A Sip and a Taste

 

John 6:24-35

Proper 13 / Year B

Can you imagine going out to your yard every morning for forty years and picking up manna to eat?  Can you imagine having only it to dine on for all those years?  “What’s for dinner tonight, honey?”  “Manna!”  “Baked?  Fried?  Poached?  Sautéed?  Breaded?  Grilled?  Stir fried?  “Over easy?”  “No.  Fresh, like I picked it up off the grass.”  I’d have tired of this diet long before the Israelites did.  And I’m also positive I’d have failed to see God’s blessing in it after only a few weeks.  On one hand, this was their only food for forty years.  Yuck!  On the other, God looked after their daily need for 14,610 straight days.  Wow!  I know what it would have been like for me.  At first, it would have been a miracle.  After time, it would become a blessing.  From there it would morph into an expectation, and then give way to routine.  Eventually it would become nothing but drudgery.  What begins as feeding on the bread of angels becomes just another item on a dull to-do list.

Last Sunday we heard the story of how Jesus fed 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and two fish.  The people who participate in the meal are so deeply satisfied they chase Jesus all around the Sea of Galilee so as not to miss the next meal.  Of all the impressive elements of the story, perhaps the most intriguing is how the disciples fill twelve baskets with the leftovers.  You don’t need to be a physics major to deduce there is more food at the end than is present at the beginning.  And every one of those crumbs and morsels and bits of fish not eaten represents a blessing missed.  They represent the grace present that goes unrecognized.  And, like them, we have a lot of unrecognized grace present in our lives.

Paul Sohn is a blogger who describes himself as a Korean-Canadian/American leadership junkie, purpose weaver, and catalyst.  He begins one post by quoting William Arthur Ward who said, “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today.  Have you used one to say ‘thank you?’”

Sohn writes this:

One of the words that has been stripped of its meaning is the word ‘blessing.’… In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I challenged myself, asking “What areas have I been really blessed?”  An article I recently read inspired me to count my blessings.  In fact, it suggested that I come up with 100 things I’m thankful for.

At the outset, I considered this a piece of cake.  A no brainer.  But, as I have spent the last few days counting all my blessings, I realized how thankless and entitled I’ve become.  Coming up with things to be thankful for was at times an arduous, time-consuming process.  It was a sobering moment.  The overall result from this exercise was a renewed sense of appreciation for big things, but also small things that bring color in life.

Sohn shares his list of thanksgivings on his blog, often with an explanation after each item for how or why it is a blessing.  His list includes such varied things as parents, girlfriend, salvation, purpose, adversity, Portland Leadership Foundation, books, the Bible, great customer service, GPS, and today.  His exercise strikes me as a way to pick up the leftover fragments.  It seems like a mindful way to remember the daily blessing of manna always present, but often overlooked.

I think it is worth remembering Jesus says “I am the Bread of Life”, not “I am the Golden Coral of life.”  As Anne Lamont notes, “Small is how blessings, healing, progress, and increase occur.”  Yes, God offers us a buffet, a banquet, and a feast, but most often blessing and grace come to us in a single serving, or perhaps as a sip or a taste.  And a sip and a taste is at the heart of what we come here for this morning.

David Lose, a Lutheran pastor and seminary professor, writes about a conversation he once had with a psychiatrist who told him “the goal of all counseling is for a person to love him or herself because if you aren’t going to love yourself, who will, and if you don’t start now, then when?”  Lose responded, “Doctor, have you ever encountered a single person who has the ability to love himself without first experiencing love from another person?”  “No,” the doctor said quietly, “No, not really.”

The taste of bread and the sip of wine we will receive in a few moments are the sure and certain signs God gives to let us know we are loved and forgiven.  They are such “common” things, but receiving them must never become a common experience.  It must never become like going out to pick up manna.  It must always ignite in us the desire and the ability to seek and search for all the other fragments of blessing in our life.  And, as we sense we are blessed and as we feel we are fed, we must never think this is an end unto itself.  It is only just a beginning.  As we are filled, we find a hunger growing within to ensure every person in our life, in our church, in our community, and it our world shares in the blessings we have found.  God fills us with the Bread of Life one taste and one sip at a time so that we can feed others.    

 

...because They were Hungry!

 

John 6:1-21

Proper 12 / Year B

So I spent this week in deep thought, pondering a question: Why did Jesus feed five thousand people in the wilderness?  Before I disclose the definitive answer, what do you think?  Why did he feed them?  Now, don’t overthink this!  After all of my scholarly investigations and meditative musings here is what I have discerned… Jesus fed them because they were hungry! 

And, as we will see over the next four Sundays, the assigned Lectionary readings will direct our attention to the Eucharistic roots of Jesus’ actions in this story.  Taking, blessing, breaking, and distributing are the essential elements of the Eucharistic liturgy.  So if Jesus gives literal food to people because they are hungry, we might want to ask why he gives Eucharistic food.  If we don’t overthink the question we just might conclude Jesus gives us Eucharistic food because we need it.  We cannot go through life without experiencing spiritual pangs of hunger.  Our souls will starve without what Jesus freely offers. 

I attended my first service of Holy Eucharist at an Episcopal Church 39 years ago this month.  What I remember most about it was walking down the long center aisle, passing through the chancel flanked on either side by the singing choir, approaching the altar rail, and kneeling.  I was just a boy out of college, but sensed how the president of the biggest bank in town had to do just what I did in order to receive communion.  We were all in this together as equals before God; each of us having to assume a posture of humility before the Lord in order to receive.

Maybe it was Presbyterian background with its Puritanical leanings, but it didn’t take long for the ‘celebration’ of Holy Eucharist to become for me a severe, penitential experience.  Sunday worship became a time dutifully to rehearse the litany of my sins and shortcomings from the previous week; always promising with all my might to be a better person, only to go through the same litany the following Sunday, and then the Sunday after that, and after that, and… well you get the idea.  Evangelicals hold there is nothing we can do to merit our salvation because we are hopelessly lost in sin.  Grace, they ‘say’, comes only as God’s gift.  Even though I held to this doctrine in my head, it didn’t stop me from acting as if I had to merit being worthy to receive communion.  And when I didn’t and when I couldn’t, participating in the Eucharist beat me down.  Rather than life-giving and life-affirming, it morphed into a destructive spiritual exercise.

It took several years and far too many experiences to tell in a single sermon how this changed for me; how I began to recognize Jesus offers me the holy food and drink not because I deserve it, but because I need it; how I came to embrace the notion this moment is not something I earn and it is not something I deserve, rather it is something God offers to me as a sure and certain sign of God’s unfailing love for me.  I am still working to be a better person, but now I do so knowing I am deeply and completely loved for who I am, just as I am.  Now I experience the road of sanctification as a pilgrimage of wonder and grace, not as a forced march I am bound to fail.

When my marriage ended 19 years ago I learned something else about the Eucharist.  I began to attend a Saturday evening service at an Episcopal Church near where I lived and for the first time since going to seminary was able to be a worshipper rather than a worship leader.  This is when the Eucharist became a part of my ‘daily bread’ – what I needed in order to survive the day.  Why did Jesus offer the Eucharistic food to me?  Because I desperately needed it in a way I had not needed it before or since.

I have told you before about the Eucharistic service I attended at the General Convention in Salt Lake City.  It was a massive event with thousands of people in attendance.  Volunteer ushers outfitted with red vests roamed the hall’s floor to assist and direct us.  I was preoccupied throughout the service with some personal things and I struggled to be present to the moment.  The time came for our section and my row to make our way to our communion ‘station’, which I did.  After receiving communion I returned to my seat, which happened to be on the aisle.  With my head bowed and eyes closed I was trying to pray, but still distracted.  Then an usher came up from behind me, leaned down next to my ear, and said, “Did you get communion?”  “I did,” I said in response.  There was something about the person’s voice that sounded so personal and intimate; it was not a whisper, but I was certain no one else heard it.  “Did you get communion?”  A second or two passed before I opened my eyes and turned around to look at the person and when I did no one was there.  There was no usher to be found anywhere near me.

“Did you get communion?”  I had received communion, but, preoccupied with my problems as I was, I did not get communion.  I had gone through the motions, but had missed the meaning.  Most every Sunday since, after I commune myself I ask the question, “Did you get communion?”  Do you realize God loves you not because you have always been successful and not because you have the perfect family and not because you have never made a mistake and not because you are free of regrets and not because you are not haunted by personal demons and not because your belief in every Christian doctrine is rock-solid.  God loves you because God loves you… and there is nothing you can do about it!

Why did Jesus feed the 5000?  Because they were hungry.  Why does Jesus feed us with the Sacrament of his Body and Blood?  Because we need it.  It is just that simple.  God feeds us because God loves us.

Rest a While

 

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Proper 11 / Year B

Jesus said to his disciples, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”  For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 

Much of what we read in the bible feels so foreign to our day and time, but not this.  Our culture’s bedrocks seem to be frenzied activity and perpetual demands.  Meals get wedged in when and where possible: perhaps at a Chick-fil-a drive thru at 9:30 at night.  Rather than being a necessity, leisure has become a luxury well beyond what most of us can afford. 

Gandhi once said there is more to life than increasing its speed and yet this is exactly what we do.  We load our calendars with a landslide of activities.  We rev our motors well past the red lines of our personal RPM gauges.  We assume we are constantly to be doing something… anything… as long as we are doing, doing, doing.

Acedia is one of the seven deadly sins and perhaps the most misunderstood.  We get greed and gluttony and rest, but acedia is more mysterious.  Most often translated as sloth or listlessness, acedia, at least according to Kierkegaard, has something to do with the “despairing refusal to be oneself.”  For some, this refusal looks like an unwillingness to try; what we refer to as being lazy or having self-doubt.  But for others, it looks like the never slowing down.  There is a difference between being industrious (what we are created for) and being on hyperdrive all the time.

In today’s Gospel reading we see Jesus inviting his disciples to “be themselves” by seeking a time of solitude and leisure.  He helps them live out their imago dei (or divine image) by resting, as God did after six days of creative work.  The biblical rationale behind the fourth commandment to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy is not that God demands our worship.  Rather it is rooted in theology and history.  The theology: God rested on the seventh day and so should we.  The history: when God’s people were enslaved in Egypt they were made to work every day without respite.  Constant work and continual activity imprisons.  It is a refusal of one part of oneself.

This morning’s reading falls in the midst of some amazing activity in Jesus’ ministry.  It begins with Jesus asleep in a boat during a storm, no doubt exhausted from what has come before.  He disciples wake him and he calms the sea.  Once ashore Jesus encounters Legion, a man so possessed the locals chain him to a tomb.  After this and another boat trip Jesus is led to the home of a synagogue leader whose daughter is dying.  On the way, a woman reaches out and touches him, healing her illness of thirteen long years.  Next Jesus teaches in his hometown synagogue and his own people reject him.  In response he commissions his followers to go throughout the region in teams of two to preach and to pray and to heal.  In the meantime, we learn of the death of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin.  When his disciples return to report on their travels, the band is inundated by various people with multiple needs.  Is it any wonder Jesus diagnoses their need to get away!

The Gospels tell us big stories, but often in between, in just a few words or a sentence, they give us a glimpse of Jesus’ humanity.  He goes off alone to pray.  He doesn’t want anyone to know what house he is staying in.  He is hungry.  He is thirsty.  He is tired.  He withdraws.  He seeks solitude.  These are not signs of weakness or failure or selfishness.  They are acknowledgments of who he is and signs of his determination to be who God has created him to be.  They are not times when he refuses to heal or to care.  They are essential to how he responds to those who are like sheep without a shepherd.

Coming out of a protracted time of quarantine and severe restrictions it might be tempting to think we are emerging from a long period of extended leisure, but nothing could be farther from the truth.  We have spent well over a year learning new ways to do everyday things.  We have had to be more than vigilant to protect our own health as well as the health of those we love.  We have taken on new roles (like being a stay-at-home parent/teacher) while trying to keep up with our old roles (working remotely).  Whatever else this time has been, one thing is certain… it has been anything but leisurely.  And it is telling (and wise) the first response many have made as restrictions are eased has been to go away.  We recognize our need for rest, for leisure, for respite, for Sabbath.

Sam Hamilton-Poore is a Presbyterian minister who wrote a book titled Earth Gospel: A Guide to Prayer for God’s Creation.  He contends one way to care for our planet is to pray for it, and to pray for our place in it.  Here is one of his prayers that feels deeply rooted in turning from acedia by embracing who we are created to be: 

Grant me grace this day
to rest and remember
that there is nothing I have to do,
nothing I have to buy or sell,
nothing I have to produce or consume
in order to become who I already am:
your beloved creation.
May your overworked creation
and those who cannot rest today
come to know the liberation of your sabbath.

And this is my prayer for you as well.  May you come to know who you are created to be; a person with a meaningful purpose to be sure.  But also a person who does not allow yourself to be enslaved by life’s demands.  May your life be full of times to rest and to dine and to be beloved by God and those who are dear to you.    

 

 

Transforming Senselessness

 

Mark 6:14-29

Proper 10 / Year B

A shocking headline caught my attention earlier in the week: 233 Killed, 618 Injured by Gun Violence over Holiday Weekend.  These statistics are compiled by a group known as the Gun Violence Archive.  There is some ‘good’ news.  This year’s violence is 26% less than last year’s.  According to the GVA website, over 22,000 people have died from gunshot wounds so far this year.  It is sobering to note 12,000 of these were self-inflicted.  No matter what the numbers suggest to you, doesn’t it feel like our world is becoming harsher, more reactive, less kind, and less rational with each passing day?  It all seems so senseless.

How do you make sense of senselessness?  This is the question I have been living with as I pondered this morning’s gospel reading.  The death of John the Baptist at the hands of King Herod, with all the intrigue playing out behind the scenes, is a completely senseless event.  Along with the crucifixion of our Lord, it is one of the two darkest stories told in Gospels.  But unlike the crucifixion, this one seems to have no redeeming value (other than John’s disciples give his body a proper burial). 

I googled the question “how do you make sense of senselessness” and was taken aback by what came up: story after story over the past decade or so with various writers trying to come to grips with horrific events: the shooting in Las Vegas, Sandy Hook, Parkland, George Floyd, the church in Texas, the Surfside collapse.  It felt like I was taking a crash course in modern tragedies.   

One writer offered this thoughtful insight:

There is definitely a need among us to talk about and make sense of an incredibly senseless act.  In times of crisis and disbelief our humanity calls us to ask the questions – Why?  How? What can we do to prevent this from ever happening again?  

There are no easy answers.  No quick and painless solutions.  No neat, precise, clear responses that can take the pain and shock away or keep evil from threatening us again.  But this national conversation is an important one to have.  Even if the answers are not readily apparent or forthcoming, it is necessary to begin to search our hearts and our souls and ask the tough, difficult and uncomfortable questions that will ultimately lead to answers that will enable us to be a better society.   We must not stop asking these questions and searching for the insights that will bring us healing, comfort and clarity. 

Another cited this bit of wisdom from Fred Rogers:

In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.     

And another writer noted the importance of respect and compassion as we come together to seek wisdom.  This too feels increasingly difficult in our society where we seem to act like, “If me and mine are in charge, then I am ‘fir’ it.  But if me and mine are not in charge, then I am ‘agin’ it”; which, as a mindset, does not engender healing and hope, but only adds to the senselessness.

In today’s first lesson we hear God tell Amos a divine plumb line will be set to reveal where society has lost its way.  In the hands of a skilled worker a plumb line can reveal subtle deviations which, if not corrected, will result in dangerous structural deficiencies.  In our day and age no special tools are needed.  The problems are visible to the naked eye.  What we lack is a means of correction to unite us in working toward a better world.

We who embrace Jesus Christ hold something from beyond is at work in the world to counter the senselessness.  It is articulated so beautifully in today’s reading from the 85^th Psalm: 

I will listen to what the Lord God is saying,

  for he is speaking peace to his faithful people

  and to those who turn their hearts to him.

Truly, his salvation is very near

to those who fear him,

  that his glory may dwell in our land.

Mercy and truth have met together;

  righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth shall spring up from the earth,

  and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

We choose to open ourselves to what God offers to the world: to be a people of truth who exhibit mercy, a people who seek what is right as a means of creating peace.  This is our response to senselessness.  It is to join God’s team, to march in the parade God is leading, to sing in the chorus God conducts. 

The Crucifixion.  At Tuesday’s Evening Prayer from the Northumbria Community we read the lyrics of a song by the English writer and worship leader Godfrey Birtill.  Consider how what he sees in the cross differs from the senselessness of John’s death:

When I look at the blood
all I see is love, love, love.
When I stop at the cross
I can see the love of God.

But I can’t see competition.
I can’t see hierarchy.
I can’t see pride or prejudice
or the abuse of authority.
I can’t see lust for power.
I can’t see manipulation.
I can’t see rage or anger
or selfish ambition.

I can’t see unforgiveness.
I can’t see hate or envy.
I can’t see stupid fighting
or bitterness, or jealousy.
I can’t see empire building.
I can’t see self-importance.
I can’t see back-stabbing
or vanity or arrogance.

I see surrender, sacrifice, salvation,
humility, righteousness, faithfulness, grace, forgiveness,
love!  Love … love…

When I stop! … at the cross
I can see the love of God.

This speaks powerfully to the difference between the two deaths.  Jesus’ death was redemptive, John’s was senseless.  Everything Birtill says he can’t see when he looks at the Cross – abuse of power, manipulation, selfish ambition, hate, envy, vanity, arrogance, etc. – are found in spades in John’s death.  The actions of Herod and those around him make John’s death seem cruel and meaningless.  Jesus’ death on the cross is cruel to be sure, yet it becomes the clearest symbol possible of God’s love for the world.

In 2006 a man walked into a small Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, PA and took hostages, killing five and shooting another five before taking his own life.  Most don’t remember his name, but we do remember how the Amish community reached out the killer’s wife, children, and family.  We remember how they extended forgiveness and expressed compassion.  We remember how they took something senseless and transformed it into a symbol of God’s love.

This is how we choose to live and move and have our being in this world… aligned with the salvation our Lord offers in order for God’s glory to dwell in our land.  May God empower us to reflect God’s light in the darkness of these senseless times.

Out of the Cave

 

Mark 6:1-13

Proper 9 / Year B

Plato’s allegory of the cave is discussed in every intro to Philosophy class.  Plato instructs his students to imagine the world is like a dark chamber in a deep cave.  Its only source of light is a wood fire.  Next, Plato asks his students to imagine a group of people who live in the cave.  They have never been outside the chamber, not even once.  In fact, Plato says, envision each person has spent his or her entire life sitting in a chair facing a wall of the cave with the fire burning behind them.  They never stand up.  They never turn around.  They never even look sideways to see the other people who are sitting there with them.  All they know of life is the flickering shadows cast on the cave wall as the light from the fire moves past their own sitting bodies.

Plato goes on.  One day one person sitting in a chair stands up and looks around.  He sees all the other people in the chamber.  He sees the other walls of the cave.  He even sees the fire for what it is.  He, and he alone, has a unique perspective on reality.  As he wanders around the chamber he discovers a passageway leading toward a strange new light.  It is a tunnel to the cave’s entrance.  Standing in the opening he beholds the light of the sun.  He sees color for the first time: blue skies, white clouds, green vegetation, and brilliant flowers.  And he sees other creatures: animals, birds, insects, fish, and even other people.

He, and he alone, knows there is so much more to the world than the flickering, shadowy images on the cave’s wall.  He goes back into the chamber and tries to convince the others to look around, to face the fire, and to walk out of the cave into the sunlight.  All but a few insist he is wrong.  They are convinced there is nothing more to life than the shadow images.  They will not stand.  They will not turn.  And they will not follow him out of the cave.  Only a handful of people have the courage to do as the person suggests.

Plato teaches his students he is like the one who first stands up and examines the world.  He teaches his students they are the few who accept his invitation to challenge what they know of reality.  And he holds the overwhelming majority of people are content to stare at the shadows, remaining firm in the erroneous belief the world holds nothing more and nothing better than the dark cave with the flickering images.

There is a story in Sanskrit about a frog born in a well which stays in the well and lives its entire life in the well.  Its worldview consists only of the well.  It has no way of knowing there are other wells with other frogs.  It has no way of knowing there are frogs living in ponds and frogs living in streams and frogs living in lakes and frogs living in rivers.  It knows only itself and its well.

The allegory of the cave and the story of the frog touch on an aspect of our humanity cutting across all cultures and all peoples.  Human beings from all times and all places seem to understand there is more to reality than we can grasp from our own unique, but limited perspective.  Because of this insight we hold openness and communion with one another to be better for us than isolation and fiercely protected rigidity.  It is a belief based on the experience of having someone proclaim something radically different from what we hold to be true and then having that foreign proclamation help individuals and entire cultures to take dramatic steps forward.

Isn’t this what Jesus is trying to do in the Gospel reading we heard just moments ago?  He has launched his public ministry and it has been marked by inspired teaching, miraculous healings, and breath-taking signs and wonders.  His fame is spreading far and wide.  Then Jesus returns to Nazareth, his hometown.  He is back with his teachers and coaches and scout leaders and neighbors and friends and he wants to bring to them the Kingdom of God (a reality he himself inaugurates and embodies), but they will have none of it.  They are satisfied with what they know of life.  They are comfortable, even though (and perhaps because) they are complacent.  They prefer to watch the shadows.  They choose to stay in the well. 

How tempting it is to assign this phenomenon to someone else!  How tempting it is to say I am not like them, to assert we would never bury our collective heads in the sand all the while pretending we are scanning a vast horizon!  And yet how easy it is for our understanding of life to become little more than watching shadows dance on the wall; never to turn and face one another, never to look at the fire fueling the images we admire, and never to walk out into the pure, bright light which is the true glory of God. 

And how easy it is for a faith community like ours to become like a frog in a well, never to scale the walls to see what lies outside our isolated environment.  How easy it is to become satisfied all the while being closed off from God, from one another, and from the world around us.

And, on this day when we celebrate the 245^th anniversary of our nation’s independence, how easy has it become to exchange the genius of our enterprise (our desire to create new maps and to chart new courses by listening to and learning from one another) for the worst of our nature (the inclination to create trenches and ruts to defend our own perilous perspectives).  When and why did we become so afraid of each other?

We learn from today’s reading God will not allow us to live in isolation because God’s Spirit continually comes to us to call us outward and to bring us closer to the Kingdom of God.  It may not always be comfortable.  Frequently, it may go against what we know to be conventional.  It may confuse us or make us mad or scare us to the marrow or even cause us to part ways with those we hold dear (at least for a while).  But who among us really wants to watch shadows or to live knowing only the life of a well?  Who among us wants to be nothing more than a citizen of Nazareth… a city which over the centuries, according the historical records, never produced a single achievement worthy of note?  Do you think there is a correlation between the way they closed themselves off to Jesus and the fact they never accomplished anything making an impression on the world?

The text tells us Jesus marveled at their “unbelief.”  It wasn’t just him and his vision of the Kingdom they didn’t believe in.  They didn’t believe in the grandeur of the world as God has made it.  They didn’t believe in the potential for progress.  And, I dare say, they didn’t believe in themselves.

Jesus’ response is instructive.  He moves on.  Time is too short and there are too many people who are willing to stand and turn.  He divides his followers into groups of two and sends them out.  They respond to Jesus’ invitation to explore what lies beyond the cave.  They want to see what lies beyond the walls of well.  They don’t need special training or special equipment or special clothing.  All they need is a willingness to pursue God’s dream for all people and to invite others to join in their journey.

Where are you in all of this?  In the cave fearful of looking at anything else beyond the flickering on the wall?  In the well, completely oblivious to the glorious possibilities just beyond?  Perhaps for the first time you are beginning the journey of open exploration and discovery.  Maybe you have left the cave or the well and desire to invite others to join you.  No matter where you are in this Jesus reaches out to you and says “Walk with me.  I have nothing more important to do than to show you life and the world and God and reality.”

Jesus the 'Generative Force'

Mark 5:21-43

Proper 8 / Year B

God created all things so that they might exist;

  the generative forces of the world are wholesome,

  and there is not destructive poison in them.

Solomon’s wisdom runs counter to what Charles Darwin discerned about the ‘generative forces’ of our world, which he described as survival of the fittest.  We can reconcile these two points of view fairly easily by acknowledging Darwin’s insight is biological while Solomon’s is theological.  Darwin identifies where we have come from – a dog-eat-dog world.  Solomon points to where we are going – a worldwide community of compassion and care expressing God’s dream for all people and all things. 

And of the two, there is no question which Jesus embraces.  As God incarnate he embodies ‘generative forces’ which are ‘wholesome’ (or ‘whole-making’), completely devoid of ‘destructive poison.’  Like Solomon, Jesus assigns the corruption of God’s intent to the dominion of Hades, which is not of this world, but has entered into it.  Through his words and through his deeds, Jesus works to bind and banish the destructive deeds wrought by the ‘devil’s envy’ (to use Solomon’s language).

We see a wonderful example of this in today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark.  Recall last week Jesus was asleep in a boat when a huge storm arose and threatened to swamp it.  The disciples wake him and ask, “Do you not care we are perishing?”  Everything Jesus does from that point forward through today’s reading answers their question.  First, he commands the wind to stop.  Next, they land on the shore of Genessaret and encounter Legion, a man possessed by so many demons the local townsfolk have chained him in a countryside cemetery.  Jesus frees the man of all that torments him, everything from evils spirits to the evil intentions of his fellows. 

And now today Jesus is mobbed as soon as he steps ashore at another lakeside village.  Here he will minister to two daughters of Israel, women who are connected in several different ways, yet distinct from one another.  One is a twelve-year-old girl, the other has been suffering from internal hemorrhaging for twelve years.  One, I suspect, is known to Jesus because he knows the name of her father, the other is unknown.  Both live in a time of entrenched social norms for women, meaning certain expectations are inflexible.  The women who cannot live up to what is required of them certainly experience anxiety, depression, and perhaps of host of deeper and more severe physiological and psychological maladies.

The girl’s father, Jairus, is a leader in the local synagogue.  He is educated, influential, and respected; thus he could not be more different in standing from the man Jesus just encountered in Genessaret.  Jairus is distraught because his ‘little girl’ is near death.  It is of note her father refers to her as a ‘little girl’ when in fact, in that culture, she is anything but.  Even though twelve, in her day, she is at the age when her father begins to search for a suitable husband for her.  Her marriage will be arranged; perhaps it already has been.  Does she know the man?  Like him?  Does she feel ready to be married?  The status of her father’s family will rise or fall based on who she is able to marry.  Does she feel burdened?  Pressured?  How does she anticipate this significant change in her life with enthusiasm or with apprehension? 

In his book Jesus the Village Psychiatrist, Donald Capps, a professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton University, posits the girl is suffering from clinical hysteria, most likely as a result of the cultural pressure to marry a person she does not want to marry (but he also outlines several other possibilities, such as she is the victim of abuse).  One way clinical hysteria manifests itself is through immature behavior – talking and acting childlike.  Is this why her father refers to her as ‘little girl’?  At its most extreme hysteria can lead to a catatonic state easily misinterpreted as death.  Jesus himself lends credence to this possibility by stating the girl has not died but rather is sleeping.  If Jesus knows Jairus then most likely he knows the family and most likely knows the girl and most likely has deep insight into the complexities of what is going on.  One thing is certain, when Jairus comes to him, Jesus immediately sets off to see the girl, leaving the crowd behind.

One of the people left behind is a woman with the bleeding disorder.  We are told she has seen many physicians over the course of the last twelve years, but none has been able to help.  Donald Capps notes there is little doubt their ineptitude is for them a professional embarrassment.  And he writes we can be sure they have found multiple ways to blame her for their failures.  Mark’s text speaks volumes when it notes their inability to treat her effectively has not prevented them from billing her.  We are told her resources are exhausted.  That it is a detail completely unnecessary to the telling of the story illuminates the magnitude of abuse she has endured at the hands of medical professionals.

Her culture’s expectation for women to bear children is enormous.  Her bleeding, which no doubt is related to her reproductive system, prevents her from becoming pregnant and thus she is not able to accomplish the one thing required of her to earn the sole status her society is willing to afford her.  While her material resources are exhausted, her spiritual resources are not.  Perhaps she planned on speaking with Jesus, explaining her situation, and expressing her faith so he might heal her.  But once it becomes apparent he is moving on to other things, she shifts to Plan B.  We are given insight into her private thoughts, “If I but touch Jesus’ garment, I will be made well.” 

Those of you who participate in Morning or Evening Prayer online know I often invite you to offer petitions for your own needs as well as intercessions for those whose needs are on your heart.  I do so because I believe this is one of the primary reasons we come together in prayer.  As the Prayer of St. Chrysostom says, “you have given us grace to make our common supplication to you.”  Perhaps you do not come here this morning with a prayer for yourself, but I am confident each one of us here today carries a burden for at least one person we love. 

In the two daughters of Israel we meet this morning we see examples of both kinds of prayer.  The woman with the hemorrhaging is an example of petition.  She brings her need to Jesus.  Jairus models intercession as he brings his daughter’s need to our Lord’s attention.  Both receive grace and find healing; one who seeks it and the other who has a person seek it on her behalf.  One reaches out and touches Jesus, while the other has Jesus reach out and take her by the hand. 

And Jesus, what does he model for us?  He models the truth Solomon identified centuries earlier:

God created all things so that they might exist;

  the generative forces of the world are wholesome,

  and there is not destructive poison in them.

Jesus loves these two daughters of Israel not because they have fulfilled with fidelity what their culture expects of them.  He loves them because they are God’s precious children.  And in so doing, he opens for them the ‘generative forces’ God weaves into the fabric of our world.  He enables them to experience the world as God has created it to be for them.  And this same opportunity is available for you and for me every time we bring to God our petitions for personal need and our intercessions for those we love.

The Choice to be Very Good

Proper 5 / Year B

With the easing of Covid restrictions we are learning again what it is like to live in a world with options… plenty of options.  Will I eat out or stay in?  Go to the movies or read a book?  Take in a baseball game or go for a walk?  The truth is we had plenty of options during the height of the restrictions, but with so many things being taken off the table at times it felt as if we had no choices at all.

I grew up in a faith tradition that flirted with the doctrine of Predestination: the notion God foreordains those who will receive the saving work of Christ and those who will reject it.  Taken to its extreme, this teaching implies free choice is merely an illusion.  God’s plan, set in motion from the beginning of time, is unalterable.  How unalterable?  I had a college professor who told the story of the time he tripped and fell down a flight of stairs in his home.  Bruised and dazed, he collected himself, stood up, and said, “Well, I am glad that is behind me!”  

The Creation stories in Genesis hint at something different.  They suggest God has woven options into the very fabric of all that has been made; options which are open and free possibilities which actually alter the course of history on micro and macro levels.  Recall how God entrusts Adam with the task of naming each animal.  The choices are completely out of God’s control and entirely Adam’s to make.  By including the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the serpent as elements of creation, God opens the world to be a place where God’s will is honored or ignored or misunderstood.  The Genesis stories tell us we live in a world where we have choices and that our choices have consequences.  We have some ability (but not complete ability) to determine how we will impact the world for good or for ill. 

This past week I read a commentary on the creation story of Adam and Eve whose author encourages readers to step back from a strictly literal interpretation of the text in order to see something more sweeping at work.  So rather than focusing on the Tree as a tree, the apple as an apple, and the serpent as a snake, let’s consider the bigger picture being portrayed by this story.  The commenter suggests we see in it a metaphor for the pattern of every person’s life. 

We are born into a world marked hopefully by nurture, safety, and care.  Childhood, for the most part for most of us, is an Eden-like experience – innocent, carefree, and cared for.  It does not last.  Our experience of the world changes with the onset of puberty and adolescence.  We become self-aware, which often is associated with a sense of shame and hiddenness (as we see in this morning’s first reading).  We rebel (sometimes in relatively inconsequential ways, other times in significant ways).  We gain new knowledge about good and evil, which, while positive and necessary, has the effect of shattering the innocence of childhood.  Like the curses meted out by God in today’s reading, we come to know limitations, frustrations, and humiliations.  The world becomes a more demanding place and our place in it becomes uncertain.   In adulthood we accept our responsibilities and the embrace the consequences of our decisions and our actions.  We experience the world as a place of both opportunity and challenge.  We learn no one gets through life unscathed.  Still, most of us manage to find happiness and purpose and a measure of peace.  This is the path walked by Adam and Eve.  In general terms, it is the path each of us is walking on.

As with the doctrine of Predestination, most church teachings refer to this morning’s Old Testament reading as story of “the Fall” – how the first humans lived in paradise, but lost it all through the act of tasting the fruit of a single, forbidden tree.  “The Fall” implies we are living in a world where all God intended is crashed and gone.  Adam’s sin is our sin.  Adam’s curse is our curse.  Adam’s loss is our reality.  Deal with it… unless you have been preordained to accept Jesus’ saving death on your behalf. 

One of the things I love about the Anglican tradition is how it understands the meaning of these first chapters of the bible.  Yes, we say, the world is not as God dreams it would be.  But no, we are not so completely depraved as to not be able to respond to God’s will and to follow God’s way.  We have the possibility, the ability, and the opportunity to make choices for better or for worse, for right or for wrong, for faithfulness or for falling into something less.   

At the completion of every stage of creation God looks at what has been accomplished and calls it “good.”  And when God speaks of the newly created humans, God calls them “very good.”  While it says something significant about our elevated place in the created order, recognize being created as “very good” is no where near as demanding as being created to be “perfect.”  If God had created us “perfect” than even the smallest slip would destroy our identity (just as a lone walk changes in baseball a perfect game to a no-hitter).  The calling to be “very good” implies striving and intentionality, while making room for coming up short now and again.

Which brings us back to our world of options and the choices we make.  And it brings us to Jesus.  In today’s reading we find him making a choice to conceive in a new way the notion of “family.”  He expands it from the old standards of kindred and clan to include anyone who strives to do the will of God.  Notice he does not restrict it only to those who are perfect.  Jesus welcomes into deep relationship everyone who is oriented toward God’s dream for this world.

Jesus uses this vision to incorporate an incredibly diverse group of men and woman into his fellowship.  They have different backgrounds, come from different communities, hold to a variety of religious traditions, agree not on the politics of the day.  Jesus does not disown his biological family, just the opposite.  His brother James becomes the leader of the Church in Jerusalem after Jesus ascends to the Father and it is from here a missionary zeal emerges to invite every person in the known world into the Jesus movement.  Jesus makes the consequential choice to embrace every person, not on the basis of perfection, but rather on each person’s stated intent to do God’s will.  “Very good” is his standard, not gender, nationality, or race.  It is not your political affiliation which determines if you are Jesus’ brother or sister.  It certainly is not your socio-economic level.  It definitely does not matter if you are a Hokie or a Hoo.  And whatever your position on the doctrine of Predestination, ultimately what matters to Jesus is how you attempt to do God’s will, to live into your “very goodness.” 

“Very Goodness”, goodness gracious, this can be a challenge, can’t it.  Unlike Adam and Eve, who received the initial commandment – “Don’t eat of that fruit” – yet receive little guidance and only sketchy commentary from the serpent, we are blessed to possess the Scriptures: the stories of God’s interaction with God’s people, the insights of the Psalmists, the words of the prophets, Jesus’s own teachings and example, and the wisdom of the early Church.  And we are blessed with the gift of God’s Holy Spirit who abides deep within us and directs us when we are open to hearing this Voice. 

Today, tomorrow, and every day hereafter we have choices to make.  God’s Spirit in our lives does not mean we will be (or will have to be) perfect.  Our aim always is to be faithful.  “Very good” is our benchmark and, high as it is, with God’s help, it is attainable.