Isaiah 35:4–7a
Psalm 146
James 2:1–10[11–13] 14–17
Mark 7:24–37
Year B
I.N.I.
In late March of this year, Vicar Bill and I spent a day with our Episcopal colleagues at a Clergy Day during Lent. The guest presenter, Bishop Eugene Sutton of the Diocese of Maryland, helped us to focus our attention on what God was saying to us, offering us scriptural insights and quiet time, all ending with eucharist with Bishop Robinson as presider.. Bishop Sutton suggested that a word, a single word or a phrase often becomes a kind of door into the ways we center on God’s presence to us, like “mercy,” or “peace,” or “I believe. Help my unbelief.” Once we found ours, he suggested living in that moment of being with God with that word becoming our prayer. Bishop Sutton said that the word that came to him time and time again was Well.
Well. Well?. Well!
This word, well, describes as good as any what the biblical idea for salvation is. This word well, describes as good as any what the biblical idea for healing is.
The ELCA adopted a well-crafted statement on Health and Healthcare in 2003 titled Caring for Health: Our Shared Endeavor.
In one short paragraph of that statement, this is how healing is described:
Healing is restoration of wholeness and unity of body, mind, and spirit. Healing addresses the suffering caused by the disruption of relationships with God, with our neighbors, and with ourselves. It involves curing when possible, but embraces more than cure. When we limit illness to disease and health care to cure, we miss the deeper dimensions of healing through restoration to God.
Well. Well.. Well.
Jesus goes out of his way to heal, to save, and to make well. Really. Going to the place named in the Gospel, Tyre, from where he was previously,Gennesaret, is like going from Nashua to Boston via Portland. It doesn’t make sense. He starts by crosses a border from a well-known Jewish territory by the Sea of Galilee and goes north and west to a place crawling with Gentiles, outsiders. And he ends by heading back east and south nearer to where he started, in the region named after ten cities called the Decapolis. Geography in the Gospels is often important. Asking the question “where is Jesus going” in the Gospels is often important.
Here Jesus is, way out of his comfort zone, trying to get away from it all, in the middle of his own Labor Day weekend, when someone with at least three strikes against her squeezes through the door of the safe house. 1) She was a woman 2) a foreign woman 3) a non-Jew who had a 4) demon-possessed daughter. Scholars scratch their heads that Jesus insults the woman, implicitly calling her a “dog.” Scholars scratch their heads that the reason Jesus gives for his healing is how clever the woman was in giving it back to him. The story ends peculiar woman went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demons gone. Well!
The healing story set way out of the way in Tyre is paired with the one back on home turf. It has a much more familiar beginning. Friends bring him. Jesus takes him and applies common elements of healing in that culture: touch and spittle. Oh, and a connection to the source of all healing as Jesus looks to heaven and says “Ephphatha,” “Be Opened.”.
The kicker in that story is that the more Jesus orders the crowd not to say anything about his healing, the more zealous they are. And the prophecy from Isaiah is called to mind, where it says
5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. (Isaiah 35: 5-6)
Well, Well.
How is it with you?. How are you?
I have a couple of friends who when they ask me that question I feel like my soul is exposed.. They have a gift of seeking out my well-being, not just making conversation, but with their word or words opening a door into something deeper and more significant.
This is gift in relationships, being present and available to another, to a friend, to any of us who at our core have competing elements of wellness and illness, calmness and anxiety, engagement and disconnection. Sometimes all it takes is a word. Perhaps most of all it takes time and attention. And in these moments, in the time and attention given, we are brought to Jesus. We know that we are well. We are brought to renewed faith.
Faith is often described as believing, which makes sense.. But it seems that more often faith is just showing up and being surprised that there is a morsel of bread that sustains or nourishes. Novelist Doris Bett says that faith “is not synonymous with certainty…[but] is the decision to keep your eyes open.” [Norris, “Faith,” from Vocabulary of Faith, p 169]
Our youth trip to New Orleans could have been any kind of excursion, but I think it really was a faith adventure because we kept our eyes open, and sometimes faith just showed up. We kept to our daily offering highs and lows and God moments around a circle each night. On Thursday of that week we thought it was too late after an evening activity at the Hilton to make it back to our hotel for highs and lows, so we decided to do them while still at the Hilton in a common area. The highs were understandably focused on our day of reading to children, our service project. We were tired, but happy. As our hands clasped each other, and prayers were offered by each youth and adult, all of the sudden the most eloquent and heartfelt prayer was offered in an Creole accent, and clearly uttered not from anyone from CtK. I opened one eye and spied a short African-American man wearing a Domino’s uniform who expressed gratefulness for the mercies of the day, the gift of youth in his midst, and the opportunity to live in faith.
This man joined our circle and opened a door into a relationship beyond words and explanation.. He blessed our day. He made us see that Jesus goes out of his way to offer healing and salvation, often through just showing up, or just by keeping our eyes open. All of us remember this as a startling encounter with some of the good folks in New Orleans. Our group utterly amazed and astounding asked him to join us for a photo before we left. And on his name badge was, unforgettably, “Uncle Sam.”
Uncle Sam joined our circle that night, and taught us how wide the circle of faith is. As unlikely as it would have been to predict that a Domino’s worker would pray with us at the New Orleans Hilton before we ever went to the National Youth Gathering, this story of encounter broke open to us that God is in the room where we might least expect it. Jesus joins us in our circles and breaks through to widen them.. Jesus is in New Orleans, in Nashua, in this room, and in places and experiences that you may never imagine. Unless you keep your eyes open. Or maybe you just show up, and open up your hands and your heart for a crumb of bread.. .
Well. Well.. Well.
I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
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