For Sunday, June 19, 2016 – Luke 8:26-39
What do you want with us, Jesus? Trapped in our raging sickness and pain, will we let you come close enough to give us aid? Or will you torment us, showing us only how lost we are? Desperate need surrounds us, its thick hot haze choking us, isolating us from each other. Do you care? Is there relief? After a long night of stormy seas, inundated by the threat of death, all they want is to reach calmer, more peaceful shores, to walk again on solid ground, to restore and rest. But immediately, more chaos rushes to meet them. Storms of destruction and dis-ease ravage the body, mind and spirit of our humanity. Oh, the torment of feeling out of control, unable to stop our own devastation! “What do you want of us, Jesus?” we cry. Everywhere we look is peril. Are we utterly lost?
It used to be, or so we liked to think, that troubles came in measured doses. Maybe you got sick and lost your job, while I faced the death of a family member, and another person’s house burned down. We could encourage and give aid to each other. In the world at large, one could expect various skirmishes and an occasional war; an avalanche or tornado or earthquake from time to time; never more than could be held in the heart at once. We could keep our list and pray for each one each day. Now the filters are removed, and we see the troubles are Legion. All restraint is gone, and demons of rage and fear and blame seem to devour and divide. Notice that they, too, suffer. They, too, beg Jesus not to send them into the abyss. We are in this chaos together. The best and worst of us, afraid of being lost, afraid of being trapped forever in our current condition.
Will we admit it? We are lost. We need sacred intervention. To confess our condition is not to give up, but at last to give in to the only hope of salvation. We cannot preach or teach or perform our way into a whole and holy life, alleluia! We can only turn, again and again, to the one whose name is God-with-us, whose mission is healing, whose way is love. We can only beg for the courage to walk together in that way. Despite our fear, we can turn now toward places and people in need, and give ourselves away to that way.
