sardines and swine

 

I like a day that belongs to me, with nothing on calendar, nothing to do but sink deeper into Retirement with a capital "R" - - wilderness, a desert of sorts. Some days are like that, some not. Saturday was, but not Sunday, not yesterday Monday, not today Tuesday, not Wednesday tomorrow when Linda's car has an 8:30 shop appointment, show up and wait.

Today is Pruitt then maybe Simply Seafood but don't tempt the Lord thy God with thy fixed calendar, nomesane?

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Yesterday, Monday morning, Happy Papa: sardines for breakfast. Unless I'm enjoying them with saltine crackers (a carb that's known to put me down) I often like mustard on sardines. Monday morning, French's regular yellow mustard on - - actually these were sprats from the Baltic. Sprats are almost but not quite noticeably different from sardines, enough though that I'm sticking with sardines.

A Fathers' Day gift honoring my taste for sardines, the turquoise dish may be sized just right for holding a standard sardine tin, I'll try that soon.

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On our lectionary calendar, this coming Sunday will be the second Sunday after Pentecost. Under our old calendar it was the first Sunday after Trinity. The old ways were best, and as everyone who is dead now complained at the Time, which was 1976 with the New Prayer Books, "they've taken away our Gesima Sundays." We didn't know what Gesima was all about, only that, in our opinion, it made us different. Now, with the Revised Common Lectionary that the Episcopal Church now shares with the rest of so-called "Mainline Christianity" we are into the Season after Pentecost when each parish has the choice of Track One or Track Two for the Sunday readings.

They are different: in Track One, the Old Testament lesson and its responsive Psalm follow their own course, reading good old Time Sunday school Bible stories through books of the OT, book by book. I liked it because it was good for adult Sunday school Bible study, and because I like the Bible stories, and as a parish priest I enjoyed having the stories for preaching texts instead of our standard practice of preaching on the Gospel reading for the day.

Track Two uses the church's older practice in which the Old Testament reading and responsive Psalm are related to the Gospel reading in some way, sometimes clear, often a real stretch. 

We are directed to choose either Track One or Track Two and stick with our choice for the season. Choosing is the rector's responsibility, and I don't know yet what it'll be, but next Sunday's bulletin should clarify that. Either I Kings 19 about Ahab, Jezebel and Elijah, or Isaiah 65 about the Lord's destructive vengeance and then restoration. In the meantime, for now I'll look at the Gospel reading and/or the Second (Epistle) reading. Here's our Gospel reading for next Sunday:

Luke 8:26-39 (Mark 5:1-20)

Jesus and his disciples 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.

This story is loaded with possibilities for Sunday school Bible discussion. 

Gospel Luke lifts the story from Mark 5:1-20 with little change (Matthew changes it significantly, with two demoniacs). Mark says there were two thousand pigs. "Legion" and the unclean swine are said to be oblique references to the legions of Roman soldiers defiling the Holy Land, and the pigs' stupidity and drowning a chuckle-worthy element of Mark's story. 

In Mark, Jesus tells the healed man, "Go tell ... how much the Lord (ho Κύριός) has done for you." Luke changes it to, "... how much God (ho Θεός) has done for you," but both go on to say the ex-demoniac went out and proclaimed how much Jesus had done for him: what might you make of that difference? Neither Luke nor Mark had your today's Trinitarian understanding of Jesus as God the Son (Son of God, but not God the Son). 

This story, which scholars of the Jesus Seminar conclude was Mark's composition, is batched with other healing miracles, including the daughter of Jairus and the woman with the issue of blood. 

How to preach it so that it carries meaning for folks today when Jesus isn't around to heal illness, cast out demons, and raise the dead? Which he does in the synoptic gospels as works of power when he comes upon a needy situation (different from the "signs" in Gospel John, that Jesus does deliberately in order to show who he is). 

Throughout Mark's gospel, the demons always know who Jesus is, while those around him, his disciples, do not (though we do and may be frustrated with the disciples' blindness, which is part of Mark's agenda). In this case, even in Mark, there's none of the so-called Markan Secret or Messianic Secret with Jesus shushing the demons and others; quite the opposite, Jesus tells the healed man to go tell everyone what has happened, and he does.  

Can a preacher tell a skeptical congregation that Jesus heals physical ailments, when their experience of life is most likely to be that God is distant, remote, silent, non-responsive, not home? The preacher will have to say something: what does this Bible story say to you that's helpful?

Maybe the closing lines, that while you cannot go with Jesus physically, he nevertheless calls you to go about proclaiming him?

Yesterday's and this morning's ramble. I'm gonna leave it there.

RSF&PTL

T89&c