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The Life You Save …

The Rev. Canon George M. Maxwell, Jr.
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
Decatur, Georgia
24 June 2007
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – Year C

“Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.”  (Lk. 8:33)

            My Mother tells a funny story about this passage.  She says that one Sunday, after the Deacon had finished reading this passage, I turned to her and said, “And, the next day the herdsmen went to see their lawyers and sued the pants off of Jesus.”  I suspect that Mom remembers this story because she was not the only one who heard me!

            What makes the story funny, though, is that it really does describe what we would expect the herdsmen to do.  Their livelihood had just been threatened by the loss of their herd.  We would expect them to be upset. 

And, if they managed to avoid being upset, then we would expect them to be excited.  It would make sense to us if they had run away to tell their friends, and then come back to ask Jesus to work some other miracles.  “Hey, Jesus, … my daughter’s sick, … my brother’s on his death bed, … my servant’s blind.  Could you do something for them?  Just say the word, and they will be healed!”  This is how the crowds in Galilee and Jerusalem reacted. 

But, here, the crowd is neither upset nor excited.  They are afraid.  They came back to find the crazy man sane, and it frightened them.  He was running naked through the tombs and now he is sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.

What are they afraid of?

At first glance, it’s not clear that Jesus did anything that would be very threatening.   Frankly, it’s hard to believe that he really did anything that other holy men were not also doing at the time.  We think of demons as illusions that lose their power once they are identified.  Jesus makes the man name his demons.  Once he knows their names, he gains power over them. 

But, if we look further, we can see something else.  The demoniac was not just an isolated figure living on the outskirts of town.  He was part of an ongoing drama that involved the whole community.  It seemed to play out the same way every time.  He would go into a rage.  They would attempt to restrain him.  He would break loose and run into the tombs, screaming at the top of his lungs and bruising himself with stones.

This drama has a familiar pattern.  Edwin Freedman, in his classic book, Generation to Generation (p. 107 - 108), tells the story of a young girl who was preanorexic.  She refused to eat and lost ten pounds in a month.  Gradually, however, the mother began to see her daughter as more petulant than sick.  And, she started to do some things differently.  She fed her daughter absurdly small portions and warned her about taking in too many calories when her daughter was hungry.  The daughter responded by beginning to eat again.

What is interesting, though, is that the reverse psychology didn’t work on the daughter.  It didn’t make her do the opposite of what her mother wanted.  It worked on the mother.  It made her less anxious.

The daughter was reacting to the mother’s chronic anxiety.  As the mother’s anxiety went away, the daughter no longer felt the need to take responsibility for it.  The daughter’s refusal to eat was simply a symptom of having to bear her mother’s anxiety.

After the daughter’s symptoms ceased, the mother began to work on those things that made her anxious in the first place.  She learned not to depend on her husband to dampen her anxiety.  She learned to differentiate her own basically happy view of life from her mother’s constant pessimism.

The father, too, began to change.  He learned how to be less protective of his widowed mother and, in the process, how to be less protective of his wife. 

The point Freedman is making is that sometimes there is one person in a family who is forced to carry the anxiety of the entire family.  Relieving their symptoms is only solving part of the problem.  The rest of the solution lies in changing the way that the family relationships work.

This, I think, is what the Gerasenes are afraid of.  They are afraid of change.  They are afraid of fundamental change to the way that their relationships work. 

The demoniac has not been their problem.  He has been their solution.  He is not the weak one unable to deal with his issues.  He is the one who is strong enough and sensitive enough to deal with the community’s issues. 

It feels like their fear is causing them to conspire with the demoniac to keep the drama alive.  When he goes into one of his episodes, they chain him up, but never strong enough to actually prevent his escape.  They never have to stone him, as Job’s friends threatened to do.  He stones himself.  They don’t even have to chase him out of town.  He runs to the hills himself, as if acting out a ritualistic expulsion.

He is, in fact, doing all of the work.  And, as long as he is carrying their anxiety, then they don’t have to worry about it.  If he is carrying their demons, then they are free of the burden.  Even if they are really worried about him, their specific worry is less painful than the general anxiety caused by the demons that he is carrying.  Their health is dependent on his illness.

You get the feeling that if the demoniac didn’t exist, the community would have to create him. 

 This is, I think, is the truth that Jesus reveals.  I suspect that Jesus healed the demoniac by teaching him how to differentiate himself – how to see himself apart from others in his community.  I suspect that Jesus taught him not only how to name his demons, but also how to put them back where they belong.

But, as interesting to me as what Jesus did, is what he didn’t do.  He didn’t tell the now former demoniac that his destiny lay ahead of him in Jerusalem.  He told him, instead, to go back to his friends and tell them what had happened.  He told him to stay in his community and change the way his relationships worked.  

Look around.  This is your community.  Do you think that you are one of the sick ones?  Maybe your issue is not weakness, but misguided strength and sensitivity.  Maybe all of those demons you’re carrying around aren’t yours after all.  Watch for them the next time you accuse yourself of something.

Do you think that you are one of the healthy ones?  Maybe you feel strong because you aren’t carrying all of your own burdens.  Maybe someone else is doing your emotional work for you.  Pay attention the next time you accuse someone else of something.

And, then, we have to ask ourselves, “What are we afraid of?  Are we really willing to change the way our relationships work?”

Name your demons and put them where they belong.  The opposite of madness is not always health.  Sometimes, it’s wisdom.

Name your demons and put them where they belong.  Be responsible for your own anxiety.  We are social beings at the end of the day.  The life you save may not be limited to your own!

Amen. 

Comments? Contact The Rev. George Maxwell at: gmaxwell@stphilipscathedral.org

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