The Gospel According to Juneteenth

Luke 8:26-39

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 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. 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”— 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.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

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. 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.

When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. 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. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. 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. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “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.

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I didn’t plan to make today all about Juneteenth, really. Back in May, when I realized that June 19th – this newly minted National Holiday – fell on a Sunday, I thought it would be meaningful and fun to collect our Mission Sunday offering for the month in honor of the occasion. And this week I asked Jeannie if we could sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – the Black national anthem - in honor of the day. And then I saw that we’d be reading that bit from Galatians, which promises that, baptized into Christ Jesus, we are no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free, but that we are all ONE, thanks to faith, thanks to the grace of our creator, and thanks to our shared humanity as children of God, too.

So I thought perhaps the stars and the lectionary and the calendar might have aligned in such a way that maybe there’s supposed to be more said and wondered about and learned, here, on this Juneteenth, after all.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who just started learning about Juneteenth, as something worth commemorating, within the last few years or so. It was only declared a national holiday last year, but within the last 2-3 years, Juneteenth started showing up on my Google calendar, much to my surprise. It just showed up, like Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Arbor Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Flag Day, Father’s Day.

And not only was I surprised and curious about that, once I looked into it, I was a little embarrassed that I’d never been taught or told about it before, since it’s been celebrated by Black people in our country since it happened in 1865.

The short story is that June 19th – Juneteenth – marks the day in 1865 when Union soldiers finally announced to enslaved people in Texas, that they were free. What’s sad and significant and worth celebrating about Juneteenth, is that this announcement finally came to those enslaved children of God in Texas – the last state in the country to hear the news – which didn’t happen until more than two months after the end of the Civil War, which the traitorous Confederacy and those longing to keep their right to own people lost, of course. And the announcement of Juneteenth’s liberation came to enslaved Texans more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation which would have otherwise, at least symbolically, granted them their freedom.

So the significance of the Juneteenth holiday is that it means to mark for our country an even fuller, more comprehensive “Independence Day,” than what the 4th of July, ever could have meant for the millions of enslaved Americans who were owned and terrorized and treated as property for so many generations. Maybe you’ve heard what Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave and Black abolitionist had to say to white people about the 4th of July holiday, back in 1852:

So, if we buy what Paul is selling in Galatians, and I hope we do – that our baptism and our faith and the abundance of God’s grace makes us one in Christ Jesus, and that we are no longer bound by the labels and limits and institutions of this world; no longer male or female (remember last week’s sermon about Pride and Pronouns?) … no longer male or female … no longer Gentile or Jew … and no longer slave or free … than the freedom and liberation of Juneteenth is quite a day worth celebrating for all of us, not just our Black neighbors, friends, brothers, sisters, and fellow citizens.

Which brings me to Jesus and this strange story from Luke’s Gospel. It’s especially strange when we take it at face value and try to make 21st Century sense out of this moment when Jesus exorcises a host of demons from a possessed man, sends those demons into a herd of pigs, who are then driven madly into a lake where they drown because, apparently, even though fat floats, these pigs couldn’t swim.

Well, I learned a while ago that some smarter people than me believe this story – like so many stories in Scripture – might have more meaning if we read it literately, rather than just literally. (It’s hard to take this story literally, anyway, when we’re given the impression that Jesus arrives in a boat, on the shores of Gerasa, which was a town 25-30 miles inland from any significant body of water.)

Anyway, these wise scholars point out that the occupying Roman army had a history of terrorizing the Jews in the region of Gerasa, so that when that possessed man names his demon “Legion,” a word used by Rome to quantify its military might, and when that “Legion” of demons gets cast into some unholy, unclean, symbolically sinful swine as far as Jews were concerned, and then drowned, anyone listening to this story in First Century Palestine, would have connected that demonic “Legion” to the “Legions” of the oppressive Roman Empire and realized that Rome just got owned by that Jew, from Nazareth, named Jesus.

The moral and message of the story, then, would have been one of hope and vindication and justice and joy that the Kingdom of God, in Jesus, was more powerful even than the empires of this world. And, of course, that God, in Jesus, always stands for and stands with the outcasts, the outsider, and the oppressed in this world.

So I see a lot of common ground between what Jesus is up to with the possessed man and the Gerasenes and what happened for the enslaved people in our own country a few generations ago: as always, Jesus’ message is one of good news for the poor, freedom for the oppressed and release for the captives. Happy Juneteenth!

Sadly, the other common ground we can find in this story is that not everyone gets that, or wants that, or is willing and able to hear that message of good news.

In Gerasa, it was the swineherds and the townspeople who missed the point. The swineherds were probably mad that their valuable property – all of that livestock – was lost and gone forever. This is, of course, what upset so many slave holders, and the Confederacy, in general, back in the 1860’s, too.

And who knows what made the average bear in Gerasa so afraid that day – that a miracle had happened?; that a possessed man had been made well?; that an outcast had been welcomed in?; that they were being asked to look at him and at themselves and their past treatment of him differently because of what Jesus had done?

Maybe all of that is the kind of thing that made so many – and still makes so many – uncomfortable and unwilling to acknowledge the beauty and fullness of what Juneteenth represents. Maybe all of that is why it took so long for the last enslaved people in our country to get news of their liberation … because their enslavers couldn’t see their humanity or if they could, they refused to acknowledge or atone for how they had oppressed them so sinfully. Maybe it’s why there were armed white people protesting and terrorizing a Juneteenth celebration in Tennessee, just yesterday.

In that same speech about the Fourth of July, by Frederick Douglass, he also says simply, “Oppression makes a wise man mad.” And maybe that’s what was up with that guy who was possessed and cast out and living in the tombs of Gerasa back in Jesus’ day.

“Oppression makes a wise man mad.” I think Jesus would concur. And I think this miracle with the possessed man, the exorcised demons and the drowned pigs is a picture of God’s judgement against oppression of any kind. I think it is a picture of God’s call for justice in an unfair world. And I think it’s an invitation, on a day like Juneteenth, to celebrate that justice when it comes, to work toward more of it however we’re able, and to hope for that kind of liberty and justice for all – and mean it, every day.

Amen

NOTES:

You can read the entirety of Frederick Douglass’ speech HERE.

There’s a great chapter about Juneteenth in Clint Smith’s book How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.

Pride, Pronouns and Holy Trinity

John 16:12-15

[Jesus said,] “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own but speak whatever he hears and declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said, ‘he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’”

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99% of the time strangers mispronounce my last name – and have – for as long as I’ve had it. On the first day of school (“Hall, Hamilton, Harris, HAVEL …”); Making introductions at Synod Assembly (“Pastor Mark HAVEL, from Cross of Grace, New PaleSTINE…”); Every announcer at every baseball game ever… (“Batting for the Dragons, “Jackson HAVEL or Max HAVEL…”)

We rarely correct people. It’s the HAVEL way. I was actually just joking with my son’s new tennis coach, who was asking how to pronounce his name, that there could very well be people in my congregation who don’t know how to say my name because everyone just calls me “Pastor Mark.” And we’re fine with it. Really. We let it slide for the most part. Unless someone cares enough to ask about getting it right, we will be the HAVELs without incident, injury, or offense.

(It’s “HAVEL,” by the way. Like NAVEL with an H. Even though I rarely correct people, relatively speaking, I’ve probably said that about a million times in my life.)

All of this is to say, I have some history with the significance and importance of getting someone’s name right – or not – and wondering about why that matters, if that matters, should that matter, DOES that matter. And I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately where pronouns for gender non-conforming, non-binary, and transgender people in the LGBTQ+ community are concerned. Since June is PRIDE month and since today is Holy Trinity Sunday, I hope where I’m headed with all of this is as practical as it is holy … because I have a confession to make:

I have been confused and frustrated by all of this pronoun stuff lately. And I know many of you have, too. Let me try to explain for those of you who are new to this and may be even more confused than me about it all. And I apologize in advance for whatever I get wrong.

If someone in the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t consider themselves to be straight-up MALE or straight-up FEMALE (what is known now as cis-gender or cis-het-gender), and if they don’t want to be known or identified or limited by either of one those binary adjectives, such a person might prefer to be referred to as “THEY” or “THEM.”

Or, if someone has transitioned – or is in the process of transitioning – from one gender to another – they might prefer to go by “THEM,” instead of something so cut-and-dried as “He” and “Him” or “She” and “Her.” Or, if someone was born a male and transitions to become a female, they might prefer to be known as “THEY” and/or “HER or SHE.”

Like I said, it can get confusing and, I’ll confess, even frustrating, for someone who’s trying to get it right. For example, I know of a public figure who was born a male and transitioned to become a transgender female, with a new stereotypically female name, “MEGAN.” Megan prefers for their pronouns to be “THEY” and “HE” if they’re doing something by way of ZOOM, for example, or the more generic “THEY” and “THEM” if they’re being referred to in the press or the media. Again, this can be confusing and frustrating and I confess – and I mean CONFESS – I’ve thought some uncharitable thoughts about how high-maintenance this seems, how overly-sensitive, how needy, if not arrogant and maybe narcissistic this might be. But I’m trying to learn.

See, as someone who has never cared and never taken it personally when people have gotten my name wrong, I just didn’t understand. Which is the point. I just didn’t understand. And maybe you don’t either. See, as a straight, white, male, it has always been my prerogative to correct people if/when they pronounced my name incorrectly – or not. I could call them on it, if I wanted to – or not. I could give them the whole, “it’s like navel with an “H,” spiel, if I wanted to – or not. In my mind, they are wrong and it is my choice, my option, my prerogative – it is within my power – to let them know they are wrong, if I want to.

But for someone in the LGBTQ+ community, someone like Megan, perhaps, who likely grew up in the closet, on the margins, as an outsider to some, as a sinner to many, THEY were the ones who, their whole life, were “wrong”: in the wrong body… wearing the wrong clothes… attracted to the wrong kind of person… fundamentally WRONG by the estimation of, in the opinion of, according to the theology and judgement of most of the world around them – which would be a terrible way to try to live and move and be in the world – AND they were without the status, without the prerogative, without the power, to demand the simple, holy respect of being seen, identified, understood, and addressed in a way that honored who they are and how they feel about their very self.

And I’m confessing my frustration with this, and my lack of patience and understanding with this, because I realize that it’s lazy of me; and inconsiderate; and lacking in empathy and compassion to not take the time to simply learn – or want to learn – to address someone in a way they wish to be addressed.

And all of this strikes me as practical and holy and relevant to wonder about on what we call Holy Trinity Sunday, this strange day on our church calendar where we’re invited to wonder about and wrestle with God’s identity – and the names we use to call upon, to pray to, and maybe with which we introduce others to the God we worship.

As followers of Jesus, we start with what we learn from Jesus, in Scripture – Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit. That’s our Trinity. That’s our non-binary identity for the God of all creation, if you will. That’s the most common language most of us use to refer to the God made known to us in Jesus. And because Jesus was born a boy and died a man and prayed to God “the Father,” in his first-century, patriarchal, male-dominated culture, we do a lot of that, too. But I think that’s kind of lazy and lacking in faithful creativity and holy imagination.

Because let’s remember that Jesus also likened himself to a mother hen, who gathers her brood under her wings…

In Genesis, we’re told God created humankind “in the image of God” … “male and female he created them.”

And the word for the holy wisdom of God is the feminine name Sophia, which some use in reference to the Holy Spirit…

And remember that Jesus also talked about himself as a shepherd, as a gate, as the Way, the Truth, and the Life…

He’s also the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Son of David…

Jesus would also answer to Lord, Master, Rabbi, Rabbouni…

He was also understood to be Lord, Logos, the Word, Christ, Messiah…

Talk about high maintenance.

So, on this Holy Trinity Sunday, in the middle of PRIDE Month, in this congregation full of people who – just last week – shared how welcoming and affirming we want to be to ALL of God’s children … as I learn about more congregations in our community choosing deliberately NOT to welcome, love and care for people who are LGBTQ … let’s remember that this whole idea of naming God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, matters most if and when it points to the relationship shared among the persons of the Trinity. And that matters most, if you ask me, when it calls us and others into relationship with that same God, into relationship with each other, and into relationship with all of God’s children.

So let’s consider … that when we limit what we’re willing to name or how we’re willing to call upon God, that we also limit all the ways we might see and share the goodness of God’s love, too. We risk limiting what God can look like and how God can show up in our lives, for others, and for the sake of the world, as well.

And let’s stop doing that to each other, too. Let’s be patient with ourselves and one another… let’s listen to, let’s hear, and let’s take the time to really see our neighbors the way God does and the way they see themselves – “he,” “she,” “them,” “they,” whatever. And let’s see and celebrate everyone as created in God’s image with love, in love, for the sake of love at all costs, just as each of us is claimed and called and blessed to be: children of God, marked with the cross of Christ, forever.

Amen