"What Have You to Do With Us?" February 01, 2015

Deuteronomy 18:15-20 Mark 1:21-28 Who are the ones you let into your life? The ones you seek for guidance and inspiration, wisdom? Who are those authority figures, that you check in with before making major life decisions? This week I had a phone call from someone whose family I baptized 25 years ago, she and her husband at that time had since divorced she had moved cross country and at 57 had fallen in love and wanted to marry. She was phoning to say that she always thought if she were to marry again, she wanted me to officiate. It is that kind of relationship, that role in your life, that authority, I am addressing. When my parents died, it shook me. I had known death. I was prepared for loss. I was even prepared that they had been the hub for the spokes of our family, keeping us connected. What I was unprepared for, is that throughout our lives they had consistently been the ones who spoke with authority. In earliest memories they provided safety and reassuring. There was always a meal on the table. There was always someone there for us. Part of the “My Dad is tougher than your Dad” or “as long as footballs are inflated My team can win the Superbowl,” is that appeal to authority, that we are protected, we are secure, we have the source of answers, so no matter what we cannot fail. The more sweaters Mom knit, the more Spelling Bees they prepared us for, the more Scouting events they attended, the more Science Fairs they helped us with, the more authority they had in our lives, and the more secure we felt. When suddenly that was gone and we were threatened. When commercial airplanes were flown into the World Trade Center Towers, our Authority suffered. When we planned our futures on the value of our homes, on stocks and portfolios, and these lost value. When our bodies suddenly develop a tumor, or our marriage is threatened. Whenever we have placed our trust in a reality, and that reality is challenged, the issue is more than the circumstance it becomes a question of who we are, and who we are in relationship to the world. “Who are you to us” is the question of life. Moses stood up to Pharaoh, saying “Let my people go!” Moses led the slaves of Pharaoh out of Egypt into a wilderness, and over and over again, against Jebusites, Perizites, Hittites, hunger and thirst, Moses was the voice of authority. Suddenly the question is raised: What happens when Moses dies? Who are the people who follow Moses, without Moses? Will God still be with us without Moses? And the assurance that was offered was that God would raise up others, like Moses, to speak God's Word and provide leadership. By the time of Caesar, Judaism had developed with differing authorities, so whenever questions arose, Scribes would quote Rabbi Hillel says, but then again Rabbi Moshel says, the difficulty like a discussion between SeaHawks and Patriots Fans, being that neither side is willing to accept the other's authority. Imagine, you were at the Synagogue at Capernaum that Sabbath, when instead of the usual preacher, or Pastor Bolivar, or Rabbi Weiss, or Rabbi Niebuhr, instead an unknown Carpenter's Son from Nazareth was announced. The first thing that is amazing is that among all the Red Letter Bibles, we do not know what Jesus said that day. The only thing we do know is, he does not appeal to authority borrowed from others, but spoke with the authority of one who personally knows God. Just when Jesus has the congregation listening intently, convinced this Jesus does speak with authority, suddenly a man in the back row lets out a blood curdling scream “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? We know you are the Son of the Most High!” To have ready and to tell an appropriate Parable is tough. To preach accented with miracles, takes divine authority. But Exorcisms, remind us all of Linda Blair, and take the question of authority from a rational and philosophical exercise into a personal matter of life and death and psychoses. Taking this story seriously, the man with an unclean demon, sound like a person in the midst of addiction. For decades the standard for the War on Drugs was to shun those in addiction, to recognize that addiction causes the rest of us to be manipulated as “Enablers.” The Liberal voices of our culture have said addiction is a disease. The Conservative voices have said this is a moral failing, a weakness in the addict's character. Regardless, this is an issue of the role of the community, the people who make a difference. I recall a commercial for Drug Free America in the 1970s, that showed a Rat in an isolation cage, given a choice of two drinking bottles. The one was pure water, the other was water laced with heroin. The rat returned time after time to the heroin, until it died. Simple direct message. However, recently a researcher Bruce Alexander ran the same test differently. He questioned not whether heroin is addictive, it is highly addictive, but whether the isolation made a difference. Alexander created a community cage for rats, with tunnels and wheels and balls to play with, good food and multiple rats. Each of the rats tries the heroin laced water and rejected it, because they did not need or want it. He then tried rats that had been in the isolation cage for two months, when they were thoroughly addicted and put these into the communal setting. While they had twitches and difficulty sleeping while going through with drawl, they each avoided the heroin they were addicted to and went through withdrawl. Loving an addict is hard, especially when supporting their change. Whether smoking, or drinking, or porn, or drugs, addiction takes over lives, pushes out everything and everyone else until like the man at Capernaum he could not separate himself from the addiction and spoke as a We, What have you to do with US, united to his own evil. To forgive, to hold firm in the midst of another's attempts at manipulation, is a version of hell. But if the choice is between cutting off someone you love as if dead, and holding them accountable to your relationship I have to believe in the power of your authority. The power to say “You matter to me, you are part of who I am, that is 'What you have to do with us' and this addiction, this sin, this disease, is so painful to me I do not know how to continue.” The fact of the matter is that as human beings we need to bond. Isolation is punishment. If we cannot bond with other people, we bond with cutting ourselves, or the rush of a drug, or the whirr of a roulette wheel, we need to bond. Therefore the question instead of abstinence and sobriety, is a need for bonding. Years ago, I was called by members of the church to officiate at a wedding for their daughter. We went through all the preparations and celebration but a few years later they divorced. Years afterward, I had a phone call from the groom, saying that he had continually gotten into trouble and now needed to report to the Justice Center in Syracuse, and he claimed he had no one else who could I go with him. The next many weeks and months I visited him in prison, sat behind him in court. Realize that going in to talk at the Justice Center involves waiting, and being searched and talking through a plate glass wall. One day he was not allowed to leave his cell, I like remember like entering the Pentagon one steel door closing and locking before the next would open, as you were guided by a voice through hallways and stairwells. Until I came to the block of cells, where I spoke through a hole in a steel door. Afterward, I received a letter describing how much that visit had meant to him. Months later he was released, reconnected with his mother and his son and I thought had moved on. But then he was arrested again, this time for selling drugs, I thought I was enabling and he needed “tough love” so cut off all communication, as day after day he phoned and wrote letters, and I had no further contact, he was after all the former husband of the daughter of former members. Then, one day, I heard from another pastor that he had taken on this same man, who seemed so much in need. I realized not only had my tough love been undermined, but I had been replaced. I wish I had a better ending for you. Sometimes all we can do is try.