Friday, September 7, 2018

Being a Balm in Gilead


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.
(Chorus)
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.
(Chorus)


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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