Transfigured

“Jesus Came Down”

Mark 9:2-9

February 19, 2012

Professor McGonagall is the transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  For those of you who are Harry Potter fans like me, you already know this.  But whether you are a Potter fan or not, this may be one of the few references we find to transfiguration outside of this particular story in the gospels. 

Transfiguration in the Harry Potter stories means changing one thing into something else.  So the students practice turning one object into another.  I believe in the movie, they try to turn rats into teacups.  It’s not an easy magical skill to master as you can imagine. 

According to J.K. Rowling’s understanding of the word, transfiguration means to change from one thing into something totally different.  But is that what’s going on in our scripture passage?  Let’s hold on to that question.

The Greek word that is translated as transfiguration is metamorpho.  Our word metamorphosis also comes from this.  I learned the word metamorphosis when I was a sophomore in high school.  My German teacher talked about it in class one day and suggested a book called The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.  It tells the story of a man, Gregor Samsa, who goes to sleep one night as a man and wakes up the next morning as a large insect.  He is still Gregor.  He know who he is, has the same awareness he did the night before, but he is completely different.  He is metamorphosed into an entirely new creature. 

Is that what happens in Mark’s telling of the transfiguration of Jesus?

Does the human Jesus change into an entirely different creation when he goes up on that mountaintop?  Or is just that his true nature shines forth in that moment?  Mark’s text is not exactly overflowing with details that help us understand what happens.

“Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.”

Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James and John.  Every biblical scholar I’ve read refers to these disciples as the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples.  They were the ones who were closest to Jesus.  However last summer at the Synod of Lakes and Prairies Synod School, Anna Carter Florence, the  keynote speaker for the week and an amazing preacher and teacher of preaching, made the comment that perhaps they weren’t the inner circle as much as they were the remedial group. 

Maybe they weren’t so much favored by Jesus as they were in need of some extra help, some extra understanding.  And this makes sense to some degree because our text starts off with the words “six days later.”  Six days later from what?  What happened six days earlier?  Six days earlier Jesus had begun to teach the disciples that being the Messiah, the Son of Man wasn’t what any of them expected it to be.  It meant that the Messiah would suffer.  It meant that the Son of Man would be rejected by all the religious authorities.  It meant that the Messiah would die and after three days of really being dead, would rise again.  According to Mark, Jesus tells them this quite openly. 

Jesus tells them all this because of an answer Peter gave to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am.” 

Six days before our text today Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, but the minute he heard the rest of it, the cost of it, he told Jesus to stop talking such nonsense. 

Now, six days later, Jesus brings Peter, James and John up a mountain.  And there he is transfigured before them.  Mark gives us no other explanation as to what that means other than Jesus’ clothes turn a dazzling white, whiter than any human made bleach could make them.  In other gospel accounts, Jesus’ face shines.  There are a few more clues as to the transfiguration of his countenance as well as his clothes.  But this is what we have in Mark.  Jesus is transfigured before them.  And while he is transfigured, he is joined by Elijah and Moses.  The disciples see these two great figures of their faith, their history, talking with them. 

They are terrified, which I think is a reasonable response.  I probably would have been terrified too.  Peter, out of his terror, wants to respond somehow, so he offers to build booths for them to stay in.  Just as he makes this offer to Jesus they are overshadowed by a great cloud.  And out of that cloud a voice speaks.

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” 

The voice that only Jesus heard at his baptism is now audible to these three disciples as well.  Although I’m sure the numinous atmosphere must have felt dreamlike to the bewildered, terrified disciples, it wasn’t a dream.  It was real.  They witnessed, at least for a moment, the human Jesus that they knew transfigured into the divine Jesus that was also his true nature.  For just a moment they witnessed glory.

I realize that this doesn’t bring us any closer to understanding exactly what happened in that transfiguration.  But I’m not sure that it serves our purposes to know.  Maybe it doesn’t matter that we don’t understand it.  We just have to trust that something happened to Jesus on that mountaintop that gave the disciples, inner circle or remedial group, a glimpse of the fullness of who Jesus was – his humanity and his divinity all together, all at once. 

And while they were in the power of that moment Peter expressed what I suspect all of them were feeling, the desire to stay there, to stay in that moment.  Which isn’t surprising either.   When it came to Jesus, the moments when the disciples “got it" were few and far between.  Actually, in Mark’s gospel, they never really get it.  They never  fully understand who Jesus is and what he came to do and fulfill.  So it makes sense to me that when they are confronted with his glory, when they have his Sonship confirmed by a terrible, wonderful voice from a cloud, it was natural that they want to stick around.  Staying on the mountain keeps what they’ve seen and heard real.  When they go back down the mountain, the glory is going to fade, the voice is going to become distant, the edges of the moment will start to dull and blur.

Because that’s what happens, isn’t it?  We have what is referred to as a mountaintop experience, and we want to stay in it.  When I was a young Senior High youth advisor, I went with my youth group to the Montreat Conference Center outside of Asheville, North Carolina.  Every summer Montreat hosts several weeks of youth events for Senior Highs.  It is a life changing experience for everyone who has the opportunity to go.  The conference itself is amazing.  Friends are made, bonds are formed.  It’s incredible for youth and adults alike.  And you are actually on top of a mountain.  So when I say it was a mountaintop experience for me, I mean that literally and figuratively. 

Yet once the week was over, we had to go back down the mountain.  We had to go home, back to the daily grind of our lives.  We had to go back down and reenter reality once more.  I remember feeling so joyous while I was on the mountain, so alive and ready to be a better disciple, a better person, but once I left the mountain that feeling of joy, of zeal was hard to sustain. 

Maybe the disciples suspected this would be true as well.  Maybe they didn’t.  But either way, they went back down.  More importantly, I think, Jesus went back down.  We never think about what it may have meant to Jesus to be transfigured.  Did he know exactly what would happen to him when he took the disciples up the mountain?  Did he discern a call from God to climb that peak that day?  Or did he just have a gut sense that going up the mountain was the right thing to do, for the disciples and for him? 

Regardless, Jesus went up.  And Jesus came down. 

I wonder if going down the mountain was even harder for Jesus than it was for the disciples.  I wonder that because Jesus had to have known what he was he was descending to.  He went back down to so much pain, so much need.  Yet Jesus came down.

Jesus came down.

He came down because staying on the mountain was not what he was there to do.  He was called to a broken world, and that broken world was in the valley below.  There he was called to be, to preach, to teach, to heal, to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. 

Staying on the mountaintop, basking in God’s glory is a wonderful thing.  And we are indeed called to glorify God.  But if there is a danger in descending because we may forget our moment with God, then there is an equal danger in staying because we forget the world that needs our witness. 

Staying on the mountaintop is equivalent for me to the many contemporary praise songs I hear.  It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with contemporary praise music, nor the need to praise and glorify.  But what bothers me about these kinds of songs is that often they become more about the person doing the praise, then about the One who is praised.  They become, as my friend Kristen memorably put it, “Jesus is my boyfriend” kind of songs.  Or maybe for some of you, they become Jesus is my buddy songs.  Jesus is not my best bud.  Jesus is the One who came down.  Who went willingly into darkness to bring about the Light with a capital L. Jesus crossed that threshold from the mountain to the valley because he was faithful to God and the narrow way he was called to travel.  Jesus crossed that threshold.  Jesus came down.

Transfiguration Sunday is our threshold.  It is the threshold between Ordinary Time and Lent.  It is a glimpse of glory before we cross into the darkest time the world has ever known.  So just like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to come down from the mountain and to walk through the valley that awaits us.  But even as we walk that valley, let us cling to the memory of the mountain, the memory of God that lives in us.  Jesus came back down and so do we, to bear witness to the glory of God that illumines not just a mountain but the whole world, whether we can see it or not.  Alleluia.  Amen.

An Unexpected Love

            Love finds us in unexpected ways.  I learned this on my 7^th birthday.  I was in second grade and the only present I remember from that birthday was a book my parents gave me.  The inscription, written by my mother, reads “7^th birthday.  Amy, oodles of love, Mommy and Daddy.”  It was a copy of Charlotte’s Web, written by E.B. White with illustrations by Garth Williams.  

            This wasn’t the book that taught me what it means to love reading.  I had been reading for a while and I already loved it.  Even before I could read I loved books and stories.  My father read to me every night before bed.  My mother claims she can still quote Green Eggs and Ham from memory because she consistently complied with my requests to “read it again.”  There is a photo of me at 3 or 4 sitting on our couch with my dolls sitting beside me as I read to them from one of my picture books.  No, Charlotte’s Web didn’t teach me the love of reading.

            It’s hard to put into words the love I discovered in this book.  From the first sentence to the last punctuation mark, I was entranced.  Maybe it was the discovery that when I read a book that embraces me, I don’t just read it, I live it.  Maybe it was the idea that animals can talk if only we listen hard enough.  Or perhaps it was the premise that every creature, no matter how big or small, has something to teach us.  Maybe it’s all of those things, but there’s something more; something intangible and inexpressible about the love I felt (feel) when I read this sweet story.

            I know I learned that the love of a good friend has great power – power to heal, power to save, power to transform.  It was one thing to sit in Sunday School and learn that Jesus said there was no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend.  It was a whole other matter entirely to see that embodied in the love between a spider named Charlotte and Wilbur the pig. 

            I learned about grief from reading White’s classic.  Spoiler alert!  If you haven’t read the book, Charlotte dies at the end.  It wasn’t a tragic death, just a poignant close to a life lived in love.  But I have never gotten over it.  In second grade I read this book over and over and over again.  No matter how many times I read it, I would come to the last paragraph of Charlotte’s life and weep inconsolably.  One night as I sat in bed crying bitter tears, my mother came up to see what was wrong.  I held out the book to her, almost as though I were imploring some higher power to change the words that broke my heart.  In exasperation my mother said, “Amy, Charlotte always dies.”  I know that, but that knowledge has never lessened my sorrow. 

            Maybe the most important lesson I learned is that the written word holds its own power.  It can save.  Charlotte’s words saved Wilbur.  Words and the worlds they create have saved me.  Not just through escape to a different reality, but by giving voice to the meaning I sense in the world around me. 

            Love comes unexpectedly.  The great loves of my life have appeared when I least expected them, but when I needed them most.  Charlotte’s Web, simple words strung together to make a compelling, beautiful story, is one of those unexpected loves.  I can only hope that someday someone will say about me what was said about Charlotte in the book's final paragraph.

            “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.  Charlotte was both.”

A Sermon On Obedience (From Someone Who Hates to Be Obedient!)

“A Simple Command”

II Kings 5:1-14

February 12, 2012

User friendly.  That’s a catch phrase we hear a lot of, isn’t it?  It seems to have been coined about the same time that our technology began to advance at breakneck speed.

Computers, smart phones, ipods, GPS, etc. were all supposed to make our lives easier and simpler, but sometimes trying to figure out the technology that will make our lives easier can drive you to distraction if the technology at hand isn’t user friendly.

The phrase user friendly is no longer used solely in reference to technology however.  I often hear this phrase in church circles.  How can we make worship more user friendly?  Are the bulletins user friendly?  Are they clear?  Would a visitor to our church have to do a lot of searching and scrambling to find pages and follow along with the service?  Can someone come to our church who isn’t Presbyterian or who isn’t churched at all and figure out what we’re doing?  Are we user friendly? 

It’s important to ask these questions, because more and more people church shop.  People don’t necessarily stay in the same denomination all their lives.  A family might be Presbyterian in one town, move to a new town and join the Methodist church because there isn’t a Presbyterian congregation close by.  Another family might attend the Baptist church instead of the Episcopalian because the Baptists have a better youth program.  Maybe someone who visits our congregation will never have gone to church before.  Which makes it even important that they have help.  So is our bulletin user friendly?  Is our worship service user friendly?  Are we user friendly?

User friendly helps us keep up.  Simple commands help us keep pace with our technology that seems to literally change from day to day.  Simple commands can help us in our churches. Simple commands and user friendly are ideas that are with us to stay. 

Even though the phrase user friendly was perhaps only coined in the last decades, the idea has been around for a long time.  Our Old Testament passage today deals with user friendly instructions.  In Second Kings the instructions given by Elisha to Naaman were vividly simple: go to the Jordan and wash seven times and you will be clean.  Naaman was a great man, a man of high calling in Aram or Syria as we know it.  But though he had proven himself to be a mighty warrior, he was plagued with leprosy.  The word leprosy in the Biblical context covers a variety of skin diseases, so it’s almost impossible to know the true nature of Naaman’s skin disorder.  Whatever Naaman’s actual skin disease was, according to one Old Testament scholar his disease carried a social stigma and was associated with death.  So Naaman suffered.  On one of the Syrian army’s many raids on Israel, a young servant girl had been taken captive and was now serving Naaman’s wife.

It was this young girl who sent Naaman on his search for healing.  She told her mistress about the prophet Elisha who lived in Samaria.  For whatever reason Naaman’s high standing did not keep him from listening to the advice of a lowly servant girl, and he set off to Samaria to find this prophet.  Considering the fact that the Arameans had defeated Israel, Naaman knew he could not just waltz across Israel’s borders unannounced and expect to find this prophet or get any help in finding him.  So Naaman told his king his sticky situation and the king sent a letter of reference to King Jehoram, the king of Israel at that time.

But the Aramean king’s letter was directed to the king for the actual healing, not Elisha – an oversight that might actually have been a bit of political trickery.  That’s certainly what King Jehoram thought.  He thought he was being tricked, so he tore his clothes and predicted disaster.  But when Elisha heard this news, he sent a message to the king.  “Why have you torn your clothes?  Send Naaman to me so that he may learn there is a prophet in Israel.”

At long last Naaman does indeed come to the home of Elisha.  He arrives with full entourage, and yet the greeting at Elisha’s door was very different than the one he probably expected.  Elisha does not bother to come out and greet Nathan in person.  He just sends a message to Naaman saying, “Go to the river Jordan, wash seven times, your skin will be restored and you will be clean.”  Easy, clear, concise, a simple command, user friendly.

But the easiness of these directions insulted Naaman.  He expected something hard, something challenging, dramatic, mysterious and even mystical.  He assumed that this Elisha, being a prophet of great renown would come to him, call loudly upon the name of God, wave his hands over his diseased skin or at least wave his hands near it and heal him.  That’s how a healing is supposed to work, right? 

If all Naaman had to do was wash in a river, why couldn’t have washed in the Abana and Pharpar, the beautiful rivers of Syria?  They were much nicer rivers than the ones in the Jordan.

Naaman turned and walked away in a rage.  But his servants stopped him.  Yet again, Naaman – a man of status and a mighty warrior, listened to what one commentator called the “bit players.”  He was neither afraid nor too proud to hear the wisdom of those who served him.

The servants said, “Master, give this prophet Elisha a chance.  You were willing to do something difficult, why not something easy?”  So Naaman went down to the Jordan and washed.  He did exactly as Elisha instructed.  It worked !  He was clean and his leprosy was cured.

If we were to continue reading we would see that Naaman returned to Elisha.  He stood before him and confessed his new faith.  “Now I know there is no other God except for the one in Israel.”  Naaman’s faith was very new.  When he tried to pay Elisha and was refused, he asked for some earth to take back with him.  If the true God was in Israel, then Naaman believed that he could only worship, offer sacrifices and burn offerings on Israelite ground.  Naaman also knew that he would still be expected to attend ceremonies worshipping the Syrian god Rimmon, so he asked for forgiveness in advance for the times when he would have to bow before another god.

Elisha did not judge him on his misperceptions or try to change his thinking.  He merely told Naaman to go in peace.

In this world of user friendly, of supposedly simple commands, I wonder sometimes if we’re more like than Naaman than not; at least when it comes to directions from God.  Most of the time we want our instructions to be clear, concise, easy to understand, and easy to follow.  If I’m trying to bake a cake or installing new software on my computer, I don’t want to have to decode riddles in order to figure out my instructions.  Yet the belief is that when it comes to directions from God, they should be difficult.  I know I feel that way.  Like my grandfather before me, I have often felt that being a Christian, being a disciple, following the path of Jesus should not be an easy picnic in the park.  Being a Christian should be a challenge, it should be hard.  The path that Jesus walked was a difficult one.  It led to the cross, and we’re called to pick up our crosses and follow him.  Isn’t that hard?  God gives us hard directives because that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

But I think I’ve been confused.  Certainly there is a challenge to discipleship.  Following Jesus is no simple, easy, effortless task.  Our calling to be disciples is not one to be taken lightly or without thought to the cost.  But maybe the real difficulty is not the path we’re called down or that the direction or instructions from God are too difficult or too undemanding.  Maybe the real challenge comes in being obedient to that call, obedient to what God asks of me.  Even though Naaman was angry at the simplicity of God’s prophet Elisha’s instructions, he did finally obey them.  Naaman found his healing when he let go of his pride, and in humility listened to the bit players around him.  He found healing in obedience to the simple, but elegant command of God.  Maybe that’s where we find ours as well.

I have to admit that the rebellious free-thinking American creature that I am sometimes (often) rails at the idea of obedience.  I don’t like the idea of being just another sheep, following along behind the crowd.  But that’s not what obedience to God is all about, is it?  Being obedient to God will more often than not take me away from the crowd; it might even set me against the crowd.  What’s really hard about being obedient to God is not that God’s instructions aren’t clear or easy or user-friendly.  It’s that they contradict the instructions that I often mistakenly believe are most important – my own. 

Being obedient to God means that I have to be willing to stop trying as hard as I can to follow my own counsel.  I often get angry with God for not showing me the right path, but the real problem is that God is showing me the path, I’m just not willing to go down it without a fight.  But what does the path God calls us down look like?  I don’t think it’s any better stated than in the words of another prophet, Micah.  “The Lord has told you, O mortal, what is good.  Do justice.  Love kindness.  And walk humbly with your God.”  That is a simple command indeed. 

That’s my favorite verse in all of scripture.  My mother put it in cross stitch and I have it framed on my office wall.  But favorite or not, I can’t seem to be anymore obedient to that simple command than anything else.  I do what I want.  And more often than not, when I do what I want, when I fail at obedience to God, I end up sprawled on my backside wondering what the heck just happened.  Maybe the real challenge about these simple commands that God gives us through prophets, through his Son, is not that they are too hard or unclear; maybe the real challenge is that we don’t want to obey them.  Throughout the Bible we have people who struggled with obedience, who rebelled against it like I do, but finally when they obeyed, God’s goodness and purpose was achieved.  Abraham’s obedience brought about a multitude of descendents, as many as the stars in the sky.  Moses’ obedience led to the building of a new nation, a chosen people.  Joshua’s obedience brought down the walls.  Jesus was obedient to the point of death on a cross and the world was saved through him.   Naaman found his healing, his physical and his spiritual healing, in his obedience, in his following a simple command.   Maybe that’s where we’ll find ours as well.  Amen.

Why God Matters

God stopped mattering to me when I was 15.  That was the year when I heard my Grampa Busse preach for the first time.  Both of my grandfathers, as well as several great-grandfathers and great-great- grandfathers were ministers.  But I only knew one.  Grampa Busse. 

When I was 15 Grampa and his second wife came to visit us.  Both devout preacher's kids, my parents rebelled against religion in their 40's, parting company with the Southern Baptist church of my childhood.  But their search for a new church home was sporadic at best, and they hadn't been attending any one church with any regularity.  However with my grandfather in town, we got up on Sunday morning and went to the last church they'd visited. 

It was a new church start and it met in my high school.  Unfortunately the worship time had changed and none of us knew it.  When we arrived and found no worship service in progress guilt reared its head.  We had demonstrated to my grandfather that we were merrily strolling down the path to Sinnerville with a rest stop at Heathen Junction. 

So we came back home, proverbial tails between our legs, all dressed for salvation, but with no place to go.  But my Grampa, who as a pastor had a tent revivalist penchant, saved -- no pun intended -- the day.  He just happened to have a tape of a sermon he had preached recently with him.

We listened.  It's challenging to articulate what I felt in response to his preaching.  Fear, sadness, anger.  Even the fieriest of fiery sermons in my tradition had not prepared me for his vitriolic pounding of the pulpit.  I no longer remember his text but I remember that his sermon became a raging rant, a diatribe, an angry, judgmental lashing out.

It scared me.  It angered me.  It represented everything I'd despised about church, religion, God.  No matter how often I was taught in Sunday School that Jesus was our Good Shepherd who loved us and died for our sins, the greater lesson I ultimately received was that God must matter to me because if God didn't I would roast in the flames of eternal hell.  God mattered because if not I would be punished.

And in my adolescent rebellion, which was taking definitive shape and form, I thought, "To hell with hell.  If I'm going, then so be it.  This is not a God I can live with or claim." That day, after his sermon was finally over I sat at the top of our stairs and cried.  I was done with church, with religion, with God.  I was done.

I was done.  Until I wasn't.

It turns out that God did matter, does matter in my life.  I had to own up to the fact that I had become completely lost before I could be found.  I also had to realize that God wasn't going to matter to me in doctrine.  God mattered to me in relationship.  God found me, I turned back to God, however you want to phrase it, through the outstretched hands of others.  People who loved me, who accepted me, who welcomed me, who saw something in me I hadn't yet recognized in myself. 

God matters to me in relationship, in community.  God matters in the stories each of us brings to the community, and in the story of God that is all of our stories.  God matters to me because I believe that I was claimed by God in love -- a love of compassion, justice and grace.  I rediscovered God's love in the love I received from others.  And the response I believe I'm asked to give back to God is one of love.  I do not think that God wants me to live in terror of damnation for not getting it right, but to love with all my being, even though I love imperfectly, because God loved me first. 



 

Raised to Serve

“Raised Up”

Mark 1:29-39

February 5, 2012

            In an episode of The Cosby Show, my one and only favorite show from the 80’s, Cliff and Claire – the mom and dad of the Huxtable family – are both laid low by the flu.  So it is up to their children to run the household while they’re sick.  I thought this was really funny in the 80’s.  Now I see it as more of a nightmare scenario.  But that is neither here nor there. 

            Theo, their teenage son takes charge of the house.  He makes a list of all the things that have to be done – the cleaning, the cooking, etc.  And he delegates chores to this two younger sisters.  He delegates all the chores to his two younger sisters, claiming that his work was on the organizational and management side of things. 

            You can see where this is leading can’t you? 

            The two younger sisters eventually rise up in protest against Theo.  He’s doing nothing but bossing them around and they’re sick of it.  And where do they take their complaint?  To their parents who are both sick in bed.  And in a move that I completely get now, Claire declares herself well, gets up and goes downstairs to deal with her children.  Because if she doesn’t the children are going to tear up her house.  So she is well and she goes back to work.

            This isn’t quite what happens in the passage from Mark, but I think it reflects the way that this story about Simon Peter’s mother-in-law has often been interpreted. 

            But before we take that on, let’s look at everything that’s happened around this event.  As has been noted before Mark’s use of the word immediately is significant.  It suggests the urgency with which Jesus’ ministry is taking place.  And everything that has happened in the gospel up until this moment of healing has been immediate and urgent.  My understanding is that it’s all taking place on one day.

            And what a day this is.  Jesus has come declaring the good news of God’s kingdom in their midst.  He’s called the first disciples.  He’s preached in the synagogue with an unheard of authority, cast out a demon who declared his true identity.  Now they’ve left the synagogue and arrived at the home of Simon and Andrew who tell Jesus about Simon’s mother-in-law being sick in bed with a fever.  Jesus goes into her, takes her by the hand and heals her.  She gets up and begins to wait on them.  Only now do we finally reach sunset.  Because it’s after sunset that the people start bringing Jesus their sick and demon-possessed.  Mark writes that the whole town is at the door.  It isn’t until early the next morning that Jesus tries to find a solitary place to pray.  And then they are off again, because Jesus has come to preach to the people. 

            That is quite a day!  On even my best, most productive days, I can’t accomplish as much as Jesus did on this first day.  But this is what he came for, to preach, to teach, to heal, to bear witness to the realm of God, this new state of being, is in their midst. 

            It’s taken us a few weeks just to cover in detail what Jesus did on this first day.  This week the focus of the day is the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law.  She was sick in bed with a fever.  As one commentator wrote a fever was no small thing at that time.  We know that a fever indicates that the body is fighting off an infection of some sort.  In this day and age we have a variety of medicines at our disposal to deal with the underlying symptoms of a fever as well as the fever itself.  But that wasn’t true in this culture.  This woman’s fever could very well be an indicator of an illness that would lead to her death.  It would have been cause for great concern among her family.  So when Jesus arrives he is informed of her illness and he goes into her and takes her by the hand and lifts her up. 

             The word in Greek that is translated as “lifts up” would better be translated as “raised up.”  And it’s a verb that is seen again when Jesus is also raised up from the dead.  Jesus raises Peter’s mother-in-law up, perhaps quite literally, from the brink of death. In raising her up he restores her to health and wholeness.  And when she is restored she is able to retake her place within her community.  She is able to serve. 

            This is the moment of controversy in this passage.  She is healed, but her first task after healing is to wait on the men.  Is that what Jesus healed her for?  So she could take care of them?  Like Claire Huxtable declaring herself well so she could serve her family.  I resonate with that interpretation.  I get better and my first task is to take care of everyone else. 

            I think we have to take seriously the gender bias that would have been prevalent in this context.  Women had specific roles and duties.  They were the servers in that culture.  It’s been true in our culture.  The traditional church has kept the idea alive for centuries.  I know I’ve bought into it as well.

            I’ll never forget when I was a student intern in a church for a year.  The men’s group asked me to be their guest speaker one month and give a presentation on my trip to the Middle East.  After the meal was over, I went into the kitchen and started to clean dishes.  The pastor, Greg, who was my supervisor and my mentor, came in and got me out of there, saying, “You are the invited guest.  You are not here to serve.” 

            We go into this passage with the understanding that this was the expectation for Peter’s mother-in-law.  She was supposed to serve.  She was supposed to wait on the men.  She’s healed so she can get back to work. 

            But maybe what we need to understand from this passage is the larger meaning of serve.  Yes, we can see this woman’s service as mere menial waiting on the men.  We can see it through the lens of the sitcoms from the 50’s and 60’s.  Then this becomes a Ralph Cramden telling Alice to get better so she can get him his dinner kind of story. Because if she doesn’t one day he’s gonna send her to the moon!

            Or we can see it through the lens of discipleship.  Jesus restores the woman to health, he raises her up to new life, and her response is service.  Yes, it was service in a particular way.  It was the kind of service that she had been taught to do.  She was the bearer of hospitality in her household.  She served out of a sense of duty to be sure, but I also think she served out of love.  Her response to being raised up, to being restored to full life was to serve. 

            And if we can see her through these particular glasses then she becomes an exemplary model of discipleship.  Quite frankly, she gets what it means to be a disciple, she gets it, and the male disciples don’t.  Her response to new life is to serve.

            Shouldn’t that be our response as well? 

            Shouldn’t our response to new life be to serve?

            This woman served in her particular context.  And we serve in ours.  It’s not about filling an expected gender role, it’s about responding in love to a need that is right in front of us.  That’s what it means to serve. 

            And what I see as part of the promise in this passage is that Jesus doesn’t just restore her to life in her family, in her home.  He restores her to life in a community.  She takes her place in a community that has seen the embodiment of the kingdom of God in Jesus.  She serves in a community that is touched by grace.

            We are also that community.  We have been touched by grace.  We have seen the embodiment of God’s kingdom in Jesus.  We are restored to health, and we are called to serve.  Our service does not need to come in large, extravagant ways.  Our service can be quiet and unassuming.  I read a story from another pastor who was talking with an elderly member of her community.  The member was lamenting that she was living in an old and weakening body.  She lives in a nursing home.  She cannot give of herself to her church as she would like to.  Why didn’t God just take her? 

            So the minister asked her parishioner to describe her ministry.  Because this minister was sure that this elderly woman did indeed have one.  The woman thought about it and said that she sits at breakfast with a couple who have been married 67 years.  They are both suffering from dementia.  Every morning the elderly parishioner reminds the husband that he needs to pour milk on their cereal instead of juice. 

            The minister told her that in doing that, that small service, this couple was able to stay together that much longer.  Eventually they will move to the dementia unit.  Eventually they will not be able to stay in the same room.  They may, through sad circumstance, be forced apart after 67 years together.  But through this woman’s service, they are able to be with one another, eating breakfast, a little longer. 

            I think that’s what it means to serve.   I think that’s what it means to respond to the love and the restoration Jesus brings.  I think that’s what it means to be in community.   We are given new life in order to serve.  We are raised up so we can raise up others through love, through service.  Alleluia.  Amen.

Love One Another Through It

“Possessed!”

Mark 1:21-28

January 29, 2012

Ellie was angry.  She had young children and a husband who travelled for long periods of time.  Her father-in-law was living with them, and his physical ailments along with his emotional and verbal abusiveness was creating stress for the entire family.  Ellie was angry. 

She was so angry that one day when she’d had a particularly difficult exchange with her father-in-law, she ran downstairs to the laundry room and kicked a full laundry basket across the floor.  Hard. 

So hard in fact that she broke her toe.  She was embarrassed to be that angry, embarrassed that she’d lost control like that.  Humiliated that she’d actually caused harm to herself because she couldn’t deal with her anger.  And Ellie was never able to forget what happened because from that point on whenever the weather changed, her toe ached.  She was reminded over and over again of how powerful her anger was.  In her words, it was like being possessed.

Ellie shared this story at a women’s retreat I participated in when I was an Associate Pastor in Maryland.   Although I didn’t want to admit it to anyone then, I resonated with Ellie’s description of feeling possessed by anger.  I’d been that angry before.  So angry that I didn’t feel like I had control over what I said or did.  It’s as though the anger takes over your entire being.  I’d felt that way before I heard Ellie’s story and I’ve felt that way since.  Possessed by an emotion I feel I have no control over.  Possessed in a way that I do or say things I don’t mean and immediately wish that I could take back.

According to most of the commentators I’ve read in preparation for this sermon, I’m taking the wrong tack by starting with the idea of being possessed. The scholars I’ve consulted believe that the greater point in this passage from Mark is not that Jesus healed a man besieged by a demon, but that Jesus has a previously unseen, unheard of authority.  He possesses an authority that goes beyond even the scribes and Pharisees.  He teaches and interprets Scripture with authority, and through that authority he casts out a demon. 

It is the demon who recognizes Jesus for who he is.  The demon calls Jesus by the identifying title of Holy One of God.  The only other ones who know this so far are the readers.  Mark has made it clear to us who Jesus is, but the process of understanding for the people around Jesus takes the entire gospel and beyond. 

This is the first account of a healing by Jesus in Mark’s gospel.  And this healing is probably the kind that we’re least comfortable with in our Western, enlightened, scientific thinking.  It’s one thing for Jesus to heal someone who is physically ill, to bring that person into health and wholeness.  But talk of demon possession makes us uncomfortable doesn’t it?  It does me.  So much was blamed on demons.  People were irreparably harmed because it was believed they were possessed by demons.  There was no understanding of emotional or mental illness; it was all just pinned on demons.  But let’s face it even though we live in a scientific, enlightened age, what do we think of when hear the phrase demon possession?  Anyone?  Anyone?

I know what I think of.  I think of The Exorcist.  I’ve never even seen this movie, nor will I because I just don’t need to be that scared, but I know enough about it and have seen enough pertinent clips to get the gist of the movie.  So when I think of demon possession I still get a mental image of Linda Blair with her head spinning around.  And while The Exorcist may be the definitive demon possession movie, there are still plenty more being made.  Our culture seems to be fascinated by them as equally as we are repelled.

But I think it’s far more helpful for our purposes and for our understanding to see demons in a different way.  Dr. David Lose of Workingpreacher.org writes about the demonic as that which opposes God, works against God, breaks down, rips apart, and destroys.  A demon is what keeps us separated from God and from one another.  If I am so possessed with anger that I say or do something that causes great harm, then that’s not working for God, is it?  Even if what I say or do harms myself. 

If I am possessed by greed or jealousy or despair or despondency then I am not about building up God’s children, am I?  I am not seeking to create or mend, but to rip apart and destroy. 

Thinking of this in light of our passage from I Corinthians, if I am so possessed by my own belief in what I know, or at least what I think I know, that I can actually cause harm to come to someone else, then I am not just puffed up, I am possessed. 

Possession grips us in other ways.  Think about those who are addicted – whether it’s to drugs or alcohol, food or something else.  There’s a line in a Tim McGraw song that says, “This is for the lost junkie who spends all his hard-earned money on something that he hates.”  That’s a description of possession. 

And none of us are immune from possession, from being gripped by something that feels much larger than us, more powerful than us.  Let’s remember where Jesus encounters this demon possessed man.  In the synagogue.  The man was in church, listening to the preaching and the teaching.  When Jesus speaks with his authority, the authority as the Holy One of God, the demon recognizes him.  The demon sees Jesus for who he truly is.  The demon calls out to him.  And Jesus, with authority, with the power of his word alone – not a ritual, not a rite, the power of his word alone – casts out the demon. 

Yet it’s also in the church where demons can be cast out.  I am not speaking of ritual or rite.  I’m not speaking of exorcism in the classic understanding of that.  But we too have authority given to us by Jesus.  It’s not the same kind of authority in the sense that we can command a demon to leave someone through word alone.  But we have the authority to love one another.  We have the command to love one another.  And love, in the way that God loves us through Jesus, is powerful.  That’s the kind of power that Jesus wielded.  He wielded love.

One of the best movies I’ve seen in the last five years or so is Lars and the Real Girl.  It’s the story of a young man named Lars Lindstrom.  Lars is possessed by the demon of fear.  He is so gripped by anxiety that he cannot bear to be touched or to touch someone else.  At the beginning of the movie no one realizes this, not even Lars’ brother and sister-in-law.  She is constantly trying to engage him, to bring him out of his shell. 

But Lars is also lonely and in desperate need of human contact, so the way he solves this is by ordering a doll.  A life size, anatomically correct doll.  Her name is Bianca.  Lars brings her to dinner with his brother and sister-in-law.  He creates a past life for her.  She was a missionary.  She is suffering from some unknown ailments.  Of course, Lars family is completely shocked by the fact that Lars thinks Bianca is a real girl and they maneuver him to their doctor. 

The doctor is a kind and wise woman who realizes that Lars is suffering from a delusion that’s helping him deal with a reality he otherwise can’t face.  She doesn’t prescribe something for him.  She doesn’t recommend that he be committed to a hospital.  She doesn’t even question Lars about Bianca being real.  She accepts his delusion.  If Bianca is real to Lars then Bianca will be real to her.  And she tells Lars that she wants him to bring Bianca to see her once a week for some blood work, and while Bianca is being treated she and Lars will talk. 

The doctor also tells Lars’ family to accept the delusion, to go along with it until Lars is ready to let it go himself.  So they agree.  What they do next completely overwhelmed me when I watched it.  They went to their church.   They told the board – the equivalent of our session – what was happening and asked them to play along too.  The people on the board agreed.  They were nervous, taken aback to be sure.  But they went along with it. 

Bianca was welcomed at church.  She was welcomed at parties.  She even got elected to the school board.  And it wasn’t because anybody loved Bianca.  It was because they loved Lars.  They loved him through it.  They used the authority of love that was given to them to love Lars.  They loved him through the fears and the anxiety that possessed him, until they no longer did.  They loved him through it.

I know that it’s not that simple.  We are possessed by demons that cannot always be cured by love alone.  But love is our starting point.  Love is the authority and the power that we have been given.  Jesus commanded the unclean spirit, the demon, to leave the man it possessed.  And it did because Jesus spoke with the authority of the Holy One of God.  What do we know of God through Jesus?  We know love.  It seems to me that if we’re going to be possessed, let us be possessed by love.  Let us love one another through whatever demons grip our lives.  Let us love one another through it, just as God loves us.  Amen.