This sermon is the final in a series of sermons based on Galatians and the assigned gospel readings for the day. Read the passages at Galatians 3:23-29 and Luke 8:26-39. The sermon was preached at St. James Lutheran Church in Johnston, Iowa, on June 18-19, 2016, while I was filling in for their pastor who was on a pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago de Campostela in northern Spain.
I apologize in advance and provide
you with a trigger warning. There’s nudity in this sermon today. But that’s how
it has to be. If Paul’s going to talk about being clothed in Christ in his
Galatians letter, we’re going to have to deal with our sartorial state before
Christ wrapped himself around us. And just in case you were wondering, this
weekend marks the annual World Naked Bike Ride. In 70 places around the globe,
people strip and go for a ride on a course through the city to protest the
automobile culture and car emissions, build awareness of how dangerous it is to
bike around traffic, and, of course, keep potential thieves from ever wanting
to touch their bicycle saddles. Although the guy in our gospel reading shares
his lack of attire with the naked bike riders, that’s about as far as we can go
in spotting similarities.
There he is in the same state he came into the world, but he had made no choice to be unclothed. What’s more, he’s also got a demonic spirit that’s taken him over, and he’s been shunted out of town to keep the danger away from good folks. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the only place he has to live in the tombs. Two weeks ago we saw what being around a dead body could do, when we heard about Jesus approaching the bier of the dead man in Nain as his funeral processed through town. To touch a dead person was to be declared unclean, unfit for human company. But Jesus had no fear of it in Nain, and he doubles down when he comes to the man possessed of evil and as good as dead. We keep getting these stories from Luke in which the characters are either headed to the grave or are already dead. When it comes to being able to present something worthy to Jesus, they've got nothin': the centurion, the dead son of Nain, the sinful woman with the alabaster jar of oil and now the Gerasene demoniac whose life is so over that he spends his days in the tombs.
As we’ve seen in Galatians these past few weeks, for Paul there’s nothing we can do to get it right with God. When he says we’re not saved by works of the law, he’s arguing that if salvation is to be had, it has to come by the sheer grace of God in the person of Jesus. The only thing the law can do is to protect our neighbors from us, keeping us and them safe by acting as a disciplinarian. All the law can do is put a leash on us and guide us. But it can’t get us over the finish line. If we think being good or nice or religious, voting Clinton or voting Trump or even voting Libertarian, or any other action on our part can save us – even the best thing we can think of – we’re sadly mistaken. For Paul, we’re dead in sin and can’t raise ourselves. We may be breathing and our hearts may be beating, but other than that we’re a bag of bones waiting to be packed off to the nearest two-and-a-half foot by eight-foot hole. We can’t dress ourselves up in anything that meets the high demand of the heavenly dress-code. Those of you who are old enough may remember the ads for the Dream Date game when we were kids. The girls in the commercial would ask the question, “Will he be a dream date? Or will he be a dud?” That’s us: the dud. But even if we got dolled up, a corpse in a prom dress is still a corpse. A tuxedo won’t make a dead guy live. The demands of this world and the requirements of the law can only take us to the point where, once again, the only thing the characters in Luke can say is "Got nothin', God." They’re as naked as the guy in the Gerasene tombs. And so are we.
But once we know our situation, now comes the “Rock of Ages” moment for all involved. You may remember the words to the old hymn that we’ll sing in a few minutes: "Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to Thy cross I cling; / Naked, come to Thee for dress; / Helpless, look to Thee for grace." Jesus won't let us dress ourselves, because every bit of apparel we could find to put on reeks of the tombs. The naked guy, hounded by demons and lost in the tombs, stands there with not enough power to climb out of the tomb, push the demon out of him, and go home. And ironically that’s the point when the Gerasene man and the Galatians are clothed and fully free of the bound will that possessed them.
The possessed guy in the Gerasene territory isn’t the only one in the story who’s getting a change of attire. Legion – that host of demons possessing the nude, tomb-resident? Legion, who controls the man to the point of tossing places into places where injury is only the best result, was wrapped up in the man, controlling him from the inside. But Jesus gives evil a new skin inside a raft of barrows and gilts — a herd of hogs. The swine were unclean for the Jews, as untouchable as the dead son in Nain and the demoniac living among rotting corpses. And Jesus sends them over a cliff to drown, as dead as the bison piled up at the bottom of a Native American buffalo jump. Where Jesus is present, evil dies. And so do the legalistic dividing lines between Greek and Jew, slave and free, male and female, and any other demarcation between insiders and outsiders, godly and ungodly, iustus et peccator (as Luther said). But you? Now you are wrapped up in Christ's skin. He pulls open the spear wound in his side and slips his skin over you. There's no longer any you old you left. You're as done as a left-for-dead demoniac. The life you now have is hid in Christ. There's only his purity, his life, his utter faithfulness, his place at God's right hand, his very name that is now yours.
Our friends Bob and Carole are visiting us this weekend. Bob is the pastor at St. Dysmas Lutheran Church. That’s our sister congregation behind the walls of the South Dakota State Penitentiary. It’s named after St. Dysmas, the thief crucified next to Jesus and who hear the Lord say, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” All the congregation’s members are inmates. Every single one of them has run afoul of the law. They’ve committed crimes against the state and against their fellow human beings (some of them pretty horrendous). If you attend worship with the prisoners on a Thursday evening, you’ll shake about ten hands as the men of the church council greet you, and you’ll see that everyone who’s rung out of their cells and shuffles past the guard to check in to be continually accounted for is wearing tan scrubs. There are four-inch letters on back of their shirts and on down their pants legs that say either “inmate” or “maximum security.”
One of the prisoners whose name is Christopher talks about how in prison you never get away from a sense of worthlessness, because you put on those clothes and instantly feel like nothing. Christopher says it can overwhelm you. People feel it in the cell halls and bring everyone around them down. Outside of the chapel where worship happens or with an encounter with their pastor, my friend Bob, or with another faithful prisoner, they can never escape being identified by the worst thing they’ve ever done. Inside those walls your life no longer belongs to you. It’s over. The law holds sway. You go where you’re told. You eat the worst food you can imagine, at the least cost to the Department of Corrections, and the citizens of South Dakota. When a corrections officer demands something of you, you do it or you get sent to the SHU, the special housing unit where you’re kept isolated and where you can’t do any harm. These men of St. Dysmas would read Galatians and get what Paul’s talking about. They’ve put on tan scrubs that essentially the death of them. Worship at St. Dysmas is the only hour each week where they’re called by their first names. Otherwise they’re known by their surnames, by a number or by “Hey, Inmate!” Christopher himself looks back on his time prior to prison as a dead-end going nowhere and without any kind of life. Another prisoner named Justin says you don’t get where they are by living in the light. They’ve lived darkness. Hard, hard darkness for lots of them.
I’ve been privileged to preach and teach at St. Dysmas, and I have to say there’s no easier place to proclaim the gospel. What makes it easy is that no one there is under the illusion that there’s some part of them that’s immune from judgment. Wearing those tan scrubs is a constant reminder. They don’t get to pretend like we do that the face they present to the world is find-and-dandy. They’re inmates, plenty of ‘em lifers. They’re just the kind of sinners Paul liked preaching to. And they’re especially the kind of people Jesus loved: an unworthy centurion, a dead man in Nain, a sinful women with a jar of oil, a demon-possessed guy in Gerasene, and you. This word of God from Luke and Galatians becomes a story about you, not when your starting point is how good you are. It begins at the place where you finally recognize the emptiness of sin and death.
What happens to those brothers in Christ at the South Dakota Pen when they climb up the stairs to the chapel up on fifth floor is remarkable. Walking into worship for them is like walking out of a tomb once a week. When Christopher was baptized a couple years ago, he became part of the body of Christ. That’s the place where the law can have no say. It can no longer strip them bare of identity, take away hope, or demand utter obedience, for now they are clothed in Christ. And Christ will brook no other competition when it comes to you. If you are in Christ, Paul says in Romans, nothing can separate you from the love of God, neither height nor depth, things present nor things to come, nor angels, nor principalities, nor anything else in all creation. Where before you were wrapped in grave clothes or tan scrubs at best, now Paul says you are clothed in Christ. And in those splendid resurrected duds, you be lookin’ mighty fine.
When Jesus tells the newly-freed man and you to go home and declare what God had done, it's no mission to fix the world. And it certainly isn’t some job description for how to stay cleaned up and purdy. The both of you are being sent back into the world that knows no resurrection, that knows no new life, that cannot be released from life under the law’s thumb. Instead what Jesus bids us to do is exactly what Luther talked about in the first of his 95 Theses: "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ bids us to repent, he intends an entire life of repentance." To declare what God has done is to continually confess: "I got nothin'. I couldn't get it right. I couldn't fix it. I still can't. The old me? There but for the grace of God do I now go. Christ has come to me when I was still dead and keeps giving me life. Helpless, I was given everything. Since my life comes in him alone, I can't be honest if I don't point to him. I may have come home, but it's life from Jesus that's striding through the front door."
I have to say that St. Dysmas Lutheran Church is one of the most vital ministries of the entire ELCA. And it’s certainly the warmest, most welcoming congregation I’ve ever worshiped in. Though it we in the church have been sent behind the walls of the prison to declare what God has done. (And let me tell you, if you’ve got money you want to be used for good, St. Dysmas is a place where it’ll matter. You don’t get a lot in the offering plate when most of your church members make twenty-five cents an hour.) But every place where we member of the body of Christ engage the world, we do it not to fix the world. We simply don’t have the wisdom or the willingness to really do that. But what actually do in the church with our service to our neighbors is to give witness to the freedom that’s been given on account of Christ. We declare by our letting go of the things we idolize like power and money, security and status, that Christ has clothed us.
That’s why we dress babies up in white gowns when they’re baptized. That’s why pastors wear a white alb. That why, when we are at last rolled into this place on our backs for one final worship service, our coffin is draped in a white funeral pall. It’s why the color of any church festival dealing with the resurrected Jesus or with our resurrection is white. Again and again and again, as we open our closet doors to look for something that’ll make us look nice and declare us acceptable, the gospel calls us back to say, “Nope. You’re dead. But now you’re alive in Christ. You’ve got better clothes by the best designer ever to get suited up in. You were naked, but now you’re clothed in Christ. Those are party clothes. Let’s go declare what he’s done.” Amen.
There he is in the same state he came into the world, but he had made no choice to be unclothed. What’s more, he’s also got a demonic spirit that’s taken him over, and he’s been shunted out of town to keep the danger away from good folks. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the only place he has to live in the tombs. Two weeks ago we saw what being around a dead body could do, when we heard about Jesus approaching the bier of the dead man in Nain as his funeral processed through town. To touch a dead person was to be declared unclean, unfit for human company. But Jesus had no fear of it in Nain, and he doubles down when he comes to the man possessed of evil and as good as dead. We keep getting these stories from Luke in which the characters are either headed to the grave or are already dead. When it comes to being able to present something worthy to Jesus, they've got nothin': the centurion, the dead son of Nain, the sinful woman with the alabaster jar of oil and now the Gerasene demoniac whose life is so over that he spends his days in the tombs.
As we’ve seen in Galatians these past few weeks, for Paul there’s nothing we can do to get it right with God. When he says we’re not saved by works of the law, he’s arguing that if salvation is to be had, it has to come by the sheer grace of God in the person of Jesus. The only thing the law can do is to protect our neighbors from us, keeping us and them safe by acting as a disciplinarian. All the law can do is put a leash on us and guide us. But it can’t get us over the finish line. If we think being good or nice or religious, voting Clinton or voting Trump or even voting Libertarian, or any other action on our part can save us – even the best thing we can think of – we’re sadly mistaken. For Paul, we’re dead in sin and can’t raise ourselves. We may be breathing and our hearts may be beating, but other than that we’re a bag of bones waiting to be packed off to the nearest two-and-a-half foot by eight-foot hole. We can’t dress ourselves up in anything that meets the high demand of the heavenly dress-code. Those of you who are old enough may remember the ads for the Dream Date game when we were kids. The girls in the commercial would ask the question, “Will he be a dream date? Or will he be a dud?” That’s us: the dud. But even if we got dolled up, a corpse in a prom dress is still a corpse. A tuxedo won’t make a dead guy live. The demands of this world and the requirements of the law can only take us to the point where, once again, the only thing the characters in Luke can say is "Got nothin', God." They’re as naked as the guy in the Gerasene tombs. And so are we.
But once we know our situation, now comes the “Rock of Ages” moment for all involved. You may remember the words to the old hymn that we’ll sing in a few minutes: "Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to Thy cross I cling; / Naked, come to Thee for dress; / Helpless, look to Thee for grace." Jesus won't let us dress ourselves, because every bit of apparel we could find to put on reeks of the tombs. The naked guy, hounded by demons and lost in the tombs, stands there with not enough power to climb out of the tomb, push the demon out of him, and go home. And ironically that’s the point when the Gerasene man and the Galatians are clothed and fully free of the bound will that possessed them.
The possessed guy in the Gerasene territory isn’t the only one in the story who’s getting a change of attire. Legion – that host of demons possessing the nude, tomb-resident? Legion, who controls the man to the point of tossing places into places where injury is only the best result, was wrapped up in the man, controlling him from the inside. But Jesus gives evil a new skin inside a raft of barrows and gilts — a herd of hogs. The swine were unclean for the Jews, as untouchable as the dead son in Nain and the demoniac living among rotting corpses. And Jesus sends them over a cliff to drown, as dead as the bison piled up at the bottom of a Native American buffalo jump. Where Jesus is present, evil dies. And so do the legalistic dividing lines between Greek and Jew, slave and free, male and female, and any other demarcation between insiders and outsiders, godly and ungodly, iustus et peccator (as Luther said). But you? Now you are wrapped up in Christ's skin. He pulls open the spear wound in his side and slips his skin over you. There's no longer any you old you left. You're as done as a left-for-dead demoniac. The life you now have is hid in Christ. There's only his purity, his life, his utter faithfulness, his place at God's right hand, his very name that is now yours.
Our friends Bob and Carole are visiting us this weekend. Bob is the pastor at St. Dysmas Lutheran Church. That’s our sister congregation behind the walls of the South Dakota State Penitentiary. It’s named after St. Dysmas, the thief crucified next to Jesus and who hear the Lord say, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” All the congregation’s members are inmates. Every single one of them has run afoul of the law. They’ve committed crimes against the state and against their fellow human beings (some of them pretty horrendous). If you attend worship with the prisoners on a Thursday evening, you’ll shake about ten hands as the men of the church council greet you, and you’ll see that everyone who’s rung out of their cells and shuffles past the guard to check in to be continually accounted for is wearing tan scrubs. There are four-inch letters on back of their shirts and on down their pants legs that say either “inmate” or “maximum security.”
One of the prisoners whose name is Christopher talks about how in prison you never get away from a sense of worthlessness, because you put on those clothes and instantly feel like nothing. Christopher says it can overwhelm you. People feel it in the cell halls and bring everyone around them down. Outside of the chapel where worship happens or with an encounter with their pastor, my friend Bob, or with another faithful prisoner, they can never escape being identified by the worst thing they’ve ever done. Inside those walls your life no longer belongs to you. It’s over. The law holds sway. You go where you’re told. You eat the worst food you can imagine, at the least cost to the Department of Corrections, and the citizens of South Dakota. When a corrections officer demands something of you, you do it or you get sent to the SHU, the special housing unit where you’re kept isolated and where you can’t do any harm. These men of St. Dysmas would read Galatians and get what Paul’s talking about. They’ve put on tan scrubs that essentially the death of them. Worship at St. Dysmas is the only hour each week where they’re called by their first names. Otherwise they’re known by their surnames, by a number or by “Hey, Inmate!” Christopher himself looks back on his time prior to prison as a dead-end going nowhere and without any kind of life. Another prisoner named Justin says you don’t get where they are by living in the light. They’ve lived darkness. Hard, hard darkness for lots of them.
I’ve been privileged to preach and teach at St. Dysmas, and I have to say there’s no easier place to proclaim the gospel. What makes it easy is that no one there is under the illusion that there’s some part of them that’s immune from judgment. Wearing those tan scrubs is a constant reminder. They don’t get to pretend like we do that the face they present to the world is find-and-dandy. They’re inmates, plenty of ‘em lifers. They’re just the kind of sinners Paul liked preaching to. And they’re especially the kind of people Jesus loved: an unworthy centurion, a dead man in Nain, a sinful women with a jar of oil, a demon-possessed guy in Gerasene, and you. This word of God from Luke and Galatians becomes a story about you, not when your starting point is how good you are. It begins at the place where you finally recognize the emptiness of sin and death.
What happens to those brothers in Christ at the South Dakota Pen when they climb up the stairs to the chapel up on fifth floor is remarkable. Walking into worship for them is like walking out of a tomb once a week. When Christopher was baptized a couple years ago, he became part of the body of Christ. That’s the place where the law can have no say. It can no longer strip them bare of identity, take away hope, or demand utter obedience, for now they are clothed in Christ. And Christ will brook no other competition when it comes to you. If you are in Christ, Paul says in Romans, nothing can separate you from the love of God, neither height nor depth, things present nor things to come, nor angels, nor principalities, nor anything else in all creation. Where before you were wrapped in grave clothes or tan scrubs at best, now Paul says you are clothed in Christ. And in those splendid resurrected duds, you be lookin’ mighty fine.
When Jesus tells the newly-freed man and you to go home and declare what God had done, it's no mission to fix the world. And it certainly isn’t some job description for how to stay cleaned up and purdy. The both of you are being sent back into the world that knows no resurrection, that knows no new life, that cannot be released from life under the law’s thumb. Instead what Jesus bids us to do is exactly what Luther talked about in the first of his 95 Theses: "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ bids us to repent, he intends an entire life of repentance." To declare what God has done is to continually confess: "I got nothin'. I couldn't get it right. I couldn't fix it. I still can't. The old me? There but for the grace of God do I now go. Christ has come to me when I was still dead and keeps giving me life. Helpless, I was given everything. Since my life comes in him alone, I can't be honest if I don't point to him. I may have come home, but it's life from Jesus that's striding through the front door."
I have to say that St. Dysmas Lutheran Church is one of the most vital ministries of the entire ELCA. And it’s certainly the warmest, most welcoming congregation I’ve ever worshiped in. Though it we in the church have been sent behind the walls of the prison to declare what God has done. (And let me tell you, if you’ve got money you want to be used for good, St. Dysmas is a place where it’ll matter. You don’t get a lot in the offering plate when most of your church members make twenty-five cents an hour.) But every place where we member of the body of Christ engage the world, we do it not to fix the world. We simply don’t have the wisdom or the willingness to really do that. But what actually do in the church with our service to our neighbors is to give witness to the freedom that’s been given on account of Christ. We declare by our letting go of the things we idolize like power and money, security and status, that Christ has clothed us.
That’s why we dress babies up in white gowns when they’re baptized. That’s why pastors wear a white alb. That why, when we are at last rolled into this place on our backs for one final worship service, our coffin is draped in a white funeral pall. It’s why the color of any church festival dealing with the resurrected Jesus or with our resurrection is white. Again and again and again, as we open our closet doors to look for something that’ll make us look nice and declare us acceptable, the gospel calls us back to say, “Nope. You’re dead. But now you’re alive in Christ. You’ve got better clothes by the best designer ever to get suited up in. You were naked, but now you’re clothed in Christ. Those are party clothes. Let’s go declare what he’s done.” Amen.
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