Another Sermon, This Time About Demons!

Demons, Devils, Demoniacs, and Other Stories I Used to Think Were Irrelevant

Originally Delivered 1/28/2007

Reading 1: From the Book of Luke, Chapter 8, Verses 26 through 35

Jesus Heals the Gerasene Demoniac

Jesus and the Apostles arrived in the country, and were met by a man possessed by demons. For a long time, the man had worn torn clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. The man was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”—for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Jesus then asked the demons, “What is your name?” The demons answered, “Legion, for we are many.” The demons begged Jesus not to kill them.

Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.

Reading 2: A Monologue from the movie The Devil Wears Prada

This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

Sermon

My father reminded me of a story recently. It is a story about a situation he had to deal with in one of the first few weeks he was Dean of Faculty at a small, liberal arts college in the Midwest. The theater department at the college was putting on a production. One of the scenes in the play was a funeral scene. The scenery was fairly simple—a table, with a coffin on top of the table, and a young actress in the coffin.

During a rehearsal a few weeks before the play opened, there was a mishap. One of the table legs buckled, causing the table to pitch forward, the coffin to slide off and hit the ground, and the actress to be knocked unconscious. Paramedics were called, the actress was revived in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and she ended up being totally fine.

A few weeks later, my father received a phone call. The phone call was from the college’s insurance company. The insurance agent was reviewing the insurance claim from the coffin incident. Whoever had prepared the claim failed to mention that the incident happened during a theater rehearsal, so the insurance agent had a few questions.

“First of all,” the agent asked, “how did a coffin come to be at the college? Secondly, how…exactly…was the occupant of the coffin able to be revived in the ambulance on the way to the hospital?” After 45 minutes of careful explanation, my father was able to convince the insurance agent that the college was not in fact claiming bodily resurrection on the insurance form, and the claim was able to be processed.

My father’s story reminds me of something very important—context. A few details and a simple shift in perspectives can make the seemingly impossible, well, possible.

The first reading today was from the Book of Luke. The story of Jesus and the Demoniac seems like one of those impossible stories. Jesus, walking through the country, comes upon this small town where someone possessed by demons is hanging out. This man is living a horrible life—he wears only dirty, torn clothes, he lives in the crypt, he is perpetually tortured by evil spirits. Then, Jesus begins talking to the demons, and even asks them what their name is. They tell Jesus their name is “Legion,” for they are many, and then they beg Jesus not to kill them. Ultimately, Jesus casts them out of the man into a herd of pigs, and the pigs run off a cliff and drown themselves in a lake.

Now, I don’t know about you, but to me this story seemed…bizarre, far-fetched, and totally irrelevant to my own personal spirituality or the larger Unitarian Universalist faith. I thought it was irrelevant, that is, until one of those annoyingly wise seminary professors told me that one word within that passage changed the entire direction of the story. I’m going to share that one word with you, but first, I’m going to offer some context.

The Book of Luke was written down, most likely, in the 1st century CE. It was written during a time when the Roman Empire controlled the entire region. The Romans were not the first group to control that region—before the Romans, the Greeks, before the Greeks, the Persians, before the Persians, the Babylonians, and so on back through history. However, the Romans were proving particularly troublesome to the Jewish people. Roman leaders attempted to erect statues of Roman Gods in Jewish temples (a big “no-no”), and pressured the Jewish people to eat pork, one of the most unclean and forbidden foods for the Jewish people.

And now, the word that changes the entire direction of the passage—legion. The author of Luke could have given the demons any number of names that meant “many,” but the author used a very particular word—legion. The word legion is not often found in the Bible. When it is used, it is often used in reference to Roman legions, the military occupying and controlling the region for the Roman Empire.

The man ripping and tearing his clothes, living as if dead, is possessed, is tormented, by the Roman military. Jesus comes along and has the power to cast the Roman Legion out. He does not kill them, but rather leaves them to be the unclean animals that they tried to force the Jews to eat, and they ultimately kill themselves.

All of a sudden, Jesus is not just a man, but symbolic of a much larger, radical Jewish movement attempting to rid the region of the Roman legion. And this story is about much more than one might see on first glance. It is a story of protest, of anti-colonial sentiment, a story of a community saying “LEAVE US ALONE. We do not want to kill you, but we do not want to be you either.”

This shift in perspectives, these details which allow us to see even the faintest glimmer of what it might have been like to live under Roman occupation over 1,900 years ago, make this story…eerily relevant. For many Unitarian Universalists, this story is representative of their commitment to social justice and to peace.

The second reading today was from the movie The Devil Wears Prada. The movie tells the story of a young, idealistic woman fresh out of college, who travels to New York City with dreams of pursuing her journalistic ambitions. Faced with very limited prospects, she takes a job that she feels to be beneath her—she is the second assistant to Miranda Priestly, the editor and chief of a glamorous high fashion magazine.

While deciding which dress will be featured in the upcoming edition, there is a fashion crisis. No one in the room can decide which belt should be paired with the dress. The belts are about the same size, very similar styles, and are the exact same color. Everyone in the room is going on and on about how choosing the wrong belt will be catastrophic. Everyone, that is, except the young assistant. She is standing in the corner, amazed and totally amused at this inane conversation.

That is when Miranda Priestly turns, she turns in a way that only Meryl Streep can turn, and she says to her assistant, “You think this is beneath you. You think this has nothing to do with you. And yet, the very color of your sweater was determined by the people in this room. You are so caught up in this world, you don’t even realize it, and yet you stand there and judge it as lesser than.”

I admit that I was a bit uncomfortable during this scene in the movie. I found myself identifying with the assistant. I believe myself to be beyond the petty world of high fashion, and yet, I do not stand before you dressed in a burlap sack. I did not grow the cotton, harvest it, spin it into thread, weave the thread into fabric, and sew the fabric into my clothing. I bought these clothes at a store, the contents of which are determined by what’s “in fashion.”

The very fact that I thought to dress up for this occasion is also indicative of us being in an interconnected web of fashion. It is not written into the church by-laws that the preacher should dress up. Rather, it is one of those unspoken yet expected customs. It is an expectation that usually is not even consciously thought about until it is broken.

A few weeks ago, I ordered my first ministerial robe. It is one of those big, flappy academic robes. I will wear it when I bless babies, perform weddings, and officiate at funerals. In some of the more formal Unitarian Universalist congregations out there, I will even preach in it on Sunday.

It was not my idea to start this tradition. Rather, the expectation for preaching in an academic robe dates back much further. In this country, it can be traced back to our Unitarian ancestors who believed so strongly in an educated clergy, they helped found Harvard University. While I may look, act, and speak differently than those ancestors, while I may believe in a different theology and express those beliefs in different ways, I will still be wearing an academic robe when I do it.

It makes me wonder about how many other interconnected webs exist. What other systems consciously and unconsciously determine not just what we wear, but everything from what we buy and who we date to how we treat one another.

The reason I chose to attend the seminary I am at, as opposed to any of the other fine seminaries in this country, was because of the school’s commitment to “Educating to Counter Oppression and Create Just and Sustainable Communities.” This commitment runs deeper than a statement in our literature. This commitment is a guiding force, and affects every level of the school and its work—from the course listings and content to Board of Trustee meetings, from how we make decisions to how we let other’s decisions affect our work.

At a very basic level, this commitment of educating to counter oppressions is an attempt to learn context, to find ways to shift our perspectives enough that we notice the interwoven influences we all feel but may not know how to verbalize.

For example, school meetings and classes will often have people designated as “process observers.” These are people who are actively focused on the interactions in the room. They are people who note the accessibility of the conversation and activity.

During one class I was enrolled in, the process observers noticed that many of the men in the room tended to call out answers and comments while many of the women in the room tended to raise their hand and wait to be called on. This system of interaction meant that even though there were far fewer men than women in the room, the men tended to dominate a good deal more of conversation. No one in the room was consciously doing this. The men in the room did not wish to shut the women out of the conversation, and the women did not wish to be shut out.

As a result, we instituted a policy in which everyone was to raise their hand and wait to be called on. Another student was designated to write down people’s names as they raised their hands and to call on them in that order. The result was…well, miraculous.

Students who had rarely spoken began to add their thoughts to the conversation, enriching our discussion. The careful attention paid to inclusion, to making space for everyone to speak, only deepened the sense of trust and the commitment creative problem solving. It was a class in which people not only felt heard, but they felt valued.

In another example of our commitment of Educating to Counter Oppression, a student wished to offer refreshments after the school’s chapel service on Tuesday afternoon. Being a chocolate fanatic, she thought it would be an act of hospitality to offer chocolate after the service. She then realized that not everyone could eat sugar, so she offered sugar-free chocolate as well. Then, she realized that not everyone liked or could eat chocolate, so she decided to offer trail mix as well. Realizing that not everyone could eat nuts, she decided to offer dried fruit as well.

Her decision was a small act of hospitality, but it was a much appreciated one. By shifting her perspective, by finding ways to offer hospitality to others in a way that they could accept and enjoy, she was sending a very powerful message to those around her. Even if people were not at the table, she set a place for them.

The Demoniac in Luke, the Devil in The Devil Wears Prada, these demons are a reminder to keep an open mind, to find and practice ways of shifting perspectives and giving things a fresh look. When we can do this, these stories, these demons, can be transformative. They can speak to us in ways we never knew existed. They can remind us of our mutual connections, the interconnected webs of which we are all a part.

As this church moves forward through interim ministry and into called ministry, may this church, this beloved church, find ever deepening ways of seeing our interconnectedness, and ever more ways of creating space at the table for everyone to participate. May our demons be transformative.

Amen.