Proper 8B A Tale of Two Women

 

 

A Tale of Two Women

In Mark 5: 21-43, we need to remember that Jesus has been on a tireless and relentless pace of activity: crossing the Galilee Lake, encountering and stilling a storm, encountering and restoring a mad-man and thousands of demons on the other side, which demons destroy a herd of swine, thus incurring the wrath of the local population demanding that Jesus leave, leading to a return trip across the lake where there is no rest for the weary – a crowd of people have already gathered to greet him. As the crowd is “pressing in on him,” Jairus, a leader of a synagogue, begs Jesus to help his daughter who is at “the point of death.” Jesus goes with him. In the crowd is a woman who has suffered a discharge of blood for twelve long years. She has spent all her money on physicians, but it only gets worse. She wants to touch Jesus, and does touch the hem of his garment. “Who touched me?” he cries. He feels the power go out of him. “Are you kidding? In this crowd?” reply the repeatedly faithless disciples. But here, let’s let her tell her story, as imagined by Madeleine L’Engle:

 

The Lightning  

When I pushed through the crowd,

jostled, bumped, elbowed by the curious

who wanted to see what everyone else

was so excited about,

all I could think of was my pain

and that perhaps if I could touch him,

this man who worked miracles,

cured diseases,

even those as foul as mine,

I might find relief.

I was tired from hurting,

exhausted, revolted by my body,

unfit for any man, and yet not let loose

from desire and need. I wanted to rest,

to sleep without pain or filthiness or torment.

I don’t really know why

I thought he could help me

when all the doctors

with all their knowledge

had left me still drained

and bereft of all that makes

a woman’s life worth living.

Well: I’d seen him with some children

and his laughter was quick and merry

and reminded me of when I was young and well,

though he looked tired; and he was as old as I am.

Then there was that leper,

but lepers have been cured before –

No, it wasn’t the leper,

or the man cured of palsy,

or any of the other stories of miracles,

or at any rate that was the least of it;

I had been promised miracles too often.

I saw him ahead of me in the crowd

and there was something in his glance

and in the way his hand rested briefly

on the matted head of a small boy

who was getting in everybody’s way,

and I knew that if only I could get to him,

not to bother him, you understand,

not to interrupt, or to ask him for anything,

not even his attention,

just to get to him and touch him…

I didn’t think he’d mind, and he needn’t even know.

I pushed through the crowd

and it seemed that they were deliberately

trying to keep me from him.

I stumbled and fell and someone stepped

on my hand and I cried out

and nobody heard. I crawled to my feet

and pushed on and at last I was close,

so close I could reach out

and touch with my fingers

the hem of his garment.

Have you ever been near

when lightning struck?

I was, once, when I was very small

and a summer storm came without warning

and lightning split the tree

under which I had been playing

and I was flung right across the courtyard.

That’s how it was.

Only this time I was not the child

but the tree

and the lightning filled me.

He asked, “Who touched me?”

and people dragged me away, roughly,

and the men around him were angry at me.

“Who touched me?” he asked.

I said, “I did, Lord.”

So that he might have the lightning back

which I had taken from him when I touched

his garment’s hem.

He looked at me and I knew then

that only he and I knew about the lightning.

He was tired and emptied

but he was not angry.

He looked at me

and the lightning returned to him again,

though not from me, and he smiled at me

and I knew that I was healed.

Then the crowd came between us

and he moved on, taking the lightning with him,

perhaps to strike again.

 

While Jesus tells her that her faith has made her well, messengers from Jairus’s house arrive to announce, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” Try to imagine the look on Jesus’s and the woman’s face at this announcement. He has allowed this unnamed and broken woman to halt getting to Jairus’s house. She, out of desperation, had inadvertently delayed him from attending to the young woman. And now this. “Do not fear; only believe,” says Jesus to Jairus. He allows no one but Peter, James and John to press on with him and Jairus. When they arrive, people are already wailing and weeping in full-mourning. Jesus assures them that she is only asleep. The crowd of mourners laugh at him! As some in the crowd will ridicule him on the Cross. He puts them all out of the house except for the girl’s mother and father. Jesus takes the girl by the hand and says something in Aramaic, “Talitha cum!” That is, “Young woman, arise!” Arise. “Arise,” says the one who soon himself would arise from the dead.

 

The young woman immediately gets up and walks around the room! We are told she is twelve – the number of years the woman had suffered the discharge of blood. Jairus’s daughter is now of marriageable age in that time and place, and the woman in the crowd has been discharging blood the young woman’s entire lifetime. One a daughter of a prestigious family, the other a broken and unnamed woman. Despite an already relentless pace for over 24 hours, Jesus has time for them both. These stories are bound together in Mark for just that reason. Yet, for decades our Prayer Book lectionary had removed the story of the woman with the twelve-year discharge of blood from the Sunday readings so that all we were given was the story of Jairus’s daughter. We might ponder just why. Perhaps those who removed it felt it interrupted the flow of the story. Which in fact is how the life of mission and ministry often is – interruptions are essential to the life of faith. Or, perhaps the editors felt one story was more important than the other. Fortunately for us, the Revised Common Lectionary restored the integrity of the two stories just as Jesus restored the lives of both women – one privileged, the other desperate and even considered “pushy” by some. Determined to see Jesus is more to the point.

 

 As Mark tells the tale, Jesus gives the woman and the girl’s father all the credit – lives are restored because of their faith. Their lives are restored because someone like Jairus goes to Jesus to let him know of his daughter’s need. Or, like the unnamed woman, she knnows her need and goes to Jesus herself, letting nothing get in her way. Two very different women. Jesus gives both his full attention, compassion and power. His lightning.

 

That like the unnamed woman and Jairus, we too might we have faith and recognize our need to turn to Jesus, may God help us. That we might go to him and open the door of our hearts such that Jesus might enter, and be received, and abide eternally with us, as described in these stories of Jairus, his daughter, and the unnamed woman, may God help us. Amen.

The Stockbridge Bowl

 

The Stockbridge Bowl

Sometimes the digital world reminds you of just what you need to remember. I was in a webinar on How To Be a Top Notch Hybrid Church. Never mind what exactly that means at the moment, except to say it means meeting people where they are, not expecting them to come to you. The Reverend Dr. Trish Lyons used the C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia as a metaphor for the church’s mission in the world, on line, in a building, on the streets, wherever people are doing whatever people do: said Trish Lyons, they want to have an experience of the Risen, Living Christ. Or, as our Diocesan Mission Statement reads, Encounter Christ everywhere, and Engage in his ministry of reconciliation in the world. Encounter – Engage for short.

 

After a day of teaching with funny stories called parables, Jesus turns to the disciples and others who were there and says, “Let’s cross the lake to the other side!” [Mark 4:35-41] The disciples say, “Yes, let’s! Let’s get in the boats and go over to the other side!” Knowing all too well that the other side is scary Gentile territory. But, because we want to have an encounter with the living Christ, let’s get into the boat with Jesus, the disciples and the rest. While he sleeps in the back of one of the boats, a great whirlwind, like the one from which God spoke to Job [Job 38:1-11], arises and threatens to sink the boats. Panic sets in. All of a sudden, things fall apart, the center cannot hold. We wake him up! “Don’t you care that we may perish?!?” we cry along with the disciples. He calmly gets up, and like the voice from the whirlwind, he rebukes the troubled waters. “Peace. Shalom. Peace. Be still.” Suddenly all is calm, all is bright. Then he chastises us all for having such little faith. We are left wondering, like Sundance and The Kid, “Who is this guy, anyway?” What are we doing here, anyway?

 

It gets better. When we get to the “other side,” there is a resident mad-man with an ‘unclean spirit.” Actually, lots of unclean spirits. He lives among the tombs, in chains. In chains and fetters which he had ripped apart! “He was always crying out and bruising himself with stones!” Jesus turns to us and says, “Let’s go see this fellow!” Why did we get in the boat in the first place, we ask ourselves? The man shouts for Jesus to leave him alone; do not torment me! Come out of him, says Jesus. What’s your name? says Jesus. We are legion because we are many, say the spirits! We know that a Roman legion, of which there were many throughout Israel and the Gentile territories, consists of four to six thousand men! That is a lot of unclean spirits.

 

Jesus asks them, “Where do you want to go?” They beg him to send them into some nearby swine, which of course is how we know it is Gentile territory. Jesus is OK with that. They go to the pigs, the pigs dive head-first into the sea, pork belly futures tank, the herdsmen and town people are upset and beg Jesus to leave the place. Now, they say! It’s back to the boats. The man, now in his right mind, does not want to be left with the people who had chained him in the tombs because they could not understand him. Because he was not just like them. We can understand that. Let me go with you, he says. No, says the Lord. Go and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you. Which the man does throughout ten towns. People everywhere marvel at how this man they once feared was now a man of God. Our encounter with Jesus is frightening and exhilarating all at once.

 

Stilling the storm and dealing with this man, of course, are two versions of the same story; our story. We are no strangers to things falling apart. Most days it appears as if the center will not hold. The waters rise. The wind is fierce and ruthless and uncontrolled. We want calm and control. That’s what we want with God, with Jesus. We want him to rebuke and silence all that we fear. We want an encounter with the living Christ. But when we do see him, when we do hear him, we are afraid. It turns out that no matter how many questions we might have to address to him, we need to be those people who gird our loins while he says, “I will question you, and you shall declare to me!” as he does to Job.

 

We want it to always be the way it is at the end of these two stories: calm, peaceful, those who scare us most suddenly in their ‘right mind.’ For those who want to experience the Risen Lord, however, it seems as if you need to participate in the whole story. Beginning to end. To encounter the God who forgives us and loves us no matter what, we need to experience it all.

 

Perhaps what we are meant to hear in these stories is what God says last to Job: Stop. Right there, right now. Or, what Jesus says to the disciples and all the others, including us, who are asking themselves like we are, ‘Why did we get in the boat in the first place?” Jesus says two words: “Be still.” We assume he is speaking to the wind and the waves. But rather than panic, these are his words to us: Be still.

 

Now what happens when we stop and be still? It was another time, another place in western Massachusetts, by another lake – the Stockbridge Bowl. I was sitting on a hill, near a mansion called Wheatleigh, overlooking the Bowl. It was approaching sunset. Mango-magenta skies were reflecting on the face of the waters. Like Job, I was trying to get away from all that was falling apart, the storms of life that threaten; rising water, ruthless wind. When suddenly all was calm, all was bright. All was right. Restfulness in the very eye of the storm. I could feel the center begin to hold. A deep sense of being in the presence of something much bigger than me, bigger than my troubles, the troubles of the world. This must be what it is like to be Job, I thougtht. Or, like the disciples. Or, the man who tore his chains apart. Or, the herdsmen and the towns-people. I felt I was the sunset reflecting on peaceful waters. I was surrounded, wrapped up, in the mercy and divine love of God in ways I had never experienced before. I was changed, transformed, surrounded with Divine Love.  I can now see that it was an encounter with the Risen Lord.

 

I was reminded by a friend the other day of what it is like, these moments of grace, mercy and love when she posted these words from the poet, Mary Oliver: “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it…It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. Don’t hesitate!” [Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems]

 

This is what it is like to encounter of the God who stills the troubled waters. This is the God who is at the center of our very soul. The God who forgives us and loves us, no matter what. The God who reaches out to save us, to rescue us, from ourselves and from all that feels as if it is falling apart. “Be still, and know, that I am, God.” I am. I am What I am, he says to Moses at the bush. I am the Bread of Life. I am the Good Shepherd. I am with you always to the end of the age. I am. Do not be afraid of Love’s plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. Do not hesitate. Open to it and let it in. That we may follow this peace, this inward stillness and silence, that the eternal Word may be spoken in us and understood, and that we may be One with Him, may the Father help us, and the Word, and the Spirit of both. Amen.

Let's Get Out of The Way

Many of us pray every day, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus says the kingdom of God is as if a man scattered seed on the ground and then would sleep and rise night and day and see it grow into a bountiful harvest. Again, Jesus says we can compare the kingdom to a mustard seed. The smallest of seeds, when sown in your garden or field it grows to be “the greatest of all shrubs” able to provide shelter and a nesting place for birds. [Mark 4:26-34]

Mustard seeds. Not actually the smallest of all seeds. That honor goes to orchid and cypress seeds, but the seed of black mustard is small enough to make a point: from small things, small gestures, simply scattered on the ground, we can see wondrous and marvelous results! Life lived with God is like this! These are parables of encouragement for anyone who, like the early disciples, find life to be tough going, or challenging at the very least. For the mustard seed does not grow into the greatest of all anything, but still, there is room for shelter among its leaves and branches.

Amy Jill Levine, in her book Short Stories By Jesus (Harper One, San Francisco, 2014), tells us that Pliny the Elder, who lived around the time of Jesus, wrote, “It (black mustard) grows entirely wildly, though it is improved by being transplanted; but on the other hand, when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get rid of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.” Pliny also points out that mustard is especially beneficial for the health, and helpful in the treatment of “snake and scorpion bites, toothache, indigestion, epilepsy, constipation, dropsy, lethargy, tetanus, leprous sores,” jumpy legs, and other illnesses, not to mention its pungent taste for seasoning all kinds of dishes, thus being a just the kind of crop one would like to have around: a crop that provides seasoning, shelter and healing – all dimensions of Jesus’s life among us. [Levine, The Mustard Seed, pp. 165-182]

A seed looked at by itself might seem insignificant, but contains within it endless possibilities. Jesus appears to agree with Pliny: no seed, no small gesture, no small action on behalf of others, no small gathering of the faithful is to be seen as insignificant, as all seeds, actions and gatherings contain life within. And life seasoned with abundance is what Jesus is forever talking about as the essence of his Father’s kingdom!

There is potential in even the smallest of things – potential that needs to be actualized. Like seeds need to be scattered or sown, even the smallest actions, or hidden actions, have the potential to produce kingdom living. It is like the first parable in which a man scatters some seed, and then leaves it alone for the sun and the rain from heaven to work its magic. Some things, suggests Jesus, are best left alone. The kingdom is not about us. It is not about me. As Levine observes, “We are part of a larger process, and although we may start an action, once started, it can often do quite well on its own.” [Ibid]

Sometimes we just need to get out of the way. Sometimes we are simply the facilitator for something greater so that others can carry on the life of the kingdom. The man who scatters the seed is much less important than the harvest of full grain that results from his action. He sleeps and rises day after day and watches the seeds grow. We are told, “he knows not how”!

Further, suggests Levine, these parables appear to take place in a domestic setting, a garden or a field, suggesting that the kingdom of heaven is to be found in what we might call “our own backyard” through the generosity of nature and in the day to day working of men and women. These parables challenge all those who ask when the kingdom will come, or where it is. “The ‘when’ is in its own good time – as long as it takes for seed to sprout…The ‘where’ is that it is already present when humanity and nature work together, and we do what we were put here to do – to go out on a limb to provide for others” – to provide places of shelter, places of healing, places of encouragement, and kingdom seasoning for an often bland and tasteless world. [Ibid]

Later on, Jesus, who often chides his disciples for not having enough faith, will turn his message on its head by declaring, “If you only had faith as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain move from here to there.” [Matthew 17:20] Or, “If you had faith as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea!’” [Luke 17:6]

As we promise in our baptism, everything we say and do has eternal consequences if all we say and do proclaims the Good News of Jesus! Kingdom consequences. If only we can let our own will get out of the way and allow God’s will to guide and direct even our smallest gestures and everything we say to ourselves and others – the consequences will be greater than we can ever possibly imagine!

This is what we learned from Meister Eckhart at Noonday Prayer this week: like the man who scatters the seed, we only need to get out of the way. “Where the creature ends, God begins. God asks only that [we] get out of his way…Ah, beloved people, why don’t you let God be God in you? What are you afraid of?... When both God and you have forsaken self, what remains is an indivisible union. It is in this unity that the Father begets the Son in the secret spring of your nature. Then the Holy Spirit blooms, and out of God springs a will which belongs to the soul!” The kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom is already here, in our backyard! In our soul!

“Your kingdom come, your will be done.” That we may all get out of God’s way, that we may know this Divine and indivisible union without anything getting between God and us, may God help us! Amen.  

If you have faith as small as a Mustard Seed

 

 

 

Proper 5B Where Are We?

 

Where Are We?

Anyone looking for answers in here may be disappointed. For it seems that the Lord God prefers questions.

“They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” [Genesis 3:8]

This has always been one of my favorite sentences in all the Bible. One can just imagine the “sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.” It perks up our ears as we listen ourselves to see if we too can hear those footsteps, and feel the breeze as it cools us down after a long, warm day, filled with cicada sounds filling the air, carcasses piling up on the ground, so that now we can relax and spend some quality time with the Lord God.

Suddenly, however, the mood shifts as we learn that the man and his wife are hiding among the trees, naked and afraid. Try to imagine hiding from the Lord God. This is the God of all creation, of all things seen and unseen. Where exactly do we think we can hide from the God whose Spirit and Breath enlivens us; whose mighty wind sweeps over the deep waters of chaos and brings about order, and sense, and calm where once there was nothing but a deep and unruly darkness.

The Good News arrives in the very next sentence. While the man and woman hide, afraid because their actions have been laid bare for all to see, nevertheless the Lord God calls out to them, “Where are you?” Surely, it is not because the Lord God cannot find them, or does not already know about the episode with the serpent and the tree. Yet, like a parent, like a Father as Jesus always addresses him, he just wants to know if they are safe. He loves them with Divine love. He warned them, but like all of us, they don’t listen, and curiosity gets the best of them.

The scene is not unlike Mary, the mother of God and his brothers trying to reach Jesus while he is teaching what some see as evil, as demonic, and think he is out of his mind. [Mark 3:20-35] Her concern is like the Lord God’s concern for the man and the woman. Perhaps Mary feels fear for the first time just like the man and his wife do in the garden. Out of fear, out of utter futility, they try to hide – which in the end only results in hiding from ourselves, doesn’t it? In all likelihood, they have no idea where they are. They find themselves in a new place, a new relationship with their Maker, with one another, and with the world that surrounds them. Lost.

My yoga teacher, Sally Rich, always used to say to us, “Where is your mind?” Very much the same question the Lord God calls out in his love and concern for their safety, “Where are you?”

 “Where are you?” echoes from here throughout the entire remaining narrative of Holy Scripture. It is really the one thing the Lord God asks of all of us out of a deep desire to remain in relationship with us. With us all. Male and female, slave and free, Gentile and Jew, black and white, rich and poor, for better for worse. Whether God’s people are in Jerusalem, or in Exile, or under Roman Occupation, or simply hiding from God and themselves, the question is always the same, “Where are you?”

If we knew Hebrew, we would notice that when God calls out, “Where are you?” that the “you” is second person plural, not singular. His desire is to call out to all of us, to find us, his community of Divine Love, wherever we may be. It is a call not to individuals, but to communities, societies of persons – in this case the very first community of souls on earth.

 As we ponder these stories, the Lord God hopes that we can hear that voice that echoes through the ages hoping to, what? Find us again? Reel us back in from whatever danger and fear we have gotten ourselves into now? That if we answer we might return to God’s household of Divine Love?

 It’s been a challenging 17 months since the Pandemic first broke out. As a Church, life has been disrupted and quite honestly will never be the same. The world continues to be a chaotic brew of violence and beauty as millions struggle to survive not only the Pandemic, but brutal authoritarian governments and outright lawlessness around the world. As a country we have witnessed divisions and dangers that before had seemed unimaginable. As society, as communities and as families, we have had to respond to dangers and adopt new and best practices just to find ourselves still here at all a year later. It is no wonder that like the man and the woman in Genesis 3 we find ourselves trying to hide from it all, all the time keeping ourselves busy as a way of hiding from ourselves.

How astonishing it is that the Word we are given to ponder this second week after Pentecost are among the most ancient words ever spoken in all of human history: Where are you? Where are we?

At Noonday Prayer, our Contemplative Practice of a period of silence is in part meant to help us stop “the carousel of time” and allow ourselves to take a deep look within and see just where we are. For until we do this as individuals, and more importantly as a society, we inevitably just end up going “round and round and round, in the circle game,” as Joni once put it.

It is far beyond time to continue to try and hide from it all, let alone hide from the Lord God of Creation. And we will get nowhere at all if we continue to play the blame-game like the man and woman in the garden: “She made me do it…the serpent made me do it…the devil made us do it!” Until we know where we are, there will be no getting past the fear and the hiding and the magical thinking that somehow it will all just go away. The falseness of this world has been laid bare. Naked for all to see. The Good News is that there is a greater truth that seeks us out and calls to us, “Where are you?” as a starting place for moving into a more hopeful and fruitful future – together, as one people united with the love and purpose of the One God who wants to find us, and help us, and move us to a better place than where we find ourselves right now.

The 13^th century monk, scholar, preacher and mystic Meister Eckhart once observed: God is at home, it is we who have gone out for a walk. So it is that God calls out to us all, “Where are you?” It’s well past time to return home. May God the Holy Spirit help us to that end.