Last Sunday night, this space was full for our annual congregational meeting. It was a very celebratory occasion. All the news was good! My mood quickly shifted though. As I passed through the office to get my coat, my eyes were drawn to a particular volume on a particular shelf. This is the volume. A few of you recognize it. It is the register of burials for Trinity Cathedral, listing all funerals and memorial services year by year. I have no idea why my eyes were drawn in that direction, but once they were, I had to take the book off the shelf and spend a few moments recalling those whose names were entered this past year.
Praise the Lord something happened very, very soon to lift my mood again. My attention was directed to today’s Gospel, because I knew I would be preaching today. And in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us perfect guidance for how we can endure the challenges and losses that are an inevitable part of this life. I couldn’t find one year in this register with no entries. Jesus understood the reality that reveals. Knowing that challenge and loss are inherent in this life, Jesus sets about showing us how to nonetheless enjoy the fullness of this life. Take in the context: According to Luke’s portrayal, Jesus knows that Good Friday is coming (the day after tomorrow). But he doesn’t borrow trouble from the day after tomorrow today. He resolves to stay in today, and to do the work that he has been given for today and tomorrow. The work he claimed, and commended to all his disciples through the centuries (including us) was to cast out demons and cure ills. So, that’s our answer. The best way to experience this life in its fullness is to stay busy casting out demons!! You have your instructions! End of sermon.
Possibly, not everyone here feels gifted at casting our demons. But we all have that power. Let me explain. Throughout Scripture, whenever the full experience of life is blocked in some way, the condition is attributed to a demon. I wonder if anyone else shares this life experience with me: What most often impedes my experience of life’s fullness is not anything apart from me, anything on the outside, but rather voices on the inside. Our species has less trouble with false prophets, false voices, outside ourselves than with false voices inside ourselves. Let me bring some of those false prophets into the room and see if you already know them. There is the one that says, “Woe is me! Why is the happening to me? I didn’t do anything to deserve such bad cards.” We know this is a false voice. We see all the time that bad things happen to good people. We don’t proclaim a God who hands our merits and demerits. And then there is the false voice that takes the opposite approach: “You shouldn’t be surprised at your bad luck. You don’t deserve any better. You haven’t accomplished anything with your life. You are stuck in the same old bad habits. You wake up with good intentions and screw up by noon every single day.” The last false voice is probably the worst: “Actually, you are just fine. The problem is everyone else!! You are surrounded by horribly flawed people. If they would just change (or better yet, disappear), all would be well.”
Do you remember the story of the Gerasene Demoniac whom Jesus healed. His name was “Legion.” He had a legion of voices in his head, so many that he was chained by the tombs outside of town. He suffered an extreme version of a shared condition. Jesus freed him from his chains, and we can free ourselves and one another from the voices just described. It’s not that hard. These voices have less power than they claim. Just yesterday morning, I was listening to the “Woe-is-me” voice. In a phone call, someone spoke words of thanks and appreciation. These simple words of encouragement caused the “Woe-is-me” voice to vanish. It was silenced. We have the power to silence demonic voices with words of encouragement and hope. And we are perfectly equipped to deliver such words. We have been made stewards of the world’s greatest story of hope. It is captured right in today’s Gospel.
As humankind became consumed with wagging fingers at ourselves and one another, our Creator wept. Those tears poured into the person of Jesus, God among us. And Jesus did not come to wag a divine finger. No. He came, crying out to Jerusalem, as a stand-in for all humankind, “I see all your bad choices of the past. I see the worst of which you are capable. None of it evokes anger. It only makes me want to draw you closer, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. My desire for you is life.”
I saw a story last week that makes that imagery very vivid. Two fire-fighters were passing through terrain that had just been the scene of a raging fire. They saw a bird that had been charred so quickly, its form was still in place. Before them was the completely ashen shape of a bird. It was eerie, so eerie that they went to sweep it away before passing on. As they swept away the ash, three living chicks came scurrying out from under!
God created that mother bird. And God gave her the instinct to sacrifice all for the life of her offspring. God’s handiwork reveals how God thinks. Our God will stop at nothing to give us life. This is the message of Good Friday. But here is a quandary many ponder: It is easy to see how the sacrifice made by that mother bird in the forest benefitted her chicks. She protected them. But how does Jesus’ death on the cross some 2,000 years ago benefit me? This goes to the core of our Christian faith, but don’t be embarrassed if the question stymies you. I can assure you that many, many life-long Christians (and maybe even some clergy) continue to ponder this question. Lent is an annual invitation to delve deeper into the answer.
You may not succeed in fully making sense of the cross this Lent. Maybe it’s sense-less. Maybe it is the ultimate revelation that God’s love for us is not bound by good sense. It is not bound by reason (such that good reason might dissuade God from loving us). It is not bound by experience (such that further experience could cause a reversal). God’s love for us is senselessly boundless.
Armed with such love, we can cast out demons. Whatever keeps you busy this week, let’s all more deeply experience our shared vocation. Let’s be busy casting our demons!