The 1st United
5th Sunday after
the Epiphany
Scripture
Hebrew Scriptures – Isaiah 40: 21-31[1]
21Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22It is [the One] who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 24Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when [God] blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? [The One] who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because [God] is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
27Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. [God] does not faint or grow weary; [God's] understanding is unsearchable. 29[God] gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Gospel – Mark 1: 29-39[2]
29As soon as [Jesus and his disciples] left the
synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in
bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31He came and took her by the hand
and lifted her up. Then the fever left
her, and she began to serve them.
32That evening, at sundown, they brought to him
all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33And the whole city was gathered
around the door. 34And he
cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and
he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
35In the morning, while it was still very dark,
he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36And Simon and his companions
hunted for him. 37When they
found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 38He answered, “Let us go on to the
neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is
what I came out to do.” 39And
he went throughout
Take
My Hand.
I find it just a bit odd that Jesus Christ, Superstar, that classic rock opera originally
staged by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, is making somewhat of a comeback.[3] Unlike Joseph
and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was originally made for
children, Jesus Christ, Superstar
took the whole controversial subject of Jesus as the Christ and set it to music
– complete with electric guitars, driving drums and ear-piercing vocals. There's a scene in it that comes close to
capturing the feel of today's readings.
It depicts today's gospel reading, in fact, in which the sick and
possessed crowd is pushing in on Jesus, looking to be healed. Finally Jesus can't take it anymore; he actually
screams at them and runs away.
That scene shocked a whole lot of
people, as did a number of other scenes in Superstar
that showed Jesus as having real human needs and weaknesses. And yet it does capture the reason behind his
choosing, any number of times, to leave town for quiet places in which to pray. You can almost hear a kind of resignation
behind his words, "Let's move on to the next town…that's what I came out
here to do."[4] It sounds to me like he needs a break; but he
also seems to be compelled to do what he feels that he has to do.
You and I aren't strangers to such
feelings ourselves. People feel this way
when they think about how they've mortgaged their lives for thirty or forty
years to a house, or when they realize that they don't have any time left for
themselves, because their families demand their constant attention. Some people despair of ever climbing out of
the pit of poverty, racial oppression or civic injustice.
We might be able to sympathize with
Jesus who has to sneak away just to find time to pray. Like him, we often seem unable to find God in
the cramped spaces of our lives – in the pain, the rush, the hassle, or just
the loneliness and fear. "In the
midst of life," it's been said to us, "we are in death."[5] God is not here. God is to be found by escaping, in quiet
times of self-regeneration, in moments of peace, shade and rest. Don't tell me to make my life a prayer, we
shout, unless you think that a prayer can consist of a cry of anguish and
outrage against everything that's brought me to this way of life that I now
regret – a life so different from the dreams of it that I had when I was young.
Some time ago when a woman lay in a
hospital bed after emergency surgery, she learned that the results had revealed
something very disturbing. At
twenty-seven she learned that she was no longer in perfect health, and might
never be again. After a number of
conversations with her doctor she became aware of the choices that she now
faced. She could allow her anger to turn
into demands that the people around her take care of her and pity her; or she
could rise above the limitations created by her loss, and find a way to be open
to a new kind of life. In other words,
she could live with the "demon" within her by spreading its chaos all
over the place through her unhappiness, or she could find a way to accept her
new condition, come to terms with it, and bring a greater sense of peace to
herself and to those who cared for her.
By choosing that other way she came to discover a true kind of
happiness. Like Peter's mother-in-law,
who got up from her sick bed to return to providing hospitality in the midst of
her community, this woman came to find a new life in serving others. She "would not permit the demons to
speak."[6]
The poet, Nelly
Sachs, seems to speak a word for this woman – and for all of us who grieve over
any sort of loss – in her poem entitled "Chorus of the Rescued":
Be gentle when you teach us to live again.
Lest the song of a bird,
Or the pail being filled at the well,
Let our badly sealed pain burst forth
again.[7]
Jesus' anguished prayer from the cross must have been
something like that.[8] Too often we've made prayer some kind of
pious exercise that has no relation at all to reality – to the stuff of life
itself – instead of the cry from the heart that the Bible describes in the
lives of so many.[9] Prayer in the midst of life's anguished
moments is more than just that, though, it is a supreme act of faith. It's not a polite "thank you" to
the God of good feelings and Hallmark greeting-card sentiments. It's a stand against the storms, floods, and
"natural disasters" that plague humanity – against what might seem
overwhelming evidence of the absence of God.
And while we've read that soaring and prayerful tribute to
God in Isaiah this morning, another favorite prayer of mine comes from the
lesser-known prophet Habakkuk, who looked at the devastation of his own time caused
by foreign invasion, and demanded that God explain how the covenant could
possibly be fulfilled in the face of such chaos! Curiously enough, God doesn't give Habakkuk a
really satisfactory answer – with something like the message that we find in
the Book of Revelation, saying, "Just hang on! The vision isn't fulfilled yet. But it will be!" So Habakkuk prays, in spite of his disbelief,
probably the only prayer that can stand in the presence of pain and loss as
truly honest. Here's what he says:
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on
the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
and the fields
yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
and
there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the
God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
(who) makes me run like
the deer,
and makes me walk upon
the high places.[10]
So, in spite of the very real pain that we all often feel,
in spite of the devastation that we see all around us, in spite of any evidence
to the contrary showing us that God cares, I choose to believe. As someone once said, "When I feel so
low that I have to climb up just to reach the bottom," I believe. The reason that I do is that someone once reached
down to me and said, "Take my hand."[11]
* * *
[1] Preaching to the despondent exiles around the year 540 BCE, this portion of the book of Isaiah (called by biblical scholars, "Deutero Isaiah" or "Second Isaiah" because it actually reflects a time after the original prophet, Isaiah's, death) attempts to respond to the following questions: 1.) Is God able to save us or not? and 2.) If God is able to save us, why do we keep feeling as if it hasn't happened? The tradition from the very beginning has been that God possesses the power to control kings and kingdoms. Here is the prophet's response to our very human concerns about it all.
[2] One of the reasons why some biblical scholars question those Christmas birth narratives reported in the Gospel According to Luke, is that in our oldest version of the story, here in the Gospel According to Mark, there's nothing at all about Jesus' birth! In his first chapter he launches us immediately into the public ministry of Jesus. It's very clear that, at least for Mark, Jesus always acts within the power of the Holy Spirit and with a vision of the coming of the kingdom. Maybe this is why there's a kind of "fuzziness" in Mark where physical healing, "casting out demons," and forgiving sins are practically interchangeable. For Mark, Jesus is acting out of the power and approval of God in his public ministry and connecting it to a larger plan to finally put an end to all suffering and evil so that the kingdom will, in fact, come on earth.
[3] See the
website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_Superstar
for some of the latest information on this.
[4] Mark
[5] A phrase
from the traditional Anglican Book of
Common Prayer – I believe, originally, from one of the prayers recited at
funeral or memorial services.
[6] Op. cit., v. 34.
[7] Nelly
Sachs, in O the Chimneys (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967).
[8] There's
some debate on just what Jesus might have meant by the words "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?"
– Aramaic for "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark
[9] I would invite you to re-read the book of Psalms as if it were a "schoolbook of prayer" (as a professor of mine at Duke, Roland Murphy, a Carmelite monk, called that portion of the Hebrew Scriptures).
[10] Habakkuk 3: 17-19.
[11] This is why I can't sing the hymn, Precious Lord, Take My Hand, without getting all choked up with emotion:
Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light:
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
When my way grows drear, precious Lord, linger near,
when my life is almost gone,
hear my cry, hear my call, hold my hand lest I fall:
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.
When the darkness appears and the night draws near,
and the day is past and gone,
at the river I stand, guide my feet, hold my hand:
Take my hand,
precious Lord, lead me home.