God's work--our play

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

I think it had something to do with long hours behind the wheel on winding coastal roads, maybe in combination with sleeping on the ground, but about three days into our recent family camping trip I got a pain in the back.  The muscles along the left side of my rib cage and up under my shoulder blade just kind of tightened up into a knot, and the stiffness went all the way up into my neck so that I could hardly turn my head.  Fortunately, part of my wife’s vacation planning included back-to-back appointments for her and me with a massage therapist.  Meg’s mother and stepfather retired to Ashland, Oregon almost 20 years ago, which was where our trip ended up, and on our visits over the years we have been back a number of times to see this particular practitioner, who offers a very subtle but powerful kind of healing touch that unwinds muscular tension in the body from within.

When I got to my feet after an hour on her table, I had not received a miraculous cure.  The pain wasn’t entirely gone, but there was less of it, and I had regained much greater range of motion.   I could breathe more deeply, and my body felt lighter, more open and balanced than it had, not just since before the acute back pain began, but more than it had for quite a long time before that.  And as I was standing there, experiencing my relief, the massage therapist pointed out something, something I already knew.  She led into it by asking me if I spend a lot of time on the computer.  And I said that I did, and she said she thought so, because long hours at the computer can exacerbate a posture which is stooped, with the shoulders slumped forward, and the chin and neck kind of thrust out. 

She recommended that I do what I can to prevent this from getting worse, because over time that curvature in the cervical spine might start to impinge on the nerves and lead to numbness and tingling in my arms and hands.   She suggested taking frequent breaks from the computer, and getting up out of my chair to stand for a time in what she called the “Superman postures.”  [Demonstrates].   Anyway, over the last couple of weeks I have added doing my Superman to yoga practice, and sitting meditation, and surfing, and the other things I have already been doing to counteract my tendency to slump.  Because, as I said, it not like that massage therapist was telling me something I didn’t already know.

You see, I had this tendency long before I ever started working at a computer.  My father has it, too.  Maybe I inherited it in my DNA.  Then again, maybe it is not so much a matter of biology, but of mental and emotional posture and way of being in the world.  After all, these things that get passed down in families, too.  It is common nowadays to speak about our bodies in the language of mechanics and engineering.  But anyone who has ever lain down to sleep and had a dream knows that, left to itself, the natural language of the body is image and story.  So it has occurred to me over the years to think of my posture not simply in physical or medical terms, but also as a symbol.  Maybe I, like my father, have a tendency to take on too many burdens, to be overly conscientious and responsible, to carry, as it were, the weight of the world on my shoulders.

In any case, I’m not so much interested in talking to you about my own physical and mental problems, as in making a more general point, which is that the state of our souls affects, at least to some extent, the shape of our bodies.  And recent research in fields from neurobiology to cross-cultural anthropology to clinical psychology have shown the profound connection between mental and physical patterns.  But this is one of those things we don’t really need scientists to tell us is true.  I think for most of us it just makes intuitive sense, and our ancestors understood it perfectly.  So when the Gospel of Luke describes a woman in the synagogue who is bent over and cannot stand up to her full height, Jesus has no trouble seeing a spiritual cause for her condition.  He lays his hands on her and tells her she has been set free.  Which would be a strange choice of words if her stooped posture were a sign of a structural problem with her spine, or lack of core strength.  But for Jesus it is bondage inflicted on her by Satan, the Spirit who accuses and oppresses human beings and denies them the full, free flourishing of their lives.  After eighteen years of carrying that monkey on her back, Jesus drives it away in a moment, and this is what enables that women to stand up straight and tall.  

And I think this connection between body and spirit is the key to understanding the larger context of today’s Gospel story, and why acts of healing have such a central place in the ministry of Jesus.  Because this is not just a story about the miraculous healing of a woman who could not stand up straight.  It is also part of the larger arc of story in the Gospel of Luke about the intensifying controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees.  It is one of no fewer than three incidents in that larger story where Jesus gets into trouble for healing someone in the synagogue on the Sabbath day.  And it would be easy, and even traditional, to interpret these incidents as conflicts over the Jewish law, and how rigidly scrupulous to be in observing it.  But in my reading of today’s story, it is really not about that.  What it is about is what Jesus is really doing when he heals people, and what that has to do with the loving and redeeming purpose of God. 

When the Pharisees look at Jesus laying hands on someone and curing them, they see a person doing work.  He is like a masseur or a chiropractor providing therapeutic services to a client.  He may not be getting paid, but he’s receiving other benefits, such as gaining another follower and enhancing his reputation.  And he is doing this work in the synagogue, on the very day when it is forbidden to practice one’s trade or do anything to advance one’s personal interest in the world.    It’s a prohibition that is rooted, as you know, in the Jewish story of creation.  It is a way of honoring the creator God, who, after finishing the work of making the world, rested.  God gave us every seventh day to cease all striving to improve things, a day simply to be thankful for the life we already have, and to worship the one who gave it to us. 

But what the Pharisees fail to understand is that when Jesus helps that woman cast off her spiritual burden and stand up straight and tall, so she can breathe freely and be fully alive, he is not merely doing a job on behalf of a particular individual.  He is making a proclamation to the entire community gathered in that place, of what their Sabbath rest is really meant to be about.  It is a continuation of the same proclamation he made at the very beginning of his public ministry, when he stood up in the synagogue on the Sabbath day and read from the scroll of the prophet, “the Spirit has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, freedom to the captive, liberation to the oppressed, to announce the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Jesus heals in the synagogue on the Sabbath to remind us, that the Sabbath God wants to share with us is perfect rest, perfect joy, perfect peace—and as long as there is even one person in our midst still burdened by oppression, want, loneliness, fear, or grief, God’s work is not done.   

Which is not to say that we should never stop to rest, to celebrate a Sabbath.  But it does give that rest a significantly different meaning.  The Sabbath that Jesus proclaims is not simply the enjoyment of work completed; it is also, and maybe more importantly, anticipation of work fulfilled.  The followers of Jesus gathers for worship on the first day of the week, not the last.  Here we rest and give thanks for the blessings we’ve received, but we also take in nourishment, in word and sacrament, to refresh us and renew our strength for another week of carrying on Jesus’ work.   Now, I say “work,” but if it’s really the work of Jesus, it’s more like play.  Because it’s not our personal responsibility to fix the world—that is a burden none of us can bear.  No, our work, like Jesus’, is neither more nor less than this—to tell stories, and create images, and act out symbols that proclaim what God is doing to complete the new creation of the world.        

    

Conversations with demons

1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Psalm 42 and 43
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

Last Sunday I came to church unaware that a man had opened fire the night before in a nightclub in Orlando.  But when one of our members offered a prayer at the 10 o’clock service, I gathered from what he said that there had been yet another mass shooting in America.  On the way home to change my clothes for the parish picnic that afternoon, I tuned in National Public Radio, which was airing a press conference, and a special agent of the FBI was speaking about what was known and still unknown about the perpetrator, and the victims, and the crime scene.  But over the days that have followed, as more details have come out, the picture they draw of the killer, Omar Mateen, of his personality and history, and possible motivations, has become more confused and contradictory, not less.

So while people have come together all around the world to grieve the victims and show solidarity with the survivors, and demand that something be done to prevent such things from happening again, it is still unclear why he did what he did, or what might have prevented him from doing it.  Some have portrayed Omar Mateen as an agent of Islamist terror groups, and it appears that he declared, on more than one occasion, his own allegiance to one such group or another.  But he was all over the map in terms of which organization he claimed to belong to, and the FBI has no evidence to connect him with any of them.   As his ex-wife and past associates go public with their stories, Mateen seems more like an overgrown version of the deranged children who attacked Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary than like a calculating political operative.  His choice of targets seems more reflective of his hatred of other ethnic minority groups or his violent homophobia, both of which he was known to harbor, than any religious ideology hostile to the U.S. Government.

The result of this all this strange and contradictory information has been to leave me feeling confused.   But maybe, along grief and outrage, confusion is an appropriate response.  If only Omar Mateen had remained simply confused—about his own national identity, and his sexuality, about the politics of war in the Middle East, and the politics of race in America—if only he’d remained confused, 49 people whose lives he brutally cut short would be celebrating Father’s Day today.  But he couldn’t bear to stay there anymore.  The demons of his anger and hate and despair finally eclipsed what remained of his natural humanity, and he became certain.  He became certain of what he had to do, and if there is one thing that lends itself to evil it is when anger, and hate, and despair acquire certainty. 

In the welter of maddening emotions and confusing desires, amid the muddled identities, the babble of angry voices and conflicting claims to the truth that fill this mixed-up, crazy world, one certainty pierces through the noise with a bell-like clarity.  One path offers simplicity and promises to tie up all the loose ends into a tidy little knot.  One solution entices us to give up on the long, slow work of healing what is damaged and reconciling what is estranged, to give up on the vigil of patient suffering that watches in hope of transforming grace.  It is the certain knowledge that if we are helpless to deal with life then we can always deal death. 

We don’t know, and may never know, what tormented Omar Mateen, what agonies he endured in his own deranged mind—we only know that, when he was unable any longer to bear the contradictions of his own existence, he chose to cancel them out with an outburst of pure nihilism.   He chose the path of those who make an idol of their own nothingness, and force others to worship at its shrine.   Having lost his own real life, he turned instead to his madness, and gave it a hideous reality by destroying the lives of others.

But right there Omar fell victim to a lie, one of the oldest lies there is.  Because hate and violence do not create meaning where there was none.  Whatever language we dress them up in—the language of religion or politics, of personal heroism, of grim necessity or the just demand for retribution—acts of violence corrode the meaning of that language until at last it has none.  The clarity and resolution such acts seek to bring about is false and temporary.  In the long run they only add to the helplessness and confusion of the world.   That is why it is so disturbing to see public figures and religious leaders in our country trying to rationalize what Omar Mateen has done.  They might rationalize it negatively, as an act characteristic of all Muslims, or all immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.  Or they might rationalize it positively, as a divine sentence of judgement on the LGBTQ community.  But either way, these bids to certify the meaning of the meaningless only mimic the madness of the killer. 

In today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke Jesus meets a man who, like Omar Mateen, has lost contact with reality.  The collective forces of meaninglessness have so colonized this man’s mind that it is as if he is already a corpse.  He goes around naked and lives in the tombs.   But Jesus is not frightened of this man; he understands that he is still a human being and it is not too late for him to be saved.   And Jesus also knows that in order to save him, he needs to differentiate the true human person from the spirit of violence, madness, and death with whom he has become identified.   This spirit tries to keep up the lie, pleading “I beg you Jesus, Son of the Most High God, do not torment me," as if the oppressor were the victim; as if the man himself fears the pain of being set free.  But the spirit does not deceive Jesus, and he asks it “What is your name?”  “Legion,” is the reply, which is not the name of a human being, but of a collective entity.  Literally, it is the name of a unit of 5 to 6,000 soldiers, the embodiment of the murderous certainty of the Roman Imperial state.

Now it is clear who Jesus is really talking to, and the language of the story stops referring to “the man” and turns to speaking of “the demons.”  But what I think is most extraordinary about this moment is that the conversation continues.  Jesus, who has the power to cast the demons out at any time in any way he chooses, listens to them first.  He lets the demons speak, and they reveal to him what it is they are really afraid of—which is that they will return to the abyss of non-existence.  And, of course, their fears are well-founded.  Jesus allows the demons to go out into the pigs, knowing that there is no abiding place for them in this world outside of the human imagination.  It is too bad for the pigs that they must be the tools of the demons’ self-destruction, but what remains behind is the man, once again clothed, and in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. 

The answer that Jesus gives to the madness of the world is a path that leads away from hatred and violence.  It begins where it ends, with the truth that every human being is a child of the one that Jesus called “Father.”    It steers clear of simple and seductive certainties about other people, even those as frightening as the madman in the tombs or Omar Mateen.  If we rely instead on faith in the loving-kindness of God, we can learn to differentiate between the demons of collective hate and self-destruction and the human beings they have taken control of.  We can discern the living persons who still, in their essential nature, bear the image of God.  Perhaps, with love, those persons can be freed, and called back from the realm of death. 

I’m not saying that this is easy to do.  It means giving up our naiveté about evil; becoming far wiser than we are now about what it really is, and how it really works to destroy from within human lives and entire societies.  But as Christians we carry a unique and extraordinary promise to the world—that if we have the courage to dialogue with demons, to ask them their name, to listen with clear-eyed detachment to their lies, we will find that the Son of God has mastery over them.  We will see their downfall with our own eyes, as they return to the nothingness out of which they came.  And into the place where there was torment, insanity, and death, by the grace of God, there will come healing and peace.

Saving bodies

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Psalm 130
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

When I wake up in the morning I go to the bathroom, and I wash my face and hands.  I remove the mouth guard that protects my teeth from clenching during the night, and clean it with a special brush and put it away.  I go into the kitchen and fill a glass with water and have a good long drink.  I take a few minutes for my morning prayers, and then I get back to tending to needs of my body.  I heat water to cook oatmeal and for tea.  Then I go into the living room and roll out my yoga mat and stretch and breathe to loosen the stiffness and soreness of the night.  I turn off the oatmeal pot and cover it and go take a shower.  I wash my hair and shave.  I brush my hair and dress.  I eat my breakfast, brush my teeth, grab my wallet, my phone, and my keys, put on my shoes, and then I’m ready. 

I’m ready to go out into the world, to assume my public persona, to go to work, to be the person others know and expect me to be.   But in order to be him, I first have to care for my body.  I say “my body” because that’s the way we conventionally talk, but that makes it sound like this body is a thing that I own, like a hat or a car, as if there is a separate “I” who possesses it, when the truth of my experience is that I am my body.  And it’s also true that even something as undeniably my own as being this particular body is not left to me to negotiate in private; whether I want it to be or not, “my” body is public property.  Other people define and interpret my body. 

They evaluate me, according to cultural norms—by sex, age, height, and weight; by the color and texture of my skin, eyes, and hair; by the tenor of my voice and dexterity of my movements, by the functionality, or lack thereof, of my organs and limbs, and brain.  These are all keys for classifying me as this or that kind of person and for interpreting my behavior.  Am I beautiful or ugly?  Menacing or friendly?  Esteemed or shameful?  Am I normal and able and healthy and well, or am I somehow other, something less than these?  These are questions we don’t always get to answer for ourselves, and the answers that we get from others profoundly shape how we relate to ourselves.  They can turn our bodies into prisons, where, quite apart from any biological necessity, we are sentenced to humiliation, isolation, or even death.

The Gospel of Mark is mostly a series of Jesus’ encounters with aspects of human existence that we would rather not have to deal with.  In many cases these are stories of the suffering of a body, one possessed by a demon or afflicted with disease.  But these bodies don’t simply have a medical condition, because their physical or mental suffering is compounded, is multiplied, by social indifference, by prevailing attitudes of suspicion, disdain or fear.  Public interpretation devalues the suffering of these bodies and gives them scant comfort or remedy. 

Today’s Gospel story is about the healing of this kind of body.  It is really two stories, two healings, with the second sandwiched into the middle of the first, and by putting them together the Gospel writer makes them comment on each other.  In some ways the story about the little girl is the more dramatic—after all, Jesus raises her from the dead, but it the other encounter that is the meat in the sandwich.  The protagonist of this story is a woman whose body has betrayed her with an abnormal, continual menstrual flow.  Needless to say, this has made her unable to conceive and bear children, denying her a woman’s primary source of honor and value in the eyes of her society.

But more than that, the religious laws in the Book of Leviticus say that this bleeding makes her ritually impure—she is excluded from the worship of God in the temple.  Her impurity is considered contagious; you can catch it from contact with her body or her clothing or even a place where she has sat or lain down, and it takes time and special ceremonies to cleanse that impurity away.  She once had been a woman of means, because the story tells how she spent her money on painful and ineffective treatments from doctors until it was all gone.  By the time that she meets Jesus, she has suffered this condition, and the status of pariah that goes along with it, for twelve long and lonely years. 

Which are all the years that the young daughter of the leader of the synagogue has been alive, and the contrast between their stories is instructive.  When the little girl needs help it is her father who goes and falls at the feet of Jesus to plead with him to come.  And this is the way it is supposed to be done.  A woman in the ancient world was supposed to avoid interaction with men she didn’t know.  She kept to the company of women, and to the private sphere of her home, and it was the responsibility of her male relations, her father, brother, uncle, or husband, to  advocate for what she needed in the public realm.  But the woman with the bleeding has no one to plead her case.  So she has to take matters, quite literally, into her own hands. 

The initiative in the story is all hers, it is her faith that if she could just touch Jesus’ cloak, she could be healed.  And she does touch it, and at once she feels in her body that she has been made well.  Power passes from body to body, but it is not the contagion of impurity passing from her body to Jesus’, but a healing charge of spirit that flows from his to hers.  Jesus’ feels it, too, a touch different from all the other hands grasping at him in the crowd.  He stops, demanding to know who it was who touched him in that way.  And though she falls before him trembling with fear, he tells her she is no longer alone, no longer without a patron, that now she has an advocate and protector, for he calls her “Daughter”, and says her faith has made her well.  

The word that means “made well” can also be translated “saved”, and this is a story of what it means to be saved by Jesus.  It’s a salvation that has everything to do with faith, and that shouldn’t surprise us.  I’m sure we’ve all heard enough about being saved by grace through faith to know that’s what Christians are supposed to believe about salvation, even if we’re not sure exactly what it means.  But what might be less obvious or expected is that this is the salvation of bodies.  It is God’s presence in a human body, the body of Jesus, that the woman in the story puts her faith in.  In faith she reaches out to touch that salvation, and it comes with the healing of her body.

But it goes further than that; it is the salvation of her whole person, of a body that is not only inner  and private experience but also public belonging.  Jesus’ salvation replaces the old, oppressive and divisive cultural codes with a new and universal language of identity, so that everyone who has faith in him is a new person in a new society, a daughter or a son in the family of God, a citizen of the Kingdom of God.  This salvation is what St. Paul writes about in the Letter to the Galatians, of baptism into Christ that makes us one--“no longer Jew or Greek, no longer slave or free, no longer male or female.” 

This week a scant majority of the United States Supreme Court, added that we are also no longer straight and gay.  Old cultural norms that privilege certain kinds of bodies and denigrate others continue to fall away before the gospel’s universal affirmation of human freedom, responsibility, and love.  This is a vision of the salvation, not only of persons, but of the world.  In the church we have a name for this world, this community in which every body has a unique but equally valuable place.  We call it a body—the Body of Christ.