Patrick Comerford
Next Sunday, 23 June 2019, is the First Sunday after Trinity (Proper 7).
The appointed readings in the Revised Common Lectionary for Proper 7 (Year C), as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland are in two groups.
The continuous readings are: I Kings 19: 1-4 (5-7), 8-15a; Psalms 42, 43; Galatians 3: 23-29; Luke 8: 26-39.
The paired readings are: Isaiah 65: 1-9; Psalm 22: 19-28; Galatians 3: 23–29; Luke 8: 26-39.
There is a link to the continuous readings HERE.
Introducing the readings:
For the past two months, we have been reading from Saint John’s Gospel as part of the Lectionary provisions for Easter and Pentecost. But we have returned to Ordinary Time, and on Sunday next we return to the Year C lectionary readings from Saint Luke’s Gospel.
For three weeks, we also have Old Testament readings that tell of brief episodes in the stories of the Prophets Elijah and Elisha, and New Testament readings from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.
In next Sunday’s readings, Elijah goes into foreign territory, the Psalmist talks about what it is to be an outsider and isolated, Saint Paul addresses the true outsiders, and Jesus and his disciples go into foreign territory and encounter an outsider among the outsiders.
We might find contrasts between Elijah who stays in the cave after running away, and the man who lives in tombs after escaping from his shackles. After the storm, Elijah meets God in the ‘sound of sheer silence’ or the ‘still small voice’ in the wilderness, and after the storm, when Christ and his disciples go out into the wilderness, a disturbed meets the living God and comes to know true peace.
These readings challenge us to think about who is clean and who is unclean, who are the outsiders and who are the insiders.
God is in control of all life, whether it is the storm and fire, the stormy arguments that divide communities, or our own interior storms that are capable of destroying our own thinking and our own minds.
I Kings 19: 1-4 (5-7), 8-15a:
Before we come to this first reading, the two kingdoms are divided and separated, so that Israel becomes the northern kingdom and Judah forms the southern kingdom. In Israel, the northern kingdom, Queen Jezebel has promoted the Canaanite religion, and many people have strayed from worshipping God.
The Prophet Elijah has predicted a three-year drought, finds refuge outside Israel with a widow at Zarephath, and they miraculously find enough to eat. As the drought continues, Elijah becomes involved in a public conflict with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. When God hears Elijah, he sends fire, the failed prophets are killed, and God’s superiority is reinforced when the drought ends.
In this reading, Queen Jezebel seeks retribution and now threatens to kill Elijah swiftly. Fearing her vengeance, he flees for his life to Beer-sheba in the southern kingdom of Judah.
Elijah is spiritually exhausted and has had enough. He wants to give up, and even wants to die. He falls asleep but is woken twice by an angel, and he is fed twice by this angel’s guidance.
He then travels for 40 days and 40 nights to Mount Horeb, or Mount Sinai, and like Moses he has a living encounter with the ‘the word of the Lord’ (verse 10).
Elijah complains that the people have rejected God and killed God’s prophets. Now he alone is the only prophet left alive.
Elijah is told to climb the mountain and about to pass by. But God teaches Elijah a lesson. Instead appearing by showing his mighty power in the great wind, the splitting of rocks, the earthquake or the fire, God is present quietly, in ‘a sound of sheer silence,’ what the King James Version calls ‘a still small voice’ (verse 12).
God once again asks Elijah what he is doing there, and tells him to return to his mission in the northern kingdom.
Psalms 42, 43:
These two psalms form one single poem or song consisting of three stanzas, each with the same refrain (42: 5, 42: 11; 43: 5):
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.
The writer of these psalms loves God dearly:
As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
We know the writer lives in the northern kingdom, for he refers to Mount Sinai as Mount Horeb (see 42: 5). He has a deep desire to visit God him in the Temple, but is ill or wounded, and unable to make a pilgrimage from the north to Jerusalem.
He has fond memories of past pilgrimages (verse 4), but he wonders whether his inability to visit God in the Temple means God has forgotten him (42: 9), and ungodly people say he is ill because he is wicked (43: 1).
He now prays that God may come to his rescue, so that he may be able to make the pilgrimage once again.
Galatians 3: 23-29:
Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians is unusual in the way it is addressed to neither a specific church in a city (such as Romans, Ephesians, Corinthians or Colossians), nor to a particular individual (such as Timothy or Titus). Instead, this letter is written to a group of Celtic people in either the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia settled by immigrant Celts in the 270s BC, or in a large region defined by an ethnic group of Celtic people in northern Anatolia.
So, this is the one book in the Bible that is related to Celtic people.
The central dispute at the heart of this letter is the debate about how Gentiles could convert to Christianity, at a time when the vast majority of Christians were Jewish or Jewish proselytes.
Some Jewish Christians said that in order for converts to belong to the People of God, they must become Jews first. The letter indicates controversies about circumcision, Sabbath observance and the Mosaic Covenant. They may have challenged Saint Paul’s authority as an apostle, perhaps appealing to the greater authority of the Church in Jerusalem and Saint James the Apostle.
In his letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul has argued that God’s promise to Abraham predates the Mosaic Law, and God’s promise of the gift of Christ is freely given to ‘those who believe.’
If the Mosaic law was marked by restraint, now we realise we are free, and all barriers have been broken down. No longer are we to be disciplined as children (see verse 24), but are the free children of God because of Christ (verses 25-26).
Baptism in Christ means all the barriers have been broken down. There ‘is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus’ (verses 27-28).
In the Church, there can be no more distinctions based on ethnic, social or gender differences. If we belong to Christ, we are the true, spiritual descendants of Abraham and heirs to God’s promises (verse 29).
‘For a long time … he did not live in a house but in the tombs’ (Luke 8: 27) … the Tomb of Amyntas, in the rock face above Fethiye (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)Luke 8: 26-39:
This story appears in all three synoptic Gospels: Matthew 8: 28-34; Mark 5: 1-20; and Luke 8: 26-39.
After Jesus calms a storm on the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8: 22-25), he and his disciples arrive on the other side of the lake in the countryside surrounding Gerasa, present-day Jerash. This city, also known as Antioch on the Chrysorrhoas or the Golden River, was founded by Alexander the Great. It is 50 km south-east of the Sea of Galilee and 30 km north of Philadelphia, modern-day Amman.
However, Saint Matthew sets this story in Gadara (present-day Umm Qais), about 10 km from the coast of the Sea of Galilee. Either location poses questions, for neither Gadara nor Gerasa is near to the coast of the Sea of Galilee: Gadara was about a three-hour walking distance, while Gerasa was well over twice as far.
The differing geographical references to Gadara and Gerasa can be understood in light of the social, economic, and political influence each city exerted over the region. In this light, Matthew identified the exorcism with Gadara as the local centre of power, while the city of Gerasa was a major urban centre and one of the ten cities of the Decapolis.
Whatever the location and setting of this story, it takes place deep inside Gentile territory. From the very moment they get off the boat, this story involves a place and people regarded as unclean by the standards among the disciples: this is Gentile territory, the people are ritually ‘unclean,’ the man has an ‘unclean’ spirit, he is naked or a person of visible and public shame, he lives among the tombs, which are ritually unclean, and the pigs are unclean too.
In those days, demons were regarded as spirits of an evil kind that did battle, as a ‘legion,’ with God and God’s allies. They were thought to invade human bodies and personalities, causing psychiatric and physical illness, and taking control of people. They found their abode in ‘wilds’ or the desert, and ‘the abyss’ was the realm of Satan and home to demons. The name ‘Legion’ suggests great demonic power, for a Roman legion was an army unit of about 5,000 troops.
Prisoners or people who had been deprived of their liberty lost the right to wear clothes. Tombs were ritually unclean places. Swine were a symbol of pagan religion and of Roman rule, but even they are subject to Christ’s authority.
This episode plays a key role in the theory of the ‘Scapegoat’ put forward by the French literary critic René Girard (1923-2015). In his analysis, the opposition of the entire city to the one man possessed by demons is the typical template for a scapegoat. Girard notes that, in the demoniac’s self-mutilation, he seems to imitate the stoning that the local villagers might have attempted to use against him to cast him out of their society, while the villagers themselves show by their reaction to Christ that they are not primarily concerned with the good of the man possessed by demons:
‘Notice the mimetic character of this behaviour. As if he is trying to avoid being expelled and stoned in reality, the possessed brings about his own expulsion and stoning; he provides a spectacular mime of all the stages of punishment that Middle Eastern societies inflict on criminals whom they consider completely defiled and irredeemable. First, the man is hunted, then stoned, and finally he is killed; this is why the possessed lived among the tombs. The Gerasenes must have had some understanding of why they are reproached, or they would not respond as they do. Their mitigated violence is an ineffective protest. Their answer is: “No, we do not want to stone you because we want to keep you near us. No ostracism hangs over you.” Unfortunately, like anyone who feels wrongfully yet feasibly accused, the Gerasenes protest violently, they protest their good faith with violence, thereby reinforcing the terror of the possessed. Proof of their awareness of their own contradiction lies in the fact that the chains are never strong enough to convince their victim of their good intentions toward him.’
On Girard’s account, then, the uneasy truce that the Gaderenes and the demonic have worked out is that the evil power in him is contained and so neutralised. The arrival of Jesus on the scene introduces a spiritual power stronger than Legion, which upsets the societal balance by removing the scapegoat. This reversal of the scapegoat mechanism by Jesus is central to Girard’s entire reading of Christianity, and this reversal is on display in this story as well.
Contrasting the self-destruction of the herd of pigs with the typical motif of an individual evildoer being pushed over a cliff by an undifferentiated mob (see Luke 4: 29), Girard comments:
‘But in these cases, it is not the scapegoat who goes over the cliff, neither is it a single victim nor a small number of victims, but a whole crowd of demons, two thousand swine possessed by demons. Normal relationships are reversed. The crowd should remain on top of the cliff and the victim fall over; instead, in this case, the crowd plunges and the victim is saved. The miracle of Gerasa reverses the universal schema of violence fundamental to all societies of the world.’
After this episode, the man not only sits ‘at the feet of Jesus,’ as disciples did, but he becomes a missionary to other Gentiles. This is a story of dramatic transformation.
Look at the changes in this man’s life: he moves from outside the city to inside it; he moves from living in tombs and being driven into the desert to being alive in a house; he moves from nakedness to being clothed, from being demented to being of sound mind.
He moves from destructive isolation to being part of a nurturing, human community. He moves from being expelled from the religious community to being part of the Church and proclaiming the good news.
He is sent back to live in his house or home (verse 27). The word Saint Luke uses here is οἶκος (oikos), which means a house, an inhabited house, even a palace or the house of God, as opposed to δόμος (domos), the word used for a house as a building. Those who live there now form one family or household, and this comes to mean the family of God or the Church (for examples, see I Timothy 3: 15; I Peter 4: 17, and Hebrews 3: 2, 5).
Without trying to read too much into this use of language, we could still draw from this that the outsider, the person seen as unclean and defiled, the scapegoat, is restored to a full place in the Church too, in God’s family.
Who do you think we see as Scapegoats today, as outsiders to be pushed to the margins, so that we can maintain the purity of our family, church or society?
Who do we expose and shame so that we can maintain the appearance of our own purity?
Are these the very people who might bring the good news to people on the margins, inviting them into the household of God?
Luke 8: 26-39:
26 [Jesus and his disciples then] arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27 As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. 28 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’ – 29 for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he 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.) 30 Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He said, ‘Legion’; for many demons had entered him. 31 They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.
32 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. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.
34 When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. 35 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. 36 Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. 38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Green
The Collect:
God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you:
Mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you, grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you, both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Eternal Father,
we thank you for nourishing us
with these heavenly gifts.
May our communion strengthen us in faith,
build us up in hope,
and make us grow in love;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Suggested Hymns:
The hymns suggested in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling, include:
I Kings 19: 1-4 (5-7) 8-15a:
325, Be still, for the presence of the Lord, the holy one is here
549, Dear Lord and Father of mankind
593, O Jesus, I have promised
624, Speak, Lord, in the stillness
387, Thanks to God whose Word was spoken
141, These are the days of Elijah
Psalms 42 and 43:
607, As pants the hart for cooling streams
606, As the deer pants for the water
15, If thou but suffer God to guide thee
95, Jesu, priceless treasure
425, Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts
384, Lord, thy word abideth
434, My Jesus, pierced for love of me
Isaiah 65: 1-9:
No suggested hymns
Psalm 22: 19-28:
492, Ye servants of God, your master proclaim
Galatians 3: 23-29:
250, All hail the power of Jesu’s name
389, All who believe and are baptized
218, And can it be that I should gain
496, For the healing of the nations
522, In Christ there is no east or west
101, Jesus, the very thought of thee
358, King of glory, King of peace
Luke 8: 26-39:
549, Dear Lord and Father of mankind
554, Lord Jesus, think on me
373, To God be the glory! Great things he has done!
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
For René Girard and this Gospel reading, see René Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp 165-183.
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