The Cost of Healing

 Luke 8:26-39

This last week, I took a class for religious leaders at Northwestern downtown.  It was a great week. We were mostly pastors and rabbis with a few denominational leaders, chaplains and school principals in a room talking about our faith and our ministry.  A word that kept coming up over the course of the week was the word “transformation.” It’s not surprising. Yes, it’s a word that comes up all the time in our ancient scriptures and, clearly, it’s a word that describes things that are happening all over the place right now.  

Our churches and synagogues are in seasons of transformation. Our schools are. Our society is in so many ways.  Those of us gathered at this event last week talked about what it was like to look at change in the face and listen for what it is calling us towards. But, as we pastors and rabbis all discussed various times over the course of the week, transformation of all kinds--whether it’s in our own hearts or in our wider society--doesn’t come easily. 

Transformation asks us to take risks. It asks us to be courageous. It admits: something’s not right here, something needs to be changed. Transformation shines a light on things we’ve tried to hide.

While we like change and new directions, the piece that we sort of conveniently put to the side is that transformation comes with exposure to something we need to change.  It brings something out into the open for everyone to see. 

For example: “Here’s this family secret that we’ve been keeping quiet that’s pushing the everyone to the brink.” Or, “here’s this personal detail I’ve been keeping in the shadow that I need to work through.” When we bring that out into the light, the future before us shifts. if it’s a mind-bender for us to individually do this, it’s just as much of a mind-bender, and even a trip, when society does it.

In the story we heard of today, there’s a man who is possessed, naked, out of control, living with the dead; 

And then, by the healing power of Jesus, he is saved, clothed, sitting at Jesus’ feet and in his right mind. This. Is. Great. News. This tormented man is healed and free…and yet, he (and Jesus) are the only ones celebrating. Did you catch that?  The bible says that the community doesn’t find any joy in this story.  In fact, they are counting the cost associated with this healing and they are finding it to be just a little too high. 

Jesus heals for free. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t costs.

So. The costs.

1. At face value, there is the cost of loss.  While this healing was good news for the man, it wasn’t for the pigs. The pigs were lost when the mob of demons entered into them. They ran off a cliff. There is a deep economic loss for the owners of the herd, especially if they make a living selling the animals.  

When you consider the cost of change in society or in your self, what is the economic cost to you? 

2. For the man who’s healed, there is the cost of a new vocation in life.  Any of you who have ever changed jobs know what I’m talking about. What do you lose when you leave an old job or even vocation?  Maybe you’re the parent of a newly graduated child and your vocation as a parent is shifting. There’s some loss. Maybe you’ve changed careers and, either your salary changed, or your responsibilities. For this man, the change is obviously dramatic.  He is turned into a disciple. Jesus calls him to activism and tells him to go and proclaim what God has done. He is freed and sent to share the good news.  In your case, what would be the economic cost of healing to you? What would answering a call to activism cost you? 

3. And finally, there is the cost of uncertainty. There is the cost of change. Remember, this guy is changed but no one wants that change but him and Jesus. Everyone else seems to resent it or they’re completely terrified by the way his transformation messes with this neat little system they have in place. We try to control the things and people that scare us.  Out of sight out of mind.  And when they couldn’t keep him locked away up out there in the cemetery, when everything is brought into the light in this story, 

This cost is steep. 

Too steep, in fact. Did you catch the way The Message version of the bible translates the verses that describe the people’s reaction to what happened? “too much change too fast.” 

Scripture actually says that the people were fine in the storm.  They were fine with of having this man chained up outside of town. Yes, perhaps they acknowledged his awkward presence up there, but now, they’re afraid of the calm.  They had a deal worked out. They had a system worked out: They had some kind of logic that was twisted into “we chain him up and it keeps him safe and us safe. It keeps the peace (even if it’s uneasy peace).” Now, they feel this change and this dis-ease and they can’t handle it.  And they ask Jesus to leave.

There is a cost of transformation. 

In this story, there’s a lot that is brought out into the open.  This man isn’t well. He’s tormented. He’s naked. Being naked all kinds of vulnerable. It is all kinds of fear. What will people see? What will people think? What if we admit that our family is a little messed up right now? Or that we have something really tough that we’re working through? Or what if I bring out into the open the truth of some kind of systemic thing that I’m grappling with? Or something that I need to grapple with but don’t really want to? Do we take a chance? Or do we say, “there’s not really anything I can do. This is too big. Too much. Out of sight out of mind.” 

What do we need to see in order to be healed?
What is it in our lives in the life that needs healing?
What is it in our society that needs healing? 
Where am I practicing control because I am freaked out by the cost of what calm would bring?

In 2018, Kendrick Lamar released an album called “Damn.” Kendrick Lamar, is rapper, a songwriter and record producer. He’s the kind of artist that, when I listen to his album, makes me stop. And ask: “what?” and skip back in the song to see if I heard he right.  This album, “Damn.,” was the first non-classical, non-jazz album that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music. And in it, his poetry is about storm. “Where,”

he asks through the poetry of his lyrics, “can one find a sense of peace, a sense of safety, a sense of trust?” He is exploring a sense of humanity in these tracks. 

In his song “FEEL.,” he’s showing how this storm beats on the walls:

I feel like friends been overrated
I feel like the family been faking
I feel like the feelings are changing
Feel like my daughter compromised and jaded
Feel like you wanna scrutinize how I made it

He created this album before the pandemic but it puts words to the storms: the racial deaths, the war deaths,  the shootings. African American professor, Luke Powery says: the great resignation, the “great hater-a-tion,” pandemic—pandemonium. The storm. 

What do you need healing from?
What do we need healing from?

Because Jesus shows us: the calm is possible.

This isn’t a bible story that happened a long time ago and now, because of the resurrection, it’s all fixed and we don’t live like this any more.  We are right here between these words.  We see the things and the ones that we chain up. We need the healer’s presence in our midst. We still need liberation. 

But there is a cost to the calm.  Please leave, the people say to Jesus. The calm was too much to bear.  The chaos was familiar. The healer’s presence healed too deep.

Today is Juneteenth.    On June 19th, we celebrate the truth that the last enslaved African Americans learned they were freed in 1865. This is a day to celebrate freedom and African American achievement, art and education. It is a day to celebrate liberation in all of its’ beauty.  

It is a day to ask the dangerous question of what needs to be healed? To shine a light on the things we’ve tried to hide to consider the cost of freeing our hearts of freeing our world from the things that bind us. And to move forward despite the cost because our liberation depends on it. 

Transformation, growth, and an opening of our hearts are central to our faith.  So we’ve got to ask the difficult questions.

What needs to be healed that only the presence of Jesus can heal? 
Where are we as a society called to change? 
Where are you?