Year C

Luke 8:26-39

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Freedom in Christ

Two Sunday’s ago, on Pentecost Sunday, the Church began the very long season of Pentecost. This season will eventually end on the first Sunday of Advent, November 27. We now enter into this long green Season, a time of immersing ourselves in the Gospels, in the acts of Jesus, in the acts of the Church throughout history, and welcoming the Holy Spirit’s leadership in our lives. In so doing, the Spirit of Jesus empowers us to do all that we need to do to bring our gifts to work for freedom and justice in God’s world. Speaking of freedom, today on June 19, it is not only Father’s Day; our nation marks today the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery. It’s called Juneteenth and it was on June 19, 1865, that Union soldiers brought word to Galveston, Texas, that the war was over and that the slaves were free. Abraham Lincoln had actually signed the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years earlier but because of poor communication it was not officially known until June 19th, 1865.can only imagine how difficult it must have been for those who had to continue living in slavery for over two years when their freedom had already been proclaimed. For the Christian, Christ signed our Emancipation Proclamation through his life, death and resurrection. Over and over in the scriptures we are reminded of our freedom in God and that it is only in the acknowledgement and service of God that we find our true freedom and rightful place in the order of creation. In this Christ-created new world, the sins of ethnic, social and sexual injustice will be no more. People will not be seen as black or white, rich or poor, male or female but as human beings, brothers and sisters in Christ.

Yet, the reality in our world is that many still live in slavery in one way or another. Despite the fact that there have been and are those who work hard to narrow the gap between the way things are and the way things are going to be one day in God’s kingdom. Our lessons today all speak to this new Christ- created kingdom and our freedom in a God that’s powerful enough to help us from the things in life that enslave us and bring us down. The prophet Elijah for example, who identifies himself as the only faithful prophet among the Israelites, will not adhere to the religious position of Queen Jezebel. While surrounded by Ahab, the prophets of Baal who want to kill him, and the people of Israel who have abandoned God, God makes himself known as the only true God through a spectacular display of power by igniting a soaking-wet altar, in order to demonstrate that he, not Baal, is God.

Elijah then commands that all of Jezebel’s four hundred prophets of Baal be killed and now he must flee from Jezebel’s wrath. He flees to the wilderness. Exhausted, he asks God to end his life but God does not grant his request. Rather God comes to him, cares for him and tells him to wait on top of the mountain because God is about to pass by then God display’s God’s power not in a great wind, or in an earthquake, or in fire but “in a still small voice.” This voice reenergizes Elijah and places him again in the role of the leader of those who are trying to be faithful to God. Elijah is a new Moses, raised up by God to lead the people to freedom in the time of trouble. 

In our gospel reading today, the awesome power of God has the capacity to bring freedom to transform a demon possessed man. Like Elijah, the man in the text today is oppressed by evil. As soon as Jesus sees the man, he commands the demons to come out of him. God comes to the man and gives him exactly what he needs, as God did with Elijah. Life is restored and the man from whom the demons had gone responds by obeying Jesus and telling the people in his town how much God had done for him. A wonderful miracle story but miracle stories like this one are sometimes hard to believe. Rachel Held Evans in her book ‘Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and loving the Bible Again’ wrote that in her research, she learned that there is more going on in the gospel healing stories than simple transmission of fact.

Each of Jesus’ healings demonstrates his healing power and compassion for the individual, of course, but that is not the main point-the main point is the miracle’s universal significance: the overturning of social and religious barriers; the ending of taboos; and Jesus’ declaration of God’s love and compassion for everyone. The miracles of Jesus prefigure a future in which there is no more suffering, no more death, no more exclusion or stigma, and no more chaos. “As Jeffrey John explained in his book ‘The Meaning in the Miracles,’ these and other healing stories seem to have been deliberately selected by the writers of the gospels to show Jesus healing at least every category of persons who, according to the purity laws of Jesus’ society, were specifically excluded and labeled unclean.”

Rachel says, “these healings show us what it looks like for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, and they invite us to buy into that future now, with every act of compassion and inclusion, every step toward healing and reconciliation and love.” The apostles remembered what we tend to forget-that which makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out but who it lets in. Paul certainly understood this and perhaps this is why he was consistent, in his inclusiveness. He is a perfect example of the power of God to turn life around. He knew how God’s power can remake a “wretched sinner into a brand new creation.

He writes in his letter to the Galatian’s, that through the power of the cross, the most stunning display of God’s power, God makes people into new creations. Having accepted Christ by faith, God clothes his people with Christ, giving them the ability to live not as slaves to sin but as God’s own children. So clothed, the differences that divide us disappear in the unity of baptism. Unfortunately, the world as a whole continues to await the “glorious freedom of God’s children despite the fact that we are new creations. Paul was not defeated and neither are we even in the times when we ask why, cry out to God for healing or help, and feel forgotten by God. It is in these times that our cries of faith rise to heaven with those of the psalmist and we are reminded that the power of God is with us.

We are reminded that God hears our cries but God’s power does not always come in the form we expect. Sometimes it does come in wind or fire but often in “a still small voice” reminding us that God is not finished with us yet. God wasn’t finished with Elijah, the demon possessed man who was healed or with Paul. There is plenty yet to do to bring in this new world of freedom and justice for all. Our only hope of being what we are meant to be lies in belonging to Christ for we are “one in Christ,” “We are clothed with Christ.” Why not live our lives according to this truth? We are already free. We just have to accept it and then live our lives like the free children of God that we are so that others may see.