We just sang a lament hymn. Did you pick up on that? I know the organist and choir are always pumped up when the preacher talks about music, but listen again to the opening words from “Thine Arm O Lord In Days of Old”:

Thine arm, O Lord, in days of old
Was strong to heal and save;
It triumphed o'er disease and death,
O'er darkness and the grave.

This is the classic structural opening of a lament Psalm. It begins with reminding God of what happened “back then” – back when God showed power and strength. In a lament Psalm this would be followed by asking “Where are you now God?” I know that I’ve been asking the question “Where are you now God?” this week in the wake of the shooting at Pulse in Orlando which left 50 people dead (including the shooter) and another 53 seriously injured. Where were you God? Where are you now God?

Make no mistake, the actions of Omar Mateen were not of God. They were the actions of a troubled, sexually conflicted man from a traditional Afghani culture – a culture where shaming your father by admitting you are gay is worse than death and masking your suicide by cop under the guise of a pseudo-religious martyrdom is imaged as the only way out. God was not in the actions of Omar Mateen no matter what some Christian extremists want to say.

I can say where God did show up. God showed up in the long lines of volunteers willing to donate blood. God showed up in the police officers, medics, doctors and nurses who cared for the injured. God showed up for those who claimed the dead and comforted their loved ones. God showed up here at Grace Church on Monday for candlelight Compline and prayer and again on Church Street in Frederick where I was privileged to stand with religious leaders from the UCC, Unitarian, Jewish and Muslim communities – all standing together to support the LGBTQ community and commit to ending gun violence. Our gospel reading today reminds us there is no place at all where God will not show up and no limit to how far God will go to heal us.

The story of the Gerasene demoniac is told in all three synoptic Gospels with some minor variations. Luke closely follows Mark’s telling of this story. Jesus crosses over to the region of the Gerasenes, across from Galilee. He is squarely in Gentile territory – an “unclean land” according to Jewish tradition. He is met by a man possessed by demons, a state of ritual uncleanliness. Luke tells us he is often naked and according to Jewish law, looking on a naked person makes a person ritually unclean. In other words, God in Jesus is showing up in all the so-called “polluted” places!
Jesus attempts to cast out this man’s demons and they respond by naming him as “Jesus Son of the Most High God.” Naming is powerful. It is an attempt to gain control over another. Notice how the demons know exactly who Jesus is and in many of these stories, they attempt to gain control over him by naming him as “Son of the Most High God.” Jesus responds by asking the demons’ name and the reply is “Legion” – a reference to the size of a Roman army unit numbering between 3,000 and 6,000 soldiers. This man is possessed by countless demons.

In our enlightened, scientific modern culture, we often dismiss demon possession as something from an ancient time – Stone Age people trying to explain mental or physical illness. Surely we are past that, aren’t we? Well, no … no we are not past that and we are fools to think we are. We, both individually and as a culture, are possessed by demons – and make no mistake, they are legion. Here are just a few:

• Violence is one of our demons. Our violence explodes in words and actions – in our homes, in our workplaces, in our schools, on our streets, in churches and nightclubs. It also manifests in our addiction to war. My children, who are now in college, have only known our country as one at war – they have no conscious memory of our nation at peace. Violence possesses us – it is a demon.
• Fear is another demon. We are afraid of people who are different – whether they are immigrants, ethnic/racial minorities, or LGBTQ. Fear is the demon which drives our xenophobia, our homophobia, our transphobia, our cultural misogyny. It feeds the demon of our violence.
• Selfishness is another demon. We are quick to demand our rights for what we think is our due but divorce those rights from responsibilities towards the greater good of the community.
• Avaricious greed is another of our demons. Putting corporate profits ahead of public safety and the good of the community intersects with our selfishness to place a price tag on our lives and commoditize our worth.

Oh yes … do not be fooled into thinking demon possession isn’t real. It is very real and we are possessed by a legion of demons!

It is, though, right into the midst of this polluted mess that God shows up in the person of Jesus. At the request of the legion of demons, he orders them into the herd of swine (yet another unclean element in this story). Now in seminary, we remember this as the “deviled ham” story – and we hear the swine rush into the lake and are drowned. The symbolism of the unclean animals becoming clean in their death by water would not have been lost on Luke’s audience, although we tend to feel sorry for the pigs today.

We now hear that word gets out and the people come out to find the formerly demon-possessed man clothed and in his right mind – and this terrifies them. What seems to be great news of liberation is terrifying to the people. Why? Well, likely they have spent years using this guy as their scapegoat, writing him off as some crazy so they didn’t have to look at their own sins. Now that he’s been healed, who will the people hid their sins behind? This healing destabilized their ability to make excuses.

We Christians live in a paradoxical reality for we are both the demon possessed man and simultaneously through our baptism we are received into God’s grace and called to be healers and reconcilers to continue the work of Christ. How can we do the latter if we are the former? Let me suggest the key lies in the pattern of what Jesus does in the story. First he finds out the names of the demons. If we refuse to name our demons, both the individual ones and the corporate ones, we will remain bound to their powers and react out of them. This only perpetuates the demonic activity and its destruction. We too need to name our demons. I’ve given you a few to consider today and naming them is the first step to being healed of them. We need to know and acknowledge them before God in order to face them honestly. When we do, we allow God’s power to enter our lives, especially through this community here at Grace and the Sacraments of the Church, to release us from them. This is the liberation and transformation which Christ promises to all of us and there is no limit to how far God will go to find us and set us free.

Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away.

Happy is he who sees a married woman from far off, commands her to be brought to him, rapes her, and sends her home.

Happy is he who kills the husband of the woman he wants and who, when called out by the prophet of God, begs forgiveness of God.

Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away.

Happy is he who has the wealth to host a dinner and neglect hospitality to the son of God.

Happy is he who sneers at a sinner.

Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away.

Happy is he who rapes an unconscious girl but, because he is such a promising athlete, is only going to spend 90 days in jail.

Happy is he who spews hatred, division, and judgment, and for he is chosen as a presidential nominee.

Happy is he who saves his Christian university’s football program by covering up the sexual assaults perpetrated by his team members.

Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away. [i]

These are supposed to be words of joy and thanksgiving for receiving God’s mercy and forgiveness. But in the cold light of this week’s news of ever rising hatred spewed in our political process, a justice system’s failure to take seriously a victim’s voice, the inability of a convicted rapist and his parents to take responsibility for a crime, collusion to cover up sexual assaults at a Christian university coming into juxtaposition against King David’s rape of Bathsheba and his orchestration of the murder of her husband Uriah and the sneering judgmental rejection of Simon towards a woman seeking Jesus – well, the Psalmist’s words ring just a bit hollow.

We hear today of Nathan, the prophet of God, calling King David out for his sin. And what was his sin? King David saw Bathsheba taking her monthly bath of ritual purity required under the law and he wanted her. He made inquiry and found out she was married to Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s soldiers. He ordered her to come to him anyway – and he raped her. Make no mistake, it was rape – Bathsheba had no choice in the matter. When the King, who is also your husband’s benefactor, summons you, you have no choice in the matter. But given that this story takes place in a very different context, the rape of Bathsheba is not considered a crime against her – it was rather a crime against Uriah for stealing his sexual property. So when Bathsheba sends word to David of her pregnancy, David makes a very elaborate effort to get Uriah to have sexual relations with her to “cover up” the parentage of the child in her womb so he can get away with his theft. When Uriah refuses to have relations with his wife, David takes more drastic measures so that he will not have to be accountable for the unlawful impregnating of Bathsheba, and so he orchestrates Uriah’s death on the battlefield. And God saw it all.

This is why God sent Nathan to call David out on his sin – one he thought was so private and, by all appearances, he had successfully hid. But the Biblical narrative frames this according to Jewish law: a sin against the property rights and life of Uriah the Hittite. The whole metaphoric story of the rich man stealing a lamb for his banquet has to do with stealing property because in the eyes of the law, that’s what Bathsheba was – property of her husband. Did you pick up the fact that in this passage, the writer of this story doesn’t even name her? She’s referred to repeatedly as “the wife of Uriah” not as Bathsheba. And when Nathan calls out David on his sin of “taking the wife of Uriah the Hittite” and orchestrating Uriah’s death, David’s response is, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He does not once mention he has sinned against Uriah or Bathsheba – he reduces his sin to an individual transaction between himself and God.

The danger of reducing sin to only a transaction between an individual and God is that we ignore the very real social impact of what our sins do to other people. We forget the flesh and blood victims who suffer the consequences of our sinful actions. When we reduce sin to merely an individual transaction between ourselves and God, we can confess our transgressions privately to God alone and smugly rest in the assurance of our forgiveness bought by the blood of Christ while refusing all the while to make direct amends to those we have harmed. Forgetting the victims is the first step in ignoring the societal systems which continue to perpetuate violence and degradation of God’s beloved children.

When we reduce sin to only a transaction between an individual and God, when every instance of sin is viewed as a single instance rather than part of a pattern that takes place over and over again, we ignore the systems which perpetuate violence against women and act as if sexual assault is merely a natural consequence of being born female and not just not hiding it well enough.

Jesus was a guest at the home of Simon the Pharisee when a woman, whom the narrator tells us is a sinner, enters the house. For millennia, this woman’s sin has been assumed to be sexual in nature. This is the pervasiveness of the way our culture looks at women - that we are sexual objects so it stands to reason our sins are likely sexual ones. It is interesting that the only sin we have historically ascribed to women, including falsely to Mary Magdalene, is sexual promiscuity. We seem to forget it takes two to tango and we let the men in these stories off the hook.

But if indeed this woman’s sin was sexual, what does this say about the status of women in society in Jesus’ day? She comes to Simon’s house alone. In a day when women actually were property of their husbands or fathers, where were the men she would normally look to for protection? Was she a widow? Had she been turned out by a husband? Was she escaping abuse in her marriage? We don’t know. But for women who are alone and vulnerable, too often the sex trade becomes the only way to survive – both then and now. And what does this say about a society which creates a lucrative market for a woman to sell her body – both then and now? Reducing sin to only a transaction between an individual and God lets us turn a blind eye to forget victims and systems as we look at the women who have been always been slaves to the appetites of men and say like Simon: "You don’t belong at the feet of Jesus."

Jesus turns to face the woman and he says to Simon, “Do you see this woman?” Do you see this woman? Do you see this woman Brock Turner? Do you see this woman David? Do you see this woman Donald Trump? Do you see this woman Ken Starr? Do you see this woman? This woman has come before Jesus in humility seeking God’s mercy and justice for her. Not the kind of earthly justice denied Bathsheba, Brock Turner’s victim, or the thousands of other victims of sexual assault. She seeks the justice of God to remove the stain of her label of “sinner” – the label which Simon continues to hold against her. She comes to Jesus in hope that God will really, truly see her – not for her labels or her sin, but as a whole person. She is seeking the kind of justice that walks up to David and says: You are the man! The justice of God which stands up to every system of oppression and domination and says: You are the man! The justice of the Son of God sitting across the table from Simon and saying: Do you see this woman or do you only see the sinner who offends your delicate sensibilities?

Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sin is put away. There is no question sin has an individual nature – a transaction between us and God – but it cannot only be seen as an individual issue. God’s forgiveness begins with the confession of our sin but it cannot and dare not end there. The grace which God gives us through the cross of Christ is not a private matter – it has social dimensions. God’s forgiveness is a beginning, but it is not a substitute for nor does it excuse us from making amends to those whom we harm. God’s forgiveness is no free pass to turn a blind eye to the systems of domination and oppression fed by our collective sin and willful blindness. God’s forgiveness is the means by which we are set free to act in ways which are healing and reconciling. It gives us the freedom to know our transgressions have been healed from God’s side and asks the question of us, “Now what will you do to restore the relationships you have harmed?”

[i] Inspired by Emmy Kegler: http://emmykegler.blogspot.com/2016/06/do-you-see-this-woman-preaching.html.