Hope and Trust

What do you hear in today’s Scripture readings? Do any of today’s readings speak to your own experience? Perhaps you empathize with David’s grief over the death of his beloved friend Jonathan, even as you might wonder how David can also grieve the death of his old enemy Saul. Perhaps you too have known the depths of sorrow – over the death of a loved one, over the deaths of nine innocent people sharing study of the Bible or of innocent tourists on a beach, over the betrayal of someone close to you, over the loss of a job, over continued war and poverty. Perhaps you too cry out with the psalmist, “Out of the depths have a I called to you, O Lord; Lord hear my voice!” Perhaps, like Paul, you have begged others to respond to a need or cause about which you feel passionate. Or perhaps, like the people in today’s Gospel stories, you have begged for healing, either for another person, or for yourself. Perhaps you’ve been in all these places, and you know, from your own deep experience, how Scripture continues to speak to our condition, continues to offer us words of hope and lead us to a deeper trust in God’s saving power.

Our reading from 2 Samuel, catches up with David after he has defeated the Philistines. Despite the fact that the way is now open for David to become king over Israel, and despite his bitter conflict with Saul, David pours out his grief over both Saul’s and Jonathan’s death. More important perhaps for us, the account of David’s grief allows us to see David expressing deep emotion. No “stiff upper lip” or “men don’t cry” here. Perhaps we might, like David, understand our emotions as gifts from God. Perhaps we might even trust that God’s shares our emotions and seeks to console and comfort us in our grief.

Certainly, the psalmist trusts that God shares our griefs and sorrows. The psalmist also reminds us that, eager as we are for God’s comfort, we must wait patiently. And we must never let go of our hope that, in God’s good time, God will restore all things.

St. Paul also counsels the Corinthian Christians to wait patiently – and to also act in faith. As he wrote to the Christians in Corinth, the faithful in Jerusalem were suffering from famine. Now Paul was certain that Jesus would quickly return, probably within Paul’s own lifetime. Yet Paul does not hesitate to look after the living. He does not say, “Ignore the poor, and hungry, because all of us will soon be taken up.” Instead, he asks for help from those he himself had brought to faith in Christ. He knows that life is a gift of God, that it is good, and that the bodies of children and adults must be fed. He knows what matters – and he trusts that the Corinthians will respond to his request – because he compares everything to God’s great gift: “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

Our reading from the Gospel according to Mark offers another of Mark’s gospel “sandwiches:” one story nested within another, each speaking to us in different ways. Here, we catch up with Jesus, just as he has arrived from the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Despite Jesus’ best efforts, his fame as a miraculous healer has spread. As the crowds of the hopeful – and the curious – press in on him, a wealthy and important man, a leader in the synagogue, falls on his knees in front of Jesus, and begs Jesus to save his daughter. Jesus attends to the father in need and turns to accompany him.

Just then, the bleeding woman, outcast from all polite society because of her illness, approaches Jesus. She is convinced that she will be healed by just touching Jesus’ outer garment, and that, because of the crowds, no one will notice her. But Jesus notices her, or rather notices that something has happened. Perhaps the energy of the woman’s immense faith was more powerful than all the shoving and pushing of the crowd. Perhaps that energy was enough to call forth God’s healing power.

As we follow Jairus home, we hear that by the time he and Jesus finally arrive, the child has already been declared dead, and the professional mourners have begun to gather. Why is Jairus still bringing Jesus into the house? What can the rabbi do now? Even so, Jesus turns to the sad father and says the words that we all need to hear over and over again, “Do not fear. Only believe.” As Jairus leads Jesus into the child’s room, Jesus shocks him by saying, “The child is not dead but sleeping.” And then another miracle of healing occurs. Perhaps hinting at the end of Mark’s story, Jesus gently says, “Young woman, get up.” The onlookers collectively let out their breaths, and life returns.

Two instances of healing, for two different kinds of people, that came about in two different ways. In the frame story, Jesus offered healing to the daughter of a wealthy, powerful family. In the nested story, an outcast woman, a woman shunned because of her illness, claimed Jesus’ healing power for herself. What is more important, the healing of Jairus’s daughter was a public event: the crowds knew where he was going, and Jairus himself witnessed it. By contrast, the healing of the bleeding woman was a private event. Even Jesus wasn’t sure what had happened, until the woman, trembling and afraid, fell down before him and told him everything.

Does any of this resonate with our own experience? One thing these stories should tell us is that God offers healing to everyone. You do not need to be rich and powerful, you do not need to have a Cadillac health insurance plan, to claim God’s healing power. Indeed, as Mark and Luke suggest over and over, God has a preference for the poor, the outcast, and the marginalized, and God will attend to their needs, just as God attends to our needs.

Moreover, perhaps we too have experienced healing – or offered it – in these two different ways. An aside here: We hear the gospel stories of miraculous healings so that we can learn something about what God is like, not so that we can think that Jesus came to be a 24/7 medical savior. It is not impossible, though it is extremely rare, for miraculous healings, to actually occur. And if they do not, it is never because our faith was insufficient.

However, we all do experience open, public healing: through our medical facilities, through support groups, and even through our ministries as a church. What’s even more important, we can experience – and offer – healing more indirectly and privately, in the “random acts of kindness” through which God operates in the world. Such healing can happen anywhere. A twelve-step meeting was just ending when a young woman suddenly blurted out her name, shouted that she was an alcoholic, and rushed out of the room. An older woman followed her and saw her sitting in a dark corner weeping uncontrollably. The older woman came over to the younger woman and embraced her. She said gently, “My dear, just let us love you until you can come to love yourself.”

We may not even be aware when such healing occurs. Theologians who have studied the science of cosmology speak of “quantum entanglement,” the idea that ultimately all life, indeed all creation, has a common origin in God, and that we are all ultimately connected. Or perhaps you’ve heard of the “butterfly effect.” This is a term used in chaos theory to describe how small changes to a seemingly unrelated thing or condition can affect large, complex systems. The term comes from the suggestion that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in South America could affect the weather in Texas, meaning that the tiniest influence on one part of a system can have a huge effect on another part. If you think about it, perhaps this is the way prayer works. Our lives are connected. Like Jesus, we may receive healing from someone or some circumstance unknown to us, or we may be the agent of healing for someone, simply by virtue of how we live out our lives. Needless to say, as followers of the one who offered himself in love to all comers, we are called to be grateful to God for any healing in our lives that does occur, and we are called to treat lovingly all who approach us for help and healing.

My brothers and sisters, here is the good news. Much of our lives are out of our control. But as followers of Jesus we believe that we are connected to God and to one another, and that God will respond to our needs, directly or indirectly, in God’s good time. We may not be able to predict when or how God will act, but we can continue to live out our lives with hope and trust in God’s deep care.

The Mission Field Starts Here

“The mission field starts here.” This is the sign that greets parishioners of a church I recently read about, as they go out of their sanctuary or parish hall into the parking lot. The mission field starts here, right on the other side of our doors. Of course, our churches have a long history of overseas evangelism. The Episcopal Church was especially active in the American west, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These days young people often go on “mission trips,” short-term forays to remote places in Appalachia, Haiti, Honduras, and elsewhere. And you have heard me preach more than once about our need to care for our sisters and brothers in other countries, to find that one square inch where we can make a difference in their lives. I still believe in that square inch, and Jack and I are still trying to make a difference in the lives of children in a square inch of Haiti. But what of the world on our doorstep? What of the people who share this neighborhood with us? How do we care for them?

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear Jesus’ answer to that question. You remember that Luke’s overarching goal in this section of the gospel narrative – and really in the whole gospel – is to teach people what it means to be disciples of Jesus. In this poignant story we have a powerful lesson in discipleship.

Jesus has gone abroad with his friends. They are on a “mission trip.” They have gone into the territory “opposite Galilee,” i.e., the territory on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, which, of course, is not a sea, but a big lake. However, this word “opposite” is not just a geographical allusion. Luke is reminding his hearers that Jesus has ventured into gentile territory. Jesus is daring to minister to those who are culturally and religious “opposite” to him. Jesus is risking ritual defilement to preach the good news to those whom observant Jews regard as unclean and off-limits. Worse yet, as soon as he sets foot on shore, Jesus is accosted by someone who is as unclean as a person could be in the ancient world. The man who meets him is demon-possessed – or mentally ill in contemporary terms – and beset by multiple ills. He is dirty, naked, homeless, and violent. Worst of all, having been cast out by polite society, he spends his time in the most unclean possible place: the graveyard. Make no mistake: pious, polite people do not associate with this man!

But Jesus does. Jesus accepts the man. He asks his name. He listens to the man. By his very attention Jesus transforms the demon-possessed man. Can’t you imagine the astonishment the man’s neighbors must have felt – to say nothing of the man himself – when they found him in his right mind, fully clothed, sitting at Jesus’ feet, begging Jesus to allow him follow Jesus? Can you imagine the fear his neighbors felt when they saw reversed their whole sense of who this man was – to say nothing of the herd of pigs spooked by the change? No wonder they wanted Jesus out of there! And what was Jesus’ reply to the transformed man? Did he say, “Follow me,” as he had said to so many others? No, he said something unexpected. He said, “Return to your home and declare how much God has done for you.” And the man did indeed proclaim that message throughout the city.

Now can you guess what Luke’s message was for his hearers and for us? Luke has given his hearers and us two models of discipleship, both focused on caring for others. In the first model, we have Jesus himself. Jesus has gone abroad. He has gone into the overseas mission field. He has a taken a “mission trip.” And he has cared for someone – and doubtless others like him – whom he encountered. The early church, as it ventured far beyond Israel, and those through the centuries who have crossed international borders in Jesus’ name, have followed Jesus’ direct example. And I repeat: we too have a responsibility to support Episcopal Relief and Development, other aid organizations working overseas, and any square inch of need that speaks to our hearts. We too are charged with encouraging our elected representatives to craft aid formulae and farm bills that benefit all of God’s children. And there’s nothing wrong with “mission trips,” so long as they also educate us on the realities of poverty and sensitize us to our own complicity in unjust systems.

However, there’s another way for us to go to the “opposite” side. As baptized people, we are charged to proclaim God’s love in broken and desolate places. When we take Christ’s Body and Blood into our own bodies, we implicitly commit ourselves to follow him into the mission field. Where do we find that mission field? All we need to do is cross our own parking lot. There are people right here who need our ministry and care. There are people in communities who right this minute are homeless. They sleep on park benches, in doorways, or in alleys. In the winter, they search out heat vents. They forage in dumpsters and gather under bridges. Some may be addicts. Karla Miller tells the story of how, on a frigid winter night, on the upper west side of Manhattan, she came upon a woman lying stark naked on the sidewalk near a Crate and Barrel store. The woman was strung out on drugs, shivering, and begging for money for the next hit. Like all well-trained New Yorkers, Karla averted her eyes and walked around the woman. But as she did so, she wondered what Jesus would have done had he been there.

Most of the homeless people in our communities are not addicted. Many more of them bear a strong resemblance to the Gerasene man in that they are mentally ill. They cannot live a normal life, hold a job, provide for their basic necessities, or even access healthcare. Unclean and unwelcome in our communities, they risk assault, rape, and murder. Just as we don’t know how the Gerasene man became possessed or so profoundly mentally ill, we don’t know the stories of most of the homeless people who wander our own cities and towns. But they are still our neighbors, and we can still minister to them.

A few years ago, our Diocesan Convention met in a hotel opposite Trinity Church in Columbus. That particular convention was unique in that delegates were asked to spend Saturday morning engaging in hands-on mission in different venues. Trinity has an active ministry to homeless people. After hearing from a woman who had come off the streets with the help of Trinity parishioners, several of us spent the rest of our time filling shopping bags with blankets, warm clothing, and non-perishable food. All would go to street people in need. Just west of downtown, St. John’s Town Street also ministers to street people. Every Sunday, their rector celebrates the Eucharist in a vacant parking lot. Afterwards, parishioners pass out sandwiches. Could we do that? Would any of you be willing to help me minister to homeless people in our community through a street church?

Of course we already have two viable ministries very close to home – one right across the street and one right in our own parish hall. These ministries serve real people with real needs. Our Dry Bottoms diaper ministry could certainly use additional help. Right now, we also need donations of either diapers or funds. More important is Loaves and Fishes. The people who come into our parish hall are not homeless – although I’d guess some of them live in substandard housing at best. They are not for the most part mentally ill. Most of them are not outcasts. But they are people with real needs, needs for fellowship and concern, perhaps even love. They are people who need to hear from us what God has done for us, and how much God loves them. And they need to hear those messages not in pious words or formulaic prayers, but in our presence, in our attention to them as people. We are all much blessed by those of you who work hard in the kitchen or scurry around serving. However, our diners have one more need – and for some of us it’s even harder to meet that need than is cooking or serving. Our diners need fellowship. How about the rest of you? Can you leave your comfort zone, cross to the opposite side, and come listen to people’s stories? Can you learn their names? Can you sit and eat with them, extend the hand of friendship, and, through your very presence, concretely demonstrate God’s love? Can you share with them what God has done for you? Can you hear what God has done for them?

We are all God’s beloved children. We are friends and disciples of Jesus. Our mission field may be on the other side of the world. It may be on the other side of the street. It may be on the other side of the office or store. Or it may be on the other side of our church building. Jesus says to all of us, “The mission field starts here.”