St. James' E-pistle Date of Sunday Service: February 7, 2021 Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany - St. James' Church Hyde Park

St. James’ E-pistle
              Date of Sunday Service: February 7, 2021
                  Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Message from the Wardens
Now that the clothing bin is back open, we need a volunteer to help with some minor housekeeping.
This task involves, once a week, (1) moving bags of clothing from under the window to the other
side to make room and (2) making sure all the donations are bagged up and removing things that
don’t belong. If someone is interested, please contact Dyan at the church office. 845-229-2820

Even in these unprecedented (and seemingly never-ending)
times, this church needs you in order to keep up its ministry.
We reach out well beyond our community with our
livestreams, but our community presence is still very much
there, and it is important. Please pray over your ability to
pledge and to contribute in accordance with your pledge.
This is especially important with so many of our income
sources missing this year. Thanks!

If you have anything to add to the E-pistle, please contact either Dyan in the Parish Office
or Brian Rance (at brian.rance@freshfields.com). The deadline for submissions is
Thursday evening. Thanks!

              4526 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park NY 12538 T 845-229-2820 F 845-229-5293
                    W www.stjameshydepark.org E stjamesoffice@stjameshydepark.org
                           at https://www.facebook.com/groups/22692330307

Announcements

Diocesan Cycle of Prayer:
Please pray for these diocesan ministries this week. If you want to check out the entire year’s
calendar for intercession, it’s simple to find - go to
https://www.dioceseny.org/administration/for-clergy/liturgical-and-sacramental/diocesan-
calendar-of-intercession/

February 7, Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
Christ Church, Bronxville
 8      Christ Church, Warwick
 9      Canterbury Uptown Chaplaincy, Manhattan
 10     The Cathedral School, Manhattan
 11     Episcopal Asian Supper Table
 12     Church of Our Savior, Manhattan
 13     Planning Committee, Diocesan Absalom Jones Festival

Please keep the following people in your prayers:

Bob, Justin Bohlmann, Robin Bohlmann, Patty Caswell, Sue Dingee, Loretta Falzarano (sister of
Donna Beyer), Heather Francese, Robert Guariglia, Clifford Hallmark (father of Alyssa Raugalis),
Dalton K., Edith Kline, Hope Jennings, Rosemary Leuken, Lorraine, Joanne Lynn, Doris Mack,
Margaret, Andrew Mendelson, Beth and Ginero Milano, Nancy and Fred Montero (COVID),
Brian O’Leary, Sr. (recovering from surgery), Jim Oppenheimer, Sandra Paresi (friend of Deirdre
Mae Micker), Lillian Peralta (surgery), Grace Plass, Deborah Porach, John Robinson, Rob
Robinson, Jason Rodino (deployed to the Middle East), John Ross, Hank Schroeder, James
Sheeky, Naomi Sleight, Marguerite Spratt, Janice Syedullah, Charlessa Thatcher, Tracy, Candace
Vincent, Cassidy Way and Shawn Wheeler.
   For all those affected by the ongoing pandemic, including those who have lost loved ones and those risking their
                                       health for the benefit of the rest of society.

Schedules

A Note about Schedules: The names you see below are those listed on their respective schedules. There are often
times when, due to sickness or travel, substitutes are asked to fill in or trade positions. This will probably NOT be
reflected in the lists below—so, if there is an inconsistency between what you see here and what you see on Sunday,
that is all right.
Birthdays                       David Wardell, Jr. and Andrew Gausepohl
(this past week):

Birthdays                     Cathi Tegtmeier, Doris Mack, Paul O'Halloran, William Fenwick and
    (this coming week):           Deborah Belding
    Parish Cycle of Prayer:       February 7: Irene Kipp, Edith Kline, Rudy Knakal, Walter and Lynn
                                  Koch, Boy Scout Troop 80
                                  February 14: Ashley Konyn, Joanne Lown, Doris Mack

    This Week’s Lectionary
    Isaiah 40:21-31
    Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
    1 Corinthians 9:16-23
    Mark 1:29-39

    This Week’s Hymns
    Opening: 381 - The Strong Word Did Cleave the Darkness
    Sequence: 1 - Father We Praise Thee
    Offertory Anthem: Patty Moore
    Communion: 321 - My God, Thy Table Now Is Spread
    Closing: 411 - O Bless the Lord, My Soul

Last Week’s Sermon
Sermon Preached on Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

"Being Freed from Our Demons"
In today’s Gospel we see Jesus directly, specifically and forcefully freeing someone from his demons,
as it were. 1 I recall an encounter I had as a divinity student many years ago. Part of an alcoholism

1
  Speaking about the consequences of being, or not being, direct, specific and forceful, a former colleague of mine told a
preacher’s tale that goes like this: People in a small village come to the minister to complain that the wife of one of his
deacons had been stealing her neighbor’s chickens. “Please,” they appealed to their pastor, “do something about this.”
Willingly, he preached the next Sunday on the text, “Thou shalt not steal.” At the close of the service, the deacon
himself praised the parson. “Excellent sermon,” he said as he shook hands at the church door.

But in a few days the people returned. “Pastor, in spite of your sermon, she’s still stealing.” That Sunday, he got more
specific, saying firmly, “Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s goods.” Again the deacon himself was the first to praise,
saying, “An even better sermon! You’ve really got to speak specifically.”

But as the new week wore on, the people said, “That still didn’t do any good. She’s still stealing.” The minister prayed
for courage, mounted the pulpit on the following Sunday and declared, “Thou shalt not steal thy neighbor’s chickens.”
This time the deacon objected, blurting out, “Who are you to think you’re an expert on chickens? You’re not supposed

education and counseling course I took involved visiting a number of different alcohol rehab
programs and observing various 12-step open meetings. At one outpatient facility, I arrived a bit
early and sat in a waiting room. I struck up a conversation with the only other person in the waiting
room, a young woman who by all appearances, had been through a rough time. She was calm and
cordial. After a while, the counselor came in, introduced himself and explained to the young woman
that I was there to observe, if she didn’t mind. She nodded okay. But in his presence the young
woman’s demeanor changed visibly. She was now looking quite nervous and agitated. Once in the
counselor’s office, while both were still standing, with a chart in his hand, he said straight out, “So,
you’re an alcoholic.” He named the disease, the unclean spirit, the demon, as it were, quite directly
and forcefully. And if you name a demon specifically, expect it to shout back. The young woman
went on a rant and looked very scared at the same time. The counselor did not let up. By the end of
the session the woman, who had been remanded by the court to this clinic, had begun to come face
to face with her demon—her disease—that had just been directly named and confronted.

A demon (or “daemon” in the original Greek) was thought of in ancient Greek mythology as a
supernatural being of a nature somewhere between gods and humans—including the soul or “ghost”
of the dead—a kind of attendant, ministering or indwelling spirit that could guide and warn a
person. But in the Bible demons were thought of in mostly negative terms, as adversarial existences,
both personal and societal in dimension, hostile to human well-being and rebellious against God—
evil influences or spirits. These demons or unclean spirits were considered evil because they separate
us from God and from our true nature, our Christ Nature, if you will, and therefore cause us
suffering. In the worldview of that time they were subsumed under the prince of demons—the
Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebul, what have you. These demons or evil spirits were also called
“unclean” because their effect was to separate the afflicted person from the community of faith and
worship of God. It’s interesting to note, however, that the toxic, or possessed, person in this Gospel
story is found sitting right in the congregation. In our day, this use of biblical language about
demons—evil or unclean spirits—is regarded appropriately as “picture thinking;” that is, as a
figurative way of expressing the reality and extent of evil in the world, existing not only within us, but
also around us—and thus with influence upon individuals, groups and whole societies. Therefore,
such “unclean” and “evil spirits” can manifest in two ways, first as addictions and obsessions,
traumas and dysfunctions affecting individuals and their immediate circles. Second, they can
manifest as larger evils that exist within but are greater than one’s own capacity to make things go
wrong—evil and unclean and contagious spirits like the spirit of a gang, or a false but viral
conspiracy theory, or an angry violent mob; or, say, the spirit of materialism or militarism,
xenophobia or nativism, misogyny or homophobia, hyper-partisanship and so on. “Principalities and
powers” is the phrase St. Paul used to describe these larger evils. Leaders such as Martin Luther
King, Jr. also used this language of the “principalities and powers” when, for example, describing the
evils of racism—not in any way to diminish the responsibility of, or to deny the complicity of racists;
but rather, to point to the pernicious racism and enmity that infects the majority culture, and all

to get so specific. That’s not preaching, it’s meddling.” (see “Word becomes flesh, and the chickens come home”
Sermon preached by William McD. Tully (New York: St. Bartholomew’s Church), January 29, 2006).

Well, the Christian faith is precisely about meddling and getting specific and mixing things together. “The Word became
flesh,” is the enduring phrase John’s Gospel uses to describe the meddling of God in our very lives. And our Gospels
throughout show Jesus doing this often, directly, specifically and forcefully, naming the demons in people’s lives and in
the wider society, and shining his light of love and justice in those dark places.

humanity for that matter. And like Jesus, who spoke and acted as “one having authority,”—so too,
did Dr. King, directly, specifically and forcefully—and he had to get as specific as naming and calling
out, for example, Sherriff Bull Connor and his fire hoses, dogs and deputies. And their demons
lashed back. And so, the personal challenges that that young woman in the alcohol rehab clinic had
to face, and our society at large has to face again and again and especially now—these are challenges
to confront “unclean” and “evil spirits,” the “principalities and powers”—first in our own hearts
and minds, and then in our wider world. Again—first in our own hearts and minds, for our demons
rarely arise from totally outside of ourselves, as St. Augustine put it. 2

Now anyone who has engaged seriously and long enough with oneself in counseling or 12-step
recovery knows there’s a difference between, on the one hand, finding out you have “demons,”—
that relatively toxic mix of traumas, obsessions or dysfunctions that have shaped the decisions and
course of your life—and, on the other hand, truly addressing and becoming free of them, or keeping
them at bay. My own demons of workaholism up until my recent retirement; and obsessive worrying
that continues even into the present, are just two that I care to name at the moment, in public. There
is a world of difference, though, between naming them and actually exorcising them, as it were. The
exorcising for us is most often a lifelong process, often never completed, rather than some sudden
release as we read in our gospel today. Some people are satisfied to know what their demons are, but
stop there, having a bit of self-knowledge, but not engaging in the hard work of change. Because if
your demons are truly “cast out,” so to speak, whether suddenly or through a long process, you have
to change! And if you change, others may change. So, whether it’s unlucky circumstances,
dysfunctional parents, hanging around with the wrong crowd, or some other outside forces that are
the source of our demons, or whether they’re of our own making, once we’ve stopped denying we
have them, then, at best, we feel foolish letting them continue to guide our choices and behaviors.
But at worst, we feel trapped and stuck in our dysfunctional ways, and are too afraid to risk any
other way of being. As Sally Kempton put it, “It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your
[own] head.” 3

As a former colleague, Elizabeth Garnsey, pointed out, at least our demons are familiar—“I’ve come
this far, haven’t I? we rationalize. I’m too old [or too far gone or too stuck] to change. It’s too late to
become someone new. I’ll lose that relationship, or have to change my job (or worse, stay in this one
and have to confront the problems!). I’ll have to sever a destructive tie, or make a [new]

2 Quoted in William Sloane Coffin, A Passion For the Possible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), p.
22. And a similar message from the Buddhist tradition states, “It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand
battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.” As William
Sloane Coffin stated, “True, [if we love the good,] we have to hate evil; else we’re sentimental. But if we hate evil more
than we love the good, we just become damn good haters, and of those the world already has too many.” – and that can
perpetuate the very evil you hate (William Sloane Coffin, Credo (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p.
20). Or as Hannah Arendt summed up, “Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where
words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds
are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities” (Hannah Arendt, The Human
Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 178-179).

3Sally Kempton, “Cutting Loose,” reprinted in About Women, ed. Stephen Berg and S.J. Marks (New York: Fawcett,
1973).

commitment. I’ll have to do something I’ve never done before. I don’t have the energy to reinvent
myself, we might think. Starting over is too terrifying.” 4

Recall in a similar encounter later in Mark’s gospel [5:1-20], Jesus has the demons leave a man and
enter a herd of pigs who then run down a steep bank and drown in a lake. 5 But, as Garnsey points
out, “The difference between pigs and humans, if we look at [that] story, is that the pigs, when
possessed by demons, self-destruct. But we humans, with our resilient souls, assimilate and even
normalize our demons. We incorporate them into our lives and cope with them. We too may be
self-destructive, but in our sophisticated ways, we manage to survive.” 6 But only a pessimist or cynic
would cling to the idea that mere survival is the goal of life. There’s so much more to life than mere
survival. We’re created with a capacity to live abundantly. Jesus came to show us how—how to be
free from the pull of our demons—including the very familiar demon of demonizing others—and
he came to show us how to turn, and change, and become fully who we are meant to be.

We might identify our problems, but can we change our patterns of behavior? Going half way is to
stop short, naming our demons but not letting go of them. But God asks us to go all the way; and
yes, that takes a lifetime to work through. So, let us find out what our demons are. Let us learn their
names. And let the living God help us and our world break free of them.

A WORD ABOUT RECORDED SERMONS:
Since the outbreak of the Coronavirus and the suspension of public worship, all services in their
entirety are recorded and uploaded to YouTube. Now, instead of just the sermon, you have
everything. It is our intention to continue video recording the services even after our return to
public worship.
You can also listen to many past sermons by going to YouTube (www.youtube.com) and searching
for “St. James Episcopal Church, Hyde Park, NY”. There, you will not only find sermons but also

4 “Don’t just sit there” Sermon preached by the Rev. Elizabeth Garnsey (New York: St. Bartholomew’s Church), June 24,

2007

5   The fact that there was a herd of pigs indicates that this was a Gentile (non-Jewish) village. As one observer wrote,

            “With the rise of patriarchy and monotheism, the fecund pig’s association with the divine feminine engendered
            prohibitions against eating pork, the shunning of swineherds, and the fantasy of pigs as receptacles for demons
            and all that was unclean. The [ancient and] Medieval Jewish, Christian and Moslem worlds denigrated ‘swine.’
            Pigs became emblematic of deadly sins of concupiscence. Self-denial, separation of the body from the spirit
            and the glorification of chastity opposed the pig’s apparent sensuality, which by then had lost all its positive,
            creative aspect. Even in the 20th century, ‘pig’ was still a metaphor for the lascivious male, greedy capitalist and
            brute cop, and pigs are the selfish despots of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Yet other stories, especially
            children’s tales like Charlotte’s Web, Winnie-the-Pooh and Babe, reflect different attributes of the pig—
            innocence, sensitivity, intelligence and loyalty.” (Quoted in “Pig” in The Archive for Research in Archetypal
            Symbolism, Ami Ronnberg and Kathleen Martin, eds., The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal
            Images (Cologne, Germany: TASCHEN, 2010), p. 324).

6   Garnsey, Ibid.

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