The Rev. Rob Merola

In today’s Gospel, Jesus delivers a man from being possessed by demons.  My guess is that our opinions of exactly what that means probably varies considerably. But however we understand it, the result was that Jesus set a person free to live the life he hoped for but which, to that point, had always eluded him.

There’s a phrase in this morning’s Gospel that really jumps out at me; perhaps you noticed it too.  We are told that, naturally enough, the town’s people came out to see what happened to this crazy man.   Much to their surprise, they found him sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and—here is the phrase—in his right mind.

In his right mind.  The suggestion is that he was out of his mind before, or that he was in his wrong mind.  Let me ask you something:  Have you ever been out of your mind?  Have you ever been in your wrong mind?

It strikes me that we live in a world that is full of people who are either out of their minds or in their wrong minds.  It strikes me that is how we’ve come to have so many of the problems that we have now.

And yes, I am sometimes one of those people.  I am one of those people who has been, and sometimes still is, out of his mind or in his wrong mind.  That is why my own world has many of the problems it does.

I’m going to be so bold to suggest that sometimes you are out of your mind or in your wrong mind also, and that is why your world has many of the problems you have.  Because let’s face it, whether we are willing to admit it or not, we all struggle with problems of our own making.  We want to blame them on other people or pretend they are not that bad or deny that they exist at all—and I’m right there with you—but the truth is we all have problems, and more often than not, we are precisely the ones who have made them.

So to have someone offer us the possibility of being in our right minds…well, that seems to me to be a very big deal.   And frankly, that is no small part of why I follow Jesus as my Lord and savior.  No one and nothing has been more helpful to me in learning to live in my right mind than Jesus.

That has certainly been true in terms of being a father.  Believe it or not, I have struggled with being a dad.  Nothing has ever asked more of me than being a father.  And the stakes have never seemed higher in anything I’ve done than in being a parent.  Here are these two precious little girls that I have brought into this world, and how well they do in life will in no small measure be influenced by how well I do as a parent. Talk about a lot of responsibility!  Now yes, I do know that sometimes kids with good parents can go wrong and that kids with bad parents can go right, but my own experience and every study I’ve ever read have said that is more the exception than the rule.

As a father, I felt—and sometimes still feel—totally inadequate to the magnitude of the task at hand.  So I did what I always do in situation likes that:  I studied.  I read books.   I took an extensive course in parenting.  I watched and talked to people who I thought were the best parents I knew and learned from them.  And all those things were helpful, to be sure.

But the most helpful person of all in parenting from my right mind is Jesus, because Jesus has been most helpful of all in living in my right mind in general.

Three quick examples of that.  It is from Jesus I have learned the value of the reflective, prayerful life. It is from studying His teachings and following His example that I have come to realize how very important regular periods of prayer and reflection are.

Every family is a mix of good and bad; of health and dysfunction.  By prayerfully reflecting on our life we are able to embrace and celebrate the good and weed out the bad.  If we don’t do that, then we’ll just pass the craziness on—which is, of course, why craziness lives on in the world down through the ages.  It gets passed on.

Let’s face it; living in our right mind after years of living in a wrong mind isn’t easy.  It requires a death of sorts; death to old and familiar ways of doing things where those ways are hurtful or destructive.  It requires a conversion, a conversion to a new and better way of life. 

In my experience, those things don’t happen without prayer and reflection.  The kind of change it takes to live in our right minds in the midst of a crazy, crazy world requires a power that is greater than our selves.  Most people will simply drift with wherever life takes them, conform to the accepted standards and practices of their peers and the culture around them, and/or remain ignorant of their wrong mindedness through any one of a number of readily available escapes.

Let’s get a little more specific.  We live in an uptight, angry world.   And if I’m honest, I have the propensity to be an uptight, angry person.  This is trickier than you might think, because anger presents itself in a lot of sneaky ways.  It can look like passive aggression; you don’t blow up or lose your temper, but you undermine or criticize those around you in subtle or seemingly innocent ways, by what you don’t do as much as by what you do do.  Or anger can look like depression, which can be anger turned inward.

How do angry people come to live in their right minds?  The answer to that takes more time than we have here.  But for me, for now, the answer has been in faithfully following Jesus over the years.  In prayerfully reflecting on His word, I’ve come to see the many ways anger runs through my life.  In opening my heart to God’s Spirit, I’ve found a power that is greater than my own failures and shortcomings.  In the fellowship of others who are also following Jesus, I’ve found the accountability to staying true.

I’m not perfect, but believe me—I’m a far different person than I would’ve been if I hadn’t intentionally and faithfully followed Jesus for these past 37 years.

One more, more specific still.  I have a propensity to show affection by teasing, or by being sarcastic rather than saying what I really feel.  And you know what?  I think you can rightly ask if those are ways of showing affection at all.  I’d suggest they are not; what they show is our fear of honestly showing what we feel, or our inability or unwillingness to do the hard work of putting our true feelings into words.  I’ve hurt my kids, and a lot of other people as well, many times over the years by the ways I’ve teased them or through sarcastic “humor.”

And again, it was through prayerfully reading and reflecting on Scripture that I have become aware of this behavior, a better way of living, and the power to change.  Like the demoniac in today’s Gospel, Jesus has helped me come to live in my right mind.

Fathers, how are you doing at living in a right mind?  You can’t do it alone.  To think you can is to live in your wrong mind.  To be the father you want to be, you’ll need the help of the people around you.  You’ll need God’s help, available to us in the life and teachings of Jesus, and in living in the power of His Spirit.  How are you doing in your relationship with Jesus Christ?

There’s another group here today that also has the potential to live out your minds.  And that is our graduates.   Graduation is a unique time in life, filled with many joys and new and exciting challenges.  But there is also lots and lots of pressure to live in your wrong mind, whether its chasing money or being a party animal or any one of a number of other ways.

In fact, there’s a lot of pressure on teenagers in general.  I want to say a word specifically to you, our teenagers, and graduates in particular.   I know a lot of you have made a commitment to Jesus as your Lord and Savior.  A lot of you have done that at CreationFest, Summer’s Best Two Weeks, or on one of our mission trips. 

During those trips, you’ve experienced the power and the joy of living in your right mind.  But to come home and forget the promises and commitments you’ve made, to neglect your relationship with Jesus, is crazy living.  And so I just want to encourage you to be faithful to your commitment to Jesus and live in your right mind.

Of course it is not just fathers and graduates who are in danger of crazy living.  It is all of us.  All of us can fall prey to crazy living, the pressure to live in a way that is out of our minds.

And so I want to encourage all of us to make today’s Gospel story our story.  I want to encourage all of us to trust Jesus as our Lord and Savior, and allow Him to help us, in ways that nobody else can, to live in our right minds.

Amen.