Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: "Being" and "Doing" are One in Christ

Isaiah 65.1-9

Psalm 22.18-27

Galatians 3.23-29

Luke 8.26-39

This story of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac is a rich one; rich in detail and rich in depth of meaning.  There is something here about identity, both the identity of Jesus and of the demoniac; and  linked to the idea of identity is that of vocation, purpose and mission: again, of Jesus and of the demoniac.  But, more subtly, is the  underlying motif of crossing boundaries, of bridging divisions, which have been considering for some weeks now.  The Gerasenes lived across from Galilee and were Gentiles and foreigners to the Jews.  The demoniac was one of them.  Jesus and his disciples cross geographical and cultural boundaries to encounter him.  Identity, mission and boundaries, these motifs weave themselves around the basic miracle-story.

From the start, the question of identity is at the centre of this episode.  Immediately on encountering Jesus, the demoniac – crazy though he may be – recognizes him for who he is, the “Son of the Most High God?” (Luke 8.28)  This poor man who has lost his own identity and place in the world – “for a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in tombs” (Luke 8.27) – knows who Jesus is.  This utter outcast, a foreigner to the Jews and now to his own people, a person alienated even from himself is able to acknowledge who Jesus is and to recognise Jesus’ power; something Jesus’ own followers were rarely able to do.  Yet, he is so lost himself that when Jesus asks his name he can give no better answer than by revealing how torn apart he is:  “My name is legion.” And Jesus crosses the boundary between our world and the world of demons, between madness and sanity, between Jew and Gentile, between neighbour and foreigner and releases this poor man from his torment.  In one fell swoop the true nature of both Jesus’ identity and of his mission is revealed, and the possessed man in acknowledging Jesus’ identity regains his own.

In Jesus, his true nature is intimately connected to his purposes, to the things he is about in the world.  In Jesus, identity and purpose are entwined and interconnected in perfect union.  Jesus does what he does because he is the Son of God, and his identity as Son of God is established because he does what he does.  The philosophical and existential division between “being” and “doing” in human life is gulfed in Jesus, and in Jesus we have the ability to do the same.  That is certainly what happens in the story of the Gerasene demoniac, for the story does not end with his deliverance from his demons.  His healing is completed in the discovering of his purpose and of his vocation.  Recall that the man begs Jesus that he might join him, that he might follow him.  But Jesus sends him away, dismisses him; quite literally sends him on a mission:  “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” (Luke 8.39)  Jesus is not just sending him off, he is sending him with a purpose: as a Gentile to proclaim to the Gentiles the goodness of the God of Israel.  His total healing, his wholeness, happens when his identity is joined to a purpose, a vocation.  And if you think of it, his vocation arises out of his identity: only a Gentile could carry the Good News to the Gentiles, speaking their language and understanding their ways and customs because they were his own.  In his healing, he has begun to be more like Jesus where identity and purpose flow one out of the other, and from and to the other; where “being” and “doing” are not at odds, but where there is a total unity of identity and purpose.

We often live our lives in a divided place, where who we are (or know ourselves to be) is at odds with want we want or do, or indeed, what we are doing.  Paul hints at this condition when he writes to the Romans: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7.19)  We see it also in Mark’s version of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac when the writer tells us that the tormented man “was always howling and bruising himself with stones.” (Mark 5.5)  Like Paul, he is at war with himself.  Yet, in Jesus there is no separation or conflict between identity and purpose, between “being” and “doing”; and in Jesus we too can come to that unity.  God did not in the beginning create us to be divided creatures, our natures and our wills fighting against each other; but instead created us whole.  If, as I mentoned some weeks ago, God was “in Christ God was reconciling the world to [God’s self]” (2 Corinthians 2.19), then also – by extension – in Christ God was reconciling and continues to reconcile us to ourselves.  Salvation means wholeness.  And wholeness is about bridging divisions – within ourselves (in the first instance), but from there between ourselves and others, between nations and cultures; ultimately between God and all of creation.  The Incarnation is a sign of this desire on God’s part.  Jesus is so perfectly human that he manifests for us the Creator’s initial and ultimate intention for human beings, and is so perfectly God that he bridges the division between human beings and God.

What Jesus does for the demoniac in the land of the Gerasenes, he does also for us.  In his power we are given the strength to bring wholeness – salvation – out of our divided and fragmented selves.   Identity and purpose, “being” and “doing” are not opposed to each other, and in Jesus we are recreated into the people God has called us to be, as these two aspects of ourselves dialogue with each other, and to the extent that we are willing to grow more deeply into who we are in God, into our own perfect humanity and perfect divinity.  The demoniac’s encounter with Jesus makes him like Jesus in wholeness of identity and purpose.  Our own encounter with Jesus must do the same for us as individuals and as communities.  Simply recognising Jesus as the “the Son of the Most High God” is not enough, as we see from the demoniac’s confession.  Instead, we are called to recognise our own identity in him as we move away from places of inner divisions, and discern our place in the world, our mission.  And ultimately, it is all about mission, so that we can live out more effectively and honestly what we profess, to bring into union who we say we are and what we do.  Shortly after my arrival in this diocese, I attended a Strength for the Journey Conference in which one of the speakers quoted the Rev’d Ian Douglas, saying “If we have a sense of who we are…then we can be more fully who God has called us to be.”  He also quoted Bishop Dick Chang: “If you don’t have an identity, you don’t have a mission”.  In short, only when we find ourselves, do we find what we ought to be about.  When we discover our true nature, we discover also our true vocation, but the second cannot happen without the first.  Yet, when they do, we can span the divide of being and doing which was God’s purpose for us from the beginning.

Herein lies the challenge for the Church too – locally, nationally and globally.  Our identity – our “being” – as the body of Christ is what ought to define and direct our mission, our “doing”.  When we find a dis-connect and become at odds with ourselves, only our reflection on Christ’s perfect union of identity and purpose can bridge our own gulf between the two.  As the demoniac comes to Jesus in his disconnected distraction, so must the Church constantly and intentionally come to Christ, seeking renewal and reconciliation between the claims she makes as to her identity and the living out of her mission, seeking a to resolve that internal conflict.  And yet,, when she in Christ does resolve that internal conflict between being and doing, she finds that the she faces conflict in the world and we see how in the Gospel, the people turn on Jesus the minute he resolves the conflict in the young man: “Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.” (Luke 8:37)  In large part, that is some of what the Episcopal Church is experiencing, and why she is in some circles vilified and feared – she is daring to make live out realistically the meaning and ramifications of the baptismal covenant.  Nevertheless, we can rejoice that our encounter with Christ has brought our identity in closer union with our purposes and actions in real and concrete ways.

Our fallen state will always keep at odds our “being” from our “doing”, but in the life and health held out to us in Christ these can be reconciled in such a way that we can as individuals and a Church can declare with joy how much God has done for us. (cf. Luke 8:39) and be living and active agents of God’s kingdom.