Monday, February 5, 2018

Gathering 'Round The Door

"Gathering 'Round The Door"
Mark 1:29-39

What’s it like to be ill, to have a disease, or to be possessed by a demon?  Most people know what it feels like to be sick.  A lot of you have been dealing with this flu.  Nick’s going through his second round with it.  Cindy Keller went through a painful infection that moved around her body.  Bill Keller’s dealing with thyroid cancer.  Shannon’s mom is facing a difficult heart surgery.

As far as I know, none of you are dealing with demonic possession...

But most of us who get sick with one thing or another assume we are going to get better.  That’s how God designed our bodies.  To heal.  None of us seem to be immune to different illnesses, but we all think, by hook or by crook, by doctor or by medical technology, by medications or treatments, we will get better.

What about those kinds of illnesses and diseases in which that assumption will not play out?  Jean Bloomquist has written an excellent article in the Christian journal, Weavings.  In her article she tells about the time leading up to when she found out she had lupus—a chronic, unhealable disease of the immune system.  Throughout the article she quotes from her journal—thoughts and feelings she had written about in the days and months after being diagnosed.  Her attitude and faith was challenged in a way it had never been before.

One of her early journal entries spoke of her wish for a typical and traditional, everyday life:
I remember thinking, Why can’t I just have an ordinary life—a simple ordinary life?  And then I realized no one does—or that everyone does, including me.

Jean Bloomquist realized that everyone has an ordinary life.  That is, everyone has some pain or sorrow or grief or illness that they bear.  Part of ordinary life, or part of being ordinary, means experiencing things you’d rather not experience.

There is an old Jewish Hasidic tale about the Tree of Sorrows.  People are allowed to approach the Tree and hang upon its branches their own individual burdens.  Then everyone circles the Tree, free of those burdens.

But they are not allowed to leave the Tree unburdened.  They are supposed to choose a sorrow, an illness, a burden from the Tree that will become their own.  No one can live totally unburdened.  As the legend goes, after everyone looks at all that is hanging there, each person always chooses to take their own burden back.

I wonder about all those people who gathered ‘round the door of Peter’s house wanting Jesus to be their Tree of Sorrow.
“Let me hang this one upon you, Jesus.”
“If I was free of this, Jesus, all would be well in my life.”
Acting as the Tree of Sorrows, did Jesus relieve them of their pain, but then ask that they take another?  My guess is, he did not.

He didn’t have to.  Because, what people, what we don’t realize is that when we are rid of one burden, another is there, ready to take its place.  It’s called the human condition.  We assume that those who were healed went away and never needed Jesus again.  But how many of those people were repeats?  They went away relieved, but came back another day, with a new, or enlarged burden.

That’s what Jean Bloomquist discovered.  We, all of us, are infused with the human condition and a simple, ordinary life means a life that includes a distinct burden (or burdens) that each of us carries.  Burdens that impel us to gather ‘round the door at Peter’s house hoping Jesus will touch us.

A burden that impels us towards Jesus.  A burden that impels us toward healing.  Jean Bloomquist mused in one of her journal entries about how, when people find out they have a chronic, incurable disease or illness, they want to study it.  They want to know all about it.

She said she did some of that with her lupus, but she shifted her focus.  She wrote, “I wanted to learn about healing.”  She studied the things that make for health.  She asked herself tough questions like, “What does it really mean to be healed?  What does it mean to be well.”

These were the hard questions for her as she coped with the mysterious and painful effects of the lupus.  Before the lupus struck, she knew what it was like to feel “normal.”  What if felt like to be “well.”  But lupus, as all immune system attacking diseases do, destabilizes most of your body’s functions.  After a couple of years of dealing with it, she forgot what a normal, well day was.

So what do you do?  Do you give in to the diagnosis?  Jean Bloomquist saw herself drifting that way the more she studied the nature of the disease.  People told her she should just accept the reality of the diagnosis.  But when she shifted her focus toward discovering the things that make for health and wellness, she found a new resolve to fight and get well, whatever that would mean for her.

I think about all those people who gathered ‘round the door at Peter’s house.  For how many years had they only looked at the nature of their disease?  For how long had they been told by well meaning “comforters” to just accept it and not do anything stupid?

Remember the story of the woman who had a hemorrhage for 12 years and had spent all she had trying to be well?  What was each day like for her, for 12 years running?  How long had it been since she even remembered what a normal day was?  Normal for her had become the day in, day out work of dealing with her condition.  “Well” was only a word in a dictionary that had no meaning for her.  Until that day she snuck up behind Jesus, touched the edge of his cloak and was healed.

When all the others came to Jesus that evening to Peter’s house, did they hear two little voices?
“What’s the use?  This won’t work; I should just accept the realities of my situation.”

Or, the other voice being,
“I can be healed.  I will be healed.  Jesus will heal me.”

My guess is, for those who gathered ‘round the door at Peter’s house, those two voices constantly wrestled with each other, alternating from day to day which has more power.

In his book, Letters To My Unborn Child, David Ireland described how he faced and dealt with an incurable neurological disease.  He wrote:
I have often asked myself, and have on occasion been asked by others, “Do I believe in faith healing?”  I have never taken the matter lightly.  On one occasion I asked a former bishop of the Methodist Church to lay his hands upon me.  Later I attended the service of a nationally known faith healer, not as an observer, but as one open to whatever God might will.  In neither case did my failure to experience a miracle in any way affect me negatively.
Today when I’m asked, “Do you believe God will heal you?”, my response is a question—one I have asked myself.  Do I really need to be healed?  It’s a genuine question, not a mere defense to avoid the issue...(Because) my faith is in the genuineness of God, not in whether He will do this or that to demonstrate His goodness.  I don’t need acts of miracles or wondrous words to prove it to me.  That’s not the nature of my relationship with God.

In my mind, that’s a statement of a mature faith in God.  I wonder about those gathered ‘round Peter’s door.  If Jesus didn’t touch them, if Jesus didn’t get to them, if Jesus didn’t heal them, would they walk away from that door with such maturity?  Were they more concerned about having faith in the genuineness of God, apart from the healing miracles?  Or, did they just come to be healed?  To use Jesus?

Did they come out of love for Jesus?  Did they come because of some new vision Jesus had given them about living?  Or did they come because they wanted something out of Jesus?  And once they got it, would they be like the 9 out of 10 lepers who were healed, then took off in every direction?  Or, would they be like the 1 out of 10 who returned to Jesus, because more than just his leprosy was healed?

Jesus doesn’t seem to sort the people out and heal only those who have pure motives.  Jesus doesn’t just pick out the ones who seem to have come ‘round the door for the “right” reasons.  The fact that people come and seek Jesus out seems to be enough for him.

Jean Bloomquist wrestled with this question of motivation as she sought healing.  She wrote in her journal:
What should I be doing to seek healing?  Do I kid myself by thinking I can “do” something?  It takes energy to pursue the possibilities, and sometimes I simply don’t have the energy.  Where does that leave me.  I pray.  I pray that my body may live in harmony with itself.  I give thanks for the healing already taking place.  (But) in the process of seeking healing, how do I find the balance between doing and being?  How do I know when to fight and when to let go?  When does letting go become passivity, or apathy, or worse, despair?  What is surrender?  What is grace?  Am I not to use what God has given me—my intellect, my resourcefulness, my curiosity, my desire for healing and wholeness?  I can’t help but believe that somehow seeking or striving counts for something.  For what, I don’t know, but I do believe it matters.

Maybe, that’s what Jesus honored as he healed all those who had gathered ‘round Peter’s door.  All those people’s striving counted for something.  What about those who didn’t strive?  Who didn’t get up out of their beds, and even try to amble down to Peter’s door?  Were they healed?  They didn’t even show up.

But the others, striving for healing and wellness, but maybe more importantly, striving for Jesus, became a large part of what they called “faith.”  That faith was not only shown in a dynamic kind of living and striving in the face of the unknown, but also in an opening up to Jesus.  In their yearning for what lay beyond their illness, their disease, their demonic possession, their burdens, they strove after knowing Jesus.  That striving, that reaching, counted for something to Jesus that day.

The people’s need drove them to Jesus.  The people’s need was to bring their human condition to Jesus.  They brought their condition to Jesus because they knew he was someone who could do things.  Many can talk.  Others can expound or preach or lecture.  But Jesus was effective.  And that’s why people brought their desire and need to be healed to him.  That’s why they gathered ‘round the door at Peter’s house.

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