The continuing present: or, he's here, he's there, he's everywhere

 Opening Thoughts

The pandemic is not over, and restrictions to help us guard one another’s well-being will be needed for some time yet.  But even just thinking of an eventual return to greater openness and freedom to gather, make me realize how comfortable I have become at home.  Too comfortable?

Am I living in a real-life “echo chamber” – the kind of world that social media creates for us, as the algorithms protect us from having ever to encounter and be challenged by someone or something that we didn’t click, because it didn’t seem to click with us?

Are personal growth, spiritual transformation, and real human being possible with extended social distancing, isolation, and only virtual community?

Reading:  Mark 1:29-39 

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is presented as someone who helps people see how close God’s kingdom is, in the midst of life as we know it.

Jesus has been preaching in the synagogue, inspiring folks there with a message about the nearness of God’s kingdom, and surprising them by driving an impure spirit out of a man who was there that day.

Now he goes from synagogue to the home of some friends, and astounds everyone there with more healings and more people freed from impure spirits.  With Jesus, there seems no limit to when and where God’s kingdom might be.

As soon as Jesus and his disciples left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew.  Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her.  

He went to her, took her by the hand, and helped her up.  The fever left her and she began to serve them.

 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all thew sick and demon-possessed.  The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases.  He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.  Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they said, “Everyone is looking for you.”

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so I can preach there also.  That is why I have come.”

 

 

 

Meditation

A number of years ago, I was given a t-shirt – I think it was a t-shirt – by Lynn Martin, our church secretary at the time.  It was that long ago, when that was still the official title for what is now the Church Administrator position. 

Anyway, I got this t-shirt as a gift, with this good news printed on the front of it: “I found Jesus … he was behind the couch the whole time.”

Isn’t that great?  I wonder if it was left over from some less-than-successful evangelistic campaign – like “Housekeeping for Jesus”, or “Spring Cleaning as Spiritual Renewal”?

Seriously, though, isn’t it great?  And true, that Jesus is as near to us as that?  Hidden close by – “in plain sight” as they say – in our day-to-day living, our home, right where we are?  We don’t have to go far to find him; just look around a bit.

That’s how Jesus works, and how God’s kingdom unfolds in the world.  The first readers of the Gospel of Mark would have heard that message loud and clear in the story today – that it’s not from the palace through the king, not through the temple from the priests, certainly not from Rome through the emperor, and really not even from the synagogue through the scribes and the teachers of the law that God’s kingdom comes, but in the villages and towns and homes of poor and ordinary people, as God’s love comes alive to them where they are, reaches out to them as they are, and raises them up to help them become who they are in God’s eyes.

In the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, we sometimes joke that Jesus heals her of her fever, so she can get up from her sick bed and make all the men their supper.   It’s good to notice that, and be aware of patriarchy that too easily is overlooked and not challenged.

But there’s two other things to notice here.  One is the way it says Jesus “took her by the hand and raised her up.”  This is not just healing language – the language of being fixed so you can go on doing the same old thing you’ve always done.  This is resurrection language – the language of a person bound and put down, being raised to new life beyond deadening limitations and killing restrictions.  Being lifted to a higher level of life.  Being given a bigger stage on which to act out who they are.

The other thing is the use of what’s called “the continuous present tense” in saying that she then “began to serve them” – awkwardly but better translated as “she began to be continuing to serve them” – maybe meaning that from that moment on Simon’s mother-in-law began being not just a housewife serving the needs of the immediate men in her life, but one of the women who in their on-going patronage and continuing support of Jesus’ mission have a hand in the revealing of God’s kingdom in the world – and some of whom follow Jesus all the way to the cross.

It seems when Jesus comes in to your house, it’s to set you free from whatever’s holding you back from being who you are in God’s eyes and God’s kingdom.

So where is Jesus for you?  Hiding – or hidden -- behind the couch?  Do you have his picture hanging on a wall?  Maybe a cross on a necklace?  A Bible on a bedside table?  Where is Jesus in your life, in your home, in your family’s life, in your routine right now?

Is he maybe in the closet, holding your hand as he helps you come out?  Or in a dark corner – that scary, secret place in your life that you’re afraid of facing or telling anyone else about; is he in there gently calling out to tell you it’s okay, it needn’t be so scary, he’ll help you face it and get you through?

Maybe he’s in your past, somewhere in your or your family’s memory.  Where will he be in your future?  Where and when and how will you make him be – or let him be, part of your home life, part of your day-to-day life in the world?

***

A word of warning, though, as you might think: once he’s there, don’t expect him just to stay there – just nice and comfy in your house for the rest of your life and his.  Because he also likes to be found somewhere else, out on the edges of your life.

The next day, after raising Simon’s mother-in-law and making her home the place to be, Jesus got up and left, and went off to a solitary place to pray.  And that’s where his friends have to go to find him – in “a deserted place”, as some translations put it.  Not really desert or wilderness.  Just somewhere beyond the circle of daily life, on the edge of where we normally are, and feel comfortable and in control.  A place where we see the bigger picture that our little circle is part of.  Where the bigger-ness of God and God’s purpose becomes more evident and clearer.  A place of real prayer.

And where is that for you?  Where is your place to go, when you need to step to the edge of your circle and start to see beyond?

In some ways, church is that.  It’s certainly deserted now.

My guess is we don’t normally think of it as a wilderness or a desert place.  Come to church long enough and it becomes like home, a family home as comfortable as an old shoe or slipper.  Which is good.

But church is also one step beyond daily life, and I’m glad to have left the comfort and convenience of home behind to be here this week.  I look forward to when we can gather here again.

Because here we are family with others who are different from us, who we don’t always like or get along with, who if they weren’t coming to the same church as us, we might not ever have reason or interest to count as friends.  Church is a step beyond home.  I like the way our Church Council puts it: that at Fifty, church is not so much a haven to settle down in, as a harbour we come to to be refreshed, and then to sail out from again, to be out on the sea with God.

The way Mark puts it, church is where we hear Jesus say, “Come on; let’s go somewhere else – to the nearby villages, to the wider community, to the world – so I can preach there as well.  ‘Cuz that’s why I’ve come.”

***

And isn’t that the third place Jesus is found – out there? 

One place, is in our homes right where we are, raising us up to be who we are in God’s eyes.  A second, out on the edge of the familiar and comfortable, calling us to find him there.  And a third place, out in the world where we haven’t yet been, and where he wants to lead us.

Because his gift is not just to come to our homes and raise us up to be who we are, but to bring this same gift and the same message to all the world – to all homes, all villages, all families and people like us, of day-to-day need and fear and brokenness.

Jesus is with them too – wherever, whoever and however they are.  Maybe behind their couch.  In their closet as they come out of it, and in their scary places that they’re afraid to enter.  In the midst of their pain and sorrow, on their sickbed or deathbed.  Ready to raise them up to new life, if only someone might open the door, make an introduction, and help the miracle of the kingdom of God happen there, too.

***

When Jesus came to Simon’s house, took his mother-in-law’s hand and raised her up, she began to be serving him continually in the unfolding of the kingdom of God.  The story doesn’t say exactly what that means, except that it’s a continuous present. 

But we don’t really need to know what Simon’s mother-in-law did, do we?  The question for us is how, when God’s love comes to us where we are, as we are, to help us be who we are, each of us will begin being, and continue being, of service to him and to the miracle of God’s love for all around us. 

This is why he’s come to us.  It’s the same reason he comes to everyone.  To raise us all, where we are and as we are able, into the life and the living of God’s kingdom.