Second Sunday After Pentecost
To Witness Healing; To Seek our own Healing
It has taken a global pandemic to imprint upon us in serious ways what Christians have been taught from the beginning – that the illness of one is the illness of the whole community.
The Gospel story today reminds us that any story of illness and healing – even a sudden, divinely sourced, miraculous healing, and even the healing of a single person – is the story of the illness and healing of a community. It’s a drama that’s not only a drama for this unnamed person who has been suffering a lifetime. One of the community is possessed by demons and has been therefore in exile from them, living in the town cemetery for so long now that his isolation is just the way it is, the normal social pattern. They have gotten used to being a divided community. And they’ve gotten so used to this normal way of being that they’ve lost sight of how this norm of division – perhaps for all sorts of good reasons of public health and safety – mean that they as community are not whole, they as community are not therefore fully themselves, that they are not fully a community as God desires them to be. And that they, too, are in need of healing.
But the focus of the story is this unnamed, suffering man who discovered God, recognizing the power of God commanded by Jesus against the demons inside himself. And he speaks – utterances that can be understood, words of recognition, not only about Jesus and God’s power, but also about himself. As Jesus engages with him, God-in-Jesus invites him to name his own condition, on his own terms, to name what he knows of himself. Who is possessing you? Oh, it is Legion, there are so many of these demons. And Jesus frees him to begin a new journey of rediscovering his true self outside the grasp of the demons.
And suddenly now here he is, healed, clothed, in his right mind, sitting down trying to have a conversation with us, and it is terrifying. The one whom we might have feared at times but could control with shackles, is now taking his place with us and that is even more frightening. The balance of our normal is upended. Yes, there is fear of the power shown by Jesus – that’s startling beyond description. But I think it’s fear of something more.
Part of the story I think is that the community doesn’t see their own needs for healing. He’s the one who’s sick, after all, and he’s been that way for so long that they don’t even know his name. No, we can hear them say, we’re ok. So long as he stays in his little reserve in the tombs and keeps at his predictable ranting and so long as we can continue to dismiss that ranting, we’re ok. They were demons, but they were demons we knew and had found ways to contain and live alongside.
What is described as demons and the impersonation of evil can be understood in many ways, metaphorical and psychological, theological and ethical and we need to tread with care here. I limit my focus here to considering the demonic in terms of those powers – or to use a different biblical metaphor, powers and principalities – that reach in to that core of our being that is baptised to freedom, and graced to live in faith, hope, and love, those powers that reach in and warp this goodness with fear, insecurity, and greed. Sometimes these powers are subtle and seductive, sometimes they are overt and obvious to us. They always enslave our freedom, and warp our desires, and cause real spiritual illness in persons and communities. Their masquerades of false promises of security, power, wealth and happiness lure us in and make me act in ways that are ultimately unhealthy towards myself and others. Who are these contained in our Legion?
Competitive Capitalism is one of them. It makes me believe that it’s ok that the necessities of life are restricted only to those who can afford them, that everything must be earned, and that no one eats without proving their worth through currency. God’s economy is one of grace and giving away, freely, to those who need food, shelter, clothing, friendship. In that economy, God confronts me and my community with our need for healing from our worship of money in financial systems that have power to grant life to some at the cost of the lives of others.
Achievement and Performance Culture is another. It makes me believe that my ultimate value is in what I can do and achieve by societal standards, and how I am seen by others for what I do and achieve. God’s culture is one of loving regard, looking past performance to the beloved soul whose very breath is a beautiful gift from God. In that culture, God confronts me and my community with our need for healing of our damaged sense of personal value, worth, and dignity.
Even FOMO is another: Fear of Missing Out. It makes me scramble with a false appetite to consume the fleeting fast-food of whatever the latest entertainment, social media or fashion trend is this week or this hour. God’s banquet, though, is one where there is no rush, and the most healthy and delicious meals of justice, peace, and reconciliation are always on offer – they’re not fleeting, and they will always be there – with an invitation to slow down, take time, and pay attention to what God has already given. And at that banquet, God confronts me and my community with our need for healing from fear and from the psychological nausea of perceived personal insufficiency.
White Supremacism is another. It makes me feel comfortable and entitled, and able to feel removed from any claim on my white privilege, as though it’s the way the world is supposed to be. God’s supremacy, however, God’s sovereignty over all human privilege is one that confronts that privilege for the abuse of power that it is. God’s supremacy confronts me and my community with my need for healing from the sinful arrogance by which I can separate myself from the struggles of those who suffer from racism and colonialism, and of all the ways in which I am part of the problem.
These are serious demons.
Who am I without them? It is hard to imagine my self apart from these and so many other snares, powers and principalities that are constantly trying to colonize my soul. Without them – ah, perhaps that’s a glimpse of salvation. And yet, to be healed of these ills, to have the occupiers of my soul cast out, can be terrifying. Who am I without all these things I lean on, all my normal ways of interacting with people, even without all my fears? I wouldn’t know myself. And yet that is the spiritual journey into which we are called. And God hols us through it all.
It is a profound gift to witness healing.
I have had the privilege of attending several national Indigenous Sacred Circles, gatherings of Indigenous Anglican clergy and lay leaders seeking to deepen their own walk with God, and to grow a self-determining Indigenous Anglican Church within our Anglican Church of Canada family. When I look at this self-determining Indigenous Anglican Church growing across Turtle Island I see a spiritual movement that is living out with focus the desire expressed by Thomas Merton: to discover ourselves in discovering God, finding God and therefore finding themselves, finding indeed, our truest selves in God. The truest identity in God that honours the gifts that God has given in the origins of these peoples, who have always sought God the Creator through their own ways long before we Christians showed up.
This week we celebrate the National Indigenous Day of Prayer, a Major Feast in our Church now, on National Indigenous Day, June 21. Our national Indigenous Ministries and Healing Fund administrators have been sharing stories of Indigenous people finding their own paths of healing and reconciliation for several decades now – there is a rich resource base of these stories in the national website. The first of the Sacred Circles took place in 1988 – a celebration in a first coming together of Indigenous clergy and lay leaders. By 1993 the realities of the horrors of residential schools systems of abuse couldn’t be contained any longer, and that year’s Sacred Circle decided to set aside the agenda for a day to listen to story after story of residential school survivors. It lasted more than a day. There was so much pain. And there was so much hope. And the ability of our then-Primate, Michael Peers, to take in the pain and to really experience vicarious trauma, with the humility required to sit and to listen and only then to offer the Apology, was a gift to us all.
I am going to read parts of it here for you. Because as Anglicans we might be feeling just a little bit smug as we hear calls for the Pope to offer a proper Apology to Indigenous Anglicans, and there is a lot in the meaningfulness of our Church’s Apology. It is Our Apology and it is an ongoing, living commitment, not something just done in the past, on our behalf.
There are at least three big meaningful things about it. One is the Apology came only after very much listening and learning about the realities of the trauma and sources of the harm in the very church and Canadian society and law that we have thought were virtuous; another is how it speaks from a place of witnessing the healing of residential school survivors, speaks from that place of listening, into a place, into the church, to speak about our need for healing; and third is the sense of the livingness of this Apology: that it wasn’t something that was about that moment of saying sorry, getting it over with and going on life as normal, but rather is about, as Michael Peers always used to say, a long-haul commitment to the healing of the whole church from the colonial and racist beliefs, behaviours and ways of being church that cause dehumanizing trauma and destruction of community.
After speaking of what he had heard in the stories of suffering and healing, Archbishop Michael said:
“I also know that I am in need of healing, and my own people are in need of healing, and our church is in need of healing. Without that healing, we will continue the same attitudes that have done such damage in the past.I also know that healing takes a long time, both for people and for communities.
I also know that it is God who heals, and that God can begin to heal when we open ourselves, our wounds, our failures and our shame to God. I want to take one step along that path here and now.
I accept and I confess before God and you, our failures in the residential schools. We failed you. We failed ourselves. We failed God.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we were part of a system which took you and your children from home and family.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that we tried to remake you in our image, taking from you your language and the signs of your identity.
I am sorry, more than I can say, that in our schools so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally and emotionally.”
This is the Church’s Apology. It is our Apology.
When confronted with the enormity of injustices, historic and present, and the demons of intergenerational trauma, we can get overwhelmed by a sense of impotence: what is there that we can do to help? Especially what is there that we can do to help without repeating – even unselfconsciously the colonial patterns of patronising and hurtful behaviour and attitudes that are so normal to us as to be unconscious to us.
Here’s something, a pretty foundational something that we can do. I suggest that we might want to visit and revisit this 29 year old Apology this week especially prayerfully. And from whatever our places are in its story, for those of us of the dominant and especially white, settler culture to ask ourselves what are our own needs for healing. And pay attention. Pay attention even in mainstream media, but also worth checking out the Aboriginal Peoples’ Television Network and CBC Indigenous this week and visit the local events, to see and to take in with humility what really are stories of healing in the celebrations of resilience and strength and beauty of Indigenous people especially as expressed in this time of celebration. And give thanks for Indigenous Anglican leaders. Let us rejoice in the healing happening, and welcome as gift the invitation to our own healing, that we may all be One in Christ.
The Revd Dr Eileeen Scully