Reflection - Transformation

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/012918.cfm
2 Samuel 15:13-14, 30; 16:5-13
Mark 5:1-20

Nothing is certain but death and taxes. Or so the saying goes.

We address the ordinary uncertainty of life with a variety of words like chance, disorder and disarray. In the most intense circumstances we might turn to words like havoc or chaos. I wonder which words David chose to describe the disruption in his life which followed from his son’s rebellion. It would seem that the lives of David as well as of all those in his court would have endured more than a temporary messiness. Possibly he anticipated Shakespeare and yelled “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”

Life is messy. Knowing that, we worry about a phone call in the middle of the night. We become anxious when a child does not return home as expected. We are nervous as we open the letter from the IRS. The unexpected is expected; and, try as we might, it’s hard to escape the unease when the possibility of the unexpected is anticipated. It is also hard to ignore the internal diesruption in our gut when the unexpected unexpectedly comes.

Chaos was the stuff of life for the Garesene Demoniac. It’s persistent presence was something he had to live with. Some might claim his situation was unique, after all, demonic possession was not all that common. Yet, his situation, while possibly pushing the boundaries of the chaotic lifestyle, encapsulates the worst of human experience, and exemplifies, in it’s foulest form, the condition with which all men must contend. Since the sin of Adam and Eve, when creation slipped into the domain of Evil, ‘possession’ has been an ambient character of creation. God never ‘possessed.’ He only created. ‘Possession’ of any kind is always from the Evil one. Whether we are ‘possessed’ by inordinate desires, or engulfed by a full blown invasion of evil, every ‘possession’ stands as an obstacle to the life God desires for us. Indeed, the condition of the afflicted man in the story might easily be read as a sustained metaphor for human existence, either individually or collectively.

Are we dying among the living or living among the dying?

‘Possessions’ are always unwilling to depart. They are comfortable residents in their chosen domicile. No matter the disgusting character of their origin. No matter the repulsive manifestations of their occupation. No matter their psychic brutality or their imposed deprivations. Bed bugs and fleas are easier to eradicate.

It wouldn’t have made any difference if the man’s ‘possession’ was the result of a legion of demons or had been a malignancy formed by some childhood mistreatment. His ‘possession’ was the cause of his bondage, his enslavement to chains that could not hold but, in effect, still kept him entangled. His ‘possession’ was the source of his fear, for chaos, in whatever form, and whether major or minor, finds itself subject to a painful sense of alienation when it encounters holiness. And so the cry: “Do not torment me!"

The cry was from the demons who were Legion; it could just as easily have been provoked by the man’s awareness of his own depravity and corresponding sense of unworthiness. And when we remember that torment is a lot like transformation, in that both have consequent struggle and pain and suffering, we can understand why it might be easy to confuse the two and ask the Holy One of God to depart from us.

Reminding his readers of their radically new life in Christ, Paul sketches a scenario which flows from the common, down-to-earth experiences of us all.

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
(1 Corinthians 15:36-38)

This is the development, the transformation we see in the story of the man possessed.

If we’re fortunate, it is also ours.