Sermon - 6/22/25

Year C – 2^nd Sunday after Pentecost; Lectionary 12 – June 22, 2025

Pastor Megan Floyd

Luke 8:26-39

Letter from Birmingham Jail, MLK Jr.

 

Grace and Peace to you from our Lord, Jesus Christ, who is the source of our liberation. Amen.

***

This past Thursday was Juneteenth… it is the day we honor June 19, 1865, when the last remaining people who were enslaved in Texas were liberated by the US Army… three years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued.

A few of us came together to honor this day by reading and discussing Martin Luther King, Jr’s, Letter from Birmingham Jail, from April 16, 1963.

Nearly 100 years after the liberation of those people who were enslaved… we were reminded in that letter… that people of color in this country… were still not free.

They… were still bound.

And 62 years after this convicting letter… 62 years after MLK wrote of his ‘hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice would soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding would be lifted from our fear-drenched communities…’

we sat with the pain of knowing that we are still not free from our sin of holding our fellow siblings captive.

We… are still bound.

So many people in our country are committed to their idea of what is right and acceptable, that instead of growing in their understanding of the beautiful diversity of God’s creation, they have added to the categories of people who are bound by our prejudice…

People of color still face discrimination from white people… and this now overwhelmingly includes Native Americans, and our immigrant, refugee, and migrant communities.

Additionally, our LGBTQIA+ neighbors face prejudice and discrimination as they have started living more openly as their beautiful, authentic selves…

And yet, the Supreme Court just issued a ruling last week to uphold a state law allowing for the ban of medical care for transgender youth… disregarding the mountain of evidence that this care literally saves lives…

We are bound by our sin… and we cannot free ourselves.

We are bound… but we have before us, our God in the flesh… Jesus… the source of our liberation.

Jesus… the one who comes to release our chains… release us from our prisons and enslavement of our own making.

Jesus… comes to us… to set us free.

If we are willing… if we are willing to be freed.

Our gospel text tells a story of a man plagued by demons… so many demons… he is so burdened… so bound by these demons… that he identifies as his demons…

When Jesus asks him his name… he replies… Legion… for we are many.

This man is literally bound… bound by chains, shackles, and by distance… separated from his society… marginalized… and feared.

For Jesus and his disciples, this man is the most unclean of all the unclean… he is a foreigner… a gentile… he is possessed by demons… he is naked and living among the dead… in the tombs.

For Jesus and his disciples, this man is not just outside of the realm of what they found acceptable… he was in another world.

And yet… Jesus shows up here… because there is no place that is beyond Jesus’ reach and authority… but it was here, among these tombs and