According to the OM3 translation of Mark 5:1-20, there was a man with a variety of issues, who lived in a space of no economic development, and even when the townspeople tried to incarcerate him, no one could subdue him. When Jesus asked his name, Legion — that is, a legion of issues — answered and asked to be sent into some pigs. When the townspeople came and saw the man clothed and in his right mind, the people asked Jesus to leave immediately because they were afraid. The man wanted to go with Jesus, but Jesus told him to go home and tell his own people what God and Jesus had done for him.
Three times, the Rev. Otis Moss III repeated the sentence: “The man who formerly had issues was dressed, in his right mind, and the people were afraid.”
Moss preached at the 9:15 a.m. Friday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. His sermon title was “From Miseducation to Liberation,” and the scripture reading was Mark 5:1-20.
Once again Moss asked the congregation to turn to a neighbor and repeat, “Neighbor, O neighbor, it is time to be liberated.”
When Moss was child, his godfather, Alfred Moore, would take him to the Richfield Coliseum in Cleveland to see the Barnum and Bailey three-ring circus. From the clowns in the tiny car to the trapeze artists, to the lions, tigers and bears (Oh my!), the animals he loved the most were the elephants.
“I adored and feared the elephants. I wondered why they would listen to a little man with a small whip and a chair. I feared an elephant coup d’etat,” Moss said.
His godfather assured him that the elephants were domesticated when they were small. Moore told him, “When they were small, they had a 12-foot chain around their neck. As they grew, they assumed they had a limitation of possibilities and stayed in the boundaries. They are emancipated now, but they have chains on their minds.”
His godfather continued, “So don’t worry, there will be no revolution. They have been miseducated so long that only when they realize a chair won’t stop them will there be a revolution.”
Moss urged the congregation to move beyond their limitations.
“As a nation, we need to take the chains off because a revolution is on the way. We are going to elect someone who is Indian and Black and not from the Mayflower. We have nothing to lose in the yet-to-be America. We can break the ceiling and expand our imagination in the world.”
Jesus rolled into town with his crew, Moss said, and found a man with no name but a condition. He was living in a space with no economic development and he ran up to Jesus. The community had provided him with incarceration, not mental healthcare, like people in the Cook County jail. “If we do the work to break the chains we would see change in the community.”
As the man rolls up to Jesus he says, “Don’t torment me.” Moss said that “the man was a victim of religious trauma; he had been tormented by other religious leaders. When religion is a problem, faith is the answer.”
Moss shared a story from Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. When Rosa Parks decided she would not give up her seat on a bus and was arrested, the leaders of the Black community gathered. Martin Luther King Jr. was a young pastor in Montgomery and sat in the back of the room.
“He sat in the back and the men in the front were arguing about what to do next,” Moss said, and repeated the sentence three times.
As the men argued about the possibility of a boycott or calling in the NAACP legal team, JoAnn Robinson got the sisters who were sitting in the back together and they left.
“They were going to start a revolution,” Moss said. They had decided to have a boycott and in eight hours they had printed 55,000 flyers on an old-fashioned mimeograph machine.
The women wanted to get them to every Black person in the city, and asked some of the newspaper carriers to take them home to home.
“A breeze took one carrier’s piles and spread it around. One flyer landed on the windshield of a sheriff’s car,” Moss said. “He took it to the head of the White Citizen’s Council, who believed that the Negros were going to start a revolution.”
Moss continued, “He decided that the white people needed to be alerted, so he took it to the newspaper and the paper printed the flyer, exactly as it had been printed. The breeze made sure that there were no parameters on what the people were doing.”
The man with many issues asked Jesus not to torment him and Jesus asked, just like a brother would, “What’s your name?” But he did not answer — Legion did.
Moss said, “Mark was using the word ‘legion’ deliberately. It was a Roman military for a battalion of 10,000. The issues are having a conversation with Jesus and they lobby him to send them into the pigs. Jesus says, ‘Go on with your bad self,’ and they move to the pigs who run off a cliff and commit pigicide.” He said the last sentence three times.
Do the math, he told the congregation. One man has 10,000 issues and there are 2,000 pigs in the area. That is five demons per pig.
“Not even one pig could handle five issues, but the man still held it together. When we see people with issues, they are still holding it together,” Moss said.
Jesus liberated the man and turned the economy in the area around. “One person can shift the economy,” Moss said. “An economic source went away. No more pork chops or fatback. And a man was dressed and in his right mind and the people were afraid.”
The people were not afraid when he was in chains, living in the tombs. Now he is no longer exploited, he is a productive person and the “people are afraid when he can walk with purpose and power,” said Moss.
“Why is there so much fear about Blacks being clothed and in their right minds, that a revolution will happen to build the yet-to-be United States of America? People from Chautauqua and Buffalo can get together and change New York State,” Moss said.
The people asked Jesus to leave because he messed up the economy and liberated the man with issues. Moss said, “We have to move from miseducation to liberation. We need ambassadors of compassion and prophets of a new generation in their right minds in these yet-to-be United States so that all people have room to breathe.”
He continued, “We can join hands and, as Kendrick Lamar says, ‘We gonna be alright.’ Can I get a witness? Can I get a witness? May God bless you, and I will see you in a few years.”
Moss got a witness as the congregation stood, shouted, applauded and pounded on the benches in the Amphitheater.
Melissa Spas, vice president for religion at Chautauqua, presided. Judy Rice, a member of Towson Presbyterian Church in Towson, Maryland, and who with her husband was a Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan right after college, read the scripture. Owen Reyda, 2024 organ scholar, played “Verset,” by Louis J.A. Lefébure-Wély, for the prelude on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir sang “Dear Lord and Father,” music by C. Hubert H. Parry, arranged by H.A. Chalmers and text by John Greenleaf Whittier. The choir was directed by Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist and accompanied by Reyda on the Massey Organ. The postlude was “Toccata,” from Symphony No. 5, by Charles-Marie Widor, played by Stafford on the Massey Organ. Support for this week’s services was provided by the Gladys R. Brasted and Adair Brasted Gould Memorial Chaplaincy and the Daney-Holden Chaplaincy Fund.
