He Lifted Her Up

Mark 1:29-39 (NRSV)
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Her daughter was married to a man who would abandon his fishing nets – the only means of feeding the family – and follow this stranger to God-knows-where. Andrew and Simon had just undergone a major life change. They used to spend their days in solitude fishing for their livelihood and their family’s. They seemed so responsible. These days, though they still fed their family, they were gone a lot. These days you would find them in the middle of a crowd.

This man they joined up with almost immediately begins to make a stir. Everywhere they go people crowd around him. He’s pretty cool, that’s for sure, and he can heal people and exorcise demons with the best of them – but yet, somehow, he’s different from all the rest. He doesn’t use all the known cures, but does his own work. He walks into a room and people turn and stare. Hard to tell if it’s the way he carries himself – it sure isn’t how he dresses – he could use some help in that department. His kindness and gentleness of spirit belie an unbending strength. There’s a quiet certainty about him – assurance – as if this man really knows himself, knows his source. This one is different. The fact that her son-in-law is hooked up with such a crowd gatherer would have been enough to give anyone a fever. And there she lay.

She was in bed, they told him. Laid aside with a fever. He found her there. We don’t know anything more about what ailed her. We don’t need to. He went to her, took her hands, and lifted her up. The Greek verb Mark uses for lifted up is the same as the word the Gospel of John uses to describe what Jesus did when raising Lazarus who had been dead for three days and already buried. Jesus took her hands and lifted her up. She got up and began to serve them. Mark says the first thing she did upon her resurrection was minister to them.

We skip right over ideas of resurrection these days. Some of us who are scholars avoid the embarrassment of mystery by arguing over the differences between resurrection and resuscitation in the case of Lazarus. Jesus’ resurrection is the only one we’re comfortable talking about – if we’re going to be Christian it’s hard to avoid that one. We side-step the embarrassment of mystery in Jesus’ resurrection by arguing over whether it was a bodily resurrection or a spiritual one. And then we hope that no one will push us to talk about whether we will be resurrected one day, and hope to avoid the embarrassment of the mystery of whether it will be bodily or spiritual.

People living in the first century after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus weren’t so uncomfortable with the idea. Dead was dead, and alive again was alive again. And they saw it happen – these witnesses like Simon and Andrew, James and John. They looked into the eyes of Simon’s mother-in-law as she passed around the plate of cookies at the coffee fellowship at her house after synagogue. She got close enough for them to feel the warmth of her breath, an alive again body ministering to them. Yep, it was her. There was recognition.

This church is going through some change. This change is about as radical as dropping our nets to follow Jesus could possibly be. Travel back with me in time to think about some of our history. We spent a year or more catching God’s dream for us, and busied ourselves with the mission and ministry Christ wanted to continue through us. Our identity was clearly linked to outreach ministries. For a very long time we only had a central place to meet on Sunday mornings, and for a while we would come back to the school on Sunday evenings. For all those years, when we met to discuss the business of the church, or if we added Lenten studies, we met in our homes. Then in time, we prepared to build a structure to house our stuff and our ministries, a place of our own where we could worship. Then after two years of intense effort and much celebration, we moved into our new digs and began to settle in. We were tired – in bed with a fever. The cause of the fever: Fatigue, disappointment, excitement, fatigue, a need to rest after such intense effort, fatigue, waiting for an idea of what’s next. It was as if we experienced a year of post-partum depression following the delivery of our new address. A sabbatical summer of rest from all the pushing was good for us. And when we tried to get up out of our bed in the fall of 2008, our legs were pretty wobbly. We couldn’t get our bearings, and had to go back to bed, with a fever.

There’s a good chance when Jesus hears about it, he’ll come to us immediately. Reach out his hand to this church, too, and lift her up.

That night, after synagogue, after coffee fellowship, when the word had spread through Capernaum about this unusual rabbi, all the people crowded in the doorway to get to Jesus. Mark says the whole city came and huddled around the door like a bunch of crazed Cardinals fans looking for a ticket to scalp. It wasn’t the last time the crowds would find their way to him, longing for wholeness, looking for a cure. Did you ever put out finch seed, with not a finch in sight, and then watch them gather? How do they know? How do they tell one another? How does the word spread? Hungry souls seem to have a kind of telepathy, don’t they? I imagine a crowd – the whole city of Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa, Queen Creek, Apache Junction. I imagine those doors right there, open wide enough for people to get a glimpse of Jesus. Hungry souls finding their way to bread.

I don’t know what that image does to you, but it makes me want to drop to my knees in humility. It makes me want to pray hard enough to break a sweat that when people walk through those doors it is the Great Physician they will see.

No wonder he had to slip out in the early morning while it was still dark, for some healing time... some prayer. We like to think in Myers-Briggs terms about how we get renewed. Some of us recharge our batteries in a crowd, or at least in the company of friends, and others of us need alone time – absolutely must get away from people in order to think straight and renew our energies. All of us need alone time. Let me say that again. All of us can be distracted by sights and sounds around us, and in order to reconnect with our center (which is like a temple where God dwells), we have to be alone and undistracted. We need to pray.

The spiritual discipline of prayer was one Jesus practiced often. Mark shows us the result. The result of prayer for Jesus was clarity about his calling. Think of how distracted he could have become by all the need in Capernaum. Clearly he could have hung out a shingle and made a good living there caring for all the people who would come to him. He could have stayed close to home. But that was not his calling – and he knew that after spending some time in prayer. His calling was to preach the good news of God’s saving presence now here, among them, and to preach it in many places. This was what he came to do.

If we carry this allegory further and let it enlighten our listening for God’s call, what might we hear? It feels really good to be doing the things we are already doing as a church. We like our little community of faith. Liking the way we do faith development, we could expand on it, and add some new youth activities (like we are doing today with the announcement of our first movie night). If our ministries are good, we could simply do more of the same and we can assume it would all be good. But what if God is calling us to more, to something outside the box we have built?

As a congregation we may be in bed with a fever from all the recent changes, shifting from our beginning way of being -- but I feel a resurrection coming on. Post-resurrection, with new life, like Simon’s mother-in-law, the first thing we will think to do is minister again. Imagine the crowds at the door who really are waiting for someone to come along whose healing is different, who can command the demons of our time, hungry for the kind of bread Jesus is. To do this work, we need rest and renewal as much as Jesus did. Already he had done so much good, and surely there was more he could do. But his calling was wider than that – deeper, farther flung. He didn’t slip into doing less. He slipped into doing more. His calling was to move on to the neighboring towns, and there he did exactly what he had begun in Capernaum. He proclaimed the good news to another people. Article VI of Chalice’s Constitution says this: “As a Church formed from the mission-mindedness of Community Christian Church of Tempe, as soon and as frequently as practical, Chalice Christian Church shall give birth to missionaries to expand the Good News of Jesus Christ to people of another location where another Christian Church will be formed.”

There are three segments to this story from the first chapter of Mark: healing of Simon’s mother-in-law; people brought all the sick & possessed to him for healing; he got away for renewal, which readied him for work in the next town.

Come away with me for Lent. Let’s slip away in the quiet of the still-dark morning, and pray, there to be reminded of the work we came to do.

Amen.
Sermon at Chalice CC (DOC), February 8, 2009

Snark

I just heard a lively discussion on the Diane Rehm show on NPR. David Denby has published a book titled, "Snark: It's Mean, It's Personal, and It's Ruining our Conversation." While recognizing the virtues of satire and irony, among other forms of speech used as humor, he defines snarking (currently very popular) as insider language poking fun at "the other" that has particular meaning to the insiders, for the purpose of putting down. He gives value or credibility to some instances of snarking, if they represent specific positions.

I think he walks on thin ice, since the line between OK and Not-OK snarking is so thin. But his observation is very useful, and calls me to think honestly about how much my opinions on public issues, the news, politics are formed by this rather passive-aggressive, clever, entertaining style of not-saying.

What do you think? Is snark ruining our conversation? Are we losing our ability to use language effectively to say precisely what we mean?

Awkward Reminder

I just watched the National Prayer Breakfast at the National Cathedral in Washington. I was excited to hear what Sharon Watkins, the Disciples' General Minister and President would preach to the new administration. Sharon is a good preacher, and it is a point of great pride for some of us that Obama chose her to preach because he once witnessed her authentic conciliatory nature. I thought she would have something good to say about unity, coming together despite our differences.

I tuned in to MSNBC, where I usually get my news, to watch the broadcast. To my dismay Chris Matthews talked over the broadcast, talking about the impossibility of religious people practicing inclusiveness because all religions declare that they have the only way, and then launching into a discussion of the Senate hearing on the Secretary of Treasury, while the ticker-tape messages at the bottom of the screen screamed our financial woes. Then to top it all off, MSNBC panned away from the service BEFORE the sermon, forcing me to look elsewhere for a live telecast.

I found it on FOX news. I never get my news from FOX -- I prefer a different spin than I get there. But you see, FOX panders to the audience they expect, their loyal audience, a more conservative audience. Unfortunately the popular belief is that all people of Christian faith fall into that audience. That is not true. Nor is it true that there are no Christians who practice inclusivity.

MSNBC, you missed an important opportunity today.

Thank you, FOX, for televising the entire service without interruption or commentary. Where can I find someone in the news media who understands that there really are people of faith who are progressive in their theology and social views and still care deeply about the integrity of worship and aren't embarrassed at encountering sacred mystery? Why does the media still try to force us into one of two camps: the religious right or the secular? Why is the media so far behind? FOX, you need to work at catching up as well. Look to the left a little and see what you might discover.

Better yet, what if we lost the spin altogether? What if the media tried straight reporting -- factual, unbiased? Is that possible?

Summer's End

End of summer came and I returned from sabbatical. For a long time I haven't been able to bring myself to write here.

On August 25 my father died. He was ready. He lived well and fully and long - to 96. Our time together in the summer was rich, and such a gift. The sorrow of missing him is astonishing. Deep.

On some level I think we all knew it was coming, though he had rallied so many times, it was hard to know. In retrospect it seems that he was staying around to help all of us get ready, to finish things. And so we travelled the end of his life together.

I actually made four trips home to Missouri in the summer of 2008. Three of them were planned. I was home with my parents and my children - the extended family - for a month from mid-May to mid-June. Daddy was still showing energy and humor. He was walking without assistance to the mailbox every day. We had some great conversations, and recorded many of them.

When I returned in July he had declined considerably. He was using a walker on the rare occasions when he had the will to walk. His resilient spirit had lost its cheer. Watching and listening to my parents, I noted that the aggravation they each sometimes expressed was so integrated into their days that if either of them were gone, the other - the one left - would miss the nuisance terribly. I went to my room and wrote in my summer journal:

... leaves will fall at
summer's end
and sadness settle itself around you.
Days, growing shorter, will
seem longer.
Expected interruptions will not...
and life will take new shape
around the absence.