Confronting the Ghosts that Haunt Us

6-23- 19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Monday was the four-year anniversary of the murder of nine members of Mother Emanual AME Church in Charleston South Carolina. As these nine people, including the pastor, gathered for Bible study that evening, they welcomed a newcomer, a young white man, into their midst. For hours this man, Dylan Roof, sat with them, until they bowed their heads in prayer… and that’s when he opened fire, killing 9 people, before driving away from the scene.

On Monday night and also on Wednesday, the celebration of Juneteenth, a new documentary about the event showed in select theaters. It is unfortunate that it only had these 2 showings, and our own bishop Pat Davenport regrets that she herself could not see it. But I did. I made it a point to go, because I think it’s a something especially that all ELCA church members SHOULD see, and NEED to see.

Why? Because Dylan Roof was baptized and confirmed in an ELCA church. Because the ELCA is THE MOST WHITE Protestant denomination in the United States.. Because we as denomination have historically abandoned and neglected our African American churches and pastors, beginning from the very first African American pastor Jehu Jones… who was never actually paid for his work. Because one of our other ELCA synods who a bishop publicly made racist comments… and those comments can still be seen on Youtube…  and just a few weeks ago this bishop was RE-ELECTED.

Because we still hear things like “my old neighborhood in Philadelphia has REALLY CHANGED…” and we all know what it REALLY MEANS.

Because ae are a haunted people – haunted by the legacy and the actions of one of ours, Dylan Roof. We are a haunted people – haunted by our country’s original sin of slavery, Jim Crow, institutional racism, discrimination, and white privilege. Haunted, tormented, paralyzed, controlled, imprisoned by the demons who cause us to torment, control, and imprison innocent people.

The name of the demon that controlled the man Jesu healed was named Legion, for they were many. This man lived in a place where a Jewish man like Jesus would not seek out to go if he could help it – or if he could avoid it. A graveyard, in a city that respectable people did not travel - the first-century equivalent of a place name you would follow with “be sure to lock your car” or “be careful where you park” or “don’t go there at night.”  This place, Gerasa was indeed a location haunted by tragic history – it was the site where a thousand men were killed by the occupying Romans, who then took their families prisoner and burned down the city. Some of the people buried in that very graveyard were those victims. One of these legions of Roman soldiers had a mascot – a pig. More than a little ironic, considering what happened to the demons after Jesus cast them out.

Places haunted by the history of trauma and violence are everywhere. Cities in the South like Charleston may have its history of the Klu Klux Klan, lynching, and the arson of black churches, but we “up here” in the “enlightened North” don’t get a pass. Over the last four hundred years, Philadelphia has its share of racist history: on the corner of Front and Market street, where there is now a bus stop, African human beings were bought and sold, and the first – but not the last - separations of families began in this country. And since then, that history continued with violent white mobs, white transit worker strikes, redlining, not to mention the blatantly bigoted history of Levittown. When the “inner city” and urban areas became somewhere scary to flee from, suburbs like Levittown promised to be bastions of “safety” and whiteness. 

But safety is the exact opposite of where Jesus tends to go. Jesus didn’t think twice to go to a place that others would shrink from in fear, to confront a demon in a graveyard in a place so haunted by death. Jesus cast out those demons and gave this man his identity back. This man had become lost under the sway of Legion, and now he is found.

This healing was good news for this man, but it was not so good news for the people of the surrounding city and country. They saw the man freed from his demons, and it terrified them… so much so that they asked Jesus to leave. This did not win Jesus any popularity contests. Perhaps the people were so used to their demons being made manifest, that they could not imagine life without them. The demons became their identity, and without the demons, there would not be anything left.

The demons that control us are Legion, for they are many. They are racism, white privilege, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia…. which are really just many names for the same thing: fear. And once you know the names of your demons, you can’t un-name them. Like once you see the effects of racism, you can’t un-see them. You can try to hide it, deny it, bind it up, chuck it away, shoving in the graveyard, but it will still be there, prowling around, howling and haunting, present and waiting in the background, ready to claim another victim. Or nine.

These demons bind us and drive us into the tombs, into places of death. We become their slaves, held in thrall by their favorite minions, hate and fear. We are held captive to these demons and cannot free ourselves. We may even feel as though we belong to them.

That day, Jesus crossed the lake, crossed boundaries, and double crossed some demons in order to save a man from this place of death. No lake is too wide, no place is too remote, no boundary that Jesus cannot cross. Jesus shows us the power of the living God - to call US too out of places of death. Because not even death is a boundary Jesus cannot cross.

That day, Jesus looked the demon Legion straight in the eye, said, “Not this one, not today, this one’s mine,” and he cast the demons, by means of pigs, into the lake, to be gone forever. On Good Friday, and every day of OUR lives, Jesus looked sin and death straight in the eye, and said about YOU, “Not this one, not today, this one’s mine.” And three days later, not sin, not death, not even the stone door of the tomb could keep him from crossing back into life, bringing all of us with him, and making us one.

We belong to Christ. We all have been clothed with Christ in our baptisms, and reminded of our true names as Children of God. As Paul wrote, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” We are bound and we are free. We are citizens and we are Christians. We are sinners and we are forgiven. We have died and we are alive. We are followers of Jesus, who lived by crossing borders, welcoming strangers, and reconciling divisions.  We are followers of Christ, who died, and lives, and reigns triumphant in the kingdom to which we belong.

When we live into the reality of this kingdom – this “no divisions”/ border-crossing, stranger-welcoming kingdom, we are going to be about as popular as Jesus. Which is to say, not very. Jesus got kicked out of that region for what he did. And our friends and families might be made more than a little uncomfortable when we tell them that the joke they just told or the comment they just made is racist. Or when we refuse to blame people in poverty when they have been made so by the same system that has benefited us. Others won’t understand. But we will know – we will know that we are doing kingdom work, and that is holy, and worth doing. Amen.