Pentecost 4 (Proper 7)
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a, Psalm 42; Galatians 3: 23-29; Luke 8: 26-39
There's lots of stuff in that gospel reading that we miss. For instance, while we might think that the outcome of the story is a positive one that's only partially true. The crazy guy must surely feel great, but what about the pigs?
And then there's the First Century Jewish humor. What was it that the crazy guy was called?
"Legion"! Now what was the name the Romans gave to their units? "Legion"? And just to reinforce the point, another term used for Roman soldiers was....? Swine!
So part of the story is a joke at Roman expense - Legionaries were crazy, and bore some significant similarity to pigs!
Perhaps the most important question here, though, is this one: what's really going on here? If this were just a story about some individual who lived two thousand years ago who was blessed with remarkable healing abilities then we would probably say, "how nice for him" - and, of course, how nice for those whom he healed.
As with most things in the bible, though, there is more than one level to this story. Beneath it is an even more profound picture - here is someone who is, quite literally, "coming to his senses", coming to a place where he can grasp the reality he inhabits in such a way that everything finally makes sense. Now he can make some decisions for himself.
The result of that journey is, as the gospels so frequently say, that we are blessed with having eyes to see and ears to hear.
But not literally - it's a metaphor! If you don't get it, then you don't get it!
Rachel has a good friend - Tony - who was a fellow hospital chaplain at St. Vincent's Hospital in Indianapolis, where she was a supervising chaplain. Tony became a chaplain because he was fired from his previous job: he was a PATCO Air Traffic Controller!
Tony had many wonderful - and some quite scary! - stories about his time as an ATC. I remember one day him telling me the test that determined whether the trainees could continue on to become Air Traffic Controllers. They have to be able to create for themselves a mental "3D" image of the flat radar screen that they see in front of them. They not only had to be aware of where each plane on that screen is in the two dimensions they saw, like chess-pieces on a chess-board, they also had to be able to take the 'height' numbers that appear next to each flight and cast the "up" and the "down," the vertical, onto the radarscope, so that when one plane crosses another's path they would know without having to think that they planes were vertically separated. It isn't an easy thing to do. Tony said that you can explain this until you're blue in the face, but it takes something intangible happening for the trainee for them to be able to do it. They work at it and work at it, and develop their abilities until it becomes second nature to them. Then they're ready. But the mental ability to think in "3D" is beyond some people, and they flunk out of the training. On their exit forms there are always the same four words written: "unable to see traffic."
"Unable to see traffic." Sometimes biblical passages are like that, and it requires of us a deeper level of intentionality to be able to understand what's going on.
Last week I was at a Church Pension Fund sponsored Intensive that I would compare to a 50,000 service on a car - it was about self-reflection and healthy living.
One of the people there - a priest named John Harman who was ordained in this country but originally from Liberia - shared his memories of going to get water. In his village there was only one source of water, a small pond. It was owned by a private individual. For a small fee you could come out there, under the shade of some wonderful trees, and draw one bucket of water. There is an art to this. The surface of the water was grimy and had debris floating on it - you didn't want that water, it would make you sick.. So what you did was to throw out the bucket horizontal with the water and then jerk the rope attached to it so that the bucket flipped with the bottom up and its open mouth facing the water. When it hit the water, John said, it made a very distinct sound that he's never forgotten.
And because of the air in the bucket even though it was empty it pushed the dirty surface water aside and sank to the clean water below.
Retrieving it was also an art - you pulled in a particular way to keep the bucket full of the fresh, clear water as it parted the surface pushing aside the dirty surface water.
To draw up the fresh, clear spiritual water of the bible we have to go below the surface - carefully; with intention; making sure to part the surface so that the superficial details don't clutter our appreciation of the profound truths that lie below, in the depths.
And that's also a metaphor for our own spiritual journeys. It's way too easy to live our lives on the surface, to allow the debris and the grime of our lives to prevent us from ever discovering and drawing up the clear spiritual water that lies in our hearts. That's where the psalmist is coming from today: "As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God. My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God...."
I was certainly reminded last week of how easy it is to live life - and especially to live a faith life - by rote. To lose contact with the things and people that matter, to do too much and so do too little.
Today's gospel reading invites us to take a breather, to slow down and to look below the surface of our lives as much as we look below the surface of the bible's stories, and seek that fresh, clear, spiritual water that we know comes from God. AMEN
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