St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church   
Albuquerque, New Mexico 
Sunday June 28, 2009 Pentecost 8B
Preacher: Christopher McLaren 
Text: Mark 5: 21-43, Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15: 2:23-24
Them: Life-giving presence 

Jesus has been crisscrossing the Galilee shuttling between Gentile and Jewish territory. Now he has returned to Jewish territory among his own people the faithful of Israel. For those into numerology the text is full of the number 12 highlighting its Jewish audience. The woman with the hemorrhage has been suffering for 12 years. Jairus’ daughter is 12 years old. Jesus has 12 disciples following him and he has just returned to side of the lake where the 12 tribes of Israel call home. 

Immediately upon his arrival Jesus encounters Jairus who is a church official, a leader of the Synagogue, a clergy-type.  Jairus falls at Jesus’ feet when he finds him and begins to beg Jesus to come and heal his daughter (this of course is not typical behavior for a synagogue official). It is a tender and desperate scene, and evidently Jesus finds the man’s request as compelling, as many of us surely do, and begins to travel with him toward his beloved child.  What is needed for me  in the text is a little travel music, “Life is a highway I want ride it all night long.”  You can insert your own music here. 

In route to the little girl, Jesus is surrounded by the crowds that have come out to see him, to hear him, and to be healed by him.  Things are chaotic as the crowd surges along trying to get a sighting of the famous rabbi pressing in on him. Hidden in the crowd is a desperate woman, who has been suffering, bleeding for 12 years. She has seen every specialist. She has tried the dead sea crystal healers, and the tribal medicine men. All of her life savings is gone on medical care (because she didn’t live in Canada or Sweden). Somehow this suffering desperate women she manages to get close enough to him to touch his clothing that she believes will heal her. How long has she imagined this scenario?  Had she dreamed it the night before?  Did the idea hit her like a lightening bolt from heaven, or had she been planning it for some time hoping against hope that this itinerant healer would come by her village?

In a spine-tingling way Jesus is, “Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him.” Jesus stops his urgent travel begins to search for the one who had touched his clothing. Of course the 12 disciples are not a little incredulous. There are hundreds of people surging around them how can we be concerned about who touched you, “Who hasn’t touched you think the disciples.” “We don’t need a welcoming committee we need some crowd control around here,” the disciples mutter. 

For the second time in this passage a person falls at the feet of Jesus. The woman full of the knowledge that her body is healed comes to Jesus. Trembling with joy and fear she allows her story to be told for perhaps the first time in all of its troubling and heartbreaking detail. Sometimes I wish we had that story. But you know all about this story don’t you. You’ve been there, or someone you love has. They’ve been to doctor after doctor, they’ve had this test and that test, embraced this treatment and that drug and still they suffer.  She pours out her story, the failed medical history of a woman who has been ceremonially unclean and an outcast in her faith community (according to Levitical Law Lev. 15:25-30) for so long she can’t remember what it means to belong.  Jesus looks at her, looks deep into her and speaks words that she had probably thought would never come, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” There is so much in these words spoken to this healed women.  Jesus calls her daughter as if her were saying welcome back to the family. He affirms her part in this healing, your faith, your desire to be well, your dogged determinism not to give-in to the culture of death around you, not to be immobilized by hopelessness is part of your healing. Jesus speaks Shalom into her life, a rich and numinous word for wholeness and peace and the coming perfection of the world. Finally,  Jesus reminds her that she is indeed well. Her life is about to change dramatically as newness breaks in. 
The interruption of the woman has held Jesus up from getting to Jairus’ home and it is now too late.  Servants from his house come bearing news of the child’s death and begin to call Jesus off the mission. But Jesus will have none of it, “Do not fear only believe,” is his guru-like advice to the fearful, the mourning, and to his clueless disciples, and to us.  
Arriving at Jairus’ home it is all over.  The weeping and wailing and commotion of the place tell the sad story.  But Jesus has another take on the scene
"Why are you making such a fuss?" Jesus asked. “The child is not dead but sleeping.”  The crowd of mourners turns nasty and begins mocking Jesus. 
Taking with him only a select few, the parents and an inner circle of disciples, Jesus enters the house and goes to the child.  As if it were time for school,  Jesus touches the little girl, saying, "It's time to get up!" And she arose and walked out. All those in the house of death are astounded, jaws drop and hearts begin to open.  Jesus orders them to keep this hush, as if anyone could and reminds them that this little girl is probably hungry. 
This healing story is so astounding that we are tempted to discount it, to dismiss it. Things just don’t work like that very often.  Yet at the same time we know deep in our souls that God does indeed heal. Perhaps it has happened to you or to someone you know.   I have a friend who at a healing service watched her leg grow and her life-long limp disappear. I cannot count the number of times that people surrounded by prayer have returned to the surgeon or doctor only to find that the tumor isn’t there anymore, that the problem is no longer present.  

But while miraculous healing does occur we also know that it is not the norm. Usually things are more pedestrian with us seeking sage medical advice and treatment. We know that often, painfully often, illness continues and faithful people, prayerful people die.  We wish we understood the ways of God. We would like to be able to access the healing power of the divine in the just the way we desire it.  Why don’t these miraculous healings happen more often? Why is God so random with his grace? 

The stories of Jesus the healer in our sacred story make it clear that he did not heal everyone. Jesus was not a physician who set up a 24/7 clinic to rid 1st century Palestine of disease. I do not believe that the healing stories in the Bible are meant to be used in a way that make us feel inadequate in our faith if a miracle of healing does not a occur when we pray.  However, I do believe that theses healing stories are meant to tell us something about God life-giving power at work in the world around us. 

We all encounter friends and family who are in the grip of various forms of addiction. Recovery? Cure? Do you know the statistics on that sort of thing? Few get over their enslavement to the pills, or the bottle. Death is the order of the day.
We know people who continue to make such poor choices in their life that they seem hell bent on death themselves. 
Some of us know what it means to be numb, asleep,  dead to the world because we have had so much pain and loss in our life that we don’t know if we will ever really live again. 
Some of us are surrounded by Job’s comforters: telling us that things are only getting worse, that cynicism is the only path that doesn’t lead to disappointment. That God is to blame. 
What they mean is, you must adjust to death. What they and the world are trying to convince us of is that the culture of death will win. So when this desperate father presses in upon Jesus, when this poor, harried woman reaches toward Jesus, he responds by offering them new life, hope, a future. He doesn't say some magical incantation over their problem. He looks into the woman’s eyes and calls her daughter. He wakes the girl up for school and breakfast. He just shows up at the man's house, he just allows the woman to touch the hem of his garment. 
For Jesus just showing up is enough.  These stories of Jesus and his followers are proclaiming that wherever, there is a situation of death and defeat, there is the possibility of resurrection.  When Jesus shows up, when the one “through whom all things were made” (John 1) arrives or is called upon, a culture of life invades. That is the good news. 
These miraculous stories about healing are not just for two women long ago, they are for us. They are reminding us that even now, a culture of life is flowing around us in God, that even now the power of death can be undone by the author of life and our fumbling attempts at faith. 
As the Wisdom for Solomon proclaimed to us today: 
God did not make death,
And he does not delight in the death of the living.
For he created all things so that they might exist;
the generative forces of the world are wholesome,
and there is no destructive poison in them,
and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.
For righteousness is immortal.
 
God created us for incorruption,
and made us in the image of his own eternity,

True, he didn't raise every dying person, didn't heal everyone who was sick. Yet there is something about Jesus that is everlasting life. In him was life, and light, and it was and is for all.
It's for you too. I don't know, this summer day, where there is a shadow in your life. I don't know what dead end, or despair or what situation of enslavement you are dealing with. I do know that in God there is a culture of life to be found, that death has no chance in God’s life-giving presence. This is a hope worth falling at the feet of Jesus for not only long ago but for us today. Amen

June 21, 2009
Calming the stormy waters
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Mark 4:35-41, Job 38:1-11

When troubles come, how do you respond? 

Chances are, your first response is to try to do something to improve the situation. We humans are ingenious problem-solvers. It’s a gift from God. As much as we have the ability to mess things up, we also have the power to to make things better. 

We are, in this sense, co-creators with God. Whether or not we have the will, we have the ability to solve problems like preventing hunger, curing diseases, and negotiating peace. If  we’re sick, we go to a doctor, and if we’re not satisfied there, we get a second opinion, we go online, we try to figure out how to fix the problem. If we have a conflict at the office, we listen, negotiate, and make a decision. 

It is natural to start in this place. We’re good at problem-solving, and many times, this is all that is needed. But what happens when this doesn’t work, or it takes a lot longer than we want? 

Our next step, if we’re at all reflective, is to try to understand what’s going on. Why is the other acting this way? Why am I acting this way? When we pray, we ask for insight, because we believe that by understanding, we can grow. 

This, too, is good, and a gift from God. But what happens when this doesn’t work, when there is no understanding to be found? What do we do when we feel like we’re at a dead-end? 

When we come to this point, we are never really at a dead-end. We are at a crossroads. We have simply come to the end of our human capacities, that’s all. This is hard for us to accept easily, to believe there is something beyond our abilities. For even as people of faith, people who should know better, we act as if we have to fix or understand all our problems on our own. We forget that we are not alone in this universe. 

If we choose to step forward beyond this crossroads, we enter another world, a world of mystery, grace, transcendence, and healing. This is the world that our readings today invite us into. 

The first reading from Job is near the end of this book. For 37 long chapters, Job and his friends have been trying to understand why his life has become so miserable. He has lost his health, his family, his wealth, everything. His friends are convinced that Job has somehow brought this upon himself; they argue with him over and over, trying to get him to fess up to his sin. Job considers himself blameless, and is outraged that God would treat him this way. Both believe in the fallacy that good behavior earns God’s blessings and bad behavior brings punishment. After 37 chapters of talk, their attempt to understand suffering has come to a dead end. They can’t fix it, and they can’t understand it. They feel helpless. Job pleads with God “Where are you? Don’t you care?”

In the gospel, the disciples are also helpless. This story was told in the early church as a parable about their persecutions and conflicts. If Jesus was so great, they asked themselves, if we are his, why then are people excluding and killing us, why are we fighting among ourselves? Why are we, in this boat of the church, about to sink in these stormy waters? They couldn’t fix the situation, and they couldn’t understand it. They plead with Jesus, asleep in the boat “Where are you, Lord? Are you asleep? Don’t you care?” 

God’s response to Job and Jesus’ response to the disciples is the same. They slowly rise up and reveal themselves as God. They don’t give an answer; they don’t help them understand. Instead, they pull back the veil and temporarily reveal their beauty and power. For a moment, they blind their questioners with light and divine silence. 

God puts Job in his place, asking “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, and answer me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth, when I made the seas and the clouds and the darkness?” God goes on for 4 long chapters, asking Job if he can make or even understand the rain or the light, the foolish ostrich, the great whale, or the soaring eagle. In effect, the Lord says to Job “I am God  and you are not.” Job is humbled and falls down in worship. His problems cease to matter. 

Jesus is more succinct. He wakes up, stands in the boat, holds out his hands, and commands the wind and the waves “Peace, be still!” There is a dead calm, an eerie silence. He asks his disciples “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” The disciples are dumbstruck, and finally wonder “Who are you?” 

This is the path that lies beyond the crossroads. When we have come to the end of our ability to solve our problems, when we can’t understand, we too feel abandoned, at a dead-end. It is tempting at this point to stand there like an outraged Job, obsessively asking why this has happened to us, angrily insisting that life should be fair. But we don’t have to remain stuck there. We can step forward, beyond this crossroads, into the mystery of God. 

In the midst of our troubles, in the middle of the storm, we can still open wide our hearts, as Paul urges the Corinthians today. We can stand patiently before the veil and wait for God to draw it aside. After all, we will die someday, and in the meantime, this short life is wondrous. No matter what our circumstances, it is wondrous. It is always possible to love, to be grateful. 

Even in a crowded airport or in line at the post office, God’s beauty is revealed in the faces of his children all around us. A small yellow finch flitters across the yard, and we can wonder what it is like to fly. In the middle of our prayer for relief or insight, everything can become calm, and our problems can cease to matter. God speaks to us like a mother to a child on her breast: Hush, don’t be afraid. I am God, and you are not. Remember the silly ostrich. Remember the endless sea. Remember your life. Open wide your heart, even now. Peace, be still.

This doesn’t mean that we shall stop all future efforts to fix or understand our situation. It means that in addition to these God-given abilities, we can also develop, through spiritual practice, our capacity to access another dimension. 

Are you developing this capacity? It won’t come to you by magic or by simply wishing for it. It comes over time, out of your long experience of worship and prayer, and the active exercise of your faith. And it won’t come if all we do in prayer is plead with God to fix our problems or to help us understand. 

Our prayer, our worship, our faith only helps us move beyond this crossroads if it is about more than just us, if it becomes also about God: God’s beauty in nature, the Spirit’s graceful and fluid movement through our lives to work things out, the limitless divine love and brilliance that lies just below the surface of every moment. 

Prayer that can help us move beyond ourselves into grace is the prayer of adoration, praise, and gratitude. For a moment every day, forget your concerns, stop asking for God to fix things or to help you understand, and just be with God. In this place, let yourself soak up the goodness of God. This is what Jesus asked of his disciples during that storm, to look within and find the peace of God that passes understanding and circumstance. This is what God asked of Job that day, to stop – even in the miserable state he was in - and open wide his heart. 

As we allow our spiritual life to become less self-oriented and more God-oriented, we develop the capacity to access another dimension of life, one that is vastly larger than our problems. It is always free, always true; in it, there is no fear, only love. In this place there is no longer any need for questions, or even for a solution. 

Together with Job, together with Jesus’ friends in the boat on that stormy night, we discover that there are no dead-ends. We are always led forward, through our crossroads, into new life. 

June 14, 2009
God’s life is like a weed
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Mark 4:26-34

What if I were to tell you that God’s ways are like the majestic tumbleweed, offering security to all who lean on its mighty branches and comfort to all who rest in its luxuriant shade? 

Essentially, this is what Jesus just said. We might have missed Jesus’ irony because in church we’re supposed to listen to the Bible with very serious piety. Or we might have missed it because we’re used to hearing the plant in this parable mistranslated in other versions of the Bible as a  “mustard tree.” There is no such thing. 

What you know as the mustard plant is the same thing the world over, including Israel: thin and scraggly, two to three feet high, little yellow flowers, popping up all over the place, especially where you don’t want it. You know the weed. This, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of God is like. 

Jesus was making a parody of the passage we heard from Ezekiel today, and others like it throughout the Hebrew scriptures, that use the mighty cedar of Lebanon as a metaphor. 

This tree was so large and strong that its trunk was made into masts for the ships of the Mediterranean and beams for the great temple in Jerusalem. The scriptures say that the righteous – or in other places, the wicked - will tower over others like cedars of Lebanon. The powerful armies of Assyria are like cedars of Lebanon. 

And as we heard today, Ezekiel said that Israel would be like the noble cedar: a great and powerful kingdom, in which every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. 

To contrast the kingdom of God with the worldly kingdoms of Israel,  Assyria, or Rome, Jesus turned this familiar metaphor upside down. He said “We all know what the kingdom of Israel is supposed to be like. But to what shall we compare the kingdom of God?...Ah, the mustard shrub! Such a little seed! But when it grows up, it becomes the greatest of all shrubs, putting forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” His audience, people who were close to the earth, must have burst out laughing. What was he trying to say? 

Two things, I think. The first is that God appears most powerfully in the least of appearances, not the greatest. The second is that once God takes root in us, his life spreads unpredictably, into places we may not even want it to go. 

I’ve been to the Grand Canyon, the Taj Majal, the top of the World Trade Towers, the Vatican. I’ve prayed in sacred monasteries and temples, heard famous musicians and seen Van Gogh’s paintings. 

But do you know where God has made the most impact upon me? At the kitchen table, on an ordinary Wednesday evening, in a conversation with my wife. During the 10th meeting of a committee I serve on with you. At the bedside of an old man, dying at the heart hospital, with only his daughter by his side. On a walk along the ditchbank with my dog. 

Would it be possible that we miss the presence of God because we’re looking in the wrong places? Maybe we expect our experience of God to be like the expensive plants we buy at the nursery: vibrant and lush and happy and colorful, full of joy and delight. Surely that’s where God is to be found! 

But perhaps God is really more available to us in the weedy, forgotten places of our back yard: in the daily grind of our work, in our suffering, in the lonely and empty times. Perhaps God is most present when we fail, when we know our need for grace. 

We may be so busy trying to rid our lives of these things that we don’t realize we’re weeding out the very presence of God. The last shall be first. Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit. 

And now to the second part of this weedy metaphor. As God’s life grows in us, it will take us in some very surprising places, perhaps even where we do not especially want to go. 

As we all know, weeds spread unpredictably. Once they get hold in an area, they take on a life of their own. You can’t contain them. And once we’ve invited the Spirit into our lives, into the ministries that we share together, we can’t contain grace, either. 

Some of our members might start coming to church here reluctantly, dragged in by their spouse or partner, sure that this would be a depressing repeat of bad religious experiences of the past. 

But then they hear the Word proclaimed in a new way, see real community, feel a palpable sense of God’s presence in our worship, and before they know it, they find themselves serving on the Vestry!

Or together, we might start with an innocuous project like giving food away to hungry neighbors, but then we find out that they’ve got a serious heart condition and don’t have access to medical care; or they’re afraid that INS agents will come into their house and split their family apart. Soon, without intending it, we find ourselves in league with UNM medical school residents and community advocacy groups. 

Or you might ask for God to guide you through a difficult patch, praying only for a little insight and comfort, nothing more, thank you very much. 3 months later, you find yourself being hauled through the depths of your brokenness, on your way to being healed of your greatest pain. 

It happens all the time. God’s life spreads in us like weeds. 

Finally, Jesus reminds us that the spreading of the kingdom is not up to us to accomplish. He says that it is like growing grain. After the seed is sown, the farmer rises and sleeps, day after day, for months. The seed sprouts and grows, and the farmer doesn’t know – and doesn’t have to know – how this happens. Then “the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” 

After the seed is planted, God’s kingdom produces of itself. The original word for this in the text is automatos, or “automatically.” Automatically, the seed of God, once planted, produces grain. Automatically the Spirit begins to do its own work. We don’t have to make it happen. 

Martin Luther once wrote about this parable, emphasizing his faith in the living power of God’s grace. He said “after preaching my sermon, I go home and sip my Wittenburg beer with my friends or take a nap and let the Word do its work.” 

What a wonderful way of trusting in God’s grace. Put in your effort, offer it in prayer, then let God go to work. Automatically, the seed of God produces first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain.

But Jesus knew that not everyone is prepared to hear this stuff. It’s subversive. 

Not everyone welcomes his message that our hope is not to be found is being a part of a powerful, dominant nation, like the great cedar of Lebanon – whether that is ancient Israel or the United States of America. Strive instead, he said, for the things of God that may be smaller but much more important: mercy, understanding, reconciliation, and peace. 

Not everyone welcomes his message that God’s life can’t be controlled within religion like a tidy little English garden. It spreads unpredictably, like weeds in the wild desert, once it takes root. 

Not everyone welcomes his message that once we’ve set our need before God, we can really let go of the reins, go to sleep, and let grace take over. 

That’s why Jesus spoke in seemingly harmless little stories about mustard seeds and growing grain. These humble parables hide some very subversive stuff. Only those with ears can hear. But Jesus’ disciples wanted to hear, and so later he took them aside, and explained everything to them in private. There, he probably asked them, as he asks us today: 

Will you keep your eyes open in the midst of it all, appreciating even the scraggly and troublesome weeds of your life, so that you not miss God’s presence? 

Will you let God’s life in you spread like a weed, following it wherever it leads, even if you did not intend for it to take you there? 

And after you’ve asked for God’s help and planted the seed of faith, will you please go have a beer with friends or take a nap, and just trust God to get to work? 

For this, Jesus said, is the kingdom of God.

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