A
Meditation on Mark 5:1-20
1.
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| 9.24.01 |
I have here two editions of The New Yorker, two that I’ve kept close
this week, thinking about discipleship, Christian discipleship, on the edge of
another war in the Middle East. There’s
this sad, dark cover of September 2001, with its faint outline of the fallen
twin towers; and there’s this chilling cover of this September, 2014, with a
dozen defiant figures facing down a menacing tank somewhere in America’s
heartland. “HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT!”:
that’s the mantra they’ve taken to the streets in Ferguson, Missouri and
elsewhere—protesting police brutality and the senseless killing of young
Michael Brown. “HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT!”
This week I’m asking myself how we
got from September 2001 to September 2014, how we got from violence in the
streets of Lower Manhattan to tanks in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. Could it be, is it possible that the wars we
waged in the aftermath of 9/11—the wars we will continue to wage—have occupied
our American psyche so completely that we necessarily turn all that weaponry
and all that aggression against our own sons and daughters? Could it be, is it possible, in the
controversial words of my colleague Jeremiah Wright that so many “chickens are
coming home to roost,” that organized violence is nothing but a colossal
boomerang that has to come back around?
I think these are legitimate questions—troubling questions, but legitimate ones. And just as Jesus asked hard questions in his own time, we have to ask the right questions in ours. A prophetic people asks the right questions. Doesn’t an eye for an eye make the whole world blind? Can you love God and make war on your neighbor? Is forgiveness practically the path to reconciliation and peace? Or not? A prophetic people asks the right questions: we ask them of ourselves in prayer; we ask them of one another in community; we ask them of our government and our country.
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| 9.1.14 |
So maybe it’s no surprise that
these terrifying and sophisticated tanks end up on the streets of troubled American
cities like Ferguson. Maybe it’s no
surprise that our politicians have forgotten the arts of negotiation,
collaboration and compromise. It’s
painful even to write these words. But maybe
it’s no surprise that our obsession with violence doesn’t stop at the bedroom
door. The media seems shocked this week,
that a professional football player hauled off and knocked his girlfriend out
cold. But war is what we know. And war is what we do. And war is—in some ways, at least—who we are. Since 9/11—on the international stage, at least—we
haven’t done much else.
I’m reminded of my seminary teacher
Walter Wink in New York who wrote these words some decades ago: “The myth of
redemptive violence undergirds American popular culture, civil religion,
nationalism, and foreign policy...it lies coiled like an ancient serpent,” he
wrote, “at the root of the system of domination that has characterized human
existence since well before Babylon ruled supreme.” I really think it’s this myth that Jesus
exposes and even exorcises in this morning’s gospel story. And we’ll get there in just a moment. “The myth of redemptive violence undergirds
American popular culture, civil religion, nationalism, and foreign policy.” Does that make sense? “It lies coiled like an ancient serpent at
the root of the system of domination that has characterized human existence
since well before Babylon ruled supreme.”
Friends, I believe discipleship
requires that we address this myth, unmask it, and free ourselves from its
awful, hideous, bloody grip on our American soul. If the community of Jesus’ disciples is to be
relevant, faithful, true to its calling—we have to ask the right
questions.
2.
2.
Before we get to that gospel story,
just one more word on the news this week.
As if we needed another reminder of what kind of week it’s been. But every month Kate receives the official
news-magazine of the American Academy of Pediatrics: it’s a journal for
pediatricians, of course. And on the
front page this month is this piece on the Academy’s fight to repeal a
controversial Florida law that prohibits pediatricians from discussing gun
safety—gun SAFETY—with parents of small children. It almost seems too cruel to be true. But three years ago, the NRA lobbied Florida’s
legislature to pass (and their governor to sign) a law making it illegal for
DOCTORS to suggest that parents lock their guns away in safe places, making it
punishable for DOCTORS to suggest that parents take special care to keep guns
out of sight and out of the reach of children and teens in their homes.
So am I missing something
here? Is this not the very definition of
public policy hell? That well-funded
special interests convinced a publicly elected body to criminalize advice
around gun safety in homes with children.
That the NRA’s persuaded presumably intelligent men and women that gun
safety (gun SAFETY) compromises the industry’s God-given right to sell as many
guns and as many bullets to as many families as they damn-well please. That’s what freedom’s come to mean in
Florida. That’s the ancient serpent
coiled at the root of our American system.
That’s how war and violence occupies the American psyche.
Talk about demonic.
And this leads us back to the
gospel: a strange story of violence and possession, demons and occupation,
Jesus and liberation. What in the world
is going on here? And how does this wild
little exorcism relate in any meaningful way to our calling in the 21st
century?
In Mark’s story, a man is possessed
by a dangerous and unclean spirit. And
he’s breaking everything he can get his hands on. And he’s howling angrily at the world. And he’s bruising himself with stones.
Mark tells us that Jesus comes to town by boat; and that he finds this tortured, battered man living in a graveyard, howling at the world, brutally attacking his own flesh. In terms of simple storytelling, it’s wrenching and gruesome, and terribly sad. And he runs at Jesus, this man, and throws himself at Jesus’ feet; and he howls some more. “I beg you by God, don’t torture me. I’ve had enough. Just leave me alone.”
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| "Demoniac" by Justin Bowers |
So here’s a story about violence,
right, and how it gets into a man (maybe even a culture), and how it warps and
wastes a man’s soul. Whatever it is he’s
been through, whatever haunts him, terror has occupied his spirit so thoroughly
that he can’t help hurting himself, bruising himself with stones, turning from
every offer of help. It’s a strange
tale, to be sure, but not unbelievably so.
Because we know that soldiers returning from killing fields are too
often swallowed up by despair and turn weapons on themselves. Because we know that women beaten by boyfriends
and husbands are too often too traumatized to ask for help. Because we know that those tanks we built for
Afghanistan and Iraq, those fearsome tanks, are rolling through the streets of
Ferguson now.
So he throws himself at Jesus’
feet, this wild, tortured man, and he begs Jesus to just leave him alone. But instead Jesus engages and he asks him his
name. “My name is Legion,” say the
demons at war in the wild man, “for we are many.”
And here’s the clue, the
indispensable clue, about where Jesus and Mark are going with this story. Because a first-century Jew in Palestine
hears this part about the Legion and knows immediately that this is a story about
Roman occupation and the violence of armies and empires. A first-century Jew in Palestine hears the
Legion howling in the graveyard and recognizes instinctively the madness of
war, the spiraling of violence, the terror embodied in an occupied land. This is a story about rage and
self-mutilation. It’s a story about the
colossal boomerang that is organized violence.
Inevitably, we take on that violence—spiritually—and inflict it on loved
ones, families, communities, enemies, on and on and on. Its demons wreak havoc on souls and cities
and whole nations. We are possessed.
So the point of Jesus’ stunning
exorcism would not have been lost on Mark’s first-century audience. And it ought not be lost on us. Because I think it has everything to do with
discipleship and faith in our twenty-first century church.
When the Legion hurls itself off a
cliff and into the sea, we remember the great narrative of Jewish faith, the
organizing narrative of the Bible itself.
We remember that God so loved the Hebrews that God swallowed up
Pharaoh’s warriors and their chariots in the roaring Red Sea. And we remember that God did so to liberate
the people from slavery and occupation and poverty and fear. Whoever else God is, whatever else God is,
the Biblical God is a God of liberation and freedom. Slavery breaks God’s heart. Occupation rouses God to action. So Jesus sends the Legion into a herd of mad
pigs, roaring off a cliff and into the sea.
God’s on the move again. And Mark
reminds us that discipleship has something to do, maybe everything to do, with
releasing a people from its addiction to violence and mayhem and slavery.
4.
It would be easy, of course, if
there were some great exorcism we could perform to heal the world of its
madness. It would be painless for all
involved if there were some holy invocation we could chant to unmask the myth
of redemptive violence and bring peace at last to the nations.
But Mark insists and Jesus teaches
and you and I know that it just doesn’t work that way. We know that God heals the world in a very
different and more demanding way: through disciplined loving and committed
sacrifice and daring forgiveness and selfless service. Again and again, Jesus’ disciples seek an
easy way, a quick fix, a dramatic solution to the world’s problems. Again and again, Jesus invites them and us to
faith and compassion and daily practice.
“If any want to become my followers,” he says, over and over again, “let
them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” I wish I could tell you this whole exorcism
business is quick and easy. But I
can’t. And it’s not. We are called to take up the cross. We are called to follow Jesus. And it’s one day at a time. One prayer at a time. One protest at a time. One loving project at a time. There are no quick fixes. “Peace is the great venture,” said Dietrich
Bonhoeffer eighty years ago. “Peace must
be dared.”
It’s probably no surprise that the
President is gassing up the war machine again, as he faces the troubling,
bewildering, but not surprising new threat in the Middle East. I understand the pundits who call ISIS a
monster in the Middle East. And I
understand the political calculations that require a President to do something,
anything to show he’s in control. But
something’s missing, I think, when we refuse to acknowledge our own role—our
major role—in creating this new monster.
Something’s missing when we refuse to acknowledge that ISIS is using
weaponry we sent, not so long ago, to the Iraqi army. Something’s missing when we act—without
reflection, with little awareness—as if the myth of redemptive violence is the
holy word and the way to peace.
We unmask that myth when we follow
Jesus to shelters for battered women and sit in prayer and friendship with victims
of domestic violence. We unmask that
myth when we follow Jesus to juvenile hall and treat forgotten teenagers like
our own sons and daughters. We unmask
that myth when we pray for our enemies—even the wild-eyed terrorists of ISIS,
even the maddening warmongering politicians in Washington, even the neighbor
who drives us batty. And we unmask that
myth when we say NO to the culture of violence and war and brutality that
threatens the heart and soul of our country.
Amen.
