Jesus shows us the shadow

Monday, January 30, 2023

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Jesus shows us the shadow

Jesus and his disciples came to the other side of the sea.  When Jesus got out of the boat he was met at once by a man who lived in the tombs. He had an unclean spirit; he lived alone because no one was strong enough to subdue him. He was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.

Such a long day of driving south, into Texas. The sky got bigger as I drove. It felt so sweet to pull into an open parking spot in front of our apartment.

I listened to my childhood Lutheran service at 8 am. Pastor Mark told his congregation he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. He preached about the “already, now and not yet” of our lives, and indeed, of his own life. Sunday’s Gospel was from Matthew 5 – the Beatitudes of Jesus. Blessed are those who … are meek, who are poor, who grieve, who are hungry, who are merciful and pure in heart, who are peacemakers. If we are pure in heart, he said, it’s because Jesus has purified us.

Before the confession of sins, the congregation sings from Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God – ” a pure heart, a new heart, where the Holy Spirit can dwell in peace.

He made his personal announcement at the end of the service. I imagined how difficult it was for him, now that the liturgy and prayers and preaching were over. Standing up in front of his church, in his white robe, speaking of his own fragility, I felt his courage and was proud to be listening. And I thought of what Richard Rohr said last week about what Jung called our “shadow.”

The shadow is that part of the self that we don’t want to see, we don’t want others to see, and of which we’re always afraid. Our tendency is to try to hide it or deny it, even and most especially from ourselves. Jesus, quoting the prophet Isaiah, describes it as “listening but not understanding, seeing but not perceiving” (Matthew 13:14–15). 

Pastor Mark’s preaching consistently describes our human depravity, and often he shares personal confession. Invariably he reminds his congregation that God is our rescuer, that Jesus comes to save us.

Jesus asked the unclean spirit, “What is your name?”

Legion is my name. There are many of us. Please do not drive us away. Send us into that herd of swine instead! Let us enter them. And Jesus let them.

Of course preaching is just a piece of the Christian life. It is difficult for churches and Christians to face the darkness for more than a few moments at a time. In fact, focusing on God and his good usually shoves our shadow deep into the closet.

Archaic religion and most of the history of religion has seen the shadow as the problem. Such religion is about getting rid of the shadow. This is the classic example of dealing with the symptom instead of the cause. We cannot really get rid of the shadow. We can only expose its game—which (if we persist) results, in great part, in getting rid of its effects. 

Mark’s story of the swine is more vivid and desperate than stories we tell of our own lives, or of our own churches. But it rings with contemporary truth.

People came to see. They saw the man who had been possessed, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear. They saw the pigs had run over a cliff, all killed. And they pleaded with Jesus to leave their town.

Radical healing is hard to understand and difficult to receive. Middle-class Americans mostly seem afraid to need anything, even forgiveness, except in liturgical ceremonies. But how can God clean my heart if it’s not dirty?

Jesus and the prophets deal with the cause, which is the ego. Our problem is not our shadow self as much as our over-defended ego, which always sees and hates its own faults in other people, and thus avoids its own conversion.  

Jesus turns the tables on our egos. He surprises us by loving us in our sin and accepting us as we are. It’s out of that acceptance that true transformation is born. Rohr ends his reflection thinking of how Jesus does this, and why.

Jesus is not too interested in moral purity because he knows that any preoccupation with repressing the shadow does not lead us into personal transformation, empathy, compassion, or patience, but invariably into denial or disguise, repression or hypocrisy. Isn’t that rather evident? Immature religion creates a high degree of cognitively rigid people or very hateful and attacking people—and often both. It is almost the public image of Christianity today, yet God’s goal is exactly the opposite.

Sitting and listening to my Lutheran service, in the car under the big sky, I prayed for Pastor Mark and the nature of his own personal “already, now and not yet.” Jesus will show us each our shadow one way or another, and always we are the better for it.

The man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with Jesus, but he would not let him. “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.”

 (Hebrews 11, Psalm 31, Luke 7, Mark 5)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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