Ann I. Hoch - Sermon Untitled (June 21, 1998)

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-	The second reading is from the Galatians, chapter three.	0:07
	Now before faith came, we were imprisoned,	0:12
	and guarded under the law, until faith would be revealed.	0:16
	Therefore the law was our disciplinarian, until Christ came.	0:20
	So that we might be justified by faith, but now that faith	0:26
	has come, we are no longer subject to an disciplinarian	0:31
	for in Christ Jesus, we are children of God through faith.	0:34
	As many of you were baptized into Christ, have closed	0:39
	yourself with Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek,	0:43
	there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer	0:47
	male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.	0:51
	And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's	0:58
	offering, heirs according to the promise,	1:01
	this is the word of the Lord.	1:06
	The third reading is from the Gospel	1:12
	according to Saint Luke, chapter eight.	1:15
	Then they arrived to the country of	1:18
	Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.	1:20
	As he stepped out on land, a man of the city,	1:23
	who had demons who met him, for a long time	1:26
	he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house	1:29
	but in a tomb, when he saw Jesus, he fell down before him,	1:33
	and shouted at the top of his voice,	1:37
	"What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most	1:40
	high God, I beg you, do not torment me!"	1:42
	For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to	1:47
	come out of the man, for many times it had seized him,	1:50
	he was kept under guard, and bound with chains and shackles,	1:55
	but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demons	2:00
	into the wilds, Jesus then asked him, "What is your name?"	2:03
	He said, "Legion," for many demons had entered him.	2:10
	They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.	2:16
	Now on the hillside, a large herd of swine was feeding,	2:20
	and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these.	2:25
	So he gave them permission, so then the demons came out	2:28
	of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed	2:32
	down the steep bank into the lake, and was drowned.	2:36
	When the swine herd saw what had happened, they ran off	2:41
	and told it in the city and in the country.	2:44
	Then people came out to see what had happened.	2:47
	And when they came to Jesus, they found the man, from	2:50
	whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus	2:54
	clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.	2:57
	Those who had seen it, told them how the one who had been	3:04
	possessed by demons had been healed.	3:07
	Then all the people of the surrounding country of	3:10
	the Gerasenes, asked Jesus to leave them, for they were	3:13
	seized with great fear, so he got into the boat	3:17
	and returned, the man from whom the demons had gone	3:21
	begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away	3:25
	saying, "Return to your home, and declare	3:30
	how much God has done for you."	3:34
	So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much	3:37
	Jesus had done for him, this is the word of the Lord.	3:41
	[Congregation] Praise the Light.	3:47
-	I'd like to take a moment of personal privilege,	4:00
	to give thanks to God for the ministry of this place,	4:04
	for the staff and the congregation and all those here,	4:10
	and especially on this day to give thanks to God for	4:14
	the ministry and witness of Deborah Brazil.	4:19
	I preached in this chapel on Deborah's first Sunday,	4:23
	and I recalled it last night, and I think it's	4:26
	a fitting close for both of us to be here, sharing	4:29
	in the leadership of worship this morning.	4:33
	But I do thank you, Deborah, for what you have meant to me.	4:36
	Let us pray.	4:42
	Oh, God, silence in us any voice but your own,	4:47
	that hearing your word, we may believe and obey, amen.	4:53
	Our culture	5:02
	is often loathe to name things	5:05
	what they are,	5:08
	we disguise the truth with clever words,	5:12
	firings become downsizing,	5:17
	lying or cheating is a character flaw,	5:21
	unfaithfulness becomes an affair of passion,	5:27
	gluttony, drunkenness and greed	5:34
	get labeled addictions,	5:38
	evil moreover, is represented by	5:42
	a vapid theology that suggests nothing worse	5:47
	than mere unpleasantness	5:52
	or absence of good,	5:55
	the scripture lesson for today,	5:59
	forces us to take seriously the	6:02
	demonic dimension of life	6:05
	and Jesus' power over it.	6:09
	But first, we need to ask	6:13
	just where is the demonic located,	6:17
	this story from the Gospel of Luke, sheds some light	6:23
	on the answers to that question with straight forwardness	6:27
	and an ironic twist,	6:32
	lets consider first the situation	6:37
	of the man from the city, Gerasenes,	6:41
	he is unwelcome,	6:46
	the one rejected by his community.	6:49
	Granted, he wore no clothes	6:54
	nor lived in a house,	6:58
	pretty strange by any conventional standards,	7:01
	his neighbors did not want him running loose	7:05
	in their neighborhood, so they kept him under guard	7:09
	and bound with chains and shackles,	7:13
	but he broke the bounds, and ran into the wilds	7:18
	and lived among the tombs,	7:23
	you know it seems every community	7:28
	has some unwelcome element we would like to	7:30
	keep out of the spheres of our lives,	7:35
	not in my neighborhood, how many times have we heard	7:40
	that, better yet,	7:45
	how many times have we said that?	7:48
	The public schools decide to place children	7:53
	impaired with a variety of emotional, cognitive,	7:56
	and physical conditions in all classrooms.	8:00
	We worry about how the teachers and other children	8:07
	will be affected,	8:09
	why can't special education classes	8:12
	have their own rooms, corridors, even entrances?	8:16
	The county buys a house for the rehabilitation of	8:24
	substance abusers, uh-oh,	8:27
	recovering addicts are unpredictable and uncontrollable.	8:31
	What if they back slide, they will share our	8:36
	sidewalks, and lurk outside as we walk to our cars.	8:41
	There are numerous ways to deal with those	8:49
	who are unwelcome, to banish them, control them,	8:51
	keep them out of the way,	8:58
	Pat Conroy, in his novel,	9:01
	Prince of Tides, describes starkly what	9:03
	it must be like from the other side.	9:06
	In mental hospitals, no matter how humanistic	9:10
	or enlightened,	9:14
	keys are the manifest credentials of power.	9:16
	The steel asterisks of freedom and mobility.	9:21
	The march of orderlies and nurses is accompanied	9:26
	by the alienating cacophony of singing keys,	9:29
	striking against thighs, annotating the passage of	9:33
	the free, when you find yourself listening to their	9:38
	keys and owning none, you will come close to	9:42
	understanding the white terror of the soul,	9:47
	that comes from	9:52
	being banished from all commerce with human kind.	9:53
	We have a glimpse of where the	10:01
	demonic is located from one angle.	10:03
	But I do not mean to imply that there isn't more.	10:08
	And here it is, the unwelcome power.	10:12
	The unwelcome power is any source of evil,	10:20
	whether in an individual or human systems and structures.	10:25
	One biblical commentator writes of this story about	10:31
	the demoniac, even if one were to accept demon	10:36
	possession, as a way to name the disintegration of	10:40
	someone's personality, that we recognize as mental	10:45
	illness, and even if we were to recognize exorcism	10:48
	as a way to speak about healing, Luke's story is	10:53
	marked by such grotesque and fantastic descriptions,	10:59
	that it is like a caricature,	11:04
	drawn in primary colors.	11:07
	The fact is that we are not simply faced with	11:11
	an interesting medical case, but with the presence	11:15
	of the demonic,	11:20
	evil is real not theoretical,	11:23
	and none of us has to look further than ourselves,	11:29
	to know the demons that we struggle with.	11:34
	Self absorption, control, addictions of	11:37
	every kind, dishonesty, mistrust, jealousy,	11:41
	we can fill in the blanks for ourselves.	11:47
	Then there are the movements in which groups	11:51
	get caught, that work for evil.	11:54
	Whether it is in the senseless bombing of a	11:58
	nightclub by a militia group, people yelling	12:01
	obscenities and throwing rocks at other people	12:05
	because they have a different skin color or	12:08
	practice a different religion, or an undeclared and	12:11
	illogical war,	12:16
	we see the enslaving power of the	12:18
	demonic, an unwelcome power,	12:21
	if we are going to take seriously the force of evil,	12:28
	then even more	12:33
	we need to take seriously what God does about it.	12:34
	God sends Jesus	12:41
	to prevail over the demons,	12:44
	and defeat them he does,	12:47
	central to the ministry of	12:52
	Jesus and the Gospel of Luke, is Jesus' power	12:53
	to cast out demons, Jesus announces	12:58
	that a new age is breaking in,	13:03
	the Kingdom of God is here,	13:06
	therefore, he commands the demons to depart.	13:09
	That is why the demons cry out when they meet Jesus.	13:14
	They know that for them his coming means	13:19
	the beginning of the end,	13:24
	two chapters later in Luke,	13:29
	the 70 commissioned followers	13:33
	of Jesus joyfully report, "Lord, in your name,	13:35
	even the demons submit to us."	13:39
	to which Jesus replies, "I watched Satan	13:43
	fall from heaven like a flash of lightening,	13:48
	see I have given you authority to tread	13:51
	on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power	13:56
	of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you."	14:00
	Luke delights in Jesus' display of power over demons.	14:06
	And what a demonstration of power of Jesus	14:12
	unfolds in this story about the Gerasenes.	14:17
	Immediately, upon stepping out on land,	14:22
	Jesus is recognized by the demons,	14:28
	I said demons, not just one, but Legion,	14:33
	there were many, the possessed man falls	14:38
	upon the ground, and foolishly, the demons	14:43
	negotiate with Jesus so as not to	14:47
	be sent into the abyss,	14:50
	Jesus agrees to their	14:54
	request to enter the swine, but they wind up	14:56
	in the abyss anyway and are drowned.	15:00
	The spectacle Luke records had many witnesses,	15:07
	and the man sitting clothed and in his right mind,	15:12
	gave truth to the testimony of those who told the story.	15:18
	Now if Luke's story ended here, we could all	15:26
	joyfully celebrate the arrival of a power	15:31
	greater than evil, claim that all is right in the world,	15:34
	and go home,	15:39
	but it doesn't and we can't, not yet, anyway.	15:42
	The ironic twist Luke presents is this,	15:50
	Jesus is the unwelcome	15:57
	power of good.	16:01
	The very folk who tried to control	16:05
	and contain the Gerasenes, recognized the mystery	16:07
	and power of what has taken place,	16:12
	but they cannot make a place for it,	16:15
	or accommodate it in their lives,	16:18
	and they asked Jesus to leave,	16:21
	Jesus' power of good is unwelcome, he is rejected.	16:24
	And in that, to be sure, the demonic is	16:31
	located as well,	16:36
	it is only the one from whom	16:40
	the demons were exorcized,	16:42
	who appreciates Jesus and his power,	16:46
	the neighbors, Luke records,	16:52
	were seized with great fear,	16:55
	fear of what?	17:00
	Power over the demons,	17:02
	I suspect it's something more.	17:06
	A psychiatrist friend has written	17:11
	that when a destructive force of behavior is driven away,	17:14
	it has to be substituted with a good force.	17:20
	A community that wants to rid itself of war making,	17:25
	needs to substitute it with assertive peace making.	17:30
	A bad habit has to be replaced with a good habit.	17:35
	Perhaps this community of the Gerasenes was so	17:41
	accustomed to the evil presence, that it	17:46
	could push away or work around that freedom	17:49
	and wholeness were scary to them.	17:55
	They couldn't change and accept and unknown power.	17:59
	Even Jesus' power of good over the known	18:05
	and predictable power of evil,	18:11
	and that is often	18:16
	the response to workers of justice and righteousness.	18:17
	Julia Esquivel, is Guatemalan, a human rights	18:24
	activist, theologian, and poet.	18:29
	Her poem, I am Not Possessed, is dedicated	18:34
	to the many valiant women of her Quatemala,	18:39
	it goes,	18:45
	"I am not possessed, I am not crazy, obsessed	18:46
	with an idea, I am simply a women with a human heart,	18:50
	I am a rebel when faced with a cold and calculated	18:56
	correctness of a bureaucrat,	19:00
	he who is always bound	19:04
	by the limits of the correct, the objective, and	19:06
	the prudent of an always neutral balance.	19:11
	The one who avoids taking risks for the sake of his	19:16
	office and his prestige,	19:19
	I am the possessor of not	19:23
	possessed by the normality	19:27
	of a woman that rejects	19:30
	and always will reject the disorder constituted	19:33
	by macho's, all of them potential generals,	19:36
	by all who place the law above life,	19:42
	the institution above humanity, the personal project	19:46
	above truth, fear above love,	19:51
	ambition above humility,	19:54
	that I must admit to those obsessed with	19:58
	such criteria,	20:02
	I am a red hot coal, lighted	20:04
	by the fire of a great love,	20:09
	brother, do you know	20:14
	the story of the burning bush that was never	20:16
	consumed?"	20:20
	Juliet Esquivel has been exiled from	20:24
	Quatemala since 1980,	20:28
	the unwelcome power of good.	20:34
	So if the man who's demons were exercised,	20:40
	is the only one who appreciates Jesus	20:45
	and his power of good, what does that mean for us?	20:50
	I believe Jesus' power of good will continue to	20:57
	be unwelcome to us, until our own demons are	21:01
	exorcized, and Jesus' power of good is welcomed	21:07
	as a way of life,	21:12
	exorcisms are largely ignored	21:16
	in our culture, as Kathleen Norris notes in	21:19
	her new book, Amazing Grace:	21:24
	A Vocabulary of Faith,	21:28
	"I suspect that most people have experiences that	21:31
	need to be exorcized," she writes.	21:34
	Fortunately, exorcisms have not been quite killed off	21:38
	in the modern Protestant Church, I enjoy finding	21:42
	them tucked away in hymns, where people tend	21:47
	not to notice them, what might be considered	21:52
	Martin Luther's theme song, the tough and resolute	21:56
	a mighty fortress is our God,	22:01
	puts it well,	22:05
	in the third stirring verse,	22:06
	and those this world,	22:12
	with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,	22:14
	we will not fear,	22:19
	for God hath willed his truth	22:22
	to triumph through us,	22:26
	the Prince of Darkness Grim,	22:30
	we tremble not for him,	22:32
	his rage we can endure,	22:36
	for low his doom is sure,	22:39
	one little word shall fell him.	22:44
	We need to believe what we sing,	22:50
	that little word is Jesus.	22:54
	Jesus is the one who dispels all demons	22:58
	and leads us to a new way of life,	23:03
	a life in which	23:07
	each and every one who calls upon his name,	23:09
	welcomes the unwelcome,	23:14
	engages evil as the enemy,	23:18
	defeats the demonic,	23:23
	and works towards good,	23:26
	even when it is unwelcome.	23:30
	My friends,	23:34
	Jesus' power is good news,	23:37
	and it is the only hope we have to transform	23:42
	the world into what is not yet,	23:47
	and to purge it from what seems to be,	23:51
	amen.	23:57

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Title:

Ann I. Hoch - Sermon Untitled (June 21, 1998)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 05:02. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 23:59.
Each of us is afflicted by demons because they represent sin and we are all sinners. We must trust in Jesus and the word to exorcise them. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “Jesus is the one who dispels all demons and leads us to a new way of life. A life in which each and every one who calls upon his name welcomes the unwelcome, engages evil as the enemy, defeats the demonic, and works toward good even when it is unwelcome.”

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4b56dj9n

Date:

June 21, 1998

Speaker:

Hoch, Ann I.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 CS-0911
ref9971_fzy
uachapelsermaud
duke:320572
dcrau001555
ark:/87924/r4b56dj9n
41219cab-6b5d-4e6e-8a28-29f4d75320ea

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Ann I. Hoch - Sermon Untitled (June 21, 1998)

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