Sermon for June 23, 2019
Gospel: Luke 8:26-39; Epistle Reading: Galatians 3:23-29 This text has me thinking about the labels we put on other people. Often we create labels for the purpose of distancing ourselves from others. Possessed was the label endured by the man in today’s gospel. We use many others: Homeless, addict, crazy, mentally ill, uneducated, educated, poor, rich, gay, immigrant, woman, man, young, old, conservative, liberal. Some of those labels might be true, but sometimes they are used to create distance. They are used to remove the sense of being just another human being so that we can ignore, discount, look the other way, and disengage. Each of us uses different labels for this purpose. This past week I was in Spokane with the Mission Possible group, our annual mission opportunity at Lord of Life. The day I was there, some of us got to interact with Kathy, Devin, and Alicia…