Preacher: Julia Baker

Scripture: Luke 8:26-39

The author Elizabeth Gilbert has a practice where she writes letters from God to herself writing at the top of the page — “What would you have me know today”?” I have done this practice over the last years, finding it especially helpful when the press of the world is upon me and I am not in my “right mind” and needing to hear God’s voice – the voice of what is True and Real and Good – with clarity.

As I spent time with the passage this week I found myself writing one of these letters to us. I invite you into this imaginative exercise with me…

—–

God — Holy One, 

What would you have us know today? 

We are like deer panting for water, we long for you and your winds of the Holy Spirit – whisper and howl – your words into us. 

What an intense time to be alive. The collective grief, strain, worry, our groaning too deep for words even — under it is the longing and yearning for peace, and thriving for the whole community of creation.

And alongside it what a beautiful time to be alive — to see the collective action of people putting their bodies where love is — at protests and pride marches, baking cookies with grandkids, tending gardens with the first tomatoes and calling legislators, gathering here to worship you…

Sometimes within all of this there are a legion of emotions within us, which is not a problem. You meet us where we are with what we are holding.

So God, what would you have us know as we seek to live more faithfully in the Light of your Love?

—-

My children, my beloved ones kneeling at the waters of Life – 

I see where you each are and I love you. 

I meet you each for the healing you need. 

That is what I love to do. I seek you.

It gives me pure delight, just as I once, 

long ago met the demon possessed man 

– a human who was “locked down” within and without – 

and liberated and restored him to thriving, 

to right mind, and his place within the community. 

I saw his agony, all that consumed him. 

What was not his to carry. 

And so I took it from him. 

Releasing the evil, that was not of him, 

but shrouded and filled him,

I cast the demons into a herd of pigs and them 

into the transforming waters of the sea. 

The burden forever gone. 

What might each of you be holding that isn’t yours to carry?

A generational story that never really belonged to you, but was feed like milk, with a trace of something did not nourish. A story that is ready to be cast out. Or a societal story. Many many of them — the stories of not enough, of should, of power found in anything that isn’t love. 

My Voice, the Voice of Truth only speaks in love.

I wish you could have been there

to see the change after the suffering man was freed. 

His whole countenance, every fiber of his being changed. 

How about this, think of times in your own life, 

imagine and feel into it…when have you been consumed with something 

— fear, anxiety, grief, addiction, a worn out story, 

an emotion or action that gripped you turning your muscles into ropes of tension,or your limbs to lead with the molasses of apathy or depression.

Feel into it.

Maybe this was with you for a short pulse of adrenaline, 

maybe this is much of where you lived

for a season or years in riveting anxiety or a numbed grief. 

All of it separates you from being present to life here and now, separate from relationship and thriving, from the fullness and goodness of the whole range of 

emotions. That integration is what I most want for you.

And then remember a moment when, 

like the sun breaking through a shroud of clouds, 

you get relief from the inner or outer storm. 

Like the man you are, “in your right mind” again. 

There is a calm in you, an inner spaciousness – you can breathe.

An alignment in body, mind, heart and spirit.

Feel into those moments. What does your whole being feel like?

Really imprint the felt memory.

That is who I AM in you.

I am the God who created you in your mother’s womb.

I AM that calm that settles your whole being.

I am the Calm that man knew at last.

I am the Calm that can settle the storm, settle the world.

The Peace that Surpasses Human Understanding.

Wholeness and integration, Completeness is who I am.

When people see this in you. My Calm.

It might be confusing or off putting to the world.

When you do things that suddenly don’t align with the Story of Fear.

Fear is often a reaction to the Real for those that themselves are shrouded and don’t have eyes to see it. It touches the deep down, silenced place of yearning for it, for me, within them…

Just as the people reacted to the man — “Those who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured. Then all the people of the region of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, because they were overcome with fear.”

The man was told by Jesus to — “Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” 

The scriptures read, “So the man went away and told how much Jesus had done for him.”

This man in his right mind, in his healed integration knew and saw the relational dance of the Trinity. 

What a beautiful thing!

He knew that Jesus and I are one. “In Christ all things hold together.”

And he spoke from his calm of The Calm. 

He spoke of the “you restore my soul” he shared of the living waters.

I can see the light and clarity shining from his eyes.

Shining from your eyes when you also are living trusting in the Flow of my Love.

And when you tell of it – of me – through your actions, words, and countenance.

It is okay if it is only for moments, if you forget and remember again and again.

That is the Practice, that is the Way. 

Do this all — each movement in remembrance of me. 

It is from my Calm in you – from Right Mind – that you then can act with what the moment calls for with compassion, curiosity, clarity, and connection.

This is, living rooted in my love is what you need. 

What the world needs. 

What breaks through my kingdom here.

How are you called to “Return home and tell what God has done for you, to share of Jesus.” 

To witness to this good news? To who I am in your life? 

To do this even when it is uncomfortable, even when you might be met with  – “fear and get out of here.” — the song we sand said — if your cries for peace are taken as unpatriotic 

In the world as it is now it can be scary to speak my name. 

Lots of horror has been done in the name of God. By the church and Christians. 

This grieves me deeply. I understand the hesitation to claim and name me.

It gives me joy then when I see things like a Mennonite pastor wearing a shirt at pride that says “This Pastor Loves You.” 

And it gives me joy — all the quieter, less tangible, one-on-one ways of “returning home and telling of the good things God has done.” 

It might just be how you are sitting on a subway, how you smile at a clerk, how you engage a child or friend. “They will know we are Christans by our love.” 

And sometimes, how might you be invited to lean into more overtly labeling that Love as me. I give you that loving challenge.

How does my Love – the Love of the God who loves you deeply as you are –

give you courage to invite others into this Good News?

What can you be freed of today, a burden laid down and not picked up, to then have more space and calm within yourself to share of my Goodness?

I love you more than you can fathom. Sink into it. 

Amen.