I preached this sermon on Halloween night at St. Lydia's. The text is Mark 5:1-20; read it here.
This morning on my bike, I saw superman pushing a stroller down Fifth Avenue. At brunch, the Invisible Man served me a frittata, while Fidel Castro filled the water glasses of the folks at the table next to me. Biking here I saw a mermaid and a dragon, and a fuzzy, four year old monkey.
I think that Jesus would have liked Halloween.
Halloween is rooted in a ancient Pagan festival called Samhain, which in old Irish means “summer’s end.” The festival celebrated the end of the “light half of the year” and the beginning of the “dark half” of the year, as they days grew shorter and shorter. The Celts believed that on this night, the barriers between this world and the other world became so thin, that all sorts of spirits, good and bad could pass through. So they carved turnips with faces and lit them with candles, and put them the windows to ward off evil spirits, and lit big bonfires in the center of town, and families took stock of the food needed to get them through that dark half of the year.
All Saints and All Souls are November 1 and 2, days when Christians remember those who have died in the last year. Dia de Los Muertos is a time for those in Mexico to honor the dead, bringing food to the cemeteries for the ancestors to consume.
It seems that there is something about this time of the year, that draws us to reflect on life and death and the dance between the two. Nature gives up her harvest to us as the leaves fall from the trees, and the ground becomes unyielding. The grain gives us life, but the scythe is itself a sign of death.
The ancient Celts saw this night as the night where the boundaries blur, where the darkness, kept at bay for most of the year, is let loose for one night and allowed to roam free.
I think Jesus would have liked Halloween.
Our story tonight is set in the most appropriate of places: a graveyard. And then man who lives there, lives among the tombs, is inhabited by chaos, consumed with everything that is dark and unknown, everything we let loose on Halloween. In Jesus’ time he was thought to be possessed by unclean spirits, and so he lived in most unclean of places: among the dead.
Jesus is familiar with unclean places:
Places of death and of sickness.
He touches lepers and women,
Eats with prostitutes,
Brings a friend back from the grave, still in his grave clothes.
Jesus is familiar with unclean places
and as this man bows before him,
he says to him,
What is your name?
What is your name?
We say it all the time.
And it changes everything.
Because when we name something,
it looses its power.
And our fear is dispelled.
What is your name?
Jesus says.
My name is Legion, the man answers, for we are many.
Have you ever felt it?
That moment of finally finding a name
for some secret part of yourself you’ve been hiding away?
Some hidden fear,
some unsaid worry
that’s been living inside you and eating at your core?
And then someone helps you to name it.
And it’s dispelled.
I think Jesus would have liked Halloween because it’s a night when we not only name our fears, but act them out. We put them on and look in the mirror, surprised at our own reflection. We frighten and disorient, we turn everything on its head. We enter the places we’ve kept secreted away, reveal the parts of ourselves we might rather hide. We find our fear and give it a name. And it’s dispelled.
On Halloween, we let the boundary between this world and the next grow thin,
And the darker side of things are let loose on the world.
It’s a night when we open the gates of the graveyards
and let death roam free.
But we’re not afraid. Death has no power over us.
On Halloween, we play a trick on death.
Jesus knew all about the darker side of things.
He knew all about the thin places between this world and the next,
all about graveyards.
In fact, I heard he stayed in one for three whole days.
But in the end, it had no power over him.
He played a trick on death.
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