Monthly Archives: July 2025

On Leaks and Parishes…

31 Thursday Jul 2025

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Photo credit: Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly. Reuse with permission only.

Last week at our church we discovered a leak in our parish house that necessitated saws, hammers, and very loud industrial fans.  By Friday, the constant noise broke my patience and I decided I needed to find an alternate place to work remotely – maybe not a place of silence, but certainly a change of scenery.  I landed in two different eateries/coffeehouses and decided to publicize my “remote office.”

What I found was people visiting from out-of-town I did not know were here, parishioners running errands, happy for an open ear, and lots of gratitude for being invited into the shared experience – both from church members and non-members alike.  The experience reminded me why Episcopal Churches are often referred to as “parishes.” Once upon a time, Episcopal churches served a geographic region, or a parish, and the priest was sort of the neighborhood priest.  Doing my work and meeting people where they are – whether they are from my actual church or not, reminded me of the original intention or churches:  that their priests were for the good of the entire community, not just the members.

Archbishop William Temple is attributed with having once said, “The Church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.”  At our church, we often talk about our mission being simultaneously about those inside our walls and those outside our walls.  That’s why we are doing some big things of late:  developing a third worship service designed specifically for people who are not a part of our community; forming a team who will look at alternative uses of our property that are missional and community-facing; and establishing small groups for spiritual formation that meet off campus – in homes and places of everyday “parish” life.  If we truly believe Archbishop Temple, then our clergy sitting in coffeehouses and eateries should more often be the norm than the crisis-driven exception.

Being out in the “parish” is not just the role of the priest.  I wonder how you are taking your faith, your worship community, your church out into the world.  When was the last time you asked a friend about their spiritual health (in the same way you would ask them about their physical or emotional health)?  When was the last time you were listening deeply to another person’s story and were willing to offer where you saw God in their story?  When was the last time you invited someone to church – not necessarily to the building on Sunday at a certain time, but into the experience of “church” that has been so transformative for you?  I cannot wait to hear about how you can envision taking your church out into the parish!

Sermon – Luke 10.38-42, P11, YC, July 20, 2025

24 Thursday Jul 2025

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Professor Jennifer Wyant describes “…a famous legend told about Martha of Bethany that was popular in the Middle Ages.  In this story, which takes place after the resurrection of Jesus, she becomes a traveling preacher and ends up in a small town in France that, unfortunately, has a chronic dragon problem.  She manages to slay the dragon and, in doing so, wins the whole town over to Christianity.  In that same story, her sister Mary, on that same trip, ends up starting a monastery in the wilderness, meaning they both live out the roles assigned to them in Christian history:  Martha acts and Mary studies.  Martha represents an active faith, while Mary represents a contemplative faith.”  Wyant goes on to explain that “This dichotomy comes in many ways from Luke 10:38–42 [that we read today], in which Martha shows Jesus hospitality while Mary sits at his feet.  The two women embody different aspects of Christian discipleship in Luke’s Gospel, and both are lifted up as positive characters.  They are both doing good things.  There is no villain in this story.  But ultimately, Jesus tells Martha that Mary has chosen the better part, and this represents a tension point for most readers.”[i]

Now like any good Episcopalian, I am not big on dichotomies.  I am not a fan of either-or options – I am more of a both-and Christian.  So, I am not sure if this story gets my hackles up because I think dichotomies can be dangerous, or if I am defensive because both this story and the Old Testament lesson have women hustling around in stereotypically gendered roles, or if Jesus’ lack of support and criticism of Martha is so biting, or if I just see too much of myself in Martha.  If Martha and Mary’s story today has you similarly anxious, uncomfortable, or defensive, or if this story has you feeling a bit affirmed and self-righteous, then we all need to dig a bit more deeply into this story. 

Starting with the text will help.  On the surface, this is a story about an older sibling, Martha, taking on all the household work while the younger sister, Mary, sits with Jesus, enjoying the luxury of learning from Jesus while Martha does all the work.  But in verse 40, the translation we have says Martha is distracted by her many tasks.  Now according to scholars, the Greek translation says something more like, “Martha is ‘distracted by much ministry.’”[ii]  This is not a critique of stereotypically gendered work women must do.  Martha is not just distracted by preparing food, cleaning the house, and making beds for disciples.  Martha is doing the sacred, faithful work of hospitality – a crucial act of ministry.  Later, Jesus says Martha is “worried and distracted by many things…”  Here, the Greek word for “worry” is “‘strangle’ or ‘seize by the throat’ and ‘tear.’  The root meaning of the word ‘distraction’ is a dragging apart of something that should be whole.  These are [two] violent words.  Words that wound and fracture.  States of mind that render us incoherent, divided, and un-whole.”[iii]

This story is not about who is the better sibling, whether women’s work is inferior to men’s work, or even about judgment of identity for us Marthas in the room.  This is a story about how all of us have ministries – ministries of discipleship that involve learning and action, of studying the Word and showing Christian hospitality to strangers, of speeding up and slowing down.  What Jesus is really concerned about is our intention around our discipleship.  The question is not if we are doing God’s work, but how we are doing God’s work.[iv]  According to Debie Thomas, Martha is in “such a state of fragmentation, a condition in which she cannot enjoy [Jesus’] company, savor his presence, find inspiration in her work, receive anything he wishes to offer her, or show him genuine love.  Instead, all she can do is question his love…fixate on herself…, and triangulate.”  Martha seems to think she can “invite Jesus into her life – and then carry on with that life as usual, maintaining control, privileging her own priorities, and clinging to her long-cherished agendas and schedules.”  And unfortunately, “That’s not how discipleship works.”[v]

So maybe instead of getting some either-or clarity today, we need to ask some both-and questions.  How are we approaching our ministry these days?  Are we so wrapped up in our assumptions about other people’s behaviors that we have forgotten to look at our own?  Have we invited Jesus into our lives, but only under our own set of requirements and strictures?  Once we refocus our questions, some clarity comes into view[vi].  Maybe we need to take some more time at Jesus’ feet, praying, reading scripture, coming to church, or joining something like Faith and Film or Sunday morning Bible Study.  Maybe we need to look at those metaphorical dinner plates as an invitation to prayer, holding dear the bodies that will be fed by our labor.  Maybe we need step out of our controlled kitchens and go serve up a meal at Meals on Wheels or at From His Hands.  Jesus loves us and affirms us in our varied ministries.  And Jesus also knows that when we start looking at how we are doing our ministries, the real, life-giving, whole-making discipleship will come.  Amen.

[i] Jennifer S. Wyant, “Commentary on Luke 10:38-42,” July 20, 2025, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-16-3/commentary-on-luke-1038-42-6 on July 19, 2025.

[ii] Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington, III, The Gospel of Luke: New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2018), 297.

[iii] Debie Thomas, Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories:  Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, Oregon:  Cascade Books, 2022), 51.

[iv] Matthew L. Skinner, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C., Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 265 and 267.

[v] Thomas, 51.

[vi] James A. Wallace, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C., Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 265.

Sermon – Luke 10.25-37, P10, YC, July 13, 2025

24 Thursday Jul 2025

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I don’t know about you, but gospel readings like the one we heard today immediately put me at ease.  Episcopalians aren’t particularly known for memorizing scripture, but we do know stories.  And the Good Samaritan is definitely one of the stories we know.  We know these stories so well that we sometimes tune out, maybe imagining, like I did, the time when we were kids and the Sunday School teacher had us dress up and act out the story.  And we are not the only ones.  There are whole churches, charitable organizations, nursing homes, and hospitals named after the Good Samaritan.  We love this simple story about how to be like the Good Samaritan and not like the lawyer, priest, or Levite.

The problem with these familiar stories is that our familiarity dilutes the power of the stories – and perhaps our ability to situate ourselves in the characters of the parable.  Some scholars even try to rename this parable to something like, “Jesus and the Lawyer.”[i]  The lawyer is the first person we miss in this narrative.  We know he is trying to trick Jesus, so he must be bad.  We admit he knows the law, or Torah – to love God and love neighbor.  His second question is where the trouble comes.  The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?”  The question seems simple enough, but the trouble comes from what he doesn’t ask, “Who is not my neighbor?  How much love are we talking here, Jesus?  Can you be specific?  Where can I draw the line?  Outside my front door?  At the edges of my neighborhood?  Along the cultural and racial boundaries I was raised with?  I mean, there are lines.  Aren’t there?”[ii]  And before we get too high on our “I know loving neighbors means loving everyone” horse, think about the last time you got angry about politics and what “those people” are doing or saying. 

Our next issue is pointing the finger at the priest and Levite.  I have heard and read all kinds of explanations about why these two men might have walked on the other side of the road from the dying fellow in need of help.  I have heard people explain that priests and Levites must be careful about ritual purity.  I have heard that as religious professionals they were being upper-class snobs.  I have heard they were late to temple, in a rush to do their jobs.  Unfortunately, according to scholars, none of those justifications work.  The purity laws would not have prohibited these guys from helping – from touching, maybe, but not from helping.  And despite being known leaders in communities, the roles of priest and Levite were mostly inherited, and not a vocation like we know now.  And the text tells us the men are walking away from Jerusalem.  They’re definitely not late for work.  The real problem is simple:  the two men simply do “what is all too ordinary:  [they] fail to act when [they] should.”  In fact, both men were required to attend to the fellow in the ditch, dead or alive.[iii]

Martin Luther King, Jr. on the night before his assassination preached about this parable.  He said, “I’m going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It’s possible that those men were afraid….And so the first question that the priest [and] the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’…But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”  King went on, “If I do not help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?”[iv]  The real issue with these two men is they only thought about themselves and failed their neighbor.

Now, the final challenge in the parable is the Samaritan.  We all know him as the “Good Samaritan,” but even that nomenclature is problematic.  You see, Samaritans and Jews experienced a great deal of tension.  They have had a long rivalry about where the proper temple is and who has authority.  Just a chapter before in Luke we read about how the Samaritans do not welcome Jesus and the disciples are ready to rain down fire upon the Samaritans.  This does not necessarily mean Samaritans are less influential or wealthy.  This is a tribal feud – an “us versus them” conflict.  And as much as we might identify with the Good Samaritan as the example we always follow, the truth is the Samaritan is not us.  He is the last person you would think of as the “good guy” in Jesus’ day.  We have to hold on to that reality because anyone hearing Jesus’ parable in his day would have been shocked by the introduction of the Samaritan – especially one who behaves much better than “us.”[v]  Scholar Amy-Jill Levine reminds us of the storytelling “rule of three.”  For anyone hearing Jesus’ story, when he talks about a priest, then a Levite, the hearer would have anticipated an Israelite being the third character in the story.  Levine says, “Instead of the anticipated Israelite, the person who stops to help is a Samaritan.  In modern terms, this would be like going from Larry and Moe to Osama bin Laden.”[vi]

So, to help us hear this familiar parable in a fresh way, I want to turn back to scholar Amy-Jill Levine.  Doctor Levine is a Jewish New Testament scholar – and yes, you heard that right – a devout Jew whose career has been in the study of Jesus.  She retells the parable like this:  “I am an Israeli Jew on my way from Jerusalem to Jericho, and I am attacked by thieves, beaten, stripped, robbed, and left half dead in a ditch.  Two people who should have stopped to help pass me by:  the first, a Jewish medic from the Isreal Defense Forces; the second, a member of the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.  But the person who takes compassion on me and shows me mercy is a Palestinian Muslim whose sympathies lie with Hamas, a political party whose charter not only anticipates Israel’s destruction, but also depicts Jews as subhuman demons responsible for the world’s problems.”[vii]

Before we can be Good Samaritans or Good Hamas Members or Good Jews, Jesus is inviting us to get real clear on who our neighbor is.  As scholar Debie Thomas suggests, “Your neighbor is the one who scandalizes you with compassion…Your neighbor is the one who upends all of your entrenched categories and shocks you with a fresh face of God.  Your neighbor is the one who mercifully steps over the ancient, bloodied line separating ‘us’ from ‘them’ and teaches you the real meaning of ‘Good.’”  What shall I do to inherit eternal life?  Do this.  Do this and you will live.”[viii]

I do not know who you are so deeply in conflict with that you have written them off as unacceptable neighbors.  I do not know whose hand you would recoil from if they extended their hand in help.  I do know who you have deemed unredeemable or unforgivable.  But Jesus’ parable is not a safe, cute parable about how to be a good person.  Today’s parable is an invitation to recognize how deeply difficult loving your neighbor is because the definition of neighbor is uncomfortably expansive with Jesus.  And once you concede this parable of the Good Whomever Makes You the Most Uncomfortable, Jesus invites you to love them anyway.  In the same very way that Jesus loves you – unconditionally, bountifully, and full of mercy and grace.  Amen.

[i] Fred B. Craddock, Luke: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), 149.

[ii] Debie Thomas, Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories:  Reflections of the Life of Christ (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2022) 126.

[iii] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus:  The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York:  Harper One, 2014), 98-101

[iv] Levine, 102.

[v] Thomas, 127

[vi] Levine, 103.

[vii] Levine, 114-115.

[viii] Thomas, 128.

Sermon – Luke 10.1-11, 16-20, P9, YC, July 6, 2025

24 Thursday Jul 2025

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This past week has been a jumbly mess of feelings around my identity as an American Christian.  I probably could have buried my head in the sand about most of the mess and just ate my hamburger and watched the fireworks and called it a day.  But I happen to have an eleven-year-old in my house who asks lots of questions, officially making head-in-the-sand living virtually impossible.  Instead, we spent time in conversation about the intersection of politics and Christian ethics in the caring for the poor and sick and the responsibilities of those with wealth.  Later, we had to talk about my discomfort with the man on his loudspeaker preaching salvation to Colonial Williamsburg visitors – that not all followers of Jesus believe the same things.  Our conversations reminded me that knowing in my head that not all Christian values being publicly proclaimed are my Christian values, and having actual conversations with others about that difference are two very different things.

I think that is why today’s gospel lesson is so unnerving.  By chapter ten of Luke’s gospel, Jesus has already sent out the twelve on an evangelism mission.  Today, we pick up where Jesus commissions seventy to do the same.  In other words, this is when being followers of Jesus starts getting real.  Jesus does not sugarcoat the mission or even make an appealing pitch.  First Jesus tells them that the “harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  So basically, there is so much work to be done that the seventy are going to be overworked and overstressed.  Next Jesus tells them, “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”  I imagine the seventy begin to panic with questions about who these wolves are and whether their own lives are at stake.  Then Jesus tells them, “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road,” explaining they are to be dependent upon the hospitality of others.  If they are not worried about working conditions already, this last bit of information might set them on edge.  Basically, Jesus sends them out with nothing – no safety net, no creature comforts, and no guarantees.  The seventy are terrified and starkly vulnerable; and we, thousands of years later, are either equally wary or totally dismissive.

I remember many years ago talking with a clergy colleague who did a lot of consulting on evangelism.  She tells a story of how she was studying with a professor whose specialty was church growth, and her assignment for her thesis was to go to a local coffee shop and start talking to people about their faith.  The first week she went to the coffee shop, but was too terrified to talk to anyone.  When her professor asked her how it went, she totally lied.  She made up some story about having good conversations with folks.  This charade continued for weeks.  Each week she would go to the shop, but be unable to take that first step.  And each week, she would lie to her professor about trying.  Finally, guilt won over, and she took a small step forward.  She made a little sign out of a folded piece of paper that read, “Talk to me about church, and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”  She sat nervously, petrified of what would happen.  Eventually a woman came up to her and said, “I’d like to talk to you about church, but I’ll buy the cup of coffee for you.”  The following conversation was transformative for them both, and the professor, who knew all along she was lying, was proud to see her finally make progress.

Like there was good news for my colleague, so there is good news for the seventy.  Although Jesus does send the seventy out in a very vulnerable way, he does not send them alone.  Jesus sends them in pairs.  Having a partner offers all sorts of security in the midst of their vulnerability.  As David Lose says, “When one of them falters, the other can help.  When one is lost, the other can seek the way.  When one is discouraged, the other can hold faith for both for a while.  That is what the company of believers does – we hold on to each other, console each other, encourage and embolden each other, and even believe for each other.”[i]

Second, Jesus promises the seventy that the harvest is plentiful.  Jesus does not tell the seventy that they are responsible for preparing the harvest – that is God’s work.  Their work is simply to gather the harvest.[ii]  This distinction is pretty tremendous because Jesus is saying that people are ready for his message.  Jesus does not tell the seventy that they will need to go out and convince people of the message.  Instead, he tells them that there are people who will already be receptive and are simply waiting for the seventy to gather them.

Finally, we hear that after this scary commission – as lambs among wolves, of walking over snakes and scorpions, and of being utterly reliant on the hospitality of strangers – the seventy return with joy.  This thing Jesus asks them to do does not leave them bereft or exhausted or even discouraged.  The seventy return delighted in what has happened to them; not because they did something, but because of the work that God did through them.[iii]

This gospel lesson has good news for us today as well.  Despite our hang-ups about the commission, at the end of the day, this story is about our own call to share our experience of God’s grace with others – especially in these identity-challenging times.  When we think about this text in those terms, the language starts to shift.  When Jesus says we are to go out for the harvest, and that the harvest is plentiful, mostly Jesus is telling us that in our world today, people are eager for a word of Good News.  Even if they say they are not religious, or they do not normally talk about God, Jesus assures us today that there are many people who want to hear your story of gratitude about all that God has done in your life.  And when Jesus says the kingdom of God is coming near, he is not asking us to go to Market Square and grab a megaphone.  Mostly he is telling us to stop delaying and get out there.  The kingdom being near is his way of saying the time for sharing is now, even if your sandwich board is more like a folded piece of paper inviting others to coffee and conversation.  Finally, when Jesus tells us to cure people, we might consider the ways that our faith has been a salve for us.  Surely in your faith journey, at some point your relationship with God has gotten you through something tough and has returned you to wholeness.  The worlds needs the salve of the Good News now more than ever.

And just in case you are not sure about all of this, I want to give you a little encouragement.  I once gave some homework to one of my Vestries.  They were to go to a local gas station or shop and ask for directions to our church.  One of our Vestry members was shocked to find that the grocery clerk was able to give her perfect directions to our church.  The Vestry member found out that she lives in the neighborhood across the street, though she had never actually been inside our doors.  Another Vestry member was chatting with a different grocery clerk about the amount of blueberries she was purchasing.  The Vestry member explained that they were for Church.  The clerk proceeded to ask her which Church and even said she might come by one Sunday.  Even I had an encounter at the local gym.  I was stretching and a gentleman approached me who I had seen several times.  He said that he had seen me in a church t-shirt the last time I was at the gym and he wondered what my affiliation was with church.  In the conversation that followed, I learned that he had once attended our church and that he might consider coming back for a visit.

Though the language of this gospel might make us evangelism-wary, politically-exhausted Episcopalians nervous, the truth is Jesus is simply inviting us to share the Good News of God’s grace in our lives.  He promises that we do not have to do the work alone – we always have good partners here at Hickory Neck.  He promises that people are ready to hear our words – we all have a story of goodness about our faith journey here the world needs to hear.  And he promises that there will be joy – we will all find surprising delights in this journey of sharing.  Our invitation is to be a laborer in the plentiful harvest.  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “The Greater Gift,” July 1, 2013, as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2617 on July 5, 2025.

[ii] David J. Lose, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 217.

[iii] Richard J. Shaffer, Jr., “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 218.

Sermon – Luke 8.26-39, P7, YC, June 22, 2025

24 Thursday Jul 2025

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You all know by now that following the three-year lectionary cycle means you are going to get pieces of scripture that the preacher would normally avoid if at all possible.  As we slide back into ordinary time and back into stories of Jesus’ ministry, this story from Luke about the healing of the demoniac is one of those stories.  Part of the problem is that there is simply too much going on for us to tackle unless you want to be sitting here for another couple of hours.  There is the fact that Jesus has taken his mission into Gentile territory, into a place whose name has the Hebrew root of the word gerash, or “to expel,” effectively making this city named “expelledville” or “excorcismburg.”[i]  There is the presence of what the text calls a demoniac, a word that is essentially foreign to us, and creates a slippery slope when we try to start defining what being possessed by a demon means in modern times.[ii]  There is the demoniac’s claim that his name is Legion – which certainly means lots of demons, but also is a reference to the Roman term for a militia of about 6,000 men – a militia that has caused a great deal of oppression for the people of the Gerasenes.[iii]  There is the fact that the demons seem to know Jesus’ identity before the disciples do.  Then of course there is the fact that Jesus allows the demons to possess pigs who then die in the lake – effectively destroying the local economy of the pig farmers, killing creatures of God, and damaging the water habitat.[iv]  And then at the very end of the story, when the healed man asks to follow Jesus, Jesus turns him back home – not using his familiar, “Follow me,” command, but sending him back to witness to people who have known him in one specific, awful, complicated way.[v]

Acknowledging that ALL of that is going on, and that we really need at least an hour-long Bible study to really dissect this passage, I want us to focus on one other bit of this layered, complicated story that has been lingering with me this week.  Verses 35 and 37 of this text say, “Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.  And they were afraid…Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.”  The people are not relieved or joyous at the man’s healing.  The people are not grateful, hospitable, or in awe.  The are afraid with a great fear.  Now scholars concede that some of that fear could be in how Jesus has destroyed their livelihood.[vi]  But scholars also suggest that the fear these folks are feeling is because their sense of identity is called into question through Jesus’ healing of the man with demons.

You see, in this town, the man with all those demons had not been cast out of society.  Instead, he was treated as the responsibility of the people.  They knew his behavior was erratic and he could be a harm to others and himself, and so they regularly chained him up, trying to mitigate the impact of his possession.  He became the identified patient in the system – the person they all put their energy into so they could create some sense of normalcy in the midst of something very abnormal.  As scholar Fred Craddock explains, “In the case of the Gadarene demoniac, the people knew the locus of evil, knew where the man lived, and devoted considerable time and expense trying to guard and to control him…this particularly successful balance of tolerance and management of the demoniac among them also allowed the people to keep attention off their own lives.  But now the power of God for good comes to their community and [the power of God for good] disturbs a way of life they had come to accept.  Even when [power] is for good, power that can neither be calculated nor managed is frightening.  What will God do next?”[vii]

Professor Rolf Jacobson relays the story of one his students as they discussed this passage.  The student had a stepdad who was an alcoholic.  There was chaos in his home that he learned to manage once the patterns became predictable.  Though the idea of a kid having to learn how to handle that reality is upsetting, what this student found more upsetting was the day his stepdad left the family.  Without warning, the chaos was suddenly gone.  He had expected to experience great joy, but instead he was left uncertain about his own identity.  If was no longer the stepchild of an alcoholic, who was he?  He didn’t like the identity, but at least he knew that identity.   He had no idea how to define himself in this new reality.[viii]

I think that is why Jesus’ first question to the demoniac is so important.  In the face of this man who is clearly possessed by demons, who is stark naked, who, being homeless, lives in the tombs of the dead, who is likely violent, dirty, and somewhat feral, Jesus says, “What is your name?”  As scholar Debie Thomas asks, “Has there ever been a more searching question?  …Who are you when no one is looking?  What name do you yearn to be called in the lonely stretches of the night?”  When Jesus asks, “What is your name?” he “begins to recall the broken man to himself.  To his humanity, to his beginnings, to his unique identity as a child beloved of God.”[ix]  Unfortunately, we are never given the man’s name.  But as he sits at Jesus’ feet, fully healed, fully clothed, in his right mind, we can only imagine he has found his name.

I think that is perhaps at the root of the fear of those in the demoniac’s village.  Jesus’ question for the demoniac is their question too.  What is your name?  Separate from what has been ailing this guy, and more importantly, separately from the likely legion of evil that was haunting them too, Jesus’ actions mean that he turns to those who haven’t been dealing with their own stuff and asks the same question, “What is your name?”

That is our question today too.  I am keenly aware that every person who walks through the doors of our church or who watches us online comes to church with their own legion of struggles and suffering and questions and doubts and anger.  For some, just making it to one of these seats today was a battle – either a literal battle to get kids, spouses, or ourselves up and out the door, or a figurative battle of not knowing what to do with all the “stuff” of life and not sure the church can handle our stuff.  For us, Jesus wants to know, “What is your name?”  Now Jesus does not ask that question because Jesus does not know.  Jesus knows every single one of us here is a beloved child of God.  But Jesus asks us that question because Jesus wants every single one of us here to be recalled – to ourselves, to our humanity, to our beginning, to our unique identity as a child beloved of God.  And then, because Jesus never leaves us without homework, Jesus asks us to go back out into the world, confident in our own names, so that we can ask others that same probing question, “What is your name?”  Amen.

[i] Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington, III, The Gospel of Luke:  New Cambridge Bible Commentary  (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2018), 238

[ii] Chelsea Brooke Yarborough, “Commentary on Luke 8:26-39” June 22, 2025, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-luke-826-39-6 on June 19, 2025.

[iii] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke:  Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, Minnesota:  The Liturgical Press, 1991), 137.

[iv] Rolf Jacobson “Sermon Brainwave:  #1029: Second Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 12C) – June 22, 2025” June 6, 2025 as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/1029-second-sunday-after-pentecost-ord-12c-june-22-2025 on June 18, 2025.

[v] N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 102.

[vi] Fred B. Craddock, Luke:  Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), 117.

[vii] Craddock, 117.

[viii] Jacobson.

[ix] Debie Thomas, Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories:  Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, Oregon:  Cascade Books, 2022), 101.