Outside In
The Rev. Sandy Selby –
Proper 7, Year C –
Text: Galatians 3:23-29 and Luke 8:26-39
About fifteen years ago the nation was shocked by news of
a series of murders committed by a man who was not only a serial killer but
also a necrophiliac and cannibal. The details of the crimes and the
perpetrator’s bizarre rituals were horrifying. How could anyone do such things?
The arrest of Jeffrey Dahmer in
Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of murder and sentenced to a
total of sixteen consecutive life sentences in
The road for Pastor Ratcliff has not been an easy one. He
was criticized in many quarters for his relationship with a man who had committed
heinous crimes. He was so vilified by his own congregation for baptizing Jeffrey
Dahmer that he was forced to leave. People could not believe that anyone as
sick as Dahmer could possibly be “born again.” His baptism, they said, was a
fraud and an affront, and Ratcliff had demeaned the sacrament by offering it to
someone so perverted as to be beyond redemption. They didn’t believe that
Dahmer could be changed—and beyond that, they really didn’t want to allow
him to change.
The
Gerasenes felt the same way about the demoniac that Jesus healed by casting his
legion of demons into a herd of swine. They had tried to control the man by
keeping him under guard and in chains, but periodically he would break his
bonds and be driven out into the wilderness to live among the tombs. That’s
where Jesus and the disciples found him. When Jesus commanded the unclean
spirits to come out of the man, he fell down before Jesus and shouted, “What
have you to do with me, Son of the Most High God?” for the demons
recognized at once who Jesus was. The demons entered the herd of swine, which
then rushed down the steep bank and into the lake, where they drowned.
When
the people came out to see what had happened, they found the man totally
changed: the demons were gone, and he was sitting fully clothed at Jesus’ feet.
But far from rejoicing at this dramatic transformation, the people were afraid
and asked Jesus to leave at once.
Why weren’t they rejoicing? After all, look how radically
the demoniac had been transformed! Well, that was the problem. As strange as it
may seem, they needed this man because he served a very important social
function. He was the “bad guy,” the scapegoat, and the fact that the community
could cast him out as not being “one of us” gave them both unity and order. As
long as the demoniac was lurking around—sometimes in chains, at others caving
around in the tombs, they could project all their perversity on him, and that
made them feel safe. Societies have worked this way since ancient times,
bringing unity and stability to the “insiders” by blaming the “outsiders” for everything
that goes wrong.
Think
of all the disasters, natural and otherwise, that Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell
and the like have blamed on those they considered deviants: gays and lesbians,
abortionists, feminists, and assorted other liberals! The scarier and more
changeable the times, the more people feel the need to demonize those who are
different.
Jesus’ healing of the demoniac was disturbing and
destabilizing for the Gerasenes. The man who had been the convenient “Other” was
just like them, and they didn’t like it one bit.
Neither did the congregation of the pastor who baptized Jeffrey
Dahmer. Here’s what Pastor Ratcliff said at Dahmer’s funeral:
Jeff
confessed to me his great remorse for his crimes. He wished he could do
something for the families of his victims to make it right, but there was
nothing he could do. He turned to God because there was no one else to turn to,
but he showed great courage in his daring to ask the question, ‘Is heaven for
me too?’ I think many people are resentful of him for asking that question. But
he dared to ask, and he dared to believe the answer.
Jeffrey
Dahmer had asked to be baptized into new life with Jesus Christ after much
study and prayer. Perhaps he had read these words of Paul to the Galatians: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ.” He wanted to change, but many people—including
Pastor Ratcliff’s congregation—didn’t believe that he could, and beyond that
they didn’t really want him to. Perhaps they need to reconsider what the Church
is all about.
Rowan
Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has this to say on the subject:
The
church is the community of those who have been immersed in Jesus’ life,
overwhelmed by it. Those who are baptized have disappeared under the surface of
Christ’s love and reappeared as different people. The waters close over their
heads, and then, like the old world rising out of watery chaos in the first
chapter of the Bible, out comes a new world. So when the church baptizes
people, it says what it is and what sort of life its people live. Baptism is an
event in which the ‘sharing between holy people’ comes to light and we see what
the church really is, a community in which people are constantly being brought
into new life by being given a new relationship with God and each other (Christian Century, 6/12/07).
Paul
tells us that “we have been buried with
(Christ Jesus) into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by
the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom
6:4). The church is called to be a
community of transformation that casts out societal norms and ushers in a new
creation in which there are no longer insiders and outsiders but one body
living together in unity. In Paul’s words, “There
is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ.”
Jeffrey Dahmer wanted to be “born again,” and I have to
trust that he was. Those who knew Dahmer said that in the months following his
baptism he lived as a person transformed. Thank God for that.
Here
at