Father Abraham (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on February 25, 2017, Lent II)

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“I’m Not One of Them, and Nor Are You”

In today’s scripture, Abram gets a new name, Abraham, which means something like “Father of Many.”  Because that is God’s promise to him: “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations….I will make you exceedingly fruitful” (17:5-6). 

It’s hard for me to hear today’s scripture without hearing echoes of a song that I learned long ago, a song that I probably sang at every Vacation Bible School and church camp I’ve ever been to.  I’m sure you know it.  We sang it here at our last VBS: “Father Abraham.”  When I was younger and I sang that song, I didn’t give it much thought.  I just figured that Abraham was our father because he was really old.  I just figured that all of our family trees, if you traced them back far enough, would converge at father Abraham.  And isn’t that just what today’s scripture is saying?  That Abraham would indeed become the father of many different peoples, probably including you and me?

Well, according to Paul in one of our other lectionary texts today (Romans 4:13-25), God was not talking about literal fatherhood.  God did not mean that Abraham would go on to be the lineal father of the Americans and the Czechs and the Argentineans and the Congolese, and so on.  In other words, if we’re talking about the children of Abraham’s bloodline, I am not necessarily one of them, and nor are you. 

What, then, could God’s promise of fatherhood mean?  How could Paul call Abraham “the father of us all,” especially when much of Paul’s audience was non-Jewish?

Father of Faith

It’s simple, says Paul.  Abraham lived before the temple and its system of sacrifice.  Before the Hebrew people received God’s law.  So Abraham is not the father of a religion.  He’s not the father of a religious people.  He’s the father of something much more elemental than that.  He’s the father of a fundamental experience.  He’s the father of faith.

If you’ll remember, Abraham’s story begins with letting go.  He’s seventy-five.  Settled in a nice metropolis.  Gathered together with his father and his brothers and all his family.  When God calls to him out of the blue and says, “Leave behind your country and your culture and your kindred, and go where I show you.  And I will bless you, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (cf. 12:1-3).  Faith is what led Abraham to let go.  Faith is what made him leave his country behind.  His culture behind.  His kindred behind.  Faith is what led him into the wilderness, not knowing where he was going (cf. Heb 11:8). 

Abraham, according to Paul, is much more than the father of an ethnic group of people.  He is the father of anyone who has taken the leap of faith and let go of his or her life, trusting that the blessing of God lies outside the safe harbor of the heart, outside the four corners of the home.

Blessing: The Redemption of Creation

What Abraham does is pretty incredible.  Up until that point in history, humanity has done the opposite.  Rather than letting go, they have grasped and clawed for control.  Rather than living selflessly outside their hearts and homes, they have lived greedily from the center of their hearts.  The first humans grab the forbidden fruit in the hope that they will become as powerful as God.  Cain seizes his brother and kills him out of a jealous anger.  Things get worse and worse until all the earth is filled with this grasping and clawing, this violence.  Next comes the great flood, which we looked at last week, which is less a story of what God actually did and more a story about whom the ancient Israelites understand God to be—namely, a God beside rather than a God above, a God who hangs the bow in the sky (never really carried it in the first place) and comes down to enter into relationship with humanity.  But even with the promise of a caring and faithful God, humanity persists with its grasping and clawing.  Rather than filling the earth selflessly with life, they merge into the single, selfish heart of an empire—and empires always mean control and cruelty.[1]  How else could they accomplish their plan to build a tower as tall as the heavens, than through conscription?

What is God’s response to this history of grasping and clawing, this genealogy of violence, this fall of creation?  Blessing.

What a gentle response.  Openhanded.  Outward-facing.  It is the opposite of our grasping and clawing.

And when God responds to humanity with blessing, Abraham responds in turn. Trusting that blessing abounds outside the grasp of his heart, outside the reach of his home, Abraham lets go.  He leaves.  It’s no understatement to say that the redemption of creation begins with Abraham.

“I Am One of Them, and So Are You”

So is it any surprise when we hear Jesus say in today’s gospel scripture, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the good news, will save it” (Mark 8:35).  Is this not another way of saying what Abraham shows us? When we let go of our life, we enter into the blessing and redemption of the world.  But when we hold onto our own life—our country and culture and kindred—we lose it.  It’s like the child who holds onto the ball for himself, controllingly, protectively, unaware of the joy to be had in the game that could be played with others.  Holding onto our own lives closes us off to new life, to the redemption of all life.

I don’t know what holding onto your own life looks like for you.  For me, it’s sometimes as simple as reading and listening to voices that I already agree with, not risking real dialogue and change.  For many in our nation, I wonder if holding onto our own lives has not taken the shape of racism and sexism, and today especially nationalism and capitalism and gun enthusiasm—for how easily the flag and the dollar and the gun separate us from others. 

As Paul would later proclaim rather radically, being children of Abraham and followers of Christ means that we have let go of these things, that we are ultimately not defined by country or culture or kindred.  “There is no longer Jew or Greek…slave or free…male [or] female” (Gal 3:28-29). 

All of this leads me to wonder if, for God, Abraham was meant to be not simply the proud father of one huge family, but rather the father of a new humanity, a humanity no longer defined completely by country, culture, and kindred; a humanity that does not grasp after control; a humanity that is redeemed from its past violence.  We see this new humanity most clearly, of course, in Jesus.  Jesus was ultimately a child of Abraham not because he was Jewish but because he was faithful.  Jesus faithfully let go of everything and confirmed what began with Abraham: the blessing and redemption of the world.

“Father Abraham had many children.  And many children had Father Abraham.  And I am one of them, and so you are.”  So let’s let go of the life that has defined us in the past, and follow Christ, who leads us outside our heart and our home and into the blessing and redemption of all the world.

Prayer

Christ of the cross,

Even more than Father Abraham,

You let go of your life—

Country, culture, and kindred.

Not just on the cross,

But when you befriended

Tax collectors and women

And lepers and Roman soldiers.

Fill us with your faith

And your letting go,

That we might enter into

The blessing and redemption of all creation.  Amen.

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[1] The language of “brick” and “mortar” in Gen 11:1-9 appears next in the Bible in the story of the Hebrews’ conscripted labor in Egypt.

Hanging Up the Bow, Slipping on Some Sandals (Genesis 9:8-17)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on February 18, 2017, Lent I)

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Cranky Old Enlil

Enlil just wanted some sleep.  It seemed every time he lay his head down to rest, there was some new commotion.  This time it was the humans.  The other gods had convinced him that the humans were a good idea.  They would do all the work, so that the gods could enjoy their leisure.  At the time, that had made sense enough to Enlil.  So he had said, “Sure, let’s make some humans, and let them work the fields.”

At first the idea worked a treat.  Enlil grabbed a few good winks of sleep—around 1200 years.  But then the racket started.  The humans had multiplied exponentially, and now they were making all sorts of noise.

Rousing from his fitful slumber with a grumble, cranky old Enlil regretted that he had every agreed to the idea of the humans.  Something had to be done.  His sleep was at stake.  So he devised a plan.  He would flood the world.  That should do the trick.

And it did.  Except for one human who had caught wind of the news and built a boat.

A New Take on Old History

Such is the tale of the great flood according to ancient Babylonian tradition.  The oldest tablet of this story dates back to around one thousand years before the composition of the Hebrew Bible.  (If you’ve heard of Hammurabi, the Babylonian king famous for developing an organized code of law—this ancient tablet comes from around the time of his grandson Ammi-Saduqa.)  And this flood story is not alone.  There survive from other ancient Near Eastern cultures similar tales a great flood.

So the story that we have in the Bible is not new.  It is, rather, old history.  But it is a new take on old history.  It’s almost as if the writer of Genesis took what was common knowledge and then critiqued it, tweaked it, refitted it with a different understanding of God

Because in the biblical flood story, God looks very different.  Whereas crotchety old Enlil acts for selfish motives—for a few more winks of sleep!—God acts with the intention of helping the earth, rinsing it of the violence with which it has become filled (cf. 6:11-13).  Whereas cranky old Enlil floods the world out of anger, God floods the world out of grief.  Earlier in Genesis, the narrator explains, “The Lord was sorry that [the Lord] had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved [God] to [God’s] heart” (6:6).

And then in today’s conclusion to the story, God appears to grieve the great destruction that God has wrought.  Why else would God promise not to repeat the deed?  The flood hasn’t wiped out wickedness (cf. 8:21).  Humanity hasn’t changed.  But God has.  “Never again,” God says, apparently in grief.  Three times God says it: “Never again.”

Mechanics versus Meaning

This grief—this change of heart—this may satisfy some of us.  But perhaps there are others among us who still feel wary about this God.  A change of heart may all be well and good, but the fact remains that this God committed genocide—nearly geocide.  Is that the kind of God to whom we want to entrust our lives?  The flood is a troubling story, much more troubling than we make it out to be, when we tell it as a children’s story and show pictures of an ark and a rainbow and all the happy animals.  We don’t include pictures of all the bodies that must have been floating in the water, or washed up on the newly dried land.

But maybe reading this story as a historically factual portrayal of God misses the point.  Genesis alone is filled with historical contradictions.  Did God create humanity before plants, or plants before humanity?  Depends on whether you’re reading Genesis 1 or Genesis 2.  Did the flood last 40 days or 150 days?  Depends which verse you’re reading in the flood story.

Genesis, it seems to me, cares much less for the mechanics of what actually happened and much more about the meaning behind what happened.  I would say this true of the whole Bible.  Which is why for me, reading the Bible isn’t about determining the precise events of history.  It’s about listening for the heartbeat of God.  It’s about holding our interpretive stethoscopes up to the text and determining how another person or another people encountered the living God.

From a God Above to a God Beside

In the case of today’s scripture, I wonder if the ancient Israelites weren’t trying to make sense of what was common knowledge in their day—namely, that a great flood had come from heaven above.  The interesting part of the story, then, isn’t that there was a flood.  Everyone already knew that.  The interesting part of the story is the way that their understanding about God changes. 

In today’s scripture, as God repeats, “Never again, never again,” God also gives a sign of God’s promise: a bow.  This is the same word used for the weaponry of a bow and arrow.  Simply put, this God is hanging up God’s bow.  Never again will this God resort to violence against all the earth.  Instead this God decides to enter into covenant, into relationship, with humanity and all of creation.

So maybe the real drama of the flood story is not what historically happened, but rather how the character of God undergoes a profound transformation in ancient Israelite consciousness: from a warrior God to a relationship God, from a God who grumbles about sleep to a God who grieves about life, from a distant and detached God to a caring and faithful God, from God above to God beside, from a God of fear to a God of love.

Good News for the Wilderness

In my mind, this is especially good news as we enter the season of Lent, a season of wilderness, when we honestly face up to our lack of control and our losses.  Perhaps in such a season, our first desire is for a God who is in full control, a sky god riding on the clouds with his bow and arrow, imposing order from above through fear and power.  But the ancient flood tales remind us the full implications of such a god.  Genocide.  Nearly geocide.  What comfort is that to us who walk in the wilderness?

The good news of today’s scripture is what ancient Israel discovered long ago: that God does not carry the bow, but rather hangs it in the sky.  That God does do not declare war on the world but rather enters into relationship with it.  While the rest of the world imagined a God above who ruled with fear, Israel encountered a different God, a God beside them whose rule was love.

That is the good news that we see most clearly in Jesus. It is the good news that we do not walk alone in the wilderness.  In fact, that’s precisely where we see Jesus today in our Gospel scripture.

What Gets Us Through the Wilderness,

What Makes Us Who We Are

If you weren’t here this last Wednesday, you might be noticing for the first time that the paraments are missing in our sanctuary.  There is very little color.  This is a symbolic absence.  The emptiness of our sanctuary mirrors the emptiness of the wilderness.

But the table is still here.  As the sky reminds us that God has hung up the bow (was never really carrying the bow in the first place), the table reminds us that God has gone a step further: in Christ, God slips on some sandals and walks beside us in the wilderness. We know that God loves us not only because of the bow God hangs in the sky but also because of the steps God takes by our side…in the person of Jesus, who joins us in the wilderness, shares our sorrows and our joys, and shows us the way by the simplest actions, like breaking bread and giving thanks and forgiving others and washing each other’s feet.

And if the story of Jesus is any indication, the wilderness is in fact a place of great transformation, a place where through our lack and our loss we discover who we really are and who God really is.  In the wilderness, Jesus rejected dominion over the world and displays of supernatural ability: he rejected fantasies of power and prestige.  I think he was relying instead on the words that he heard just before he entered the wilderness, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”  Love was what sustained him in the wilderness and defined who he was to become.

May it be so for us this Lenten season, as Christ walks with us in the wilderness. 

Prayer

Creator God,

Who does not grumble

But grieves;

Whose way is not control

But covenant and companionship;

May the bow above us

And the table before us

Be our sustenance in the wilderness;

May your love define

Who we are becoming.

In Christ our companion.  Amen.

Reattachment: Letting Go and Loving Anew (Matthew 6:19-21)

(Meditation for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on February 14, 2017, Ash Wednesday)

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All Will Be Lost

Life is full of loss.  For every gift that we receive, we will some day be bereaved.  Whether by time or by change: by the slow decay of moth and rust or by swift and sudden theft.  Family, friends, homes, jobs, possessions, whatever we count as ours—all will be lost.

At around the age of twenty-one, Saint Augustine lost one of his closest friends.  For a time, he was inconsolable.  Eventually, the company of other friends helped to repair his soul.  But according to him, this consolation “was all one huge fable, one long lie.”[1]  “The place of one great grief,” he writes, “was slowly taken…by the seeds from which new griefs should spring.”[2]  In other words, he had not defeated grief but only deferred it; not mended it but in fact multiplied it.  For he had exchanged one friend for many.  And one day he would lose these friends too and would endure much more grief anew.

Letting Go

The tragedy, according to Augustine, is that he was looking for life in the wrong place—“where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.”  Writing to his past self, he cries out, “[Do] not cleave too close in love to [other people and things].   For they go their way and are no more.”[3]

In one sense, Augustine was telling himself to “let go” of that to which he grown so attached.  That is part of what Lent is about.  Letting go.  It makes sense.  If attachments are what bring us suffering and grief, then letting go is the solution.

But by itself, that’s a sad solution.  It’s like giving up.  It’s like saying, because love might bring heartbreak, I won’t love anymore.

Loving Anew

This is not what Augustine was saying, and it’s not quite what Lent is about either.  Letting go is only half the story.  Augustine urges his past self earnestly, “The good that you love is from [God].”[4]  “If [other people and things] please you, then love them in God because they are [changeable] in themselves but in [God] firmly established.”[5]

In other words, Lent is not about non-attachment, but about re-attachment.  We let go of things, so that we might hold them more lovingly, more truly.  Not as they are by themselves, but as they are in God.[6]  We learn to love our family and friends and all the good gifts of life not as momentary pleasures but as holy echoes and reflections and revelations of God.  They become handles by which we hold on to God, and when they leave, we find that we are not clinging onto thin air but onto God.  They become the most graceful steps in a slow dance that brings us closer and closer to our Beloved—God, the Giver, the One whose love nothing can separate.

Lent is about letting go, yes—but it is also about falling in love. “Blessed,” Augustine writes, “is the person who loves Thee, O God, and [their friends] in Thee, and [their enemies] for Thee.  For [this person] alone loses no one that is dear…if all are dear in God, who is never lost.”

A Symbolic Lenten Loss

You may have noticed that we have lost the paraments in our sanctuary.  It is a symbolic Lenten loss.  A reminder that the beautiful things of this world eventually decay by moth and rust or disappear as though by theft, but also a reminder that the heaven we treasure here on earth is never gone.  What we love most deeply in a gift is God: the goodness that shines in a gift is God.  So no gift loved in God is ever truly lost, for the God from whom it came and in whom it had life and whom we treasured is always alive. 

Prayer

O Great Giver,

Whose gifts

We love dearly:

Family and friends,

Gardens and tables,

Bread and wine—

Loosen our grip

On the outside of these gifts,

That we may love

The You deep within.

In the name of our Treasure, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

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[1] Augustine, Confessions (trans. F. J. Sheed; rev. ed.; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), 57.

[2] Augustine, Confessions, 57.

[3] Augustine, Confessions, 58.

[4] Augustine, Confessions, 60.

[5] Augustine, Confessions, 60.

[6] Storing up treasures in heaven is another way of talking about treasuring the heaven that is here on the earth, loving the Giver whom we discover in the passing gifts.

Mountaintop Moments (Mark 9:2-9)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on February 11, 2017, Transfiguration Sunday)

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Speaking from Experience

My housemate Nick had never been there, but he had heard wonderful things from his friends.  How the salad bar had more than just salad, but cheeses and meats and vegetables with names he did not even recognize.  How the waiters passed by your table ever few minutes, happy to grab you whatever you wished.  How the cooks prepared food behind a glass wall, so that you could watch the drama of cooking unfold before your eyes.

For months, Nick talked about this restaurant.  He speculated about what he would enjoy the most.  He theorized which dish was the best.  Until one day, it wasn’t enough just to imagine and salivate.  On that day, he messaged me and several of his friends and said, “I’ve heard about it.  We’ve talked about it.  Let’s do it.”

And so we did it.  We saved up for months and then went there for lunch.  And it was everything Nick had dreamed and more. 

In the days that followed, Nick kept talking about the restaurant.  But his talk was different now. He no longer spoke in hypotheticals.  Now he spoke from experience.  He was reliving the experience, remembering how each dish made him feel.  How each dish had touched his culinary soul.

The Difference Between Salivating and Savoring

Sometimes I wonder if religion is not a little bit like my housemate Nick and this restaurant.  What I mean is this: Nick talked and talked for months about food he had never eaten.  He speculated about recipes and cooking methods and dishes.  He recited the descriptions that he had read and heard from other people who had been to the restaurant.  But he had never been there himself.  He was talking about something that he had not experienced.

Religious folks know their scripture.  They’ve read and heard all about God.  They go to their holy places and speculate about how God moves in the world and why.  Their souls salivate with these thoughts and discussions.

But there is a world of difference between salivating over dishes and savoring them.  Between talking about food and eating it.  Between thinking about something and experiencing it.

Trivializing Our Experiences

I wonder how Peter, James, and John felt the day after their experience on the mountaintop with Jesus.  Did they think it was all “just a dream”?  That the dazzling whiteness was just a bright glare from the sun, that Elijah and Moses were just figments of their imagination, that the voice from the cloud was just their ears hearing what they wanted to hear? 

I don’t know how they felt, but I know how I would feel, how many of us might feel if we had had such an experience.  Our modern world has developed a special register for talking about mystical or otherworldly experiences like Peter, James, and John’s on the mountaintop.  Whenever we have a moment that does not fit into the normal frame of experience, we trivialize it with words like “just” and “only.”  Oh, it was just a feeling.  It was only my imagination.  It was nothing. 

I suppose we could ask these questions of Peter, James, and John’s experience.  Was it just a dream?  Only their imagination?  But I suspect that would be missing the point. 

When our friends have a dream, do we ask them: did that really happen?  No—we ask them, What do you think it means?  Because deep down we have a suspicion that there is more to the world than meets the eye.  It’s almost like the visible and material surface of our world is a curtain.  If we could peel back the curtain and see behind it, we would see the meaning of things: great goodness and beauty and truth.  That’s the way Paul talks about it in our other lectionary scripture today, where he says that the good news is “veiled” or “covered” (2 Cor 4:3).   

So whether Jesus’ clothes actually began to glow, or whether Elijah and Moses took bodily form right beside Jesus or not, may be beside the point.  Maybe the point is what these things meant.  For instance, that the man wearing a dusty robe whom they had been following was not simply a man wearing a dusty robe, but in fact the light of the world.

Mystical Moments as Experiences of Faith

Recently I have been enjoying the writing of a German liberation theologian named Dorothee Soelle.  Dorothee suggests that we have all had experiences of faith, whether we acknowledge them or not.  She ponders the possibility that as children, when we lived with a more open and trusting disposition, we all had mystical moments—moments where we experienced a deep sense of connection with the world, an unspeakable sense that all was well and all would be well. 

If you’re rolling your eyes at this idea—and trust me, in the right cynical moment, my eyes are rolling with yours—Dorothee would say that you’ve proved her point.  We trivialize these childhood experiences with words like “just” or “only,” as though they are merely flights of fancy amid the cold, gritty reality of our world.  But what if—she asks—what if these moments are in fact hints of a deeper reality?  What if they are glimpses of what’s behind the curtain of the world?

I won’t pretend to have had a full-blown mystical experience.  I doubt many of us have.  But I am intrigued with what Dorothee suggests.  Because I do remember moments from my childhood of heightened connection and wholeness.  Moments like when I lay in bed and imagined all the stars above me, and I felt lost among them, just a speck in the universe, but somehow that made me feel good and safe.  Or like when I played soccer and lost myself in the game, no longer a player but part of the flow, no longer concerned with winning or losing but enjoying the touch of the ball on my foot and the calls of my teammates and the unselfconscious joy of freedom.  Or like when I gathered with my family around a table, where we would hold hands and pray and eat and laugh, and I felt home in a way much deeper than we use that word for the buildings that we inhabit or the towns where we grow up.

Maybe these are mountaintop moments?  The skeptic in me asks, “Well what do these moments have to do with Jesus?”  At first glance, they seem to have very little to do with Jesus.  But when I think about it, each of these moments is made up of a loss of self or ego and an intense feeling of sharing and self-giving.  And are not these the very things that Jesus proclaimed as foundations of the kingdom of God?  Losing oneself and living for others?

What about you?  Have you ever had a spiritual experience like this, a mystical moment on the mountaintop?  The way several of my friends who are parents talk, I have to think that parenting can from time to time peel back the curtain of the world to reveal the light of Christ, a light burning with sharing and self-giving.  Perhaps any heartfelt relationship invites us into these mystical experiences, if we are willing to accept the invitation.

Treasuring Our Faith Experience

There is a world of difference between salivating over dishes and savoring them.  Between talking about food and eating it.  Between speculating about something and experiencing it.  A church that only talks about what it has never experienced—what’s the point of a church like that? 

The tragedy of our present world, is that it tends to trivialize any experience that is not grounded in the rational and material world.  It tends to trivialize dreams and visions, experiences built on feeling or intuition, the sorts of experiences that give substance to our faith and around which the church gathers.  “Oh that?  That was ‘just’ a dream.  It was ‘only’ a feeling.”

But our scripture today—where Peter, James, and John see bright lights and ancient figures and hear a disembodied voice—our scripture today pushes back on this trivializing mindset.  Our scripture today asks: What if these sorts of experiences are actually the feast that our faith is all about?  What if these are mountaintop moments, firsthand encounters with the light of Christ, a light that wants to shine, to be made visible, to be shared?  What if instead of trivializing these moments, we treasured them?  Took them with us as a light into the world?  Shared them with others, and cherished them in times of darkness and difficulty?

When Peter, James, and John left the mountaintop, they entered into their own Lenten season and followed Jesus on the way of the cross.  A way that was dark and difficult at times.  And Jesus would start talking about some scary stuff: about a cross, about making yourself last, a servant to others, giving your life for others.  And Peter, James, and John did not get it.  They could not understand.[1]  But still they followed Jesus.  Why?  I think it had to do with the memory of that mountaintop.  Their faith was not an abstract thought.  Their faith had to do with an incredible experience that had imprinted itself on their hearts.

That man in the dusty robe whom they were following?  He was not just a man in a dusty robe.  He was the light of the world.  And he would be with them every step of the way.  May it be so for us.

Prayer

Shining Christ,

We catch glimpses

Of your light

Here and there,

But so often

We trivialize these moments;

Remind us

And inspire us

By these experiences

On which our faith feasts;

So that we might trust

In what we cannot see

In the dark and difficult days

Of our lives.  Amen.

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[1] Cf. Mk 8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:33-45.

What Did Jesus Heal? (Mark 1:29-39)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on February 4, 2017, Epiphany V)

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Teaching and Healing

“And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons” (1:39).  Teaching and healing.[1]  If you take everything that Jesus did in the gospels and reduced it all to its common denominators, these two things are what you would end up with.  This was Jesus’ ministry.  Teaching and healing.

Last week, we went with Jesus to the synagogue in Capernaum, where Mark says—twice—that Jesus shocked his audience with his teaching.  What did he teach?  The strange thing is, Mark doesn’t say.  What Mark does say, is that a troubled man interrupts Jesus in his teaching.  And instead of ignoring him or waiting for him to be removed, Jesus stops and speaks to the troubled man.  Jesus cares for the troubled man and will not rest until he does.

The best answer that I can muster to the question, “What did Jesus teach?” is love.  In our world, a teacher’s authority means great knowledge and a bold voice.  A teacher’s authority commands respect and silence.  Disruptions are not tolerated.  In the kingdom of God, however, a teacher’s authority means something very different.  It means love.  Rather than look upon the troubled man with impatience or annoyance, Jesus looks upon him with compassion.  He cares for him and speaks to his troubles.

The Word “Cure”

So we know a little bit about how Jesus teaches.  But how about the second piece to his ministry?  What did Jesus heal?

This week, we follow Jesus from the synagogue where he has been teaching to the house of his disciples Simon (who is also known as “Peter”) and Andrew.  I imagine that they go there to eat, much in the same way that folks traditionally have enjoyed a Sunday lunch or dinner after going to church.  But when they arrive, Jesus hears about Simon’s mother-in-law, who lies restricted to the bed with a fever.

We all know what’s coming next.  Jesus will “cure” her, right?  That’s the word we commonly find in our translations for how Jesus responds to the sick.  For instance, later in this passage, when a whole crowd of sick people gathers at the door of Simon’s house, Jesus “cures” them.

I don’t know about you, but for me, the word “cure” suggests that the body has a problem to which there is a sure solution.  I think of “cure” in the same way I think of a mechanical problem with my car.  When my car doesn’t work, I take it to the mechanic.  He finds the faulty part, and he fixes it.  And my car is “cured.”

For me, the word “cure” turns bodies into machines.  It turns care into control.  When I think of Jesus “curing” people, I think of a man with magical powers, instantaneously fixing the faulty parts of body-machines.

Jesus’ “Therapy”

But the word “cure” in the Greek is therapeuo, from which we get the word therapy.  As our word therapy suggests, therapeuo has to do with care and presence and practice.  It has to do with something much bigger than an isolated moment of magic.

When Jesus comes to Simon’s mother-in-law, Mark does not use the word therapeuo.  Instead he shows us what therapeuo looks like.

“He came,” Mark says, “and took her by the hand and lifted her up.”  Which is to say, Jesus touches her in her sickness.  Elsewhere it is said that Jesus bore our diseases as his own.[2]  I wonder if that is the first step to his “therapy.”  He shares our sickness, so that he may then lead us—lift us—to new life. 

When Mark describes Jesus’ “therapy” for Simon’s mother-in-law, he talks about more than an isolated fix to her body.  He describes the result.  “Then the fever left her,” Mark says, “and she began to serve them” (1:31).  Sickness had limited Simon’s mother-in-law.  It was not simply that her body-machine had been malfunctioning.  It was, rather, that the condition of her body had limited her from living.  She had been shut away from the world, confined to a bed.  She had been kept away from her calling.  But when Jesus shatters her isolation, touches her sickness, and enacts his therapy, he pulls her from confinement into community.  He pulls her from incapacity to calling. 

After Jesus has lifted her up, I imagine her suddenly coming into her own.  I imagine her entering into her element as a hostess, bustling about with preparations for the evening dinner.  In other words, Jesus does not merely fix her faulty body-machine.  In his therapy, he does so much more.  He restores her to life.  He restores her with a sense of call that moves her.  He restores her to the community that makes her who she is.

A Modern Day Story of Healing, Or “Therapy”

It’s hard to talk about faith and healing, though, when we all know people who never received a full fix for their diseases, despite plenty of prayer. 

What does this mean?  That God chooses to cure some people and not others?  That there are reasons beyond our comprehension for care shown to one person but not another?

I would imagine that we all have different answers to these questions.  And that’s fine.  Our faith is not uniform.

But our faith is united.  We all trust in a God of healing, in one way or another.

Let me share one story from our church that gives me hope in a God of healing, a Christ of divine therapy.

If you were here at all in the last couple years, you know Tom and Candice.  It’s hard not to know them, as sociable as Tom is.  Because of diabetes complications, Tom has been on dialysis for the last couple years.  He and Candice had been exploring the possibility of a kidney transplant, but right now that looks unlikely.

I won’t sugarcoat it.  Life has been rough for Tom and Candice.  It would be a lot easier if Tom did not have to deal with dialysis on a daily basis.

But if you were to ask Tom about all of this, he probably wouldn’t let you dwell on the difficulties.  As he’s said to me on more than one occasion, “I don’t want anyone’s pity.”  Instead, Tom will talk about what he’s learned through his experience and his desire to help others navigate the uncertainties and confusions of diabetes and dialysis.  In other words, Tom—and Candice too—feel a call on their lives, a call to share their experience and to give others hope.  And it goes without saying that Tom and Candice maintain a strong sense of community.  Their friendships fill them with life.

Life Is More Than Biological

I continue to pray for Tom’s health.  I honestly don’t know about cures—why they show up for some people and not for others.  What I do know, is that God is our healer.  Like Jesus who came to Simon’s mother-in-law, touched her, and lifted her from confinement to community and from incapacity to calling, so I believe that Christ journeys alongside Tom and Candice, lifting them too into a life-giving calling and vibrant community.  I believe in the healing of Tom.

Our faith tells us that life is more than biological.  Life is more than merely a mechanical tick-tock.  Jesus came not so that we might have the mechanics of a beating heart, but so that our lives might be abundant with meaning—with a sense of calling and communion.

What did Jesus heal?  He healed more than the faulty parts of our body-machines.  That would be a feat far too small for the love of God.  Jesus healed lives.  He wrought wholeness in the shape of calling and community.

Following Jesus:

Bringing Love and Life

It’s all beginning to click for me.  Jesus came teaching and healing, Mark says.  What did he teach?  Love.  What did he heal?  Lives. 

And all of this, Mark says, is part of the message that Jesus proclaims: “The kingdom of God has come near” (1:15).  What is the kingdom of God?   The kingdom of God turns on love and life.  To ask if something is the part of the kingdom, is perhaps as simple as asking, “Does it bring love to the world?  Does it bring life to others?  And not just the mechanical tick-tock kind of life, but a life full of meaning—a life filled with calling and community?”

“Follow me,” is the daunting invitation that Jesus gives us.  Follow Jesus?  How?  We can’t preach like he did.  We can’t heal like he did.

Or is that just the voice of doubt?  Because we can love like he did.  And we can share life with the sick, walking with them as they rediscover their calling and their community.  We can preach the most beautiful sermons wordlessly by loving others, and we can make miraculous healings with the simplest gestures of touch and words of hope.  We can, we can.

“Follow me,” he says.  We can.

Prayer

Caring Christ,

Whose touch

Restores us

To abundant life:

To a calling that moves us

And a community that makes us more.

Empower us to follow you,

Preaching love with our deeds

And bringing life with our presence. 

Amen.

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[1] Cf. Matthew’s summary of Jesus’ ministry in Matt 4:23.

[2] Matthew 8:17.