Declare how much God has done for you

June 19, 2016

The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost

So here's the question – what was his name? That gospel passage ended with the Gerasene man being sent back to his own community by Jesus – being sent back to his own community with a very significant task to complete. And the question is, very simply, what's his name? What will they have called him, when he walks back into the town, clothed and in his right mind?

Will they say, "Hi, Fred, glad you are doing so well?" Or is he Peter, or James, or John? Or is he Dominic, or Timm, or Paul? How will they greet him? It's a vital question, because, There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.... If this man wasn't clothed with Christ by virtue of his remarkable encounter with Jesus, then I don't know who was. So what was his name??

When I was a small child, round about the age that Benedict and Linus are now, my parents were gripped by a 17-part TV series that rapidly obtained cult status called The Prisoner. Some of you may have watched it – and it was remade by AMC in 2009. It revolves around a man we only get to know as Number Six, and whose amnesia prevents him knowing anything more about himself. But he knows one thing about himself of vital importance, he knows one thing that defines and determines his entire behaviour:

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered, he asserts, My life is my own. I am not a number. I am a free man.

The Prisoner will not and does not accept his label – and that is woven through this cult series.

It's different language, and a different context, but that cry is the same cry that we have on Paul's lips: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female. That's what happens, Paul is clear, when we recognize, when we accept, when we rejoice in the fact that in Christ Jesus, we are all children of God... for all of you, he asserts passionately, all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

And the great thing about being one is that you can also be many. Being one is not a monochrome existence – it is, or it should be, the existence of the rainbow children of God. And that means that, truly, you do not have to be a number, because you can be free. And that means that you do not have to live under the stigma of a label – especially under the stigma of a label that has been created by someone else – especially under the stigma of a label created by someone else who thinks that because you are different to them, then somehow, you must be inferior.

And, if you know you are one in Christ Jesus, you can rejoice in being who and what God created you to be. You can be a free person, not known by number or by label, but by your own name. And that's why the question that leaps out at me from the gospel reading we have just heard, is the question of what the demoniac's name – his real name – actually was.

Because it wasn't Legion.

After all, names are important and names are powerful. Think back to that ancient story in Genesis, where the person we have come to know as Jacob wrestles with a strange man who dislocates his hip. It is a curious and mysterious story, in which the author is clear that the patriarch is wrestling with none other than God himself.

And Jacob demands of God that he bless him, to which the response is What is your name?, and that's when Jacob discovers that in God's world, his name is, in fact, to be Israel. And with names come freedom, and power, and the owning of a call to God's service as God's people.
And just as with Jacob, so also in the New Testament. You are Simon, you will be called Peter. And again, we see the giving of a real name, and with it Peter is empowered and called into the service of the children of God.

And Legion – the name we here in that gospel story – Legion is not a real name. That's made explicit. What is your name? demands Jesus... He said "Legion".... for many demons had entered him. Whatever his mom and dad had called him is buried under the label and stigma of demonic possession, or perhaps, as we might say the stigma of being mentally ill – being 'mad'.

For Legion is not a name. It's a description – and a bad one – it's a description of this person's condition. He's known as Legion because a legion of demons seems to inhabit him. That's what, in today's world, we call a label. That's what, in today's world, we call prejudice.

And it is important for us to remember that prejudice, and the resulting fellow evils which spring from it, are as old as humanity. In this very fallen world, where there is difference there is always prejudice. And where there is prejudice there are labels which demean, which divide, and which deny the full glories and the full rights of the children of God, in whom There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.

And Legion? Legion is a label that has helped enslave the poor man whom Jesus encounters today. It is a label in just the same way that, on many lips, Queer is a label, or Migrant is a label, or mad is a label, or Muslim is a label. For even terms and names which should be words of dignified and descriptive freedom can all too easily and quickly be turned into labels which demean, which diminish, and which enslave, when uttered by those who seek to create division and hatred.

And we should wake up to the fact that this very gospel story is straddling tensions not just to do with demons or madness, but with race. Jesus has turned up in the country of the Gerasenes. He is in gentile country, and, indeed, he is in gentile country just down the road, many scholars believe, of a Roman garrison, populated by a legion of occupying soldiers. Everywhere we turn in this story, we find hints of labels and prejudices, and we find the challenges of ending oppression and finding freedom. Everywhere we find a need to have God put people back in a 'right mind' – and you don't need me to tell you that a right mind is the mind we have when we do not feel the need or the hatred to give people who are different to us hurtful and demeaning labels.

A right mind is the mind that does not need to carry a semi-automatic weapon into an LGBT nightclub in Florida to gun down 49 people – whatever your views about human sexuality might be.

A right mind is the mind that does not need to assassinate a British politician on the streets of her constituency – whatever your views about Britain and the European Union might be.

A right mind is the mind that does not feel the need to call out Muslims for being terrorists because they relate to God in a different way to some other folk.

A right mind is the mind that understands that with God's children – and that's just church speak for saying with everybody - There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.

And the Gerasene man who was lucky enough to have that encounter with Jesus the Christ, who threw the demons out of him, and unbound him from being Legion and being known as Legion – that Gerasene man is iconic to all of us throughout history, and is iconic to those of us today as the symbol of what it can mean to be set free, to be clothed, to be put back into a right mind, and to find ourselves at the feet of Jesus – God's Holy One who does not enslave, who does not play ball with prejudice, and who deals in names and not labels.

But... while it is, I am sure, very wonderful to be sitting at the feet of Jesus, that's not a place where he lets people remain for long! The person at the center of attention in this gospel story is, I think, well aware, that not everyone is viewing his healing and liberation as being good news – and he begs to be allowed to journey onwards with Jesus, rather than be the center of controversy. But Jesus will not have this...

Jesus sent him away, saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you."

Freedom is wonderful; liberation is wonderful; removing the stigma and prejudice of a label is wonderful. But even more wonderful is telling the world that this is actually possible. It is even more important to tell the world the simple truth that this can be done and that this has to be done – and that's the challenge that this gospel story sets, not just for its subject, but for you and me.

We are just a few weeks short of the 50th anniversary of the march by Martin Luther King and many with him to Marquette Park, in the south of this city, as part of his work with the Chicago Freedom Movement. This was a big protest against one of those huge, awful, obvious labels – the one to do with the color of a person's skin.

The mood was as full of prejudice and hatred as you could possibly imagine. Thousand upon thousand of jeering, taunting white people had gathered – one holding a placard that read "King would look good with a knife in his back." This was a gathering about which King claimed that, despite seeing many demonstrations down in the South, "I have never seen anything so hostile and so hateful as I've seen here today" said he.

Someone threw a brick at Dr King which struck him on the head – mercifully, not wounding him seriously. He was asked if he regretted being caught up in this – being caught up in another city's problems, and being the subject of such violence. But Dr King had no regrets: I have to do this – to expose myself – to bring this hate into the open, he said.

That was Dr King's version of proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. And we, we privileged children of God in this cathedral, who know that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.... We, who know this and live this in our own lives, we are no different.

So at the end of a heavy week, let's make sure that when we go out from here this morning, we are intent to remove the discriminatory labels of evil and prejudice, let's make sure we can turn our backs on the insidious, systemic, evil conspiracies of hatred and oppression that mark even our own city in our own time. And above all, let's make sure that as we return to our homes, we go throughout the city proclaiming just how much God in Jesus has done for us. Amen.