Have you been in a situation you really, really wanted to be able to change?
To fix, magically, with the wave of a wand?
I certainly have.
And I do have a magic wand on my desk - a passing gift, years ago, from a child of this congregation.
And I have experimented with waving it to fix things… the copier, the weather; to speed up the permit process at the town hall.
But when I wave that wand, and declare the error code fixed, the weather sunny (or cooler!), the process complete…
Well, let’s just say that the results are not immediate.
In fact, results of most changes in our lives, in the world, are not immediate.
Deciding on a change, declaring something to be true, doesn’t usually have immediate results.
Being declared cancer-free on one doctor visit does not mean we’re instantly back to full health - that’s a process with steps back as well as forward.
One particular birthday does not actually make us adult - in practice. Adulthood is a process of changes - steps backward and forward - before and after the one legal day.
In the same way, one birthday does not make us old (although there is some single day when you get on the AARP mailing list and will never get off it again).
Just like how there was not one day when all enslaved people in the United States became free.
I was thinking about this as we celebrated Juneteenth on Thursday, the 160th anniversary of the day news of the Emancipation Proclamation - President Lincoln’s declaration of the end of slavery in rebel states and territories - reached Galveston, TX with the Union Soldiers to enforce that freedom. Two years, five months, 18 days – Nine hundred days – after the effective date of the proclamation itself.
The commemoration of Juneteenth reminds us that emancipation in the US and Confederate territories was a gradual and complex process, with steps backward and forward. (And that, in fact, some people in the restored United States remained enslaved until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.)
In our lives, in our world, there are moments or days that mark a change. And then there are the slow and complex years of transition before the change is effective, and real, and complete.
That’s true for God’s actions, too.
We see that playing out in Luke’s story about Jesus.
There is a dramatic moment, a memorable day, when Jesus removes the demons possessing a man who has been lost to his community and himself for many years. The drama is elevated when Jesus allows the “legion” of demon - many thousands of demons - to enter and destroy a large herd of pigs.
The Day The Pigs Drowned is going to live in this community’s memory for a loooong time.
And, for all that it’s a day of healing and liberation for a neighbor who has been lost and tormented for many long years, The Day The Pigs Drowned is not exactly a happy occasion for the town.
Everyone is afraid.
The sudden appearance of liberation and healing is wildly unsettling – and it comes with a drastic loss. That’s a lot of pigs – a lot of economic investment – that just went off a cliff into the sea.
So they get up a delegation to ask Jesus to kindly move along, and stop disturbing their peace.
Before Jesus leaves, the liberated man begs to go along, to go away with Jesus.
Which is a thing I’d expect Jesus to be happy about, because a lot of the time when he heals and liberates, Jesus asks – really, instructs – the healed person to follow him.
But this time, Jesus says: Stay here.
Now, that is consistent with Jesus’ usual way of handing someone a new challenge as soon as they’re free to take it up.
Because staying in the town that’s all stirred up and afraid of miracles – and trying to recover from the loss of their pigs – isn’t the easiest thing for the healed person to do.
Every day, his liberation is a reminder to his neighbors that their world has been upset – for better and for worse.
Every day, his hometown is a reminder to the healed man that he used to be captive to demons.
That has always bothered me a bit, about this story.
This miracle of Jesus is thoroughly untidy. Bits of the story go trailing along into the future, unresolved.
A lot more like healing and liberation in the everyday world you and I live in, than like liberation and healing in stories and songs and other gospels.
There’s a moment that marks the change, yes – but it’s a moment that either obscures or reveals a whole long and complex – backward, forward, around and around – process of becoming free, becoming whole.
When Jesus tells the liberated man to stay in the place where he lives, he also commands him to tell his story. To show what God has done.
To stay, and show, and tell, so that the reality of his liberation and healing stays alive in the community. So that as the community recovers from The Day The Pigs Drowned, their story is one of healing together from the uninvited liberating miracle, rather than of shock and dismay. Of changing together – steps forward, steps back – from a community used to demonic captivity into a community built around an experience of healing, around God’s work of transformation.
I suspect it’s necessary also for the man himself to learn how to be free, to be healed and whole, in the midst of a community that’s used to assuming he is broken and doesn’t belong – another process with lots of steps backward, forward, and around.
These days, you and I and the world we live in mostly don’t experience the forces of disruptive evil, the things that corrode and break our humanity, as “demons”. As external spirits that can be uprooted from within us, negotiate with God, and supernaturally seize livestock.
Those forces of corrosive evil, the dehumanizing and destructive tides of the world around us, still work to “possess” people; to keep us captive in inner torment, to isolate us, to create unconscious barriers to seeing our neighbors or strangers as beloved siblings in our human family.
And the miracles and transformations which heal us – which bring liberation and wholeness and reunion and the recognition of the face of God in the eyes of a stranger – are still disruptive. Still tend to make us uncomfortable and anxious.
The experience of sudden relief and release can do that just as much as any experience of loss.
I would still like to be able to wave a magic wand, and get us all the way to our rebalanced, whole, free and holy selves in the same moment as healing begins. To skip all of the adjustment to liberation, all of the missteps and detours of reconciling relationships, of repairing the holes in ourselves, and supporting the healing of others. To go all the way immediately to the happily ever after we haven’t gotten to yet.
But one lesson of the Day the Pigs Drowned,
one lesson of Juneteenth,
is that “all at once” never really happens.
Not even with the miracles of God.
That when we are set free, when we witness others set free, we will need to keep alive that uncomfortable but hope-filled moment for all the long days of change – backward and forward and around – that lead to a whole, healthy, sustained freedom.
We need to tell our stories; to wake up day-by-day and remember; to continually integrate salvation, healing, liberation into who we are – as a community, as individuals.
We need to keep remembering, and responding, to those moments that mark a transformation still unfolding.
So mark your calendars – not just last Thursday, not just this Sunday – but mark your calendars every day, to remember and respond to God’s constant work among us, making us step-by-step holy, and whole, and free.
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