Last week was very difficult for me, as it was for a great many of us. I get up early on Sunday mornings, so the very first thing I saw when I turned on my computer at 4 a.m. was the news of the massacre in Orlando. It was still an unfolding story when I saw it; the body count was still being estimated. I confess that I was at a loss as to what to do with that horrible news at that early hour.

For a number of reasons I didn’t mention Orlando in worship that morning. The biggest reason was that I was pretty sure that few, if any, of the people attending would have heard the news yet and I didn’t want such horribly shocking news to cast a pall over worship and especially not over our farewell to two much-loved members who were moving across the country. Also, I needed time to process it before trying to deal with it pastorally and theologically.

By Monday morning Orlando was the stark lens through which I was seeing the whole world. I was filled with a deep sadness tinged by more than a little anger. In an effort to shift gears I clicked over to read a sermon written by my friend and colleague, Pastor Jennie Chrien who serves in Oxnard.   Her sermon was on the same lectionary text I had preached on the day before but she had taken a very different approach from mine. In addressing the Gospel of Luke’s account of the woman who washes and anoints Jesus’ feet (Luke 7:36-8:3), she had focused on the moment when Jesus turns to Simon the Pharisee and says, “Do you see this woman?” From that simple question Jennie had built an eloquent, powerful and moving sermon.

That important question, “Do you see?” wouldn’t leave me alone, jangling up against the ragged wound of Orlando as I turned my attention to the Gospel text for the coming week, the story of Jesus’ encounter with the wild, demon-possessed Gerasene man running naked among the tombs (Luke 8:26-39). I was also remembering anew the horror from almost exactly a year before when a crazy young white supremacist murdered 9 African Americans after sitting through Bible study with them.

Do you see? The question still hangs in the air.

As I read the Gospel for the week with all these things echoing in my heart, I realized that we, the good old US of A, we are the demon-possessed man. We are the man made crazy by fears and anxieties and bigotry and scapegoating. We are the man made crazy by blind rage and unreasoned hatreds.

We are the man with a hopelessly divided mind, made bipolar and schizophrenic by a cacophony of opposing inner voices—entrenched political parties with no common ground—conservatives vs. liberals and ne’er the twain shall meet on any common ground of common sense, putting our party identity or our ideology ahead of everything else that’s supposed to define us, making even our faith subservient to our chosen place on the ideological spectrum. We are so blinded by the ideological lenses we wear that we see only what we’ve decided in advance that we want to see. And since our biases rarely completely align with or truly resonate with the Gospel we hear and profess, our cognitive dissonance creates the first degree of our madness.

Do you see? Do you really see?

Oh, we have our moments of clarity but then the rage wells up in us and we explode in violence.

For most of us it’s just a violence of rhetoric and attitude, but it opens the door and for those who would turn it into a horribly tangible violence of death and destruction. Even among the most enlightened among us, our racism or our discomfort with sexualities that are different from our own our anxieties about those other religions—all these things creep out in unguarded words and give permission to the violence that is always waiting to happen. We breed the craziness.

Do you see?

We cloak our prejudices in our religions. We project our own craziness, our own fears and anxieties and hatred onto the most vulnerable and marginalized then drum up a sacred text or two to support our bigotry and give us permission to treat them horribly.We are so blinded by our own interpretation of our religions that we can’t see children of God standing right in front of us.

Do you see? Do you see that more than a little of our craziness comes from being caught in the middle of an epic struggle between love and hate?

Do you see that if you’re not actively and passionately on the side of love then you are at least passively on the side of hate? Do you see that if you are not generating light then you are opening the door to darkness?

Do you see that we are not just the crazy man among the tombs? Do you see that we are also the craven townspeople afraid of our own shadows. We recognize our own craziness and try to lock it up, to bind it with chains but we know, deep down that that’s not going to work.

Do you see that even when God works a miracle and restores one of us to our senses we respond with more anxiety because that is just so different from our usual experience?

Do you see a way out of all this?

Do you see how Jesus sees? Can you see the way Jesus sees? Can you put aside your politics, your ideology, your biases and prejudices, the less savory voices of your childhood, your inclination for self-protection, your fear of the “other,” your anxiety about a constantly changing world—can you put aside your own demons long enough to see the person in front of you?

Do you see how Jesus sees? Do you see that Jesus doesn’t see a prostitute washing his feet but a woman beaten down by the world who has had to make horrible choices in order to survive? Do you see that Jesus doesn’t see a crazy man running amok among the tombs but a human being bedeviled and enslaved by the legion craziness of the world?

Do you see that in Christ we are all children of God through faith, that in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave nor free, male or female, gay or straight or trans or bi, us or them?

Do you see that Jesus is our common ground even with our Muslim brothers and sisters? Yes, we understand Jesus very differently, but he is a central voice in both or our traditions and if we’re ever going to find peace with each other, Jesus, not Abraham, is our most likely common ground.

Do you see? Do you see that we are all going to have to learn to see differently?

No, we can’t afford to be stupid. No we can’t afford to be blind to real threats. But do you see that we are going to have to first recognize and deal with the real threats that arise from our own hearts and minds and souls?

Do you see that we’re going to have to stop listening to all the voices that divide us and pit us against each other? Do you see that we’re going to have to switch off the news channels and radio voices and web feeds and political voices that want to tell us how awful those “others” are, who want to tell us that “they” are not the real “us”?

Do you see that we’re going to have to really listen to Jesus—not the Old Testament—not even Paul, but Jesus—if we’re ever going to be freed from our own demons, our own contagious craziness?

Do you see that we are all of us, each of us, going to have to have at least one “come to Jesus” moment if we’re ever going to be freed from our demons?  Or to put it a more scriptural and Lutheran way, do you see that we are all, each of us, going to have to take off the lenses of our preconceptions and put down our guard long enough so that Jesus can come to us and cast our demons into the sea of God’s love?

Do you see? Can you see? Do you see that love—the love of Christ, the love exemplified and perpetually renewed by Jesus whether you know that’s where it comes from or not, is our only hope of ever being able to sit with each other calmly and in our right minds?

Do you see?