Seeing Beneath The Labels

Galatians 3: 28 & Luke 8: 26-39

Roger Lynn

August 4, 2019

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Sometimes it feels as if there is a lesson God really wants me to learn. So, it keeps showing up until I get it. Such has been the case recently. Over and over again, taking various forms but always with the same result, I have encountered people who simply refused to stay in the box I tried to put them in. You know the routine – they look this way, or attend that church, or use those words, so therefore I know who they are and how they think. Except, of course, I don’t. In the recent flurry of lessons that have come my way, it has involved people I assumed have a conservative understanding of faith, and therefore would be inclined to reject or dismiss my understanding of some particular issue or another. Each time I decided to go ahead and state my position anyway, without much hope of getting a positive response. And each time I found myself having to rethink my assumptions. So, I’m hear to say, “OK God! I’m beginning to get it!” 

Labels can be a useful thing. They serve as a sort of shorthand for making sense of the world. When I tell you I live on Harrison Avenue, it gives you a better sense of where to start looking when you come over for dinner for the first time. But if you start thinking that you know everything there is to know about my house because you were in a  house on Harrison once, or if you think you understand everything about me because you know what people who live in that part of town are like, then the limits of labels have probably been pushed past the point of usefulness. There is a fuller, richer truth just waiting for us to discover when we begin to see beneath the labels.

We find Jesus doing this all the time. He never seems to take labels very seriously and is always pointing us beyond them. In our reading today from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus goes over to the “other side” of the lake. First of all, it is helpful to note that the “other side” of the lake is roughly equivalent to saying “the other side of the tracks.” It is non-Jewish territory. They even keep pigs over there! And we all know what kind of people live in that kind of place. So the simple fact of his travel plans says a great deal about what Jesus thinks of labels. And then when he gets there, the first person he encounters is a wild man. Luke describes him as being filled with demons. Today we might say he was mentally ill. It doesn’t really matter. The point remains the same. It is another set of labels. It would have been so easy for Jesus to dismiss him as just another crazy man. “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. On second thought, let’s just get back in the boat and go home.” But instead Jesus engages the man in conversation and brings about a dramatic change in the man’s life. “What is your name?” Jesus asks. Luke reports that the demons answer this inquiry. “We are Legion, for there are many of us.” But the part of the conversation Luke doesn’t report, but which I think also took place, at least in some form, is Jesus’ response. “I wasn’t talking to you. Why don’t you go hang out over there with those pigs while I have a chat with this good fellow you’ve been tormenting. Now, let’s try that again. What’s your name?” The man had forgotten who he really was, and Jesus helps him remember. He looked beneath the labels – foreigner, out-of-control, demon-possessed – and discovers a human being in need of healing and understanding.

In a similar fashion, Paul, writing to the church in Galatia, reminds us that labels which define such distinctions as gender, religion and social status should not be used to separate us from each other. When we have “put on Christ” (clothed ourselves in the new reality to which Jesus seeks to point us) we begin to recognize just how shallow such labels really are. There is so much depth just waiting to be discovered beneath the labels. It isn’t that distinctions don’t exist. They do. Each of us is unique is a whole variety of ways. What I believe Paul is really saying to the Galatians, and to us, is, “Let your diversity enhance your life together rather than allowing your differences to divide you.”

So, I invite you to join me in learning to see beneath the labels which are so prevalent in our world today. Go ahead and notice that I live on Harrison Avenue. Just don’t think that really tells you very much about me or my house. Go ahead and notice that I am a male, in my early sixties, with short brown hair and a beard. Just don’t try to make that say more about me than it does. There is always more to be discovered than simple labels reveal. Learning to see beneath them will require patience, courage, and faith. The rewards for such an effort will be a richer, fuller life for us and for the world. I can’t wait to see what surprises are waiting for me next.