At that time, when Jesus came to the country of the Gergesenes, two demoniacs met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God?” ~Matt. 8:28-29
Last week in my homily, I asserted the following: "For most of our history, Christ stood at the center of our (American) culture. Despite the varying interpretations and denominations surrounding Him, there was no question that He was the pre-eminent figure in our national cultural life."
America has never been an officially Christian country; from the beginning it gave full rights to Jews and others, but there’s no doubt that the ethos of the culture was Protestant Christian.
If one observes classic movies from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, it’s amazing to note how often clergymen were prominent characters—particularly in the ‘40s you find a fascination with Catholic priest characters—all portrayed in a positive light; Bing Crosby, Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift and others had leading roles as priests. And this is at a time when almost all—if not all—the studio heads were Jewish. They may not have been Christians themselves, but they recognized the culture around them, respected it, and played to it.
I remember saying after watching one such film recently, “That movie could never be made today.” Not just because people’s tastes in entertainment have changed, not just because of the clergy scandals of recent times, but because the culture as a whole has distanced itself from Christ and the churches.
At some point in time the objection of the demons in our Gospel reading today was raised in our culture: “What have we to do with you, O Son of God?”
Not only influential Jews, who naturally did not believe in Him, but progressive sons of Protestant Christianity—like John Dewey for example—raised the same question: “What have we to do with you, O Son of God?” We will form a culture that excludes you.
We see the fruits of their success in the schools and on the streets of our country today. Christ having been excluded, many young people today have turned once again to Marxism as their great moral cause and potential savior of our society.
“What have we to do with you, O Son of God?” We don’t need God. We have Marx. His way will bring us social justice.
And yet, when one surveys the living hells of Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the purgatories of Cuba and Venezuela, with the millions upon millions of human lives sacrificed for the cause of Communism, and the incalculable human suffering, one is prompted to ask: “Why would you want to relive those experiments? You have seen how they turned out.”
And the answer is: “They didn’t get it right. We will.”
The naïveté would be laughable were not the potential outcomes so terrifying.
Yet the attempt to dissociate from Christ is hardly limited to revolutionaries active here in the States. It is an international phenomenon.
Many of us were perturbed by the news the other day that the Islamist President of Turkey signed a decree changing the status of Agia Sophia from a museum back to a functioning mosque.
His logic is simple: We Muslims took it from you Christians, therefore it is ours—and in no sense yours. Therefore Agia Sophia must be entirely Islamic. It’s 900 years of Christian history must be plastered over and forgotten.
President Erdogan has added his voice to the chorus: “What have we to do with thee, O (supposed) Son of God?”
“For you, being but a prophet, have been surpassed by our prophet. We have remade you into the Issa of the Quar’an, and we have remade your cathedral into our mosque of the believers in the final messenger of God, our Muhammad.”
You must be erased, for “What do we Islamists have to do with you, O (supposed) Son of God?”
Yet he is hardly alone. His program to exclude and exterminate the heritage and community of Christ and Christianity in Turkey are hardly unusual on the world scene today.
Other examples are the efforts of Islamists in Nigeria to eradicate Christianity there by wholesale slaughter, the repeated attacks on Christians carried out by Hindu nationalists in India, the active persecution being carried out by the Chinese Communists today—not to mention what we saw with ISIS in the last decade.
It is as if Christ and Christianity are currently besieged nearly worldwide—as never before, as the chorus grows louder: “What have we do to with you, O Son of God?”
In our epistle today, the Apostle Paul speaks to the Jews of his day who refused Christ:
Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that it may be saved. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law, that everyone who has faith may be justified. (Rom. 10:1-4)
In other words, God’s way is Christ. But they, he says, wanted to do it their own way—as do so many in our times.
My brothers and sisters in Christ, for us Christ is everything.
“What have we to do with you, O Son of God?” Our answer is “everything.” Christ is everything. Everything that we are, everything that we do, has to do with everything He is.
He is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the origin, source, sustenance, and purpose of all the works of God.
I close with some words from the first epistle to the Corinthians:
For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God … But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. (1 Cor. 1: 22-24, 30)
“What do we have to do with you, O Son of God?” Everything.
Fr. Paul O'Callaghan
is the Dean of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral in Wichita, KS. He is one of the founding members of Eighth Day Institute’s Board of Directors and is responsible for starting the Eighth Day Symposium.
