I think of this village when I think about Capernaum, where Jesus' public ministry began. Capernaum is on the shore of Lake Gennesaret,in the Galilee, not too far from Phoenicia, Syria and the Decapolis; an area where diverse cultures and ethnicities lived in close proximity. In Jesus' day it was a small, relatively affluent provincial city and toll station, home to soldiers and officials of Herod's government. It was regarded as one of the more pleasant cities in the region, even by Gentiles who generally considered postings in the Middle East hardship duty; the wealthy had summer and retirement villas built there. I suspect that many a wealthy resident, or even those whose livelihoods were based on providing goods and services to the upper classes, might watch the sunrise over the lake and think that, all things considered, LIFE IS GOOD. That is..at least until illness or injury hits.
Jesus hits the ground running on the fateful Sabbath day described in Mark's Gospel. We've already heard the story of his confronting, and curing, a disturbed individual who disrupts his teaching in the local synagogue. Now, on his way out of the assembly, he's told of his friend Peter's mother-in-law, sick in bed with fever. He heads to Peter's house; takes the woman by the hand and restores her to health. Word spreads through town about the itinerent rabbi who preaches like no other, who seems to be a lightning rod for God's healing power, and who in a most cavalier way breaks all the rules in reaching out to help the suffering and "unclean." Soon Jesus is beseiged by persons sick in body and mind, pleading for help.
I think it's sometimes hard for affluent Westerners to understand how terrible both physical and mental illness are in the less developed world. Imagine a world with few doctors -- and the ones that are present hopelessly out of reach of the majority of the people. Imagine a world with almost no healing resources -- where an injury as innocuous as a cut finger can turn septic and kill a person, with no recourse to antiseptics or antibiotics. Imagine having no understanding of how disease processes work, where no one knows why some people become sick and others don't, where no one knows how to prevent sickness, where some diseases are so beyond understanding, so horrible to experience and behold, that their sufferers are cast out of the community by their frightened neighbors. Sadly, in some cases, in some places, this is still our world; but 2,000 years ago it's everyone's world -- even in cosmopolitan Capernaum -- and these are the people coming to Jesus, begging for mercy.
One commentary on this passage notes that, on this day, Jesus seems as possessed of God's power as some of the people seem possessed of evil spirits. He seems driven to save; to quote an old Bruce Cockburn song, someone kicking at the darkness until it bleeds daylight.
What was Jesus thinking? I personally am not of the school that treats Jesus like Clark Kent -- "in disguise" as Just Another Guy, but ready to enter the metaphorical phone booth and become an omniscient, omnipotent Superman in the nick of time. I don't believe that he was consciously working out on-the-spot biochemistry and orthopedics. I believe that Christ's kenosis emptied him right into life as was lived right then, right there. All he knew was that the Reign of God was breaking through; that he had been sent by God to be both a proclaimer and an agent of God's saving power; and that he radically trusted in the God who had given him this special task.
But at some point Jesus needs to get away. The text says that, early in the morning, he finds a deserted place outside town where he can pray. What did he pray for? Likely he prayed for strength to meet the endless demand for healing. But I suspect that he may have also prayed for direction: What do I do now? Am I in the right place? What's the next right thing for me to do?
Capernaum was a lovely town; a place that attracted an ever-changing assortment of people from all over. Now that people had heard about his ministry, they'd be likely to come to the city specifically for him; to listen to him, to be healed by him, to go back to their communities and spread the news. Jesus had friends in Capernaum; he had a place of worship; he certainly had God's work to do, and if he ever had to fall back upon his carpentry skills he'd have ample opportunity to do that as well. Back home in Nazareth he'd have to contend with family shame surrounding questions of his parentage, as well as the small-town attitude toward native sons who get a little big for their britches. In Capernaum he could make a new start.
But when his friends find him out there in the wilderness and urge him to go back to the city, he declines. No, he tells them. We need to go out to the neighboring communities. I need to do what I've come here to do.
Christ meets us where we are. He did then, and he does now. This was his charge from his Father; the one he followed faithfully, even to the point of meeting us in our common human experience of suffering and death. And today he meets us in our baptisms; in the Word proclaimed; in his Meal; in others that we meet; in our own interior or exterior journeys to still and lonely places.
Christ meets us -- but he also sends us. In walking the discernment path, it can be easy to assume that our own itinerary is the one to which we're called. I know that in my own life I'm inclined to approach the idea of vocation with an attitude of, "Okay, God -- show me how to get from Point A to Point B"...or, if life is treating me right, "Thanks for getting me here! It's swell!" It's harder to ask for direction in doing the next right thing, going in the next right direction, and listening for an answer. But when we remember that we don't have to do this on our own; that we're given comfort and companionship and direction -- in the words of today's lesson from Isaiah, if we wait upon the Lord our strength will be renewed; we will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.
Sleeping Bear Dunes
2 comments:
I did not know how much this text was going to mean to me until I sat down to write about it. Here's what I came up.
The Inevitables
Epiphany 5
Mark 1:29-39
February 5, 2006
On our best days we would always say "there's no reason for his behavior." On our less than best days, we would say "he's out of his mind." We never really understood just how the power of crack cocaine and a bone to pick with the world could totally overpower a man and his beginnings at the altar of familial love. Mitchell is his name. Mitchell is my step-brother. Mitchell is a crack addict, a child neglecter, a spouse-abuser. Mitchell is a father, a lover, a son, an uncle, a brother. Mitchell has lost his three children to child protective services. Mitchell is in prison. Some would say Mitchell is a lost cause, a washout, a loser, a failure at life. Others would say he's the poster child for how tough love is just, well....tough. Still others would say he's had every opportunity in the world to straighten his act up and pull things together. God knows his mother and father have bent over backwards to save him. They've given him money, a car, a job, a place to lay his head, and he's repaid them by cursing at them, stealing their money, hitting them, lying to them, never showing up for work. Mitchell knows he's not welcome in any of the homes he grew up in. I've heard, on more than one occasion, the words uttered from his mother and father: "Son, you know we love you, but you've gone too far this time. You are.....you are dead to us."
"In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.....for Mitchell. When they, the disciples found Jesus, they said to him, 'Everyone is searching for you'", and Mitchell, screaming from the depths of his own hell, said "but how will I find you, Jesus, suffering redeemer?"
Every commentary I've ever read, every sermon I've ever heard preached on this text, suggests that Jesus got up early in the morning, broke away for some personal "Jesus" time, to refuel and commune with God. But I don't think Jesus was alone. Yes, God was there. But I think there were others with Jesus. Even though the text states that Jesus got up and went out to a "deserted place", I think that simply means the absence of a city, or town, or village. The "deserted place" is on the periphery of Capernaum, a town on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. I think Jesus went to the "deserted place" where the lepers and social outcast dwelled. There is absolutely no way that the townsfolk of Capernaum would have allowed lepers to come any where close to Jesus, even if they were present to see how he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. A man or woman with an unclean spirit could have possibly made it to Jesus, but the crowd would have dispersed at the site of a crowd of lepers trying to find their way to Jesus or even worse, the scene could have become a violent one.
While the four gospels each tell us something very important about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, I think it's also important to entertain the notion that there's a whole lot of story happening between the lines. I know that we trust the black and white ink on the page from the pens of scribe after scribe, retelling the Jesus stories, far more than we do a knucklehead 32 year old pastor, but consider this specualation for a moment.
The text says that "Jesus got up." That denotes a certain amount of intentionality on his part. The text then says "he went." The New Testament is full of instances where we are told that "Jesus went." This denotes that he had a purpose for going. It doesn't say that "Jesus wandered aimlessly about, hoping to stumble upon something interesting." We then learn that "Jesus prayed." Now, I will concede that it is certainly within the bounds of plausbility that Jesus intentionally got up that morning, and intentionally went to a deserted place, to intentionally pray. But, let us entertain for a moment that Jesus, being very familiar with the geography in and around Capernaum would also have been very familiar with where certain groups of people resided. Let us assume that he not only knew the socio-economic zip codes within the city, but he also knew where the social outcasts lived, and I use the word "lived" very loosely. Perhaps it is fair to say that more than just knowing about Capernaum's social strata, that Jesus' best ministry happened close to or in the middle of outer lying areas. Might even be a clue to who Jesus was interested in proclaiming the kingdom of God to, based on where he did his ministry, say, I don't know, among the outcasts, the disenfranchised, the poor, the hungry, the lepers, the prostitutes. Think about it -- the sermon on the mount didn't exactly occur from the perch at the 4th Presyberian Church on Michigan Ave. And what does Jesus say on the Mount: Blessed are you who are poor. Blessed are you who hunger. Blessed are you who weep. Blessed are you who are hated and reviled. These are not exactly people at the top of the social heap.
So when Jesus goes to pray, he also goes to encounter and be encountered, but by whom, exactly? Now, before anyone sends me a letter or writes me an email or calls me on the phone about the "sin of adding to the text," don't worry, I have no desire to add to the text. I'm more than comfortable with taking the text on its own terms. However, I don't think "taking the text on its own terms" means we that we need not be interested in what Jesus could have known and what he probably did know. If we're going to talk about the Christ of faith, then we also need to talk about the Jesus of history. To say, in effect, that Jesus did not know who lived on the outskirts of certain towns, would be like me saying I live in Park Forest but am unaware that Ford Heights is home to some of the most impoverished people in the state of Illinois. While there are certainly churches that value having their parishioners leave their brains at the front door, this need not be one of them.
So, Jesus goes to the outskirts of Capernaum. He goes there to pray. While he is there, he is not surprised to find the outcasts who have no other place to live but on the outskirts of this fishing village. Jesus is overcome with the fact that there are so many people there who are desperately in need of his compassionate touch. Interestingly enough, Capernaum means "village of Nahum". The word "nahum" means "consoler", or "one who consoles." How ironic that Jesus spends the bulk of his ministry in and around Capernaum. You would be hard pressed to find mention of another city that occurs more times in the NT than Capernaum.
There Jesus is, on the outskirts with the outcasts, doing unthinkable things like laying his hands upon people with leprosy. Jesus knows that to be a disrespecter of the social and religious boundaries of the day he must go to the places where a "boundary" is really just a wall to keep all the good folk in and all the bad folk out. After all, if you are among those who threaten the very fabric of society by who you are and what you represent, then guess what? It will be someone's job to make sure you're never part of the fabric. It's a delicate fabric, this piece of linen weaving who's in and who's out, who's welcome and who's not, who's acceptable and who's unacceptable. Break the rules and you die. It's that simple. Touch a leper, risk contamination. If we fail to miss Jesus as the one who risks the very heart of God in the company of the ritually unclean, then we miss Jesus and, consequently, we miss the kingdom of God in all of its glory. Jesus wasn't the only one who knew how delicate the fabric of society could be. The frequent opponents of Jesus knew it, too. It wasn't that Jesus felt there was anything inherently good about damaging the social fabric, he just couldn't see how the fabric was any good the way it had been sewn together. Moreover, he couldn't stomach the values that were holding it together. When Jesus was interested in taking something and starting over, he liked to talk about how things have to die, or be thrown into a fire and consumed, or chopped down at the root, or plucked from the vine. No nonsense imagery from a no nonsense kind of guy.
I may be wrong, but I read about Jesus in the New Testament and get this sneaking suspicion that Jesus was not willing to settle with life as it was. Anybody else read the Scriptures that way? Jesus did not accept diseased and broken lives as inevitable, even when the rest of those around him already had. What a terrible thing we do when we write people off. We might as well give "those" people in our lives a name: let's call them the "inevitables." An inevitable is someone who has done something to us that we have concluded is unpardonable. An inevitable is also someone who, for all intents and purposes, is basically a lost cause. I don't know about you, but I have banished both types of inevitables to the outskirts of my life. Our pride confirms that we are entitled to this sort of righteous indignation. After all, someone harms us, and it's much easier to banish them, than to have to risk having them around ever again. If we do that, it feels as though we're saying what they did was okay. It's as if we're saying it's worth the risk to have them do to me all over again what almost killed me in the first place. So, we keep that person at bay, because we know it's inevitable that they will hurt us again, and if not in the same way as before, then another way, but make no mistake about it.....they will hurt us. So, we elevate our emotional security over that single, precious, joyous moment when a brother or sister is brought back into the family. We can only surmise that the father who welcomed home the prodigal son must have completely lost his mind.
My step-brother, Mitchell, is the other type of inevitable. Somewhere along the way, I and others, made the decision that it was inevitable that Mitchell would mess up his life and everyone else's who came in contact with him. It was easier to give him money, a place to sleep, food to eat, than to, I don't know, take out a second mortage to pay for his treatment or to visit him everyday we were allowed so that he knew he was not forgotten, because when you are forgotten, then you are dead. Now, if you've ever known anyone with a drug problem, you know this is not a cut and dry proposition. I had the privilege to be invited to the bedside of Ronnie Roeder as his body was at war with the addiction to drugs and alcohol that would eventually take his life. And of all the reasons to cry as I sat next to him, the one that made the most sense to me was how he frequently recalled how his family never forgot him. And for the Roeder family who did everything in their power to remember Ronnie, I know that doing everything in your power to help someone always seems to fall short in the end, because we are impossibly difficult and unforgiving of ourselves. But, Ronnie knew better and he believed. Not a moment went by in those final days where he did not understand the sacrifices his family had made for him.
The Roeders, in their love for and devotion to, Ronnie, remind me that people still go into the deserted places of this world to encounter and be encountered by the inevitables of life. The inevitables will never be accepted into the social fabric of our society. It's too dangerous. There is no place for them yet. Jesus bet his life on it. On a good day, so do we.
The lepers scattered and hid in their caves when they heard Jesus' disciples approaching. From their social prisons, they heard one of them say to the suffering redeemer, "Everyone is searching for you." As loudly as he could, as to signal his desire that no one miss the hopeful intent of his words, the suffering redeemer yelled out: "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." And maybe, just maybe, the lepers caught wind of what he was telling them to do and, mustering up enough courage and trust, they followed him.
In the final analysis, the only thing that matters and remains in the darkest and most deserted places of our world is the inevitability of grace, and the One and ones who get up and go to offer it.
Your entry "Meeting Us Where We Are" really blessed me, thank you, LutheranChik.
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