Year C
 Isaiah 65:1-9
 Psalm 22:18-27
 Galatians 3:23-29
 Luke 8:26-39

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

According to an article on the Bon Appetite website…  an “i” on the end of an Italian noun indicates that it’s plural…  while an “o” or an “a” indicates that it’s singular…  so fettucino is the word for one fettuccini noodle…  raviolo is the word for one ravioli square…  and spaghetto is the word for one strand of spaghetti…  and if you imagine a plate of spaghetti… you can see that while each spaghetto maintains its own integrity…  its own identity…  each one is also intertwined…  maybe not with every other one…  but with very many of them… 

And when I think about today’s readings…  and how they apply to today’s culture and society…  when I think about the challenges we face in the world today…  the image of a plate of spaghetti comes to mind…  seemingly separate and distinct issues…  some of which really do have little-to-nothing to do with each other…  but many of which are intertwined with…  and have an impact on…  many others…

For example…  Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has affected the price of gasoline…  which has affected the supply chain…  which has affected the delivery of chicken feed…  which has affected the price of eggs…  which has affected how often people make omelets for breakfast… 

For example…  as we read in our Lenten book study this year…  Debby Irving tells the story about watching an ABC News Nightline segment…  called The Color Line and the Bus Line…  about a black teenager named Cynthia Wiggins…  who was thrilled to have gotten a job in the food court at one of Buffalo’s new malls…  on the white side of town… her public transportation commute required multiple bus changes…  and more than ninety minutes travel time…  and at one transfer point…  not only were there no sidewalks or crosswalks…  but Cynthia had to cross seven lanes of traffic to get from one bus to another…  and on a cold day in 1966…  just before Christmas…  she was hit and killed as she made the crossing…  the truck driver didn’t see her…  it was by all accounts…  an accident…  but a preventable one…

You see…  it turns out that the mall’s developers…  fearing that black customers would scare off white customers…  worked with Buffalo’s transportation officials…  to redirect Buffalo’s bus routes…  making it not impossible to cross the city’s invisible racial divide…  but making it highly inconvenient…  and dangerous…  so on the surface…  it seemed like someone was simply not paying enough attention…  but when you looked deeper…  it was connected to an entangled and entrenched system which put some people at a disadvantage…  and was otherwise invisible to the eye…  after all…  it’s easier to spot racism at the end of a rope…  than at a suburban bus stop…

So like that plate of spaghetti…  hundreds of systems and decisions…  which on the surface we may think of as being separate…  actually impinge on and influence many other systems and decisions…  and while parts of these strands lie in plain sight…  many of them…  though hidden…  are no less real… and there is a spiritual aspect to what’s hidden as well… 

As Fr. John Shea writes…  the inner spiritual world is invisible…  but it is the source of either the harmony or the disturbance in the visible outer world…  if the inner world is inhabited by demons…  it manifests itself in chaotic and destructive behavior…  if the inner world is inhabited by the Spirit of God…  it manifests itself in a calm and focused life…  and one strategy of salvation…  is to do all we can to avoid the world of demonic possession…  and stay only within the world of communion with the Spirit…  but this is not Jesus’ strategy…  because he bears God’s Spirit…  and his mission is to cross into the world of demonic possession…  and reclaim it as God’s good creation…  this Spirit is the hope of those who are possessed…  and on one level…  the possessed seem to know this…  and so when the text says this was a man of the city…  it means that he is the symptom-bearer of what the entire population is experiencing…  he has become their scapegoat…  that’s why the name of the demon that inhabits him is Legion…  and as the symptom-bearer…  the demon-possessed man manifests what the larger community has managed to repress…  since when this evil is projected onto just one person…  the many can go about leading as normal life as possible…  it kind of reminds me of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey…

But Shea continues…  the community’s efforts are only partly successful…  because although the text says that he was kept under guard and bound with chains…  he would break them and be driven into the wilds…  threatening their communal life…

You may remember that in the verses just before today’s reading…  Jesus stood against the winds and the raging waves of the sea…  and he rebuked them until they became calm…  and now on land…  he will rebuke the demons of chaos there…  who know they’re no match for the Son of the Most High…  and who beg him not to torment them…  the way they have tormented this possessed man and the city which lives in denial of its own sins…

And when the demons beg Jesus not to order them to go back into the abyss…  it’s because that would mean banishment from earth…  so the unclean Legion…  asks for permission…  asks permission of Jesus…  to go into the unclean herd of swine…  where they think the Spirit of God…  in Jesus the Jew…  might be hesitant to approach…  and where they would at least still be on earth…  but the herd runs headlong down the bank and into the lake…  and drowns… 

Many sermons will now shift…  to the loss of livelihood…  the loss of income…  and its effect on the town’s economy…  or the feared loss of income at a mall…  and because the Gospel often offends those who profit from the present way things are… the people…  now seized with fear…  ask Jesus to leave…  but as Shea writes…  there is a much deeper spiritual reality…  the symptom-bearer is now clothed…  seated…  in his right mind…  because he no longer carries the burden of the town’s sins…  so if the people feared what the demons could do to them…  it makes sense that they’d be that much more afraid of the One who could do such things to Legion…  because of what he might reveal in them…

And while the man begs Jesus…  that he might be with him…  Jesus sends this man on a mission to those whose burdens he has borne…  that he bears witness to God’s healing power…  not a power that demonstrates its might by destruction…  but one that demonstrates its might by lifting people into their true status… 

Many of you know that today is Juneteenth…  and that after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863…  it took two more years for the news to get to Louisiana and Texas…  when…  on June 19th…  the last of the slaves were set free… ] but in a so-called Christian nation…  they continued to be treated as less than…

And unfortunately…  while Paul’s statement in today’s Epistle was written in the first century…  that there are no distinctions in God’s eyes… we’re still trying to lift all people up into their true status…  and so perhaps…  we can let these verses from Galatians continue to challenge the distinctions we impose around race…  economic status…  sexual orientation…  gender and gender identity…  and any other distinction we humans make…  where we would set ourselves over and above others…  as being more important…  justified…  or favored in God’s sight…

And so we might ask ourselves some questions… ] what’s the connection between telling the truth and being healed…  what’s the connection between ignoring the facts and not having to change…  what in us needs healing but may also cost us some relationships…  ] in Christ Jesus…  we become able to unravel each strand of spaghetti…  and separate the demoni from the Spirit of God…  and see with clarity just what affects what…  and how…  ]  then we can more clearly see what promotes life and what diminishes it… so that we become increasingly able to heal not only God’s creation…  but ourselves as well…  Holy God…  make it so…