Readings

We’re at a major milestone in the Church Year: green, not white, and we’ll be in green for about half a year. Think about it: half a year to celebrate the divine acts that underwrite the new covenant: Christmas, Epiphany, Holy Week, Pentecost. Half a year to…? Our Godly Play curriculum calls it “the Great Green Growing Season,” time for these divine acts to do their work in our bodies and souls.

It turns out that today’s readings aren’t bad ushers into this season.

The Gospel. When we meet the man who meets Jesus, he’s possessed by a legion of demons, naked, maybe remnants of chains hanging from his arms and legs, totally bedraggled. Soon he’s “clothed and in his right mind.” Hallelujah. But, if that were all that salvation involved we’d hardly need six months for the Great Green Growing Season! So it’s worth noticing that this isn’t the end of that man’s story. He wants to go with Jesus, but Jesus: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Home: that would include the folk who had held him down while others put on the chains and shackles and who were not obviously celebrating his recovery. Yes, we might say that his story has just gotten more interesting. But that’s for the future. In the moment, Jesus’ heart is glad.

Staying in the country of the Gerasenes for the moment, notice that Luke is equally interested in its other inhabitants. At the beginning of the story the demons are in the man; at the end of the story—well, they disappeared with the herd of swine that went over the cliff. And, Luke tells us, “all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to”…stay? No: leave. Their preference was clear: better the demons in the man than in an eminently marketable herd of pigs.

Now, notice that in our Gospel the story’s already politically charged: the demons are collectively called “Legion.” And it would have been quite impossible for the disciples not to have relished this story—for a time at least—as a sort of down payment on what Jesus would do about the Roman legions.

But let’s come at its politics in a different way. The demons in the man or in the pigs? In our world that’s the sort of choice we regularly meet. No matter what the economic system, power typically gets used so that the powerful receive the benefits and the costs are paid by others. Often this works because we’re happy to see low prices and don’t ask too many questions about why the prices are low. Or again, our group is virtuous; they are vicious. The demons stay safely among them and our pigs continue fattening up nicely. And then Jesus comes and upsets everything. Jesus did that through his Body the Church in South Africa to overturn apartheid and in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe to overturn the Communist regimes. Welcoming Jesus can mean losing the pigs.

So one of the things that may happen in the Great Growing Season is Jesus attempting to direct our attention to our pigs. And if we pay attention we’re a little freer, there’s a bit more green, and Jesus’ heart is glad.

Let’s head north to the churches in Galatia, a Roman province in the center of what is now Turkey, the recipients of Paul’s letter. Teachers had come into the congregations telling Gentiles that they needed to keep all the Law of Moses, including the ritual parts. Bacon & scallops: out! Sharing meals with Christians who don’t observe these standards: out! Paul: the ritual part was provisional until Christ. In Christ there is a new humanity: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.”

Hallelujah. But wait a minute. So much of our identity is wrapped up in our ethnicity, in our social status, in our sexuality. And Paul’s warning us that none of that can be automatically carried over. None of that can be the foundation of what “I” means; of what “we” means. When Nicodemus asked “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” (Jn 3:4 [NRSV]), while he misunderstood Jesus’ words, he did understand the magnitude of the challenge.

Jesus’ image shows up in our liturgy for Holy Baptism: through the water of Baptism “we are reborn by the Holy Spirit” (p.306). Glorious. But it should leave us wondering: is there anything we don’t need to relearn? Pretty much the whole of the New Testament is an invitation to echo Dorothy’s famous line: “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Not surprisingly, it’s easier to see in others what happens when we neglect Paul’s words. When in Rwanda Christian Hutus were killing Christian Tutsis and vice versa, we knew that something was wrong. I’m an American Christian. Christians in other parts of the world may wonder: is “Christian” determining what my being American means, or vice versa?

So one of the things that may happen in the Great Growing Season is Jesus attempting to further shape how we negotiate our identities. And when we cooperate we gain a bit more freedom, there’s more green, and Jesus’ heart is glad.

Our reading from Isaiah is downright frightening. It’s from the words directed to those who returned from exile in Babylon. It’s frightening because some in Israel are still following the same practices that brought on the exile in the first place: sacrificing to other gods, ignoring the Mosaic Law, exploiting the poor. It’s sort of a limit case of what Paul’s worried about in our second reading: this crowd has no interest in the Lord shaping their identity. They’ve just added the Lord to their collection of deities, and continued with business as usual. They’re not asking, they’re not seeking; they’re stuck.

Mercifully, one of the things that may happen in the Great Growing Season is that Jesus attempts to get us unstuck. Last Sunday’s reading gave us a lovely series of images of that, God’s Wisdom continually calling out to us, “rejoicing in his inhabited world, / and delighting in the human race” (Prov. 8:31). God’s Wisdom—we could equally say God’s Holy Spirit—is constantly at that, through the words of a lover, a friend, a passer-by, an enemy, through the natural world, through the words of Holy Scripture—and that’s just the beginning of the list. And when we cooperate we’re a little freer, there’s a bit more green, and Jesus’ heart is glad.

So, welcome to the Great Green Growing Season. Who knows where our Elder Brother Jesus will meddle, whether noticing this or that particular herd of pigs, wondering how our baptism might further transform our identities, employing various versions of WD-40 to get us unstuck. Such meddling is usually not initially welcome, but as we cooperate we gain some freedom, there’s more green for our neighbors and us, and Jesus’ heart is very glad.