Legion Moments and Safe Harbors

 

Luke 8:26-39

Proper 7 / Year C

If you pay attention to my sermons (and I’m sure you do), you probably have noticed I enjoy learning and sharing the etymology of words, phrases, and idioms.  There are often nuggets of insight in the origin and development of what we say which helps to clarify what we mean when we say it.  And, with the advent of the Google Age, it is easier than ever for me to pursue this quirky interest. 

This past week I became curious about two idioms: at sixes and sevens and at wit’s end.  I learned both have been around for some time.  Sixes and sevens dates back to a 14^th century game of dice.  Initially it meant “to carelessly risk one’s entire fortune.”  Over time, for reasons not clear, it evolved to mean “a state of confusion or disorder.”  The King James Bible, released in 1604, draws on this meaning when it translates Job 5:19 as “[God] shall deliver thee in six troubles, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.”

At wit’s end also dates back to the 1300’s.  Wit is not a reference to humor, but rather to the age’s generic name for a mental facility.  To be at wit’s end means you are confused, delirious, agitated, feed up, out of options.  It also appears in The King James Bible: “They [sailors in trouble on the sea] reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end” (Psalm 107:27).   

These two idioms came to mind this week as I pondered today’s gospel reading and wondered how you and I connect to it.  I know there are a few of us who know firsthand the anguish of a family member living with the kind of psychological torment we see in the man Jesus encounters.  The rest of us don’t and we would be foolish and callous to suggest we know what it must be like.

Still, to a lesser degree, each of us has what we might call our “Legion Moments”; times when we are overwhelmed or hopeless or exhausted or (in idiomatic language) ‘in a state’ or ‘over it’ or “I’m so done with this.”  Times when we are at sixes and sevens.  Times when we are at wit’s end.  For Legion, these times are all the time.  For us, thankfully, they are not.  But this is not to say these episodes don’t matter because they can have a tremendous impact on our daily life and functioning and their adjudication can be life-changing for better or for worse.

Times like this have a demonstrable cognitive impact on our brain.  Mental processing slows down.  We become forgetful, more easily confused, and less able to concentrate.  Thinking logically becomes a challenge and problem solving becomes more difficult.  We lose the ability to think broadly and find our focus narrows in on fewer and fewer options.  Our ancient fight, flight, or freeze mode kicks in, shifting physiological resources away from the brain to other parts of the body deemed more essential given our state of mind.  Do you recognize any of this in your own experience or in your day to day living? 

As I said, how you act and react in these moments can stay with you, for good or for ill, for a very long time.  Have you ever had a moment of crisis or conflict when, at the time, you realize what you say or do in the next 30 seconds will determine some part of your life for the rest of your life?  I have and I suspect you have too.

Wouldn’t it be great if a herd of pigs was grazing nearby when we are in this place!  We could cast all our troubles on them and then have all our troubles be driven away and banished forever.  But, alas, pigs are never around when you need them.  This is when it becomes so soothing to designate someone else as swine in order to pin all our troubles on them.

Or, we could do like those stormed tossed, reeling sailors back in the Book of Psalms at the moment their vessel is about to go under:

Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,

  and he delivered them from their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper

  and quieted the waves of the sea.

Then were they glad because of the calm,

  and he brought them

  to the harbor they were bound for.

(107:28-30)

Crying out to the Lord in times of distress can take on many different forms.  In the moment I realized how I responded in that moment would shape my life going forward, it was the simple realization of the gravity of the moment which became my cry to the Lord.  It gave me a brief respite to recognize to gather myself and to invite a thoughtful calm to enter my spirit.  As a result, with the psalmist I can say, God brought me to the harbor for which I was bound. 

The psalmist offers this counsel to those sailors who are delivered:

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his mercy

  and the wonders he does for his children.

Let them exalt him

in the congregation of the people

  and praise him in the council of the elders.

(107:31-32)

Many of us gather here this morning because we remember the times when we were as sixes and sevens, when we were at wit’s end, and God brought us through.  We gather to give thanks.  Some of us here this morning have been at sixes and sevens, at wit’s end this past week, or even as we sit here.  We are hoping and praying the storms in our life will be stilled.  We are hoping, as Lazarus was, the chaos in our souls will give way to calm.  It will, because Jesus wills it.  And when it does, I invite you to exalt the Lord in the presence of this congregation.