Talking with the Naked Man (Sermon on Psalm 22 and Luke 8:26-39)
I preached this sermon on June 23, 2019 at Northminster Presbyterian Church. I was filling in for our pastor, whose husband was in hospice. He died earlier that morning.
You know, almost everyone who preaches on that second bit of scripture focuses on the demons or the demon-possessed suicidal pigs, and I understand, because how often do you get to say the words “demon-possessed suicidal pigs”… in church yet? But for today, I’m not going to focus on the demon-possessed suicidal pigs. I’m going to focus more on the naked guy, but first, a story and some poetry talk.
Recently, the father of Richard, a co-worker and friend, died. I got a card for Richard, and passed it around the lab so that we could all sign it for him.
Now this was right before Father’s Day, so the greeting card shelves were a little sparse on anything that wasn’t birthday or Father’s Day related. There was one sympathy card, and it was blank inside.
That meant that I had to write something, and that meant everyone had to write something. None of us knew what to say. I mean, there’s the usual: “deepest sympathies”, “I am sorry for your loss”, “heartfelt condolences”, and so on. The thing is, those all sound drab and almost thoughtless, and that’s not what any of us felt.
But here’s the thing: I can tell you from having gotten cards like that before, the most important thing is not the words, but the signatures. None of us could give Richard what he truly wanted: another day with his dad. But we could give him what we had, ourselves.
The psalmist writes at length about how cut off they feel, from everyone and everything, including God. They go on and on, pouring out their troubles, and they have a lot of troubles.
And then, all of a sudden, the poet realizes that they are wrong; they are not cut off, and never have been: “From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.” And the poet realizes that God was with them, is with them, and will be with them: “The poor shall eat and be satisfied…. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.”
A few centuries later, Jesus and his apostles had just gone through a very eventful trip across the Sea of Galilee. (Look up “Jesus Calms the Storm” if you’re curious.)
However, no sooner did they step foot on nice, solid, dry land when a naked guy who no one had ever seen before comes running at them, Jesus, acting like this is just what happens on Tuesday, commands an unclean spirit to come out of him, and the naked guy starts shouting at Jesus to leave him alone, asking him if he came all this way just to make his life hard.
Luke tells this story in a very disconnected, non-Luke-like way: “So this naked guy shows up… wait … did I mention that he was naked for a while and lived in a tomb?… no? … well anyway he tells Jesus… wait … back up a bit… first Jesus starts an exorcism, THEN the guy starts talking … no it was a demon talking…”
It’s almost like Luke wants to get to the heart of the story, but there’s just so much stuff to explain!
All right, so maybe the naked guy was just plain nuts, but maybe there’s something else going on. I think it’s important that the man lives in a tomb rather than a house. Maybe he is unable to deal with his own mortality the way most people do, and by that I mean pretty much ignore it most of the time. Maybe he is deeply mourning a loved one, someone who meant so much to him that he would live as close to them as he could, and he didn’t care what people thought. Or maybe he is insane. Or maybe he actually is infested with supernatural entities.
He has no friends. He gets routinely imprisoned by the locals (oh, there’s a whole sermon on them). He is vulnerable, a fact emphasized by his nudity.
And Jesus talks to him.
Well, first, Jesus has to talk to the demons, but – and maybe this is just me – but I sense a real impatience in Jesus’s conversation with the unclean spirits. It’s like when I have to be in a meeting to discuss budgets: How can we get to a satisfactory agreement in the minimal possible time?
It’s the man Jesus wanted to talk to.
Now, the next thing you know, naked guy isn’t naked anymore. I like to think Jesus carried around a spare set of clothes in various sizes for just such an occasion.
This man and Jesus were chatting, as if they’d known each other forever.
The local folk come out to the combined graveyard and now-defunct pig farm.
Oh, the local folk. They go from “Oh no! The guy’s got demons! Send him away!” to “Oh no! The guy doesn’t have demons! Send him away!”
Like I said, there’s a whole sermon on them, but for now, let’s just say that they are in a very long, established tradition, stretching through even to today, of people sending Jesus away when he gives them what they say they want.
Anyway, the formerly naked man begs Jesus, BEGS him, to go along with him, and get away from this bizarre little town, but Jesus has one more gift for him, and it’s a big one.
Last summer, we put our dog Gumbo down. It was horrible. If you’ve never had to be the one to make that kind of decision, it is worse than you imagine. There’s the sadness at losing a friend, the guilt as you wonder if you really did all you could for her, the emptiness at seeing the empty spaces where she used to be. I do not wish that on anyone. Anyone.
I was thankful for something, though. While I felt all that guilt and sadness and emptiness, there were others who told me that I mattered to them.
I didn’t talk about it a lot, because I don’t think people want to hear people talk about that kind of thing, and I didn’t want anyone grilling me about whether I’d really looked at every option, feeding my guilt.
But then, a few weeks later, I found myself going to dinner with my friend Nancy in Arlington, Virginia. In her car, she told me she’d seen about Gumbo’s death on facebook. She listened as I told the story, the whole story, and then she put her hand on my arm and told me that earnestly, that she was so sorry I had to go through that. She couldn’t take that time away, but she could give me her friendship, and I am very grateful.
When the formerly naked man begged Jesus to take him away from the screwy little town of his, Jesus told him no.
“Go home,” he said, “and tell people about what happened.”
Home. Jesus told this man who’d lived in a grave when he wasn’t being tied up and guarded, that he had a home, that there were people who’d listen to him, and understand, because God would draw them to him. God valued him, even if no one else seemed to.
“You don’t have to go with me,” Jesus says to the formerly naked man, to the woman at the well, to the apostles three days after they’d seen their friend murdered, to us today as we work through our sadness and loss at Ed’s death. “You don’t have to go with me; I’ll go with you.”
You know, almost everyone who preaches on that second bit of scripture focuses on the demons or the demon-possessed suicidal pigs, and I understand, because how often do you get to say the words “demon-possessed suicidal pigs”… in church yet? But for today, I’m not going to focus on the demon-possessed suicidal pigs. I’m going to focus more on the naked guy, but first, a story and some poetry talk.
Recently, the father of Richard, a co-worker and friend, died. I got a card for Richard, and passed it around the lab so that we could all sign it for him.
Now this was right before Father’s Day, so the greeting card shelves were a little sparse on anything that wasn’t birthday or Father’s Day related. There was one sympathy card, and it was blank inside.
That meant that I had to write something, and that meant everyone had to write something. None of us knew what to say. I mean, there’s the usual: “deepest sympathies”, “I am sorry for your loss”, “heartfelt condolences”, and so on. The thing is, those all sound drab and almost thoughtless, and that’s not what any of us felt.
But here’s the thing: I can tell you from having gotten cards like that before, the most important thing is not the words, but the signatures. None of us could give Richard what he truly wanted: another day with his dad. But we could give him what we had, ourselves.
The psalmist writes at length about how cut off they feel, from everyone and everything, including God. They go on and on, pouring out their troubles, and they have a lot of troubles.
And then, all of a sudden, the poet realizes that they are wrong; they are not cut off, and never have been: “From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.” And the poet realizes that God was with them, is with them, and will be with them: “The poor shall eat and be satisfied…. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.”
A few centuries later, Jesus and his apostles had just gone through a very eventful trip across the Sea of Galilee. (Look up “Jesus Calms the Storm” if you’re curious.)
However, no sooner did they step foot on nice, solid, dry land when a naked guy who no one had ever seen before comes running at them, Jesus, acting like this is just what happens on Tuesday, commands an unclean spirit to come out of him, and the naked guy starts shouting at Jesus to leave him alone, asking him if he came all this way just to make his life hard.
Luke tells this story in a very disconnected, non-Luke-like way: “So this naked guy shows up… wait … did I mention that he was naked for a while and lived in a tomb?… no? … well anyway he tells Jesus… wait … back up a bit… first Jesus starts an exorcism, THEN the guy starts talking … no it was a demon talking…”
It’s almost like Luke wants to get to the heart of the story, but there’s just so much stuff to explain!
All right, so maybe the naked guy was just plain nuts, but maybe there’s something else going on. I think it’s important that the man lives in a tomb rather than a house. Maybe he is unable to deal with his own mortality the way most people do, and by that I mean pretty much ignore it most of the time. Maybe he is deeply mourning a loved one, someone who meant so much to him that he would live as close to them as he could, and he didn’t care what people thought. Or maybe he is insane. Or maybe he actually is infested with supernatural entities.
He has no friends. He gets routinely imprisoned by the locals (oh, there’s a whole sermon on them). He is vulnerable, a fact emphasized by his nudity.
And Jesus talks to him.
Well, first, Jesus has to talk to the demons, but – and maybe this is just me – but I sense a real impatience in Jesus’s conversation with the unclean spirits. It’s like when I have to be in a meeting to discuss budgets: How can we get to a satisfactory agreement in the minimal possible time?
It’s the man Jesus wanted to talk to.
Now, the next thing you know, naked guy isn’t naked anymore. I like to think Jesus carried around a spare set of clothes in various sizes for just such an occasion.
This man and Jesus were chatting, as if they’d known each other forever.
The local folk come out to the combined graveyard and now-defunct pig farm.
Oh, the local folk. They go from “Oh no! The guy’s got demons! Send him away!” to “Oh no! The guy doesn’t have demons! Send him away!”
Like I said, there’s a whole sermon on them, but for now, let’s just say that they are in a very long, established tradition, stretching through even to today, of people sending Jesus away when he gives them what they say they want.
Anyway, the formerly naked man begs Jesus, BEGS him, to go along with him, and get away from this bizarre little town, but Jesus has one more gift for him, and it’s a big one.
Last summer, we put our dog Gumbo down. It was horrible. If you’ve never had to be the one to make that kind of decision, it is worse than you imagine. There’s the sadness at losing a friend, the guilt as you wonder if you really did all you could for her, the emptiness at seeing the empty spaces where she used to be. I do not wish that on anyone. Anyone.
I was thankful for something, though. While I felt all that guilt and sadness and emptiness, there were others who told me that I mattered to them.
I didn’t talk about it a lot, because I don’t think people want to hear people talk about that kind of thing, and I didn’t want anyone grilling me about whether I’d really looked at every option, feeding my guilt.
But then, a few weeks later, I found myself going to dinner with my friend Nancy in Arlington, Virginia. In her car, she told me she’d seen about Gumbo’s death on facebook. She listened as I told the story, the whole story, and then she put her hand on my arm and told me that earnestly, that she was so sorry I had to go through that. She couldn’t take that time away, but she could give me her friendship, and I am very grateful.
When the formerly naked man begged Jesus to take him away from the screwy little town of his, Jesus told him no.
“Go home,” he said, “and tell people about what happened.”
Home. Jesus told this man who’d lived in a grave when he wasn’t being tied up and guarded, that he had a home, that there were people who’d listen to him, and understand, because God would draw them to him. God valued him, even if no one else seemed to.
“You don’t have to go with me,” Jesus says to the formerly naked man, to the woman at the well, to the apostles three days after they’d seen their friend murdered, to us today as we work through our sadness and loss at Ed’s death. “You don’t have to go with me; I’ll go with you.”
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