{"id":1224,"date":"2010-06-01T14:44:02","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T14:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=661"},"modified":"2017-08-26T15:26:29","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T19:26:29","slug":"what-have-you-to-do-with-me-doug-johnson-hatlem-may-23-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/?p=1224","title":{"rendered":"Mark's Gospel 6: What Have You to Do with Me? – Doug Johnson Hatlem – May 23, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

View Archived Sermons <\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Text: Mark 5:1-20<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

What have you to do with me?\u00a0 This is, not only the question with which a tortured soul, or the spirits within him, challenge Jesus upon encounter in our reading this morning from Mark chapter 5.\u00a0 It would also be a fair, if provocative, question to be pressed by modern hearers of Gospel exorcisms, who struggle with psychological trouble.\u00a0 Or by those who walk closely with them.\u00a0 What have you to do with me <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>could be asked of the text itself. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>What have you to do with me could be asked yet again of Jesus,<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>whom the Gerasene or Gadarene demoniac announces as Son of the Most High God.\u00a0 But more importantly, modern sufferers of mental illness might reasonably ask of the man among the tombs himself, <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>what have you to do with me? \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Are your struggles really my struggles? \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Could Jesus or his followers really heal me with a few simple words? \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Doubtful, at best, might understandably come the answer. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Better, it would seem, to pass over such texts altogether when thinking about the vexing issues around contemporary psychiatric care. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Now there are a number of approaches that Christians have taken when thinking through mental health and New Testament exorcism texts.\u00a0 We\u2019ll consider some of those approaches this morning, but let\u2019s begin here, with a viewpoint which insists that these texts and mental health have nothing to do with each other.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>It may or may not be where we will end up this morning.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>But a denial of relevance is, nevertheless, the beginning of wisdom when approaching the Gerasene demoniac and other such texts in the New Testament. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Conservative literalism, taken to its logical conclusion, would suggest that many of those who suffer acute psychiatric problems are not sick, but possessed.\u00a0 I sat next to Harris, a good friend of mine from the streets, and listened as he wept last year.\u00a0 His girlfriend, he insisted, was not afflicted by a bipolar disorder, she was under the influence of demons.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the Bible said. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Liberal scientism, on the other hand, has a tendency to blithely universalize human experience.\u00a0 It often assumes, in this regard, that there is little to no difference between our world and the world of the text.\u00a0 The major difference being only that we have progressed beyond \u201cthem\u201d; <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>we understand things scientifically where they understood them magically.\u00a0 A skilled practitioner, on this view, might possibly diagnose young children, supposedly healed or exorcised by Jesus, with epilepsy.\u00a0 Many of the prophets, especially Ezekiel, seem to be suffering from schizophrenia.\u00a0 Our subject this morning, among the tombs? <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Multiple personality disorder.\u00a0 We are legion.\u00a0 But wait a minute, we now call that Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is not to be confused with dissocial personality disorder.\u00a0 But there are strong clinical arguments from a large faction of psychiatrists that there is no such thing as Dissociative Identity Disorder, or that if there is it is only brought on by the problems of talk therapy.\u00a0 Who knows what this disorder will look like by the time the Bible of psychiatry, the DSM, publishes its fifth edition in 2013?\u00a0 And that isn\u2019t even to mention the self-harming aspects of the text, which could suggest a borderline personality disorder.\u00a0 To get into the diagnostic and treatment possibilities of these disorders leads into an incredible morass.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>A woman we know very well at Sanctuary displays almost all of the signs of what is currently known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, especially a very convincing range of multiple personalities.\u00a0 And get this, when she tires or is ejected from wherever she has most recently been living, she often winds up sleeping and wandering among the tombstones at a church with a large graveyard not very far from where we are sitting this morning.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Nevertheless, it is very hard to see how Jesus\u2019 exorcism of the Gerasene Demoniac can readily be applied today to our friend among the tombs, whom I\u2019ll call Rhonda.\u00a0 Rhonda, from what we know about her and her past, which is quite a lot actually, may very well have been exorcised at some point over the last thirty years.\u00a0 As evangelical as we are at Sanctuary, none of us for a moment think that we have the power to see Rhonda healed with a few spoken words.\u00a0 Those of us who know her best have not even discussed it.\u00a0 We all suspect, I believe, that such an attempt would end disastrously, or even if it ended well, the rite would have to be performed and reperformed continuously as is so often the case with those who claim the power to exorcise.\u00a0 But modern medicine, a liberal or scientific point of view, also offers very little by way of solution.\u00a0 Identity and personality disorders have proven fairly impervious to modern medicine.\u00a0 A number of initially successful sounding therapeutic suggestions have failed when attempted in widespread fashion or controlled clinical settings.\u00a0 A very substantial number of august medical bodies recommend against attempts to medicate individuals afflicted by such disorders.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>So if Liberal Scientism and Conservative Literalism are unsuccessful, perhaps we should simply affirm that we cannot compare the situation of the Gadarene Demoniac and that of my friend Rhonda, at least not where the question of treatment, healing, or help comes in. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Before we get to that point, however, let\u2019s have a closer look at the text this morning:<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Jesus arrives in the region of the Gerasenes which, we are told, is on the other side of the sea.\u00a0 This is significant.\u00a0 If I had been more diligent, I would have the main map from Marilyn\u2019s sermon up behind me \u2026 In the early chapters of Mark, Jesus crosses and returns across the sea three times.\u00a0 On the Western bank of the Galilee are towns and countryside which are predominantly Jewish.\u00a0 Predominating the Eastern shore and extending considerably South, primarily along the Eastern side of the Jordan River, is the region which eventually became known as the Decapolis.\u00a0 The Decapolis was a region of ten cities \u2013 or so,\u00a0 it fluctuated over time.\u00a0 These cities, this countryside, was dominated by Greco-Roman culture and often proved to be the site of incredible conflict as well as of creative encounter between Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures.\u00a0 Aldred spoke marvelously of the conflict between Roman values and the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 It would take a very long time indeed to go into the contours of creative encounter between the Greco-Roman and Semitic culture. Ched Meyers\u2019 writings on the Gospel of Mark tell us that this was a region, in fact, where retired military personnel settled upon land given to them for their service to the Roman Empire. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Immediately when Jesus steps out of the boat he is greeted by a man with an unclean spirit living among the tombs.\u00a0 Now, \u201cimmediately\u201d in Mark\u2019s Gospel signals a narrative shift, and there is much that is different from the surrounding texts \u2013 most significantly, Jesus uncharacteristically abandons the mode of secrecy when he concludes his time here.\u00a0 (We all remember chanting, \u201cshhh, don\u2019t tell, it\u2019s a secret\u201d during Tim\u2019s introductory sermon, do we not?)<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>The text spends several verses describing the terrors of this man: breaking chains, howling, bruising himself with stones, awake both night and day.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>In verses seven through nine we witness a subtle, but unmistakable supernatural power contest.\u00a0 The power to name was very genuinely understood as the power to control.\u00a0 The loud voice coming out of the man attempts to control Jesus by naming him: \u201cWhat have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?\u201d\u00a0 And then comes a stern command: \u201cDo not torment me.\u201d\u00a0 The command sits side by side in Mark 5 with the naming of Jesus, though in the following verse we are told that the attempt to control Jesus had been preceded by an initial command from Jesus himself: \u201cCome out of the man, you unclean spirit.\u201d\u00a0 Notice here, how Jesus takes a slightly less confrontational route.\u00a0 Where the man with the unclean spirit has forthrightly named Jesus, Jesus instead asks the man \u201cWhat is your name?\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cMy name is Legion: for we are many.\u201d \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>In our language, and very much on account of this text, legion has multiple meanings, including simply a reference to a large number.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 day, it clearly referred to a troop of Roman soldiers numbering from three to six thousand.\u00a0\u00a0 This was the Decapolis, remember.\u00a0 This is where senior Roman soldiers are retiring on newly settled lands.\u00a0 This is a contest between Jesus, Son of the Most High God and a Roman Legion, commanded finally by Caesar, Son of the Most High God. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Soon the spirits beg and are granted leave to enter into thousands of pigs, grazing nearby.\u00a0 And then pigs fly \u2026 off the cliff and into the sea where they drown.\u00a0 Now, it is often noticed by commentators that pigs are unclean in Jewish culture.\u00a0 But this does little to advance our understanding of the text.\u00a0 More helpful is Ched Meyers\u2019 further notice that \u201cpig\u201d was a derisive term for a newly recruited Roman soldier.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the contemporary use of the term \u201cpig\u201d for police officers.\u00a0 In other words, Jesus, Son of God, ruler of the Reign or Kingdom of God has just symbolically become a new Moses figure; he has drowned the armies of Caesar in the Sea of Galilee as Moses is said, by the power of God, to have drowned the Egyptian Army in the Red Sea.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>The swineherders, the people in charge of these \u201cPigs\u201d, are understandably shaken.\u00a0 They run into the surrounding cities and country to spread the alarm.\u00a0 And when people arrive, there he is, the unsubduable terror of the entire region, \u201cthe very man who had the legion,\u201d \u201cthe demoniac sitting there and clothed and in his right mind.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>\u201cAnd,\u00a0 \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>they were afraid.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>So they beg Jesus to leave the neighbourhood.\u00a0 And he does.\u00a0 And the man who has been healed begs to go with him.\u00a0 But Jesus refuses.\u00a0 And Mark\u2019s Jesus does something remarkable.\u00a0 He abandons his concern with secrecy.\u00a0 \u201cGo home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord\u201d \u2013 the Lord, master of the universe, conqueror of the Romans, winner of the contest, THE Son of God \u2013 \u201ctell them how much THE LORD has done for you and what mercy he has shown you.\u201d\u00a0 There are two really, really tremendous things afoot here, in my view.\u00a0 First, Jesus didn\u2019t let this guy become a follower.\u00a0 He immediately becomes a proclaimer.\u00a0 No discipleship training.\u00a0 No church.\u00a0 No community.\u00a0 I frankly don\u2019t understand this.\u00a0 And, where Jesus\u2019 presence leaves the citizens of the Decapolis terrified, the man\u2019s ministry among them bears fruit.\u00a0 By the end of these verses, the sending of the healed man results in the turning of fear into amazement.\u00a0 A local messenger of Jesus succeeds in bringing the good news where Jesus\u2019 presence itself reduced the citizenry to terrible fear. \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>Michelle\u2019s sermon a few weeks back made use Lydia Harder\u2019s book on Mark which treats the parable of the sower as a template through which to read most of the rest of the Gospel.\u00a0 Lydia notices something interesting when using this methodology for Mark 5 and the Gerasene demoniac.\u00a0 The sower, often thought to be Jesus himself, does not determine whether a good harvest comes forth.\u00a0 It is the soil, which is seen to be either good or bad soil.\u00a0 According to Lydia, the Gospel of Mark as a whole has three types of people as varying kinds of soil: the insider, the outsiders, and the potential fruitful followers.\u00a0 The insiders and the outsiders are flatter characters, they are good soil and bad soil respectively and there is little to nothing that can be done to change this.\u00a0 The potential fruitful followers are rounder and more nuanced characters.\u00a0 Most of us would fit into that category.\u00a0 We need to be convinced and shaped and encouraged to be the right kind of soil, the kind that can produce fruit.
\n\u00a0 The insiders and the outsiders, meanwhile, fit into a dualistic mode where some are for and some are against the kingdom of God.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But Lydia notices something truly wonderful, the demoniac brings forth an abundant harvest to the amazement of all.\u00a0\u00a0 Jesus, as the sower, needed to sow the seed for the harvest to come forth, but we must notice that for the Reign of God, the one afflicted by demons turns out to have been an insider all along!\u00a0 He needs no training or encouragement or cajoling once the seed is sown.\u00a0 As Lydia puts it, \u201cinsiders that bear fruit can be identified because of the unexpected bounty of the harvest.\u201d<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>A recent and very long article in the New York Times may be helpful in conclusion here.\u00a0 The article is entitled \u201cThe Americanization of Mental Illness.\u201d\u00a0 It argues a number of things very persuasively.\u00a0 The major point, however, is that madness or what we now generally call mental illnesses are, in fact, localizable phenomena.\u00a0 Different regions and different countries have very different mental disorders.\u00a0 And we do the world and ourselves a disservice when we attempt to categorize everything around the world according to American psychiatric diagnoses.\u00a0 Eating disorders in Hong Kong, for example, showed a dramatic and alarming shift and increase when local terms, diagnoses, and treatments were replaced by North American categories and treatments.\u00a0 We do the same thing when we think we can readily understand and diagnose what was happening in the world of the biblical text.\u00a0 Yes, the man among the tombs was a personality on the border of two worlds, one Jewish and one Greco-Roman.\u00a0 But we do no one any favors by assuming that we have progressed beyond \u201cthem\u201d, that here we have a borderline personality disorder just like those in our world, and that Jesus may have been even more effective if he could have been privy to modern medicine.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>[***At this point, for a couple of reasons, I set aside my written text, and concluded mostly ad lib.\u00a0 The part below in italics is a brief, idealizied summary of what I remember adlibbing, the part in regular text, I read, though not necessarily word for word.\u00a0 I apologize for the inconvenience! Perhaps in an upcoming P.O.M. I\u2019ll write what I think I would have really liked to have concluded!***]<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>And now we come to the point where I wish that the fire drill had been scheduled.\u00a0 Right here, near the end of my sermon!\u00a0 It could have rescued me!\u00a0 I\u2019ve turned over far more soil than I could possibly bring to harvest in the few minutes I have left!\u00a0 So I\u2019ll leave you this morning without a rousing conclusion, even though I have much more that I would like to say.\u00a0 Sometimes turning over the soil and letting it sit is the best thing to do anyway.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>The one thing I will say, is that caring for people in a different kind of political community, a community striving to embody the Reign of God makes a difference for mental health issues. People often ask us at Sanctuary how much of our community is afflicted by mental illness.\u00a0 We often say, it depends on how you count, 15, 25, 60, 70, nearly 100%?\u00a0 Part of the problem is that the DSM that I referred to earlier has such a wide range of diagnoses and symptoms that nearly everyone of us, staff included, could fit into some sort of diagnoses.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine, really, what normal is supposed to look like in our world.\u00a0 At Sanctuary we are striving to include the widest number of poor and marginalized folks in our community as possible, and it makes a difference.\u00a0 People who in other churches would seem like the odd person out, the one who needs to be cared for, or watched carefully, would be the most high functioning members of our community.\u00a0 I remember leaving Simeon in the care of one such fellow quickly at one point when I went to help break-up a big fight that had erupted in the midst of a drop-in.\u00a0 And it was just fine, the way things turned out.<\/font><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/font>What have you to do with us, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>And with Rhonda? \u00a0<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>And with all those who are psychologically afflicted?<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font>[I promised someone that I\u2019d include a link the the NYT\u2019s article I referred to here.\u00a0 Her it is: http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/10\/magazine\/10psyche-t.html?scp=1&sq=americanization%20of%20mental%20illness&st=cse]<\/font><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

View Archived Sermons \u00a0 Text: Mark 5:1-20 What have you to do with me?\u00a0 This is, not only the question with which a tortured soul, or the spirits within him, challenge Jesus upon encounter in our reading this morning from Mark chapter 5.\u00a0 It would also be a fair, if provocative, question to be pressed by modern hearers of Gospel exorcisms, who struggle with psychological trouble.\u00a0 Or by those who walk closely with them.\u00a0 What have you to do with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons-a-worship-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4005,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions\/4005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tumc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}