Is There
a Doctor in the House? Sermon
Delivered By Rev. Dick Stetler June 23, 2019
Centenary United Methodist Church
Psalm 42;
Luke 8:26-39 The episode of Jesus' healing featured in our lesson this morning
is unlike any story that we have in the Gospels.
There are several aspects to this story that require an
interpretation. One aspect
is the existence of demons in which the people in Jesus' day
fully believed. Because
demons are frequently mentioned and described in the Gospels, many
people in our present day also believe in their existence. In our lesson, a man had a severe mental
disorder that made him quite violent.
There were moments when his condition seized him in a way that
was very disturbing to those living in his community.
People put him in chains for their own safety.
However, his illness often gave him super strength powerful
enough to break the chains. His condition drove him to live among the
burial caves where he would not hurt anyone.
Try to imagine the courage of Jesus to face this
man when he saw him running toward him from the caves screaming, "Jesus,
Son of God, what do you want with me.
Please do not torture me."
Jesus asked, "What is your name?"
He said, "My name is Legion." This name communicated that
he was possessed by many demons.
A Roman Legion was the name given to an army of six thousand
Roman soldiers. Earlier in my ministry, I was on the Board of
Directors of a Mental Health organization.
I found myself alone with one of the psychiatrists. I asked him
if anyone ever came to him that felt they were possessed by demons.
His response surprised me.
He said, "Yes, they have.
Dick, these are very real. I have even found some of them have a
voice and can speak.". He told me that demons are given birth from
human fears that are fed regularly by strong emotional responses like:
My parents are right! I will never amount to
anything with my life. No
one loves me; I will remain alone for the rest of my life.
My own mother has hated me since my birth.
Why am I afraid of meeting new people?
I only feel safe when I am in my bedroom.
What separates relatively healthy people from those
who are possessed by demons is that the latter have been feeding
their brains with a steady diet of self-defeating thoughts.
Soon these thoughts take on a life of their own and become a
condition that may hold people prisoners for the rest of their lives. Today, people harmlessly label compulsions,
addictions, and quirks in their personality as demons because
they come from the conditioning of their minds over many years. People
say, "He has a short fuse and can become intensely angry from small
issues where his response in no way matches what upset him." However, there are certain religious groups that
define demons much differently, believing that they are living
entities whose mission is to take possession of the bodies of people.
One has to wonder how they reconcile our loving God with the existence
of such evil spirits that invisibly spend time stalking their
prey. In addition to the aspect of demons, we also
have the aspect of Jesus sending these spirits into a large herd of pigs
that ran into a lake and drowned.
Jesus was in a territory where people ate pork so this alleged
act of Jesus not only represented the death of a food source for
people but Jesus also inflicted an enormous financial loss for the
farmer. Most Biblical
scholars suggest that what likely occurred was that the pigs stampeded
because they were startled by the screaming of the demented man.
Under normal circumstances the
area would have been quiet and peaceful but that day, the screaming man
broke that silence. There was a healing element caused by the stampede.
The mentally ill man saw the result of what he believed
was the exit of his demons into the herd.
Seeing this evidence and the death of the pigs caused what
the medical community calls a spontaneous remission for the man's
mental illness. His agonizing illness was changed by profound
gratitude to Jesus for such deliverance.
His healing gave him a freedom that he had never known. Gratitude
cancelled his negative patterns of thinking.
He was so excited that he begged Jesus, "Please, let me go with
you." Jesus responded by
telling him to go home and tell everyone what God had done for him. Of course, a number of Christians today will
bristle with such an interpretation of this passage believing that, once
again, logic is explaining away one of Jesus' healings.
However, there is more to this
story than a healing. One of the great qualities of the Scriptures is
their flexibility. We can
breathe new life into ancient stories that originated during a time when
fears and the existence of an unloving God reigned in the minds and
hearts of people. People lived
in a time when the fear of God was perfectly justified by their
understanding of God's nature. One of the mysteries of mental illness is its
origin. Where do mental illnesses come from?
A theory held by my psychiatrist friend was that many mental
illnesses have their origin in early childhood. Recently, I encountered stories that came from two
women who were abused by their parents.
As children, they were both told by their religious parents
that they were demon-possessed and the parents assumed the
responsibility of beating them in a fashion that is horrible to imagine.
Today, the two people with whom I spoke have been healed from
their scars. It is a miracle that such children have escaped the imprint
of their early childhood experiences. One of the toughest assignments for a pastor is
dealing with people who are totally absorbed with thoughts and feelings
of being unloved, unworthy, and a disappointment to everyone they know.
How are pastors able to convince people that in spite of what
they believe about themselves they are intensely loved by God?
We may get a hint from our lesson. Prior to his healing, the last words that were
spoken by the man were these: "I beg you, do not torture me!"
The punishment of his own people
had isolated him. They had
put him in chains and banished him from their community.
This only set-in-stone his own conclusion that he was,
indeed, possessed by evil spirits. What is the message in our lesson today? Jesus
showed no fear of this man.
He spoke to him.
Healing came because Jesus found him worthy enough to talk to him.
My psychiatrist friend said,
"One of the things that keeps me awake at night is our use of this
thing." He reached over and took from his desk a prescription pad and he
tossed it in front of me. He told me that today, members of his profession
are very busy treating symptoms and not causes.
There is not enough time for one on one sessions with everyone
needing treatment. He said, "We are creating zombies." Think of what happened to people during
Jesus' ministry because he took the time to talk to them.
He spoke to one of the great teachers of Israel about changing
how he interpreted his life-experiences.
(John 3:3) Jesus invited himself to lunch with Zacchaeus, the
chief of all tax collectors. (Luke 19:8).
Another moment came when Jesus spoke to a Samaritan woman at
Jacob's well. (John 4:7f) On
another occasion, Jesus healed a woman by forgiving her sins as a
prostitute as she washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her
hair. (Luke 7:48)
Who can ever forget another time when Jesus said, "He who is
without sin, cast the first stone"? (John 8:7) In each case society had
isolated these individuals because of their role or their behavior. We do not know the power of our presence when we
are accepting of another person to the point where we talk to them.
Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you."
(Luke 17:20f) When we allow the
love of God to show up with our words and presence, we are doing exactly
what Jesus did for the man in our lesson.
What frequently happens to us is that we stay away
from toxic personalities who constantly complain, who are always seeing
the flaws in others, and who only see the negative and hostile headlines
as being true for the condition of the world.
For them, everything is wrong.
Everything is unacceptable. There
is little in their lives that they can celebrate with gratitude.
They are creating demons that grow the more they are fed a
steady diet of thoughts that isolate them from happiness. The two women I spoke to last week were healed by
people who brought the love of God into their lives. Today, the two
healed women are shining examples of what it looks like to share the
love of God with those who are lonely, broken, and lost. It may be that this one encounter by Jesus with
this broken man represented the first-time anyone had spoken to
him in years. Jesus
shattered this man's isolation. Jesus'
presence was enough to bring healing.
Jesus said, "Go home and tell the people in your town what God
has done for you." This is what Jesus meant when he said, "Follow me." This drama had a happy ending without a
prescription pad. Jesus said, "Let your light shine.
Don't hide it."
(Matthew 5:16) When we follow through, miracles happen.
Each of us can become a
healing physician just through our compassion and caring for people
in spite of their living in a universe of thought that we will never
know. If we ask, "Is there is
a doctor in the house that can help this person?"
We may look in the mirror and
hear Jesus saying to us: Yes, there is and you are that doctor. Show
up in people's lives with your presence of compassion and understanding.
I will do the rest.
CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER
Loving and always
faithful God, our experiences often teach us that life happens while we
are busy making other plans.
We have learned that life-reversals can often become
stepping-stones to our
next adventure. We have learned that a significant loss
often becomes the doorway to a vital discovery.
You
have called us to look at life as a journey to
a promised-land.
We thank you for giving us moments when we must wait for the next
phase of our lives to take form. Thank you for the eyes of spirit
that allow us to perceive your guidance with peace, faith, and trust.
Amen.
THE PASTORAL PRAYER Thank you, God, for sending us new horizons
toward which to walk, new problems to solve, and new fragile moments
that challenge us to find the tools to live creatively. Thank you for
the times when the symbols of security dissolve around us and once
again, our thoughts must find peace in the unfolding of something
unexpected. If it were not
for the moments when we have to wait for the results of such times,
there would be no need for faith and trust. As we reflect on our lives, who could have known ahead of time that we would be where we are? It has been interesting as we have looked back on our lives to realize how each unplanned piece has fit so neatly into all the others. As we anticipate our future, may our faith help us to realize that in every moment we have the opportunity to reflect the qualities of your spirit to an audience of onlookers whose names we may never know. We pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus, the Christ, who taught us to say when we pray . . . |