Living on the edge

He was a man living on the edge. 

He lived  on the edge between reason and insanity.  Who knew when all the powers that competed for his life would once again attempt to crush his will, his mind, even his very life? He lived on that edge between love and hate as his neighbors first tried to help, then in fear and frustration left him to rant and rave beyond the community.

 He lived on the edge of civilization, in that town across the sea, where pigs were raised.  He lived in a land that knew not YHWH and therefore, beyond the blessings of the Divine Creator.  He lived on the edge between life and death, out there among the tombs, hidden among the dead.

Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee to step into the world of a man who was living on the edge, just as Jesus crossed the eternal divide to step into the world of humankind who was perpetually living on the edge.

Take a moment and focus in.  Zoom in on that moment when Jesus stepped out of the boat on the other side of the sea, on the other side of the acceptable, on the other side of the land of blessing.  Focus in on that first step when Jesus, the very presence of God in our world, took that first step..  He came as the Divine Creator, the Divine Lover, the Divine Healer, the eternal bridge between our reality and God's desire.

Jesus came to see the anonymous man who was out of his right mind, raving at the furies, naked in every aspect of his tormented life, and 'living' (if you could call it that) among the dead. Jesus came to him and he was re-born.  The oppression of the Legion of demons - like the legion of Roman soldiers who ruled with an iron fist - was expelled.  His mind was released.  His tongue was released.  His body became his own once again.  Jesus stepped on that distant shore to give this man back his life.

That is all.  One man across the vast sea, living in a foreign land, experienced the total healing of every part of his life.  Then he is left behind to lead others towards this person who heals, this Son of God who gives life, this Savior who recognizes neither race or social status, but only wounded need.

In the end, the anonymous man was given two gifts: the gift of life and the gift of community.  Jesus?  Everyone asked him to leave.  They were frightened - by what?  Too much good?  Too much unknown?  Too much that was going to change?  Not sure, I just know that in the end, it was Jesus who was pushed to the edge, without community, without protection, without status.

The one who traveled to the edge to bring life was pushed to the edge yet promised life.  Whatever edge you are living on.....look for Jesus.

Caution: disciples at work

Every three years those of us who follow the Revised Common Lectionary will listen again to an unremarkable passage from the gospel of Mark, chapter 6.  It begins with tired and hungry disciples, completely skips over the miraculous feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on water, and concludes with Jesus healing all the people swarming around him.

I call it unremarkable because we usually get a good miracle, a pithy teaching, even an obscure exorcism.  With this selection of scripture we get ordinary, plain vanilla healing.  Ho hum.

But of course to those folks who live on the fringe of society, touching the fringe of Jesus' garment and experiencing the healing power of the Lord of Life was anything but Ho Hum.  It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  It was their own particular miracle, their own particular encounter with the power of the Living God. All it took was Jesus delaying his time away; pausing to teach and to walk among them, allowing them to reach out and experience the powerful presence of God in their midst.

I wonder, however, where we are in this story?  What is God's message to us in this peculiar cut and paste of Mark's gospel?  What are we supposed to do with this?

Here is one possibility.  When I was learning how to bake bread from my mother, we got to the part called 'kneeding the dough'.  It's an important step and it takes practice. My mother tipped the dough onto the generously floured surface, sprinkled flour over the top of the dough and said, "You do it like this."  After a couple turns of the dough, she put her hands on mine and we pushed and pulled and turned together until I got a rhythm.  Then I was on my own.

Later in the story Jesus will tell his disciples to care for his sheep.  Today he gave them a lesson on what that looks like.  As he walked among the needy and desperate you can almost hear him say, "You do it like this."

As followers of Jesus, we walk among our neighbors and bring with us the powerful presence of our Lord. Right?

Living on the fringe

They stand on the edge, looking over the heads of others, seeing their goal in the distance. 

They are not the majority, although they are often silent.  Pressed to the outside, on the fringe of the norm, their job pays not quite enough, their skin is too brown, their accent is off-putting, their body is misshapen.  They are the trailers on the classic bell curve, and they have little hope of ever making it to the top of the hill, to stand among the accepted and acceptable, those who don’t have to worry about living on the fringe. 

Some are anonymous – the older couple who don’t qualify for Social Security, whose health is sinking and whose mortgage has another 5 years.  The teen whose sexual reality doesn’t conform.  The father of 3 who never eats lunch otherwise his children won’t eat supper.  Some are instantly recognizable.  They wander the streets, they know the locale of every free meal in the city, they live on that street where fleas and cockroaches and violence are common.  

But they are all living on the fringe.  They live in a world of hurt where dreams have a very short shelf life and hope is a rare commodity.  They trust the promises being made by charlatan and politician and that charismatic preacher on the street.  They trust because in the end, something is better than nothing….…which is probably why those people mobbed Jesus wherever he went.  What is a 5 mile walk when, at the other end you just might be healed, you just might be fed, you just might find a bit of respite?

All they needed was to touch the fringe of his garment; whatever his power, whatever its source it could come to them through the fringe of his prayer shawl.  Maybe, just this one time, someone on the fringe could be healed by the fringe of this unknown teacher.

Just maybe.  It was worth a try.  Reaching, stretching, hoping, needing.  

What about you?  Bring back any memories?

Mark 6.30-34, 53-56

She told him the whole truth

"the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before Jesus, and told him the whole truth."  Mark 5.33



It is a story about a desperate woman.  There are a lot of stories about desperate women in the Bible; they parallel the plethora of stories about desperate women filling our news cycle.

This story is about a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years.  Beyond the natural discomfort and annoyance, her continual bleeding left her in an untenable situation with the community.  She was unwelcome until the bleeding stopped and she had ritually purified her body.  She was separated from others, and I would guess, a wee bit suspect.  Twelve years?

But she'd heard about Jesus, and sliding up behind him in a crowd she touched the hem of his garment, believing that in this way the power of healing would come to her.  It did.  Jesus noticed and he insisted on knowing who it was who touched him.

Thus the scene above.  She knelt and told him the whole truth.  The whole truth.

I wonder what she said, don't you?

To speak the truth is to confess.  We find confession uncomfortable because the truth that we are telling is generally something embarrassing or dishonorable or just plain wrong.  The truth we tell is this:  we are not perfect human beings and our actions at times cause pain and suffering to others.

We tell this truth to God not because God doesn't already know about our reality, but because there comes a point in every life when our masks need to fall away and we must own ourselves.  We fear this moment.  We fear that those who hear our truth will reject us, mock or vilify us.  I think we are afraid that we won't like ourselves very much either.  So we seek out a large enough bush to hide behind, just like Adam and Eve who said, "I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself"  Gen 3.10

She told Jesus the whole truth.  I am not sure I would know where to begin, but in the end, where I begin is less important than the very beginning of the thing itself.

Discovering ourselves in all our nakedness is not the worst thing that could happen to us.  Spending a lifetime hiding from ourselves just might be.



The whole story of this woman can be found in Mark 5.21-43

When healing is just the beginning......

It makes a great deal of sense that when  you are burdened with a physical/mental/spiritual/social problem......that absolutely no one seems to be able to solve.......that should healing come, should you experience wholeness once again........you will be filled with gratitude.  I expect for days you will find it hard to actually believe that the long wait and all the worry are over.  Before the healing, you could only look down the road one day at a time.  Now a whole future stretches out before you.  There are all kinds of possibilities.  I think this is rightly called HOPE.

Yet let us consider that the gift of healing is only the beginning.  It offers to each of us the opportunity to start again.  Now that the great burden of our broken bodies or spirits is no longer our reality, we have a chance to begin again with a new reality, and to live out that reality in new and different ways.  That is, the gift of healing is also the gift of a new tomorrow......and that tomorrow could and just maybe should be different from today.

Because after today, you will be a person who once was oppressed or imprisoned by a problem that was beyond this world's ability to solve. Now you will be a walking example of the unpredictability of grace, poured out on you and your life.  You might even call this salvation.

And you just might want to tell someone else about this miraculous, life changing, life giving experience.  You just might want to tell someone else about how it all came about.  In the case of the three people healed by Jesus in the 8th chapter of Matthew, each one just might end up telling their story of new life.....and pointing to the Jesus who made it all happen.  Those who were healed would now also be witnesses......to the salvific power of Jesus, to the joy of restoration, to the gift of unexpected healing.

Healing takes many forms:  a broken relationship restored, a disease which disappears, an invitation to an outcast, a meal for the hungry, a mind which is whole again.  Any and all of these can turn our lives in a new direction, one of gratitude but also a life of witness as well.  The verb  sodzo is Greek and is translated as 'to heal' 'to make whole' or 'to save'.  In this one word is wrapped all these notions of release from disease, wholeness of body, mind, spirit and the new life that is discovered in the end.

Healing is the beginning of a journey of salvation: new life that springs up like living water in those who have been made whole through powers unknown by mere humans.  Sure, some of that healing comes to us through modern science and practice.  That doesn't make it any less amazing, or, to think about it, leave us any less thankful.

From healing to witness.  New life springing up.  Salvation lived today.  Forgiveness that takes the broken and makes it whole.   I bet you have a story about how your life has been changed.  If we share that story with others, they just might reach out to the one who wants to heal them as well.

Am I worthy?

It is the question that nags at the deepest corner of our heart "Am I worthy?"  It is rare that you will catch an American phrasing it quite that way (it goes against our cultural grain) but when you approach someone certain that they will turn away from you, that is what you are thinking: Am I worthy?  To get an autograph?  To be chosen for the team?  To be asked to the prom?  To get the promotion?

When Jesus begins healing folks in the 8th chapter of Matthew, he encounters three people who, for one reason or another, are not considered worthy.  They are outsiders: a leper who is a Son of Abraham, a centurion soldier, and Peter's mother-in-law, in bed with a fever.  The leper has been set outside his own community because of his disease.  He is an outcast among outcasts.  The centurion is a Roman, a soldier in an occupying force, and he wants healing for a sick servant!  Then there's Peter's mother-in-law (notice we never learn her name) who was born on the wrong side of the gender divide.  These three have been found 'unworthy' by their own communities for one reason or another.

They came to Jesus because there was no where else to go.  Lepers were rarely healed; I expect the centurion would have been loathe to ask favor from a Jewish rabbi.  Every Jewish woman had heard the prayer uttered by the men, "Thank you God that I was not born a woman" (this is, in fact, an actual Jewish prayer).

It is not hard to hear these folks saying to themselves, "I am not worthy"  In fact, the centurion utters these words aloud, "I am not worthy for you to enter my house, only say the word and [the servant] shall be healed."  These are the folks that Jesus heals.  These are the ones Jesus finds worthy.

The leper, who has been separated from his family and community, can now show himself to the priest - see?  I am healed.  I am OK.  Now, I can be included once again.

The centurion has nothing to lose, it would seem.  He is asking for a servant to be healed, but I would have to imagine that this is a beloved individual for him to do this kind of leg work, humbling himself before Jesus, to receive a healing.  There may be more reasons than first imagined for him to demur from Jesus entering his house to heal the servant, but none the less, Jesus heals from a far.  Clearly this Jesus has power over powers rather than just power over people (like an officer commanding other soldiers).

Then of course there is Peter's mother-in law.  It may have been a nothing fever, and she is healed only to set up and serve the men lunch, but on this day the rabbi Jesus made her whole again.

Am I worthy?  This question echoes in the depths of our souls, for in some way, each of us is an outsider.  But not to Jesus......to Jesus we are beloved children in need of new healing.  That is the definition of grace.......and Jesus pours it out on each of us.

Disturbed by baptism

It is a courageous thing we do, baptizing our children.  Certainly all the drama is given over to the big wedding plans or possibly the selection of a college or maybe even that final act of our funeral, but none of these is quite as courageous as splashing water over the head of a powerless infant.

This is why.  Citizenship in this world is relinquished.  Even though that infant cannot take a step on their own in this world, the newly baptized steps into another realm.  With all the responsibilities that weigh heavy on parents' shoulders, they willingly take on yet another when they bring their infants to the font.  They make promises.  They are challenged to renew and refresh the promises of their own baptism.  They become this child's guide to Jesus, and life in the kingdom of God. They have set their child's feet upon the Jesus path; every day of this child's life will be a challenge to hold fast to the God who holds fast to them.

Too dramatic for you?  Or have we who watch and smile and congratulate the family simply gotten comfortable with this radical splashing of water?  Have we become deaf to the call of the Spirit?  Have we immunized ourselves against the realities of living out lives as baptized people of God?

Have we convinced ourselves that the water of baptism is our insurance for another time and not the starting point of living in this time and this place?  Have we turned baptism into another Hallmark moment and stripped it of its most powerful reality......that we are now joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus.....and that is never 'business as usual.'

Once upon a time a faithful servant of God poured water over your head in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and in disturbing the water simultaneously disturbed your life.  The very word life has shifted in meaning: it no longer means 'whatever you can eke out for yourself each day' but now means a connection with the Divine Creator, a shift from 'me' to 'we' and the ever present possibility of life being formed in the midst of death.  Our vision shifts from an image in our mirror to encompass the whole of humanity and parts of the world we will never glimpse with our own eyes.  Our theme song shifts from "I did it my way" to "I love to tell the story".

The water of baptism becomes our hearing aid, enabling us to hear the cries of the stranger caught in the grips of this world's forces, crushed by the weight of an
other's oppression.  The water of baptism is our physical therapy, keeping our joints well oiled as we step out into this world to bring light into dark corners and disturb evil in its work.

The water of baptism leads to a disturbed life:  now that we have tasted the wholeness of life that comes to us through and in Jesus, we are disturbed when life is diminished, locked up or out, refused or denied.  Then we are called to step into those places and disturb evil at its work.  We are baptizing warriors: warriors of life and not death, warriors who serve others rather than be served themselves.

Jesus asked the man by the pool of Bethsaida, "Do you want to be made well?" and just possibly he hesitated to answer because he wondered if he was ready .....ready to be a warrior for life and a bringer of light.

Are you ready?  As we open our eyes with each morning's light, let's allow this question to shape our day "Do you want to be made well?"  Jesus is ready .....are you?

Do you want to be made well?

It seems a straightforward enough question:  "Do you want to be made well?"

This anonymous man had been waiting by that pool at Bethsaida for 38 years, waiting for a healing.  The rumor around the pool was this:  every so often an angel stirred up the water of the usually quiet pool, and the first person into the water received healing.  Unfortunately, this man had no one to help him into the pool and, well, someone always got there ahead of him.  So, 38 years later, he was still waiting.

.....which would, to me, make his answer to Jesus' question all the more obvious.  "Do you want to be made well?"  Of course!  Finally!  Thank God!  Yes, please!  Any of these would do.

Yet that's not what we get.  All of this set me to wondering why he would hesitate to embrace the opportunity, even if it turned out to prove false.  Why wouldn't he want to be healed?

First, he would have to go home.  The pool was a place for healing, not hanging out with some friends.  His place there would disappear.  In fact, the only place that had been home for him for 38 years would no longer be his.  That might cause a person to pause.

Second, we have no idea if he had a home to return to.  If he had truly had no one to help him into the water for 38 years, perhaps he had no family at all waiting for his return.  Perhaps they had forgotten him long ago, wrote him off as a burden.

Furthermore, would they even recognize him?  Up until this moment his identity was as the paralyzed man who lived next to the pool at Bethsaida.  If he picks up his mat and goes home, well, he could easily just blend into the crowd, no one special, identity gone.  And now that begging would no longer be an option for him, he would have to get a job.  Like being a farm hand.  Labor.  Hard labor.  After 38 years of nothing.

Perhaps it isn't so difficult to imagine his hesitancy.

Our Maundy Thursday confession includes this same idea when we say  "I ask for healing, Lord, but in the end, I prefer my sin to your healing."  Or, to state it another way, 'rather the often uncomfortable life I have to the unknown comforts of a new and unfamiliar life.'...like the life we are called in to in baptism, where the water is disturbed by the Holy Spirit, wholeness is ours as a gift from God, and our lives are forever disturbed.

Healing would disturb this man's life.  All the years he waited and watched for the water of the pool to be disturbed so he could chase after healing. Now that healing was simply offered to  him perhaps he had time to consider how much it would disturb his life.

I wonder if we are stuck in an old, paralyzed life, afraid to truly grab hold of a life of wholeness offered by God in Jesus.

Can't see beyond the border.....

It shouldn't surprise us that there was some kind of competition between Capernaum and Nazareth.  We humans are always comparing ourselves to one another and, of course, wanting to come out on top.  We have this terrible tendency to treat everything in life......even life itself.....as some kind of contest.  (That, in fact, might be a good definition for original sin.  I'll think about it.)

This, often hidden, tendency to want to be the best pops right up when (after an outpouring of the Holy Spirit) Jesus takes on God's mission as his mission - to mend and heal the world, i.e. "to preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives."

There was amazement that day.  The Gospel of Luke tells us so.  I also think there was that giddy kind of nervous laughter mixed with joy that occurs when something GOOD and TOTALLY UNEXPECTED comes your way.  Wow!

And, just think.  It's Joseph's boy.  One of our own.  From here in Nazareth.  Wow!  This is going to be something.

And it will be something.....something for the entire cosmos.....those who live in Nazareth and those who live in Capernaum.  Those who follow Torah and those who do not.  Those who do dastardly deeds and those who are faithful and obedient.  Jesus' mission is to mend and heal the entire world.  Not just Nazareth. Not just you.  Not just me.

Seems reasonable to you and me, but apparently there were a bunch in the crowd who were truly unhappy with this turn of events.  Jesus was their homeboy.  He owed it to his village to take care of them - if not exclusively, then at least well ahead of everyone else.  Otherwise, how are we going to one-up Capernaum, the next village over?

Healing belongs here, they might say.  Charity begins at home.  Take care of our own people first.  Use your talents and gifts and time right here.  If anything is left over for those other folks, fine.  But us first.

Which of course is another definition for original sin.  Us first; them maybe.

Know why I call it original sin?  Because we all do it.  Perhaps not all the time; but we all do it.  We all secretly believe that there is only a limited amount of Jesus to go around.  Forgiveness is limited.  Healing is limited.  Reconciliation is limited.  Heaven is limited.

So we will build walls, put up fences, set up check points, have secret passwords, stare down the outsiders, stand our ground when a stranger appears at our pew, never wear our name tag (because everyone knows us) nor introduce ourselves to new people (because it is their job to get to know us)....and a thousand, thousand other things to keep US and THEM separate.

Of course, Jesus gets lost in all of this.  The Jesus who loved all in the face of hate and forgave all in the face of death.  The Jesus who died at our hands yet blesses our hands again and again.  The Jesus who invites YOU to the table as he moves in this world, mending and healing and loving.  The Jesus who is Good News for us.

I can't decide if I should cry at my own stupidity or rejoice at Jesus' overwhelming love.  Or maybe both.

That, and try to refrain from building walls.