we find them today, they had a rough go of it and Jesus had to calm the seas. The disciples must have been shaken from their ride, and the display of power shown by their teacher, so land had to be a welcome sight. But as soon as they landed, a man in deep distress came up to Jesus, shouting. We don’t know this man’s name. We only know him by his affliction. I wonder if those around him only knew him likewise. He was tormented by demons.

Luke tells us that Jesus commands the unclean spirit to come out of the man, and he, or the spirit, it is unclear which, asks Jesus not to torment him. This man knows torment. He is naked and chained. He lives among the dead, away in the tombs. He knows pain as his closest companion, so when healing comes near, he can only fear it will cause even more suffering.

And we can sense Jesus then slow down. Instead of pushing ahead with the healing, Jesus takes a step back and asks the man a simple, basic pastoral question, “What is your name?”

“Legion,” he responds, named by the many demons that held him captive.

Famously, Jesus then casts the demons out of the man into the nearby swine. When the swineherds see this happen, they run and tell the folks about it in the city and in the country. Wanting to see for themselves, these people make their way out to Jesus. And there, they find Jesus and the man who used to have demons sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed, unchained, and in his right mind. And they are afraid, Luke writes. They are afraid. The man has been healed, and they are seized by great fear, and they tell Jesus to leave.

He does, but he doesn’t let the man leave with him. Instead of letting him follow him on his journey, Jesus tells him to turn back, return to his home, and declare how much God has done for him.

“When religion is not about healing,” the Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr writes, “When religion is not about healing, it really doesn’t have much to offer people in this life.”¹

¹ from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (Paulist Press, 2014), 53–55

And if we’ve learned anything from the past six months, it’s that our God does care about us deeply, wholly in this life. So, this story we get today sets the stage for the rest of our season, and it offers us our theme for our work after Pentecost.

All too often, we are afraid to receive the healing Jesus offers. Like the man with the demons, we may fear what it might change in us. What supposed harm it may cause. The transformation brought about by the healing ushers us into unknown territory, and we may find it more palatable just to stay in the chains we’re in. And like the city and country folk in the reading, we may have fear that it will upend the boundaries, the neat little boxes we’ve created to give us a sense of control over our lives. What do we call him, how do we relate to him, how do we live with him if he’s no longer “Legion?”

These fears are understandable. When all around us seems to be changing at breakneck speed, we just want something constant and familiar, even if it’s the pain and division we know too well. So, Jesus slows down and asks us our name. He knows our fear of change, knows our fears from years of hurt and of brokenness. He sees the pains we have endured in the losses of loved ones, in shattered relationships, in societal change, in the scars of violence and war. But notice, in our reading, notice Jesus does not confirm the man’s name as Legion. He has another name for him, for us, in mind.

“My poor son.” “My poor daughter.” “My hurting one.” “My beloved child.”

Jesus slows down, asks us our name, and begins to do the work of healing in our lives, if we but sit at his feet.

A former priest of mine would regularly use the phrase, “in this beautiful but broken world” in his sermons. The world is beautiful, and it is broken. It is need of healing. …We are in need of healing.

Jesus offers us this healing when we sit at his feet, when we eat at his table, when we open ourselves to receive the grace that does such a good, slow, hard work on us. This is the work of the Holy Spirit after. This is the work of the Church. And it is the hope of the Church. …Transformed more and more from the inside out by grace, we go into the broken world revealing its beauty, making known all that God has done for us.

So, this ordinary time, may the grace of God grow in us, and the Holy Spirit hold us, so we can know healing, so we can know ourselves clothed in Christ, in all our unordinary times. Amen.

The Rev. Daniel J. Reeves