Pentecost 2, Proper 7C
In the name of God: the Creator,
the Christ, and the Spirit. Amen.
When Michael worked in a school,
he worked with a teacher who was a big advocate of essential oils. Not in the way some folks are – she didn’t
think oils could be an absolute replacement for Western Medicine – but she
recognized that they could be used in a number of ways in the classroom. In a diffuser, at the very least, the oils
could make the class smell better – certainly important with kindergarteners… But there were some blends that were thought
to boost the immune system – which can’t hurt during cold and flu season. Others were good at helping people to feel
energized or calm – depending on the situation.
But when Michael first came home
talking about this, it made me think about those words: “essential oils”. I’d typically thought of the word “essential”
with only one real meaning – necessary.
But essential oils aren’t called that because their necessary, per se
(though if you ask Jen Trevisan, she might disagree…) But they’re called “essential” because they
highlight the essence of various natural substances. Scented oils might smell like natural things
like roses or oranges or whatever. Or
they might smell like other things: like linen, or “night sky”, or “spring
rain”. But essential oils are different
from scented oils because it’s not about what they smell like, it’s about the
essence behind these various natural things.
Essential oil from roses isn’t
just made to smell like roses – it’s part of roses. It comes from roses. It’s at the very being – the very essence –
of a big part of what makes a rose unique.
Of what makes it different, even from other flowers.
I thought of that this week as I
encountered the story of the Gerasene demoniac – the man from this region who
was possessed by demons. And not just
demons, but Legions of demons – more than could be comprehended. They made their home in this man. They effected how he lived his life. He was ostracized from the community. He went around completely naked. He didn’t even live in a house, but in the
tombs of the region. This man’s demons
had completely separated him from everyone.
He was all alone.
But even though these demons had
impacted every aspect of his life and of all of his relationships, when Jesus
met the man, he saw something more. The
man was not, himself, a demon. He was a
man. A member of the community. A child of God, even. The demons were in him, but they weren’t of
him. They lived at the core of his body
and even of his mind, but they weren’t at the core of his soul. They weren’t essential. They weren’t definitive. They were just outside influences that had
made their way inside.
It’s not uncommon for us to speak
of people we know, or maybe even sometimes ourselves, as though there are
demons. Most of us probably haven’t
encountered someone as outwardly tormented as this Gerasene demoniac – but you
may have. Most of the demons we know and
face each day are more along the lines of things like self-doubt… Or, the demonic residual of traumatic
experience: of abuse, disease, anxiety, sadness, or fear.
Like the man from the Gerasene
region that we read about, these demons separate us from our communities, as
well, but in quieter ways. They make us
feel like we’re unworthy of love, unworthy of companionship, unworthy of joy
and success. They make us feel like we
are, at our core, less than we should be.
The truth of Jesus, though,
whether or not you can see it at any given moment, is that Jesus can see
you. And not just those things inside
you that delude you from the truth – Jesus can see the essential parts. The essence.
And that essence – the real you that is seen and celebrated by God’s
wisdom, underneath and around whatever demons may be tormenting, is that you
are good. You are loved. You are a child of God who is worthy of all
the goodness and love that God has to offer.
That’s the core. That’s what is
essential.
It would be easy to look at this
man in the story and say, “He goes around naked. He must be immoral.” Or, it would be easy to say, “He lives in the
tombs – there’s something wrong with him.”
But Jesus doesn’t see it that way.
Jesus can see and celebrate and support the goodness that all the rest
obscured.
My prayer for everyone in this
room is that we’ll believe him. That we
will believe, just as Jesus could see past all the mess into the heart of the
child of God in this story – that just like that, Christ will see past all of
our own mess, into our own hearts, and into the truth that we, too, are
children of God. That Christ will see
our essence, and that it is better and more joy-making than we had ever
imagined.
It might be tough. We might not believe it on the first
try. But as that assurance slowly dawns,
I pray that we’ll take those eyes of Christ with us into the world. That when we see the demons of pain and
neglect in the people around us, that we, too, will be able to look past them,
to see the child of God living inside. And
that we, in the name of Christ, will cast out those demons. To declare love where it had been obscured
and impossible to imagine before.
Because love is already there. It
just needs someone to call it forth. May
God give us that strength. Amen.
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