Sermon: Disturbing the Peace
“Not now, Bartimaeus! Can’t you see we’re trying to listen to Jesus? Be quiet with your hollering!”
The
funeral service was in the church. It
was for a woman who had served the congregation well for most of her adult life
– for about 40 years, church secretary; for almost as many years, co-ordinator
of the semi-annual church sales. One of
the stories told of her was that as sale co-ordinator she would take it upon
herself to inspect all the clothing donated, and take home to wash, mend and
iron any articles that needed it, to make them suitable to be offered at a
church sale.
It was
those kinds of stories people remembered at the funeral, until the woman’s niece
came forward to offer her words of remembrance, and in addition to those kinds
of memories that she also had of her aunt, she also took the risk of briefly
sharing her feelings of disappointment and even anger at the way her aunt seemed
to have been forgotten by the end of her life.
Her aunt lived a good long life but in the end suffered badly with Alzheimer’s
Disease, and because people did not know how to relate to her, talk with her,
or spend time with her, they stopped visiting.
It was
a hard thing to hear. It raised up a lot
of feelings within the congregation. It
created some discomfort in the minister leading the service. At least momentarily, it disturbed the peace
of the occasion.
I
wonder, though, if it maybe opened a way to a fuller peace, if only we had the
wisdom and wherewithal to walk through it, and accept its invitation.
I
wonder about that because of my own experience almost two years ago now, when I
disturbed the peace of my family and of this congregation when I finally broke
down, said I have a problem and I can’t go on doing things the way I’ve been
doing them. I took a leave, received
some help, and then was able to come back and try to start living and doing
things in new and different ways.
It
wasn’t convenient. It was the 2nd
or 3rd Sunday of Advent. At
home, Christmas plans were thrown into chaos.
At church the big Christmas services were coming, and different people
had to step in and lead with no warning.
“Not
now, Bartimaeus. Can’t you see we’re
getting ready to celebrate the coming of Jesus.
Be quiet with your needs and your brokenness!”
I’m glad nobody said that. You were gracious and kind.
But I
wonder if you ever feel like I did before that moment. Like that niece did for all those years. Like there’s something wrong, but you don’t
feel free to say it. Like you really
want help, but don’t know how to ask for it.
That you try to cry out for something, but you’re convinced no one wants
to hear it.
How
many people in the world suffer in that way?
The poor pushed to the edge of public awareness … refugees front-page
news for two weeks, then forgotten as the media move on to the next big story …
families and friends of hundreds of missing and murdered First Nations women
across our country whose calls for a federal inquiry into their fate our
government has so far ignored … the neighbour down the street whose family’s
hunger and sense of hopelessness go largely unnoticed.
The
Bible has many stories of many people whose cries for help aren’t convenient or
welcome to those around them, but which God hears with utter clarity and takes
action on.
From ancient Israel -- probably in the
6th century B.C.E., there is the story of Job, who spends 35 of his story's 40
post-tragedy chapters crying out with increasing anger and vehemence for
attention and justice after his life has fallen apart for no good reason. He says what’s happened to him is wrong and inexplicable. God has made a mistake, he charges. Or God isn’t paying attention. Let me see God and talk to God, he says, and
I’m sure God will see my point and make things right.
And through all these 35 chapters,
Job’s friends – good religious folk that they are, tell him to shush, to stop
shouting at God, to just learn to accept things the way they are.
When God finally appears, in chapters
38-41, Job of course is humbled. He admits
he’s been more than a bit presumptuous to have challenged and yelled at God the
way he did, and repents of his anger and pride.
But at the same time, God lifts Job up as an example of righteousness to
his friends, and tells them if they want to be right with God too, they better
ask Job to pray for them – ask Job to put in a good word on their behalf,
because as religious as they were, there was something decidedly ungodly about
the way they acted towards Job and the advice they gave him, and something more
faithful to God about the way Job kept calling out for healing and justice.
Then from first-century Palestine we
have the story of Bartimaeus, a blind man crying out in his darkness for help,
with the people around him (all wanting to see Jesus themselves) telling him to
be quiet and not disturb either them or the messiah with his shouting for help.
“Not
now, Bartimaeus! Be quiet with your
hollering? Can’t you see we’re all trying
to listen to Jesus?”
Well …
he doesn’t see that. Instead, with
greater insight than they have, what he knows is that Jesus is listening for him
– that above all the chatter of the religious crowd, Jesus is listening for
that lone cry of help from the back row and the outer fringe.
And we
shouldn’t be surprised. Because the God
Jesus lives among us, is the same God whose story with Israel begins in Exodus,
where at the end of chapter 2 the story says, “in Egypt, the Israelites groaned
under their slavery, and cried out. Out
of their slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered
his covenant with their forefathers. God
looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”
And the
rest is history – at least the history of God.
That’s how the story starts and that’s the kind of encounter that
continues always to propel it along. And
that’s the God Jesus comes to live among us, which is why when Jesus hears
Bartimaeus crying out for help, instead of finding some way to just carry on
with what he’s doing with the crowd, Jesus says, “Call him here!” He makes Bartimaeus the focus of his
attention and his holy, healing presence.
I
wonder how we do that. How we live in
the way of Jesus and that kind of God.
Two
images came to mind this week.
One is
the little bit I know about the Western Wall in Jerusalem, believed by many to
be the only standing remains of the Second Temple of the people of Israel built
by Herod at the time of Christ and destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 of
the Common Era. The wall is a sacred
site to Jews, and thousands make pilgrimage to it every year. It used to be called the Wailing Wall,
because when they got there Jews would wail in lament for the ancient
destruction of the Temple, and cry out to God to restore it again. The name “Wailing Wall” fell into disfavour,
though, and now it’s called the Western Wall.
Still, though, the practice for pilgrims is to write their most
heart-felt prayer on a piece of paper, and slip it into cracks between the
stones of the wall in the hope that maybe God will see their prayer and answer
it.
I
wonder what our church walls would look like, if people around us saw our walls
as places where they could place their prayers.
The
other image is from last week after worship. I said goodbye at the front door to people
leaving. Then I went downstairs to see
how things were going with the coffee and cake to celebrate Ryker’s baptism. After a while I happened to come up to the
sanctuary and over on one side I saw 10 or 12 people who had stayed behind and
were still there at an informal meeting to talk about possible ways we as a
church might respond to some of the needs in the Syrian refugee crisis. No one had any clear answers. It seems pretty certain we’re not in a
position to do any sponsoring of families by ourselves. We’re not even sure what the best response
is. If we do anything it will probably
be in co-operation with some other like-minded churches.
But
that meeting and the interest of those 10 or 12 people seemed a pretty clear
sign that we were listening. Instead of
saying:
“Not
now, Bartimaeus! Can’t you see we’re trying
to listen to Jesus? Be quiet
with your
hollering!”
this
church once again was acting in the spirti of the One who says, “Listen! I hear someone crying out. Call them to me.”
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