Today’s Gospel story is a fantastical, other worldly story about the demoniac of Gerasenes. Upon their arrival, the disciples are met by a man with demons, in chains, who wore no clothes and did not live in a house. When they meet Jesus, the demons ask Jesus to leave them alone. Jesus denies this request.
When it becomes clear that Jesus is going to heal the man, the demons ask to be transferred to another person, rather than sent away all together. Jesus denies this second request, and instead sends the demons into a herd of pigs, who flail about, and jump off a cliff. The swine herders saw this and ran to tell others in town.
Upon their return, the townspeople found the man they’d known to be the demoniac, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. The story tells us they were afraid and asked Jesus to leave.
We don’t have many swine herders here, and few people know anyone who’s a demoniac. But like most Gospel stories, this story has been a relevant, timely story through the ages. It’s got two main characters, or roles. And in every age, every time, and every place, this story repeats, with the same two roles. The most obvious character is the demoniac. The crazy, or different, or loud, or disruptive, or foreign. The other. The Greeks have a word for what the demoniac is. He’s a pharmakos, or the designed outcast or scapegoat. In a hierarchal system, the scapegoat allows the system to function, by being bad, being the black sheep, so others can be relatively better. In ancient Greek times, the pharmakos was the ultimate scapegoat. The pharmakos was the unfortunate human selected to serve as a human sacrifice, the person ultimately oppressed, so that others could live comfortably.
The other player in this story is the collective people, the gathered crowd. The mob. Without the mob, there is no pharmakos, and there is no story.
But there’s always a mob, and there always is a pharmakos.
We can see this, and believe it when you think about other classist societies. Well known is the caste system in India, where people are born into their social status and have no hope of ever getting out. There is even a caste that is pre-determined to serves as prostitutes. Girls born into this caste have no choice. They are born pharmakos, necessitated by the mob-mentality of the others in the caste system. They have no choice. The mob mentality makes everyone else in the community believe this is ok. They are the lowest on the pecking order, making others higher.
In this country, we had a caste system, with the systematic legalized scapegoating of people of color. We’ve gotten away from that. Unfortunately, not far enough.
Oregon has a horrible and relatively recent history of scapegoating, prejudice, and resulting oppression. In 1859, Oregon became a state, and was the only state in the union with an specific exclusion written into its constitution, “No free negro or mulatto. . . shall come, be, or reside within this state”.
In 1884, slavery was outlawed in Oregon, more than 20 years after the Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But at the same time Oregon outlawed slavery, a law was adopted called the “Lash Law” that required that any black person in the territory be whipped up to 40 times, until they left the territory. True, black people were freed from slavery, but then lashed, and told to leave within 3 years. Within a year of that laws adoption, it was deemed too harsh, so instead, hard forced labor was substituted for the lashings. So instead of a lashing, African Americans were subjected to forced labor, and then forced out of the territory.
The 15th amendment of the US constitution says that the right to vote shall not be hindered by race or color. It was adopted in 1870, but not ratified by Oregon for nearly a hundred years, in 1959. Meanwhile, in Eugene, African Americans were not allowed to live within the city limits.
These racially biased laws were the prevailing mob-culture for far too long. The section in the constitution that prohibited blacks from settling in Oregon? That section stood until it was repealed in 1926. The law excluding African Americans from living in Eugene? That was in effect until 1965. What this tells me is that in our not-so-distant-past, we allowed our government to sanction discrimination based on something we have since realized is wrong. As a result of that recent history of complacency, I fear we have it in us to do that again.
Thankfully, those laws are gone. In Eugene, it is not acceptable to discriminate against someone because of their race, gender, abilities, nationality. It is also not acceptable to discriminate against someone because of their gender identity, citizenship status, social status, or economic status. It’s the city law. Even if it weren’t the law, it’s the right thing to do, it’s what Christ calls us to do and be.
In Eugene, overt racial prejudice has largely gone away, but it’s still around. In the first three month of 2013, there were six complaints to the Eugene Equity and Human Rights Center about racially motivated hate activity. Included in this list– car tires of a mixed race couple were slashed, with nigger keyed into the paint, racial slurs used freely during an assault, and KKK painted on someone’s fence. In Eugene. This year.
And our society is still good at being the mob and finding our scapegoat. In her book, the New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander talks about how the US has substituted one caste system for another. We have effectively turned people of color into our scapegoats. Again. This time, instead of directly using race, we indirectly use race, by using the criminal justice system, which inadvertently uses race. Once a person is labeled a criminal or felon, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against that person in housing, employment, wages – all of those areas we as a country used to discriminate against people of color.
Penalizing former criminals doesn’t sound like that much of a problem or discrimination. These folks did something wrong, after all. It wouldn’t be a problem, except there is such a disproportionately high number of people of color in the criminal justice system. I have known law enforcement professionals who used race as a predictor of possible future criminal behavior, and feel justified in doing so, because sometimes, they found the criminal behavior they were seeking.
Then the person enters a system that disproportionately convicts people of color, and disproportionately incarcerates people of color. Ultimately that person is deemed a criminal. As a result, it is once again legal – once disproportionately labeled as a criminal – for a person of color to be oppressed. Companies do not need to hire people with felonies. Apartments do not need to rent to people with felonies. If serving jail time is paying your debt to society, how do these practices support the whole innocent until proven guilty mantra of our country? Is this the mob mentality at work again?
On our behalf, on behalf of the mob, the criminal justice system inadvertently but systematically seeks out the pharmakos of our time. While this may sound like criminal justice bashing, that’s not my point. That system is the enforcement arm of the mob. We, the mob, call in and complain about them. We need a scapegoat. And when the scapegoat is found to have lived up to the mob’s prejudicial expectations of future bad behavior, they are further scapegoated, resulting in legalized discrimination. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that law enforcement professionals intentionally act on bias or prejudice. We all have bias and prejudice. Rather I’m suggesting that as enforcement agents of the mob, law enforcement is frequently asked to carry out our mob-like desires.
As a result, it is perfectly legal to discriminate based on a person’s criminal status, even if the reason they have that status was because of perfectly illegal discrimination based on race.
In today’s Gospel reading, the pharmakos is a man described as a demoniac. A naked man. In chains. Living outside. Putting that into today’s language and context, here’s who that person is. Demoniac – mentally ill. Naked – mentally ill. In chains – prisoner. Living outside – homeless. So today this might be the mentally ill homeless felon.
Did you know that pushing someone off a cliff used to be common-place, mob justice? The mob got together and forced the pharmakos to and over the cliff. With this tidy mob justice, there is no single executioner. No one needs to feel bad. Sort of like asking the police to carry out our mob justice.
If we encountered that person on our streets, in our church, what would we do? Unfortunately, I fear we would behave little better than the mob in the story, trying to imprison and oppress the person, if not walking them to the proverbial cliff.
We know from today’s Gospel that this is not what Christ did. In today’s Good News story, Christ heals the man. And far from sending him over the cliff, Christ sends the figurative mob over the cliff, which scholars say, is what the pigs represent. People’s expectations of mob justice were turned on their heads, because of Christ’s actions.
So how about in this place or community? Do we have a mob mentality? Do we have or need our own scapegoats? What if a homeless criminal came in our space? How would we react? What if someone came in from a different culture? A different economic status? A different race? A different age? Too young. Too loud. Too poor. Too gay. Too hard to understand. Too mentally ill. Would we prejudge that person? Would we presume to know about them, because we’ve known others like them? Would we smile, but secretly know they don’t belong, because they are different?
In the City of Eugene, it is unacceptable and illegal to discriminate based on race, sex, color, religion, gender, disability, marital status, political affiliation, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic status, social status or citizenship. People who find themselves the victim of discrimination and prejudice can seek remedy from the Equity and Human Rights Center. People who discriminate can be held legally accountable.
In Christ’s kingdom, it is unacceptable and intolerable to discriminate based on all of those things. People who find themselves the victim of discrimination and prejudice may find themselves in Christ’s love and made whole, like the demoniac. People who discriminate? Just think about those pigs.
As we gather as a community, we need to be very mindful of this natural and oft-repeated story of mob and scapegoat. If we’re going to have a mob mentality, we need to be the mob that is all welcoming, all loving. Where everyone is invited to the table. If there is any mob justice, let’s have it be the kind Christ envisioned, where we stand united in love, truly welcoming all. When we see scapegoats, or the discrimination, bias, prejudice or judgment that signals them out, we need to love. Love the scapegoat. Welcome them in. And we need to love the persecutor. And welcome them back. There is no place for judgment, prejudice or oppression in the Kingdom of God. We don’t need a pharmakos.
After all, Christ served as the ultimate pharmakos, being sacrificed for us. We don’t need another scapegoat.
I’d like to end with a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. If you’d turn to page 823, please pray with me.
Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart and especially the hearts of the people of this land, that barriers which divide us may
crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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