A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC June 19, 2022, the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, “Living the Questions” series. Observance of Juneteenth.  

Texts: Psalm 42, Luke 8:26-39

“What is your name?” This question posed by Jesus in our Gospel for today is powerful. Our names hold some piece of our history—perhaps we are named after family members (living or dead), or a parent’s favorite character from a book, show, or movie. Maybe our names are nicknames that “stuck” or were self-given in the process of celebrating and affirming our true gender identity. And even if, as in my case, “Ginger Elise” was simply the name my parents could agree on!—all of these names point to our history, our identity, where we come from.

But none of these are true for the response given to Jesus in our story. The man Jesus encounters was from the city. He was someone’s child, someone’s sibling, perhaps someone’s husband or father. He bore in his body the scars of different kinds of chains that had repeatedly been fashioned to control and subdue him. We don’t really know why he was treated this way. Though, human beings have been good at finding reasons through the ages to do violence to others. Two things are clear in the text: the man is deeply afflicted and others have banished and bound him. 

Jesus, however, engages this child of God differently, seeking to release him from his suffering. But the man cries out, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me!” He expects nothing but torment, perhaps fears that Jesus’ messing with the powers that harm him will only make the bodily assault worse; perhaps this beloved one’s mind is incapable of conceiving that liberation will ever come after so long a time in chains. And it seems the tormenting powers steal the man’s own voice—notice in verse 31, “they” beg Jesus not to cast them back into the abyss.

And Jesus asks the question, “What is your name?” And the name given says something about the man’s experience, but it is not his true name. The name spoken is “Legion.” 

In Jesus’ day, anyone would have known the implications of such a name: “legion” was a Roman army unit of up to six thousand soldiers. It symbolizes an occupying force whose power is complete and whose presence means the loss of control over every dimension of life. This was the experience of the Jewish people under Roman occupation. The man identified as “Legion” reveals that he is powerless before the things that bind him; this child of God is crushed, browbeaten, chained, and separated from his family and true identity by the forces of violent oppression (legitimated by religion) that saturate the Roman empire. 

This empire extracted strength and resources from those under their control to grow fat and rich off the bodies and labor of others. This may explain the response of the folks who come to investigate what’s happened. When they saw the drowned pigs, the man restored to wholeness, and Jesus with him they were afraid and told Jesus to leave. Why would these things upset them? Well, if Jesus starts treating the outcast like persons of dignity and sacred worth then the power and control equation will be disrupted and those deemed “dangerous” will be allowed to move among the people as if they were full human beings. If Jesus starts going around setting the captives free, it’s going to mess up the economy. There’s already a whole herd of swine lost and that’s just from one person’s liberation. //

Today, is Juneteenth, “freedom day,” the day when slavery officially came to an end in the United States. On June 19, 1865, about two months after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va., Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War had ended. General Granger’s announcement put into effect the Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued more than two and a half years earlier, on Jan. 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln. // Juneteenth is a day of celebration, observed by many African Americans for decades, often including prayer services, a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, dancing, and good food. And today marks the second year of Juneteenth’s celebration as a Federal Holiday. 

I cannot help but make the connections between this freedom day and the liberation of the man in our Gospel. Observe the similarities of experience: separation from family, being bound with chains and shackles, living under guard, being utterly powerless other than pushing back or trying to escape—knowing that any challenge to the oppressor would mean brutal and violent retaliation landing on their bodies, and the larger population carrying on as if there was nothing wrong with this scenario. And then there is the question at the center of our reflection today, a question of personal history, a question of family connection, a question of identity. What is your name? The man’s own voice no longer speaks, the powers of oppression speak for him. This is Legion. He belongs to empire, to the greed and cruelty of Caesar. The spirit of Caesar stole his name. This was the reality of every enslaved person. Their name, their language, their culture, their history, their dignity were all stolen. 

But on this Juneteenth, we remember that liberation came. For those in Texas, it came late—but it arrived. Yes, the life-stealing violence of racism and white supremacy are yet to be fully vanquished. The horror of January 6th, so front of mind as the public trials play out, was largely fueled by feeding that beast. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine our nation will ever truly be set free of this vile poison.

But today, we celebrate that liberation comes. We celebrate that what we can’t even imagine, is possible. And it’s possible because the power of God’s love is always at work in the world, moving in and among people of faith who know that the God we worship receives the cries of enslaved persons and sends a liberator to set them free, is a redeemer whose justice will make things right, a God who promises new life, resurrection, and that “trouble don’t last always.” Liberation is possible because Spirit continues to move among people who understand that God is not a God of one race or of one nation, that the God of Abraham, Rahab, Hagar, Moses, and Mary, does not lift up the already rich and powerful, but “scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts. God brings down the powerful from their thrones, and lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away.” (Luke 1:51-53) God breaks down the dividing walls between us and is determined to make us one people committed to love and justice. 

There are those who pervert God into a God who blesses division, bullying, enslaving, and impoverishing others, into a God who desires people in chains, chokeholds, and cells, a God who loves some and would throw away others. I pray for the grace and strength to remember that these, too, are God’s children even as I  continue with you and so many others to resist such unbiblical, perverse theology and the immoral actions that flow from it.

The story in our text today has at its center a man who has lost his identity under the weight of the greed and oppressive control of empire. When first introduced in verse 27 he is referred to in the Greek as aner poleos—loosely translated as “some random guy from the city.” A “nobody.” And we never learn the given name of the man whom we first encounter among the tombs. But be assured, God knew his name the whole time and felt every blow, every pain, every loss. And Jesus met him not as a “nobody,” but as a deeply beloved “somebody,” as a member of the Beloved clan. In verse 35, liberated and restored through the encounter with Jesus, the once “random guy” is now referred to by the Greek word anthropon, literally “human being.” And this Beloved human being regained his own voice and went home, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him. He was set free to participate in the ongoing work of proclaiming God’s liberating power and love. He was set free to proclaim that we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes… until all know their family name is Beloved.