In today’s gospel Jesus and his disciples arrive in the country of the Gerasenes—a place referred to specifically as “opposite Galilee.” This place isn’t simply across the lake of Galilee, it is a place that is symbolically opposite Galilee. It is a place of the gentiles. It is an unclean land where swineherds replace shepherds, and it is a place where Jesus is immediately met by a man who is unclean in many ways. He is said to be possessed by many demons. He is naked. He lives amongst the tombs. He is convulsed by seizures. By a multitude of social and religious conventions of Jesus’ people, this man is untouchable. Even in a land of unclean people, he is chained up and kept guarded.
As he does so many times throughout the gospels, Jesus reaches across the boundaries of social convention, of clean and unclean, to offer him a hand of comfort, healing, and reassurance. He sees here a person instead of an “untouchable.” He recognizes his dignity, recognizes him as a child of God, reassures him that he is worthy of love and care, and, offers him the opportunity for healing and wholeness.
For most of us, there are times in our lives when we too feel opposite Galilee—when we feel separated from God and each other, whether singled out by social convention, by illness, or something we can’t even name.
As many of you know, my son Anthony has Autism. From the time he was about two, we have been seeking early intervention to help him. He had started to lose language at that time, and, underwent speech therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral therapy—all of the different therapies that neuro-diverse people undergo to try to fit into a neuro-typical world—a world that doesn’t understand the world as they perceive it and that expects them to fit into a neuro-typical mold.
As Anthony grew up and started attending kindergarten, he continued to receive extra help in a fully integrated classroom. One day when I wasn’t able to be there to help with pick up from school (a day that reinforced the need for me to be there to help), Jane had Luke in hand, fresh from Preschool, Marie whom she picked up from first grade, and Anthony in her other hand, whom she had just picked up from kindergarten. I don’t recall what Jane said set him off, but Anthony had a huge meltdown and bolted. Parents and teachers on the playground simply stared in disbelief that we would allow a young child to act out like this. But then, emerging from the building, one of Anthony’s integrated service team saw what was happening, stepped across the social boundary of an untouchable situation, and offered compassion and help. She took Marie and Luke by the hand so Jane could run after Anthony to comfort him, keep him safe, and help him recover. It was a moment of blessing for Jane and for our family.
Anthony has already experienced many such moments in his short life. After meltdowns, when he comes back to himself, and realizes what he has done, he often cries. It is embarrassing to him. It hurts him to know he has hurt others. I am incredibly proud of the progress he has made as he has grown, gained tools, and gained mastery over himself—enough so that he was able to attend a week of overnight Science camp this past spring at the end of fifth grade. But the process has been one of constant reassurance in a world that refuses to understand him, that he is loved, that he is dignified, that he is worthy of care and wholeness, that he is an amazing child of God.
We hear a moment for Elijah in our first reading this morning where he too is feeling on the opposite of galilee. He has just faced down 450 prophets of Baal and learned that his life has been threatened by Queen Jezebel. He flees—first to the south to the kingdom of Judah, then forty days into the wilderness to Horeb. This is the place where mt. Sainia is. He climbs the same mountain where Moses encountered God in the cleft of the rock. This morning, Elijah shares that experience. But God’s question is, “why are you here?” Elijah, hiding and in need of reassurance, doesn’t find God in the huge miraculous moments of the earth shaking, or in the powerful wind that splits mountains—he has just been present for such as moment as he called down God’s fire on the prophets of Baal. Instead, he finds God in the silence—in the reassurance that no matter what he is afraid of, no matter what he is fleeing from, no matter what he has experienced, God is with him.
Outside of the experience of neuro diversity, ancient prophets, and Gerasenes, we live amongst a particular part of our community here in Santa Cruz that society has historically and continues to cast aside (and which is also very “opposite Galilee”). We live amongst those who are suffering from mental illness, addiction, homelessness, their inability to cope with the world around them, and OUR inability to cope with them. They suffer from the many demons of being on the outside of society. Part of our work in this place each Monday is to invite them in, to offer them a warm meal, fellowship, a cup of coffee, and a moment of dignity and reassurance, and to remind them that God is with them and that they too are children of God.
This is a reminder that each of us needs at various points in our lives, whether we are cut off from each other, cut off from God, or even cut off from ourselves.
As a non-binary person, I too have experienced that feeling of being cut off from God and opposite Galilee—for about thirty years. Growing up in a nuclear and extended family where some believed strongly that there were conditions on God’s unconditional love, I internalized their beliefs in a way they never intended. Despite their direct teaching that God loved me, what I learned from what they believed and how they spoke about the LGBTQIA+ community was that God couldn’t love me. It was a long road to wholeness and a faith that that affirmed again that I was a beloved child of God, and it took an incredible young person’s courage and willingness to live their truth, who reached across that social boundary to draw me in and remind me that it doesn’t matter what society may believe about people, about me, about those with neurodiversity, about those suffering from mental illness, about those with any of the other conditions that we set up boundaries to separate ourselves from, God loves all of us.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians this morning proclaims that there is no longer Slave or Free, Jew or Greek, Male or Female. To this we can add a whole host of other social conventions: there is no longer neuro diverse and neuro typical, there is no longer homeless and housed, there is no longer mentally ill and mentally healthy, there is no longer straight/cis, and LGBTQIA+—in Christ we are one. We are called on to recognize God in each other, in ourselves, and to lift up those around us and draw them into God’s love and embrace, to give them a sense of wholeness, healing, belonging, forgiveness, and to allow themselves to be loved by God and others.
As we enter into this Green Growing Season, as it is called in Godly Play, we enter into what the church calls Ordinary Time—not that it is mundane or pedestrian, but that these are the numbered Sundays after Pentecost. In this time of Summer and Fall leading to our next church new year in Advent, we enter into a time of exploring many of the ways in which Jesus’ ministry was a ministry to all people, and the ways in which we are called to continue on in Christ’s ministry to each other.
May this be a time of blessing to all of us as we are reminded that each of us is a child of God, that each of us reflects that image of the divine in which we are made, and that each of us is called to wholeness, to experience the love that is around us, to share it with others, and to bea blessing. Amen.
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