Loving God, you reveal to us your power to heal and your power over evil through your Son, Jesus Christ.  Open our hearts to that same power in our lives, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    Broken relationships and broken trust have been very much in the news this week.  Much of this has been related to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission here in Winnipeg.  This commission, comprised of both government and church representatives, seeks to hear the truth about what happened in the residential schools and to make some strides, no matter how small, toward healing and reconciliation.  It is important work – and it needs to happen -- and for us in the church, we serve a God who is all about truth and healing and reconciliation.

    Now, I am certainly aware of some of the attitudes and prejudices that many people hold.  The stereotype of the “drunken and lazy Indian” continues to be in people’s minds, and people ask questions like, “When will they ever get enough?”  Yet, if your land and your way of life and your language and culture had been taken away from you, what exactly would sufficient compensation be?  It is not an easy question to answer, and it helps greatly in understanding and respect when we are able to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes (metaphorically speaking, of course!).

    I’m going to ask you to do that for just a moment in relation to the residential schools.  Imagine that as a young child you were taken away from your parents and relatives and taken to a school where you didn’t understand the language of the people who were running it.  You were not allowed to speak to your brothers or sisters.  If you were caught speaking your own language you were punished, and you were no longer allowed to see your parents.

    When you were 16 years old, you were finally allowed to go back to your family.  Eventually, you had children of your own, but you had no idea how to raise them.  You had never seen any example, either good or bad, of how to raise children in a family setting.  You never saw any example from your own parents, or from aunts and uncles, or from your friends and their parents.  You no longer know who you are, and you are left with a trail of unhealthy and broken relationships.

    Surely there is so much healing and reconciliation that is needed, and surely there are just as many other people who need healing and reconciliation for other reasons.  Of course, family relationships are very much in our minds today as we celebrate Father’s Day.  It is a day where broken relationships are even more painful, even as we celebrate those relationships that are good and healthy and faith-filled.

    I mentioned the residential schools as one example of broken trust and broken relationships.  Unfortunately, there are many more examples of scars that people carry with them and things that lead to broken relationships.  Some of these things are even suggested by today’s gospel.

    Imagine that the man at the centre of today’s gospel is a member of your family.  We are told that he has been locked up many times, but he breaks free and runs wild among the tombs.  When Jesus meets him, he is naked, he is living among the tombs, and he introduces himself as “Legion” because of the many demons that live inside him.

    Now, if this man were a member of your family, it is unlikely that you would have a good and healthy relationship with him.  In fact, you might even pretend that you don’t know him.  After all, who would want to be associated with the looney who lives in the graveyard?  However, along comes Jesus, and everything changes.  All of a sudden every relationship has the potential to be different for this man.  In fact, Jesus wants this man to go and heal his relationships.

    In many ways, it would have been easier for the man to go away with Jesus like he wanted to.  That way, he could have left all of those broken relationships behind.  However, Jesus knows what needs to happen.  “Go to your home,” he says.  “Heal your relationships.  Then tell everyone how much God has done for you.”

    For us who hear this story from the gospel, while we may not be possessed by a legion of demons, most of us are in need of some sort of healing.  Whether our needs are physical or mental or emotional or spiritual, many of us have things in our lives that we would want to bring to Jesus for healing.  And some of us have our own demons that we fight from day to day.

    At the same time, many of us have relationships that are in need of healing – with family members, with friends, with co-workers, or even with God.  Put quite simply, this is what sin does – it breaks apart relationships and creates the need for forgiveness and reconciliation.

    Yet, as was mentioned earlier, our God is all about truth and healing and reconciliation.  In fact, wherever Jesus is present, relationships change.  Let’s think about this for a moment for the man in today’s gospel.

    The first thing that happens is that he is touched by Jesus, and is set free from his demons, and believes in the power of Jesus.  This man now has the ability to have a relationship with God, all because of Jesus.  At the same time, this man now has the potential to relate to people in a healthy manner.  If there are people that he hurt while he was ill, he is now able to acknowledge what he did and ask for their forgiveness.  If there are people that hurt him, they, too, have the opportunity to acknowledge what they did and to ask his forgiveness.  And finally, this man now has the ability to forgive himself, knowing that God has deemed him to be worth healing, and knowing that God is more powerful than the demons that haunted him.

    However, this is not to say that the people who know this man necessarily want to be reconciled with him.  This is always the catch when we’re dealing with other people.  We can welcome Jesus as Lord of our lives, but that doesn’t mean that other people’s hearts will change.  We can stand ready to forgive, but that doesn’t mean that other people will ask for our forgiveness.  We can confess our sins to others, but that doesn’t mean that they will be ready to forgive us.  It’s different, though, when you have two people relating to one another who both take their direction from Jesus, for Jesus changes relationships.

    Where Jesus is present, there is a readiness to acknowledge the truth, and the desire to forgive and to be forgiven.  Where Jesus is present, we are aware of God’s love and forgiveness for us and for every other person.  Where Jesus is present, there is the desire to honour and respect and serve one another, just as Jesus has first served us.  This is true for family relationships, or for friendships, or for relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ.  And because we are still imperfect, we call upon the Holy Spirit to empower us and to teach us and to fill us with God’s love.

    While many of us are still in need of healing, many of us have also already seen the power of Jesus to heal.  Thus, God’s commission for us is the same as it was for the man in today’s gospel: Go to your home.  Heal your relationships.  Then tell everyone how much God has done for you.  Amen.

Lectionary 12(C) / Father’s Day                        Luke 8:26-39
June 20, 2010
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

© 2010 Lynne Hutchison  All Rights Reserved