Mark 5: 1-20

January 26, 2020

   Donna gave me a turntable for Christmas.

   It’s not like one of those turntables that I had years ago. This one can plug into my laptop or can play music off a USB stick.

   Since Christmas, whenever I’m working at the dining room table, I usually have a record on … ones that I haven’t played for decades. I’ve discovered that I have a lot of records … ones that I forgot I even had … and I’ve begun organizing … grouping them … so that the ones that I like to listen to are easier to find.

   I found all of Donna’s Elvis and George Carlin records from high school … some of the new wave records from university … and amongst some Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin records was comedian Robin Williams first record … “Reality … What a Concept”.

   I half-listened to it while I was cobbling together this sermon.

   Just before today’s passage from Mark, Jesus had his shipboard nap interrupted by a windstorm and some panicky disciples.

   He and the disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee when the storm threatened to sink the boat. Jesus awoke … calmed the storm and criticized the disciples’ lack of faith.

   Today, they reach the shore and a man … who’s possessed by an unclean spirit … thousands of them, actually … rushes up to them. Like the spirit from earlier in Mark, this one recognizes Jesus and Jesus’ authority and asks what he wants the spirit to do.

   The spirit negotiates a deal … Jesus will allow them to enter a large herd of pigs nearby. 

   They enter the herd … which promptly runs into the sea and drowns.

   There is a dark edge to this passage.

   The community has tried to restrain the man with the unclean spirit. They’ve unsuccessfully chained him and now he has broken free … he howls and screams … he pounds himself with stones as he moves among the small caves that serve as tombs. 

   So, he is marked by cuts and bruises.

   He led a life of degradation.

   The man with the unclean spirit has been pushed there … to the edge of the community … living in the most unclean of places in the area. It’s a place of death that makes the man even more unwelcome in religious and communal life.

   Jewish tradition holds that touching anything associated with the dead made a person ritually unclean and banned from worshipping at the temple or synagogue until they were ritually bathed twice over the course of seven days. 

   People who associated with the man … because of the spirit and where he lived … also ran the risk of being considered unclean by association. No one likely wanted to take the chance. People were no doubt afraid of what the unclean spirits might lead him to do … the uncertainty must have felt threatening. 

   You can imagine the effect on the community at night … hearing the howls and screams in the darkness and wondering what the violence that might occur.

   So, the man and the unclean spirits were isolated from everyone.

   After Jesus sent the spirits away and the pigs drowned, the men tending the herds ran to the community and told people what had happened. When the crowd arrived, they saw the man sitting with Jesus … transformed by the cleansing … the healing.

   And the people were afraid.

   Change can do that … having your expectations … your sense of value … your perception of the world … so dramatically altered can stoke fears. Through their fear, they sent Jesus away. The people wanted no part of a life that is transforming … freeing them from the oppressive realities of their lives. They wanted the certainty of the life they knew … a life where pigs carried more value than a suffering man.

   One thing that’s easily lost … overwhelmed by the image of two-thousand possessed pigs drowning and polluting one of the community’s water sources or of the people being so threatened and afraid of the transformation that occurred … is Jesus’ instructions to the healed, cleansed man.

   After the man begs to go with Jesus and be among the disciples, Jesus tells him to: “Go home to your friends…”

   Go … teach … preach … show what new life comes through God’s acts of love.

   Audiences that hear this lesson, tend to look at the pigs … some have even questioned the idea of the pigs drowning, since they can swim. 

   Or audiences look at how the man was treated … chained up … restrained … until the unclean spirits were too powerful and the chains snapped … leaving him to wander among the caves that served as tombs … carrying the weight of the shackles … dragging the chains with him.

   After a life alone … living among the dead … Jesus’ instruction seems odd.

   What friends could the man have living among the tombs?

   There is no mention of friends in the early part of the passage … just that people tried to subdue him … binding him among the caves in the cliffs.

   But being shunned by the community … out in a place steeped in death … you have to wonder – How did the man survive? How did he find food? Did just eat bugs and honey like John the Baptist?

   How come his wounds didn’t become infected and take his life?

   While it isn’t stated outright … maybe … some people did care about the man’s welfare … maybe some people did venture into the tombs to give him food and tend to his injuries.

   Perhaps, those are the friends to whom Jesus refers … people who are already living a life of compassion.

   Friends who were willing to go to the most uncomfortable of places … to experience the most uncomfortable, unsettling of things … to care for the man. That … we need to remember … is the call of discipleship … the call to love.

   To tend to those in pain … even if the wounds are unseen.

   For about 40 years, Robin Williams made people laugh.

   In movies … on the stage … on television … on recordings … he made people laugh and maybe even consider the condition of the world. For all appearances, Williams was a happy and successful man. 

   In 2014, Williams lost his battle with depression and other health issues. He committed suicide.

   From a distance, there was no sign of the demons he fought.

   That’s the rub about mental illness … much of the time it’s invisible … carried below the surface … unseen and unvoiced … unnoticed.

   There might be cuts and bruises, but you need to want to see them … to hear the story of the wounds.

   And even when there is awareness … the full weight of the pain … the effects on the people around them … family and friends … isn’t fully comprehended by people outside their circle.

   Their brokenness goes unseen and unministered … and because it does, people make assumptions … comments … act … that serve only to cause pain or to marginalize … isolate people even more.

   By naming the illness … naming the brokenness … understanding becomes possible. And when we understand an issue or an illness … when we are willing to travel into unfamiliar territory … then it we can better minister to the person and healing can take hold. 

   That is when we empathize with their and family’s pain and suffering … and offer support … community … and love through the gift of grace we have received.

   The annual “Let’s Talk” initiative is a day that aims to make mental illness more visible … and more understandable. It is on Wednesday.

   Through conversation … through a willingness to understand … to embrace and to love … those coping with mental health issues can be brought closer to the heart of the community. It is when they … and us … experience a transformation … a transformation that comes through the love that is at the root of efforts to heal brokenness.

   And it’s through such a process of discussion and discernment that those battling mental health issues can experience a new life of hope and wholeness.

   And that … with apologies to Robin Williams … that reality is a great concept.    AMEN