February 25, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Joel 2:12-18 + Psalm 51 + 2 Corinthians 5: 20-6:2 + Matthew 8:1-6,16-18

 It is a season of love that we begin today: A season that celebrates love’s greatest gift, forgiveness. The forty days we begin now comes as an opportunity to remember, to recover, to restore, and heal what ever in us remains broken by sins of pride, greed, laziness, envy. How we use these days will be the measure of how rooted these sins have become in us, and of how strongly we have grasped the hand of grace that would lift us up.

We have heard often enough the command of Jesus, “Rise”. Last Sunday, the week before, and all through the Gospels, he speaks to the lame and the lost, to the dead and the doubtful: “Rise up.” It is a command and call to us all. Rise up from what is false and selfish, shallow and empty. Rise up from what can never make you happy or from what can never bring you peace. Rise up from greed and all the power abused that oppresses and dims the light of God’s glory. Rise up from laziness that keeps you from prayer and worship – from Mass, sacrifice, and service. Rise up from the jealous ways of a competitive world that destroys human dignity and life itself.

“Return to me.” says God in the words of the prophet; not next week, next month, or next year; not when you have time or when you feel like it; but now. Today. This Lent.

Last Sunday’s prophetic reading said this: “Remember not the things of the past, the things of long ago. See I am doing something new.” That prophet along with Joel today announces what can happen for those who will rise up. If this season is about forgiveness, then it is about forgetting the things of the past. At the heart of forgiveness is the willingness not to drag the hurts of the past into the moment and the future. The forgiveness we seek from God must be the forgiveness we enjoy with each other; and “enjoy” is just the right word. For what greater Joy can there be than in knowing that what we have done is the past will not be remembered, drug up again, thrown in our faces, and used to humiliate and destroy us.

In this hope lies the spirit of this season. Not a time for gloom and doom, sad faces and sorrow, reluctant alms with pocket change.  This is a time and a season for greatness: our greatness because of God’s greatness. It is a time for hope and for a Joy that will explode and burst into flame come Easter night. A Joy that can stand in darkness with a flame that dispels all fear. A Joy that springs from sacrifices made out of love, from fasting that leads to feasting, and from prayer that will soon proclaim: “He Is Risen”.  With the sure and certain knowledge that so shall we rise again. And today we renew and restore the kind of life worthy of those will shall surely rise.

February 15, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46 + Psalm 32 + 1 Corinthians 10: 31-11:1 + Mark 1:40-45

“Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and he touched him.” If you had been there, you would have recoiled in shock, gasped, and some of us might have run away! This is astounding, unheard of, forbidden, and frightening! The holy, the healthy one touched the unclean one. Think of this! Do not take it for granted. You may have heard and read this story 500 times; but every time, if you get it, you cannot help but shudder, wonder, and be amazed. Simple as it is, this story is the summary of the whole gospel message. It’s not about leprosy. It’s not about Moses. It’s not about begging. It is about compassion, a hand stretched out, and a touch. This is about the Incarnation. It is about the meaning of Jesus Christ, his presence, his life, his mission, and it is about what happens to us and what we must do because of it.

It is the touch that matters. It is about the touch of God who through his only son responded in Godly compassion to our condition of alienation and brokenness and did more than touch our human nature. He entered into us: into our social leprosy of polarized racism, into our alienation, loneliness, and brokenness. This is compassion at its best. He did not look at us, wonder about our condition, or say: “Isn’t that a shame.” He touched it and in doing so, he became what he touched. As we shall soon remember in Lent, he became broken, alienated, and untouchable as even his friends fled from him in fear, doubt, and disappointment afraid that they might be associated or connected with him.

Notice in the last verses of this story what happens to him. Mark says: “It was impossible for him to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places.” It would be easy to think that this was because he drew such a crowd; but I would like you to consider that it might have been because he became what he touched – a kind of leper who could not enter the towns openly and remained outside in deserted places. In terms of those times, by touching that man, Jesus became unclean and would have been required to observe certain customs and rituals of purification.

I would like to propose to you that what this story is really suggesting is that Jesus traded places with that man who knelt before him. Jesus, the clean and holy one, took upon himself that man’s infirmity in order to free that man from everything that kept him from life and the relationships that nurtured his life. This is the Good News we preach. This is the Gospel, the whole story in five verses.

Because our wholeness and healing is the will of God, we have been touched and immediately made clean; at least in theory and theology. But, what about in reality? If it were really true, our likeness to the man in the story would go further. If it were really true, we would be a people who would “publicize the whole matter”, as Mark put it. At this point, we go deeper into this story to discover that it does not just tell us something about Jesus, his life and his mission; but it says something about us as well.

The living Word of God is not simply repeating stories about ancient times. The living Word of God continues to reveal what God is doing today. Divine Compassion still sees our need and still wills that we be “clean” so to speak. We are a people who are touched by the hand of God, a God who would trade places with us just to make us whole. But who talks about this? Who lives every day as though they were touched by God? Who lives in recognition that everyone around is touched by God? Who lives with the conviction that in compassion God has traded places with those around us? The fact is, and the Gospel affirms that when do live this way, people will be coming to Jesus from everywhere. Until they do because of our testimony and example, we might just as well stay outside in deserted places, and feeling as though we might be the first sign that we have not yet come and knelt before Jesus so that he can reach out and touch us with the wonder of divine compassion.

February 8, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Job 7: 1-4, 6-7 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 9 16-19, 22-23 + Mark 1:29-39

Those silly apostles! They are all excited, and so easily impressed. You can almost feel their mood as they go chasing out to that “deserted place.” Mark tells us that it was “early before dawn” that Jesus had gone out there. If we were as familiar with scripture images and language as we ought to be, our minds would have snapped to attention at that phrase, because it is the same words and the same image as Easter morning when some women went seeking the tomb “early before dawn” only to find it empty. So, Mark with his attention to detail has now in just these ten verses put us in the context of the resurrection because just verses before the verb he uses to describe what Jesus does for Peter’s mother-in-law is the resurrection verb: “raise up.” Remember, this is just the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. He wants us to reflect upon this incident in light of the resurrection which is the whole point of writing the Gospel to begin with.

Yet there are those apostles never quite putting two and two together. My guess is that they pursued Jesus feeling very important. After all, they knew where he was! They were his friends! Suddenly these no-body fishermen are important. They have access to power, and so they pretend to be the great facilitators. “Everyone is looking for you!” they say. Can’t you just hear how impressed they are? They think that it’s all about the crowds: the bigger the crowd the greater the success. It’s all in the numbers they are thinking, while Mark must have smiled as he concludes the Gospel with no one left but a handful: no crowd, no one pursuing Jesus, in fact, even these apostles who are so easily impressed are no where to be found when reality hits.

“What is this reality?” we ought to ask. What is it Jesus is revealing here and why is it that the demons of earlier verses are hushed in the face of such power? Perhaps it is because this is not about power but rather about service. Perhaps it is because this is not about what Jesus can do, but about what God expects us all to do. I have come to believe that Jesus demands that the demons keep quiet because they keep pointing to him, making him the focus of attention, and thereby making it more difficult for Jesus to make his point that we must go and do likewise. To whatever extent we have bought into the thinking of these demons, they have been successful. Spectator Christians are the demons success story. Excusing ourselves from doing what Jesus does because he was the “Son of God” is exactly what the demons are out to accomplish. It puts a stop to the work of God in this world.

This story is not about power. It is about service. It is about seeing what needs to be done, and doing it. Notice that this miracle happens inside Peter’s home. There is no one there to see it, no one there to impress. It happens privately because there is human need that Jesus sees and responds to. Miracles are not great demonstrations of divine power performed to stir up crowds of the curious. They are the moments when one human being sees the need of another and quietly responds to that need with the gifts that have. What is more impressive here, Jesus who crosses a room and holds the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law or the mother-in-law who gets off a sick bed to take care of guests in her home? I’m not so sure – perhaps both actions are what this is all about.

One thing is certain. Nothing Jesus did was for crowds in spite of how impressed the apostles seem to be by their growing numbers. Jesus knows that the crowds are going to be gone when what he wishes to reveal and teach becomes clear: a message of service, sacrifice, forgiveness, and love. Even today these things do not draw crowds even of the curious. None the less, this is what he has to say to us and what he will teach us. Eventually the apostles do catch on, and the hope is that we shall as well:

catch on to the truth that what is recorded in this Gospel is not here to amaze us, impress us, or excite us. It is not here to prove the divinity or the power of Christ nearly as much as it is to point to what can happen when one person does what ever there is in their power to ease the suffering of another human being.

That is miraculous and it is sure sign of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

February 1, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK

Deuteronomy 18:15-20 + Psalm 95 + 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 + Mark 1:21-28

The “amazement” is what I want you to reflect upon with me this morning. It occurs again and again in this gospel. If we fail to reflect upon this amazement and pass over it thinking that power is always amazing. The Word of God falls on deaf ears. There are things that amaze us all the time: good and bad. Watching a lift-off for a trip to the space station is amazing. Watching the power of a tornado even from a distance is amazing. The disciples and people all around Galilee are not amazed at the “power” of Jesus. It is not the violent casting out of an unclean spirit that amazes these people.

Not unlike our own times, the response of these people to evil or to anything that might endanger their holiness was avoidance. They simply did not deal with it. They avoided it. So, what amazes them first of all is that Jesus did not do so. The authority of the past told them to avoid the evil, “pretend it isn’t there” is the suggestion. “Stay away, look the other way, and everything will be fine.” And so, in some ways, things only got worse. Do not miss the detail that this unclean spirit is inside the synagogue!

The holy place is defiled! There is a subtle and fascinating detail in this story. It takes place in a holy place at a holy time: synagogue and Sabbath. Holiness is going to confront evil in a new way, and that’s amazing.

A new authority suggests that holiness is not possible by ignoring evil, pretending it isn’t there or by looking the other way; and I am not talking about evil in someone else. This is about how one attains to holiness within themselves. If it is not just about clean pot and pans, observing the correct religious diet, and the other minute details of the Jewish Law, neither is about avoiding unclean spirits. Holiness is about getting it out. It is about silencing the tempting voice of evil not pretending it isn’t there. This is amazingly new not just back then but today as well.

We have become experts at denial. We have denied ourselves into a national and world-wide economic crisis. We have denied the seductive voice of violence to the point that this evil has entered the holy place of our homes. We have avoided facing the evil of individualism and isolation while the unclean spirit of poverty and sickness lurks all around us spoiling our uneasy peace. We have made boundaries where there ought to be none setting ourselves apart through racism and all kinds of fears and suspicions and then transgressed boundaries with sex and exploitation where there ought to be respect.

A new authority is speaking these days, says Mark. It is an authority that does not allow lesser beings to harm those God loves. That authority says: “Get out!” and it does taking with it the pain it has caused. The Jesus of today’s Gospel is not a “play it safe” authority, and “playing it safe” is not the style of his disciples. Again and again, he names evil and he demands that it shut up and get out. Our comfortable accommodation of evil within ourselves will not bring us to holiness no restore the innocence of baptismal experience. We may to hit the floor, so to speak. We may end up being cast down; but if it brings us to holiness, to salvation, to justice, and to the peace of God’s Kingdom, then that would appear to be what is happening here.

It is amazing what can happen when we cease denial, avoiding, and pretending in order to embrace the kind of change, conversion, and holiness to which Jesus invites us all.