Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
In the Twelve Step fellowships, recovering people often mention “the gift of desperation.” Most of us wouldn’t think of desperation as a gift.
What they mean is that an authentic spiritual journey toward genuine healing takes tremendous courage and determination, and most people are simply not up to it.
There’s a head-scratcher sentence in the AA literature: “To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.” What? It doesn’t sound that hard, does it? A spiritual life on the one hand, alcoholic death on the other? Who wouldn’t choose a spiritual life?
Well, as it turns out, lots of people. Most alcoholics and drug addicts, in fact. Even with programs of recovery, most people beset by addiction die of it, rather than to do the challenging and fearsome work of turning to God.
Addiction is a modern word that describes a syndrome of destructive dependence. But in the old language of the scriptures, we might call it idolatry.
Idolatry is the worship of something other than God. Based on biblical stories of idolatry among the ancient Hebrews, it usually arises when God is not providing whatever it is that one thinks one must have, or is not providing it fast enough. Wealth, security, inner peace or whatever. Living under God and according to God’s rules just doesn’t seem to work, and so one turns to whatever delivers one’s desire, or delivers it faster than God does.
Sounds very pragmatic really, and we Americans are nothing if not pragmatic. If you go to one store and they don’t have what you want or can’t deliver it fast enough, just go to another store. If God isn’t delivering the kind of country we want, we might turn to a messianic political figure, and worship that person in place of God.
Isaiah nearly does it in his seemingly endless praise of Cyrus, but he doesn’t go that far. For Isaiah, Cyrus’ messiahship had little to do with Cyrus and more to do with the sudden revelation that God was working through all of creation, even in the evil deeds of cynical, oppressive emperors. God had brought down Nebuchadnezzar, who styled himself a god, and while God might use Cyrus to get his people back to the land he gave them, he will bring Cyrus down too. A meaner nastier emperor will come along in Alexander, so-called “the great”, and Cyrus, like all other self-styled gods, will be dust. Alexander and his empire will face the same fate, and so eventually will Caesar and the Romans.
But all through these terrible times, the worship of these mere humans and the idols they worshipped brought death and destruction to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, just as every empire has done ever since.
Addiction is what it was all about. Once you privilege a class of people and get them used to luxury and ease, it’s very easy to get them to worship the people or the nation or the gods that nation worships as the providers of that luxury and ease. They become addicted to the pleasures of wealth, and like all addicts, they are willing to look away from all the suffering and misery that their greed causes, just as an alcoholic will make a million excuses as to why the suffering he causes is not really his fault.
Jerusalem, and the religious and political leaders of the Jews, were firmly in the Roman’s pockets. As such they regarded the desperate people of Galilee as unclean sinners, a den of villainy and rebellion, full of disease and insanity, something like the way people see urban slums or poor rural places.
But Jesus saw something else there, or perhaps more pointedly, God saw and heard what was really going on there, and sent his Son right into the midst of all that desperation, just as he sent Jesus into the wilderness with the wild beasts to be tested by the devil and to experience angelic help. Jesus needed to know their desperation, and face it with spiritual resources, before he could offer the desperate people of Galilee those same spiritual resources, that same angelic help.
Jesus knew about the gift of desperation, and often commented on it. He went among the desperate, those for whom the false gods of the world were an affliction rather than a blessing, and waited until he had transformed them into joyous believers in God before he ventured into the idolators’ own territory, the city of Jerusalem.
In today’s story, we see Jesus very much in action. Immediately (Mark’s favorite word) after the synagogue confrontation with the demon in Capernaum, Jesus goes to Simon and Andrew’s house and heals his mother by simply taking her by the hand and raising her up. She is restored to life, and her gratitude leads her to become like the angels who waited on Jesus in the wilderness. After she was healed, she got up and served.
Tell your neighbor, “After she was healed, she got up and served.”
Night fell, the Sabbath ended, releasing what sounds like hundreds of residents of Capernaum beset with disease and mental illness, brought by loving families and friends, to this new prophet who preached with authority and even had power over demons. Mark says that Jesus healed many and cast many demons out, though certainly not all.
But at a certain point, Jesus, as it were, runs out of gas, so before the sun even came up (much like that darkness before the dawn on resurrection day) Jesus rose and ran into the wilderness once again to pray. The Greek says that Simon and the others “hunted Jesus down,” because of the frantic searching of the crowds who were still crying out for healing and freedom from their demons.
The scripture says “a deserted place”, a place without human habitation, a place of vulnerability and danger, the place, in ancient lore, where evil spirits attack and wild beasts threaten, a place of desperation.
Humans have gone into the wilderness seeking spiritual strength for as long as they have existed on planet earth. Almost every indigenous people we have encountered in modern times have versions of the so-called vision quest, and so do many modern Christians. Craig Springs, and all church camps, are a vestige of this practice. Go rough it in the wilderness for a week and you’ll be transformed, and for many campers that is exactly the truth. Our Regional Minister testifies that church camp was how he came to Christ.
Some of our members are avid sportsmen and women. For them, to go into the wilderness to hunt or fish or sail to some new place are very similar practices. Sportspeople get spiritual sustenance from facing the wilderness, to rediscover their own fragility and vulnerability before God, to escape the great cotton ball that cradles us in civilization to get a taste of desperation.
Recovering addicts and alcoholics give thanks to God for the gift of desperation, for desperation was what fueled their commitment to the spiritual path that saved them. If not for that desperation, they would never have had the courage to face themselves, to admit defeat in their battle against the darkness, and to kneel before the only one who could truly provide the light, the one who, as we sometimes say, “puts the breeze in the trees.”
A community that is brought together by a desperate need of the one true God would appear on the outside as weak and even vaguely pathetic. But in the upside-down kingdom of God, such a community is a well of incredible and miraculous power.
Contrast that to churches who think of themselves as a voluntary community of the like-minded, and you will see a tremendous decrease in that community’s actual power. Like-mindedness is comfortable and pleasant, as the scripture itself sometimes points out, but it’s nothing like those crowds in Galilee, who will follow Jesus with passion and commitment all the way to Jerusalem, and even, for some, to Christ’s cross.
After she was healed, she got up and served the one who healed her, and such is the power of desperate community. The healed rise up to heal, because the central fact of their new life is that it never could have been without the healer.
In the twelve-step fellowships, one of the most important disciplines is remembering where you came from, remembering the desperation of the last days of your active addiction, the kind of remembrance most people who’ve been through something terrible will often want to put behind them and forget.
Perhaps when Jesus asked us to remember his broken body in the broken bread, and his poured-out blood in the poured-out wine, he is asking us to remember our own broken bodies and our own spilled blood, the very suffering we might most want to forget, our own moments in the wilderness among the demons and the wild beasts.
For that is precisely where God finds us.
Amen.
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
In the Twelve Step fellowships, recovering people often mention “the gift of desperation.” Most of us wouldn’t think of desperation as a gift.
What they mean is that an authentic spiritual journey toward genuine healing takes tremendous courage and determination, and most people are simply not up to it.
There’s a head-scratcher sentence in the AA literature: “To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.” What? It doesn’t sound that hard, does it? A spiritual life on the one hand, alcoholic death on the other? Who wouldn’t choose a spiritual life?
Well, as it turns out, lots of people. Most alcoholics and drug addicts, in fact. Even with programs of recovery, most people beset by addiction die of it, rather than to do the challenging and fearsome work of turning to God.
Addiction is a modern word that describes a syndrome of destructive dependence. But in the old language of the scriptures, we might call it idolatry.
Idolatry is the worship of something other than God. Based on biblical stories of idolatry among the ancient Hebrews, it usually arises when God is not providing whatever it is that one thinks one must have, or is not providing it fast enough. Wealth, security, inner peace or whatever. Living under God and according to God’s rules just doesn’t seem to work, and so one turns to whatever delivers one’s desire, or delivers it faster than God does.
Sounds very pragmatic really, and we Americans are nothing if not pragmatic. If you go to one store and they don’t have what you want or can’t deliver it fast enough, just go to another store. If God isn’t delivering the kind of country we want, we might turn to a messianic political figure, and worship that person in place of God.
Isaiah nearly does it in his seemingly endless praise of Cyrus, but he doesn’t go that far. For Isaiah, Cyrus’ messiahship had little to do with Cyrus and more to do with the sudden revelation that God was working through all of creation, even in the evil deeds of cynical, oppressive emperors. God had brought down Nebuchadnezzar, who styled himself a god, and while God might use Cyrus to get his people back to the land he gave them, he will bring Cyrus down too. A meaner nastier emperor will come along in Alexander, so-called “the great”, and Cyrus, like all other self-styled gods, will be dust. Alexander and his empire will face the same fate, and so eventually will Caesar and the Romans.
But all through these terrible times, the worship of these mere humans and the idols they worshipped brought death and destruction to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, just as every empire has done ever since.
Addiction is what it was all about. Once you privilege a class of people and get them used to luxury and ease, it’s very easy to get them to worship the people or the nation or the gods that nation worships as the providers of that luxury and ease. They become addicted to the pleasures of wealth, and like all addicts, they are willing to look away from all the suffering and misery that their greed causes, just as an alcoholic will make a million excuses as to why the suffering he causes is not really his fault.
Jerusalem, and the religious and political leaders of the Jews, were firmly in the Roman’s pockets. As such they regarded the desperate people of Galilee as unclean sinners, a den of villainy and rebellion, full of disease and insanity, something like the way people see urban slums or poor rural places.
But Jesus saw something else there, or perhaps more pointedly, God saw and heard what was really going on there, and sent his Son right into the midst of all that desperation, just as he sent Jesus into the wilderness with the wild beasts to be tested by the devil and to experience angelic help. Jesus needed to know their desperation, and face it with spiritual resources, before he could offer the desperate people of Galilee those same spiritual resources, that same angelic help.
Jesus knew about the gift of desperation, and often commented on it. He went among the desperate, those for whom the false gods of the world were an affliction rather than a blessing, and waited until he had transformed them into joyous believers in God before he ventured into the idolators’ own territory, the city of Jerusalem.
In today’s story, we see Jesus very much in action. Immediately (Mark’s favorite word) after the synagogue confrontation with the demon in Capernaum, Jesus goes to Simon and Andrew’s house and heals his mother by simply taking her by the hand and raising her up. She is restored to life, and her gratitude leads her to become like the angels who waited on Jesus in the wilderness. After she was healed, she got up and served.
Tell your neighbor, “After she was healed, she got up and served.”
Night fell, the Sabbath ended, releasing what sounds like hundreds of residents of Capernaum beset with disease and mental illness, brought by loving families and friends, to this new prophet who preached with authority and even had power over demons. Mark says that Jesus healed many and cast many demons out, though certainly not all.
But at a certain point, Jesus, as it were, runs out of gas, so before the sun even came up (much like that darkness before the dawn on resurrection day) Jesus rose and ran into the wilderness once again to pray. The Greek says that Simon and the others “hunted Jesus down,” because of the frantic searching of the crowds who were still crying out for healing and freedom from their demons.
The scripture says “a deserted place”, a place without human habitation, a place of vulnerability and danger, the place, in ancient lore, where evil spirits attack and wild beasts threaten, a place of desperation.
Humans have gone into the wilderness seeking spiritual strength for as long as they have existed on planet earth. Almost every indigenous people we have encountered in modern times have versions of the so-called vision quest, and so do many modern Christians. Craig Springs, and all church camps, are a vestige of this practice. Go rough it in the wilderness for a week and you’ll be transformed, and for many campers that is exactly the truth. Our Regional Minister testifies that church camp was how he came to Christ.
Some of our members are avid sportsmen and women. For them, to go into the wilderness to hunt or fish or sail to some new place are very similar practices. Sportspeople get spiritual sustenance from facing the wilderness, to rediscover their own fragility and vulnerability before God, to escape the great cotton ball that cradles us in civilization to get a taste of desperation.
Recovering addicts and alcoholics give thanks to God for the gift of desperation, for desperation was what fueled their commitment to the spiritual path that saved them. If not for that desperation, they would never have had the courage to face themselves, to admit defeat in their battle against the darkness, and to kneel before the only one who could truly provide the light, the one who, as we sometimes say, “puts the breeze in the trees.”
A community that is brought together by a desperate need of the one true God would appear on the outside as weak and even vaguely pathetic. But in the upside-down kingdom of God, such a community is a well of incredible and miraculous power.
Contrast that to churches who think of themselves as a voluntary community of the like-minded, and you will see a tremendous decrease in that community’s actual power. Like-mindedness is comfortable and pleasant, as the scripture itself sometimes points out, but it’s nothing like those crowds in Galilee, who will follow Jesus with passion and commitment all the way to Jerusalem, and even, for some, to Christ’s cross.
After she was healed, she got up and served the one who healed her, and such is the power of desperate community. The healed rise up to heal, because the central fact of their new life is that it never could have been without the healer.
In the twelve-step fellowships, one of the most important disciplines is remembering where you came from, remembering the desperation of the last days of your active addiction, the kind of remembrance most people who’ve been through something terrible will often want to put behind them and forget.
Perhaps when Jesus asked us to remember his broken body in the broken bread, and his poured-out blood in the poured-out wine, he is asking us to remember our own broken bodies and our own spilled blood, the very suffering we might most want to forget, our own moments in the wilderness among the demons and the wild beasts.
For that is precisely where God finds us.
Amen.
