Happy Father’s Day.
I have to say that to all of you, and many of you who are on vessels somewhere in the ocean or in a port now will not be with your children.
But know that you are important to them as you are important to God. So happy Father’s Day. Celebrate this day and know that the sacrifices that you are making to be able to send money home to be able to support your families is so deeply appreciated.
So to today’s lesson.
And there’s a couple of things that occur to me as I reflect on this gospel passage.
The first of them is I can’t imagine that the swineherders or the owners of the swine were very charmed with Jesus.
Right?
They’d lost a lot of profit.
They’d lost their swine
It’s fine for the demons to be cast out of this man, but into this swine and destroy all their profitability and all their farming.
I’m quite sure that people were not happy with Jesus and it’s no surprise to me that they ask Jesus to leave.
”What more are you going to do? Who else are you going to harm?”
Of course, the swine are only one aspect of the story.
The other is this man whoareonly has for so long being tormented.
In the words in the gospel passage we hear that there are many demons that had possessed him. Perhaps today, in psychological terms, people would want to say this man had schizophrenia or some other mental condition, psychological condition. But the reality is that the people of his time understood him to be demon possessed and the people of his time saw how he had been restored to his right mind. And the people of his time were astonished at the way in which God was able to work and they understood Jesus to have authority over these things.
The man himself, when he had been restored to his right mind wants to cling to Jesus. For the first time in many years, he finds himself able to sit quietly, be part of a conversation being part of a group.
And he wants to cling to Jesus and stay with Jesus.
Maybe this is in some way again, the reflection of what we see at the transfiguration where Jesus is on the mount of Transfiguration, with Moses and Elijah and the disciples who are with him say “teacher let us erect tents so we can stay here. Let’s not leave this place. Let’s stay in this holy environment. Let’s just stick to what we have.”
But as on the occasion of the Mount of Transfiguration, there too, Jesus says to this young man, Go back to your home. And proclaim to people the love that God has shown you and how much God has done for you.
And I suppose that the teaching that we are receiving today is fundamentally one of recognising what God does in our lives and proclaiming that, sharing that.
One of the challenges that we have today is I think, a lack of the attitude of gratitude. And so many others do not see the many gifts and blessings that God gives to us in our daily lives.
We do not see that even if we have a job that pays, If we’re not enjoying that job fully, we don’t give thanks for the job. We don’t give thanks for the salary that enables us to keep our family.
If we’re having challenges in our marriage, we don’t celebrate the fact that we have someone who we can share with.
If we’re having difficulty with our children, but we’re not seeing them enough, we don’t give thanks that we have children that can even engender these feelings.
And so much of the joyfulness of life comes from an attitude of gratitude, an attitude of recognising the many gifts that we receive on a daily basis.
As we shared on the Feast of Pentecost, if it had not been for the Breath of God within us we would not be. We would not live. We would not be alive.
And so this Sunday perhaps you don’t think of yourself as having demons.
I hope you don’t.
And perhaps you don’t think of yourself as being continually blessed by God, but I hope that you do.
And today I would ask you to use this day as a day of reflecting on the gifts that God gives you on a daily basis.
Earlier this week, on Thursday, we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, and so this morning we will celebrate community together.
And when we who are in the Chapel have received communion, I will pray with those of you who are attending this service virtually the spiritual communion.
So this Father’s Day, recognise with joy the many gifts that God has given you.
And we pray with you for the time when you will be joined with your families again and be able to celebrate the joy and the love that God gives each one of us.
In the name of God.
Father, son and Holy Spirit.
Amen
