A Reflection for XVI Pentecost St.
Gorge's Church, Engelhard, NC
September 9, 2018 Thomas E Wilson,
Visiting Supply
Being a Balm in Gilead
There are many ways to
approach Bible stories and it is best to look at the stories from
several different ways because a good story is like a diamond, which
when we turn it we see other dimensions; every time you really look
at it, there is more there. The story does not change but I have and
the world has and I cannot just pull the old view out of mothballs,
but I am compelled to encounter it again.
The Lectionary, the
schedule of the lessons for each Sunday, is based on a three year
cycle. I went to seminary in the fall of 1981 so I am beginning my
37th year of studying the lessons for each week and this
would be my 14th time I have looked at this Gospel lesson
from Mark as a lesson for this Sunday of the year. Over the years, I
have translated it, I have borrowed insights from others who for over
2000 years tried to come to grips with it. I have interpreted it from
a theological, sociological, historical, literary, spiritual and
philosophical; you name it I did it. But today I approach this story
about a parent coming to Jesus and begging for healing for a daughter
as a parent.
St. Ignatius Loyola
suggested in his Spiritual Exercises that
we can by an act of imagination enter into the person of a character
in the story and feel what it is like to be in that story from the
Inside Out rather than from the Outside In, so that it becomes an
experience of our intuition rather than from our intellect, from our
body instead of our brain, having the word become flesh in our lives.
Seventeen days ago Shanon,
my 48 year old daughter, who lives in Colorado, was sitting in the
living room rocking chair, on a normal day after her husband had
taken their 13 year old son to school and then gone to work, Shanon
's heart stopped and she became unconscious. Later, we do not know
how long, Luke, their 16 year old son found her unresponsive and
called 911 and under their direction performed CPR on her until the
medics arrived and took her to the hospital eight blocks away. I flew
out to Colorado the next day joining her mother, her husband, her two
sons with multitude of their friends in flooding the ICU unit with
concerns, thoughts, love and presence, besieging whatever Gods and
powers we believed in with prayers to find a way of healing.
As she was in her coma and
when we were alone I would talk with her. I made a joke that as a
preacher I was used to talking with people who did not seem to be
paying attention. I prayed, I recited Psalms, I sang songs, one of
them was an African American spiritual, “There is a Balm in Gilead”
which I asked Clare, your organist, to play as your sequence hymn for
today. it comes from a verse in Jeremiah where, in his frustration
for his country that has just lost its way, the prophet cries out
“Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician
there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people
recovered?
The song holds on to the faith that there is indeed that balm in the person of Jesus.
There
is a balm in Gilead,
- To make the wounded whole;
- There is a balm in Gilead,
- To heal the sin-sick soul.
- Some times I feel discouraged,
- And think my work’s in vain,
- But then the Holy Spirit
- Revives my hope again.
- If you can’t preach like Peter,
- If you can’t pray like Paul,
- Just tell the love of Jesus,
- And say He died for all.
In my imagination I
understood from the Inside Out the frantic quality of the mother in
this story and the fact that she would not give up until there would
be a healing as long as there was a chance. There is a Prayer that
guides my life, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom
to know the difference.” This woman, and I, would not accept until
we had tried every opportunity.
She comes to Jesus and she
has a three strikes against her. One; this is a foreign country and
it was a violation of ritual purity that a Rabbi, as Jesus was,
contaminate himself with consorting with a Gentile in a foreign land.
Two, this woman was a gentile not a Jew., and the proper procedure
would be that a Jewish acquaintance of a Gentile would come and ask
respectfully for intercession. Three, the woman was a woman and
prayers asked for a woman could only be asked through the oldest male
relative of the woman. Four: The woman was uppity. This woman said:
“I don't care about the ways things are usually done; the health of
my daughter is more important that any social or religious doctrine;
compassion trumps dogma, love trumps institutional self interest!”
Jesus starts to say
something that can be translated as: “We don't do things like this
back home. You are forgetting yourself. Pull yourself together. It
just ain't done.”
This now becomes a real
moment of a continuing shift in Jesus' understanding of his mission
and life. Before encountering this woman, he saw his reason for being
as a Prophet calling his people of the Jewish sect to a deeper
awareness of their faith. By his words and deeds he calls people to
repent and to be made whole. It is his job description. But the
woman's response shakes him as he comes to realize that he is not
called to make not a vocational decision but to enter into an
ontological insight; it is not what he does that is important but
about who he is. He is the image of God and when he encounters
people, he doesn't don't just stop and say, “My job is to be a
special revered Holy Man, who if you are nice and I aprove of you,
can do good things for you!”
What is happening the
woman is looking through him and sees God's very self. In a way it is
like the story of thre Transfiguration where the disciples can see
Jesus transfigured into the glory of God. And at the same time Jesus
looks at, and through the woman and no longer sees someone who is a
foreigner but someone who is also the image of God's very self. It
is her love for her daughter that is the image of God dwelling in the
space between. Jesus is not just a Holy Messenger who is telling them
that the Kingdom of the Heavens is coming and we need to get ready
for it. Jesus is saying that God is not far off somewhere above the
clouds acting like a judge but is living right here and now in,
between and through our lives here on earth; wherever love is –
God's very self is there. The faith that makes the woman whole is not
an intellectual assent to doctrine but her love that lives the
reality of God's love.
When my daughter was in
ICU, after the fear and shock wore off, I was able to look at the
Doctors, Nurses,Technicians and visitors in a whole different way. I
was able to look through them and see Images of God doing acts of
love and healing. I suspected that more than a few of them did not
attend church regularly or hold on to the Filoque Clause of the
Nicaean Creed or even subscribe to Christian doctrine but they knew
how to love this stranger far from home and his daughter.
We come to church not to
get our ticket to heaven's reservations confirmed but to be reminded
that we are images of God made to love and when we come to receive
the bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, it is to remind us
that we have become what we eat. We are outward and visible signs of
God's presence in this world to our brothers and sister images. Like
Jesus we are learning that wherever we live or journey, whatever is
our race or creed or the language we speak; we are images of God made
to love and be loved, together to be the Balm of Gilead to make the
wounded whole.
My daughter, Shanon, is in
the process of recovering and I will be going back tomorrow to be
with her and her family and friends when she gets out of the
rehabilitation unit to be part of the Balm of Gilead that makes the
wounded whole. Today in Hyde County may you realize that you are part
of the Balm of Gilead making this wounded world whole.
Waiting For the Balm of
Gilead
The machines lights kept
blinking
giving information to
those understanding
the beeps, announcing to
those outstanding
professionals around her
now thinking
of translating to us,
Outer Circle of family
and friends without
training and degrees,
if we'd be sheltered from
ill wind, lees
of fortune or we'd be
buffeted by calamity.
“Today”, they
conclude, “will be more hope
to make it through
tomorrow and next day.”
“But more things need to
be done”, they say
leaving us with a few more
crumbs to grope.
They left and we told to
each other stories
to be shared when the tide
turns to glories.
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