Desperate Measures, Deep Mercy

Mark 5:21-43

When [Jesus] had crossed again to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him and he was by the sea. Then a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue, came and fell before him and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.” So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.

Now, there was a woman who had suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped and she felt, in her body, that she had been healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus said to the crowd, “Who touched my clothes?” His disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you. How can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus looked around to see who had done it. And the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came to him with fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house and said to him, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” Overhearing them, Jesus said to him, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed only Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, to follow him. As he approached the leader’s house, he saw a great commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he entered the house, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead, only sleeping?” And they laughed at him. He put them all out of the house and took the child’s mother and father, and those who had come with him, into the place where the child was. He said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means “little girl, get up,” and the girl got up and began to walk about. (She was twelve years of age.) At this, they were filled with amazement and Jesus ordered them sternly that no one should know about this. Then he told them to give her something to eat.

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The woman in this morning’s Gospel reminded me of something I read – and the author, who I’ve seen in a couple of different ways on TV and in social media – recently.

(Newsun Zip)

Jane Marczewski is a 30-something-year-old cancer survivor from Zanesville, Ohio. She’s had the big, ugly, scary, evil cancer diagnosis three times already at her young age and has been given a 2% chance of survival. (Like the woman in this morning’s gospel, you might say, “she has endured much under many physicians. She’s spent all she had. She is no better, in many ways, but has only grown worse.”) Like I said, she has a 2% chance of beating this thing. And her husband left her, too. And all of that is hard to believe if you’ve watched her sing on America’s Got Talent or seen her interviewed on any number of television shows, lately. She’s full of wisdom and life and hope and joy – because of and in spite of all she’s been through.

And she wrote something in her blog called “God is on the Bathroom Floor.” I won’t read it all, but portions of it made me think Jane and the woman in today’s Gospel are kindred spirits. She wrote,

“I spent three months propped against the wall. On nights that I could not sleep, I laid in the tub like an insect, staring at my reflection in the shower knob. I vomited until I was hollow. I rolled up under my robe on the tile. The bathroom floor became my place to hide, where I could scream and be ugly; where I could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep, even with my head on the toilet.

“I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed thirty. There are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story. I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that He will say I disappointed Him, or offended Him, or failed Him. Maybe He’ll say I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn’t grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this: He can never say that He did not know me.

“I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses. Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.”

It's that last bit that brought to mind the nameless woman in Mark’s gospel. She was like God’s downstairs neighbor, too – not banging on the ceiling with a broomstick – but pushing her way through the crowd to get her hands on the cloak of Jesus.

And without a whole lot of work, I’m guessing we can see – or at least imagine – where the woman in this morning’s Gospel, and Jairus, that leader from the synagogue, are coming from, can’t we? Who among us hasn’t been there ourselves or loved someone who is or has been: sick for years, I mean; sick and tired of wrong or insufficient answers; sick and fed up with expensive treatments that may or may not work; sick and out of money, sick and out of energy, sick and out of patience, sick and out of time, even.

And I think the gift and the good news of this morning’s Gospel isn’t just in the hemorrhage that stops or in the little girl who gets up to walk again. Those are beautiful, hopeful, life-giving things. But you and I know not everyone wins that lottery.

(For what it’s worth, I decided this week, maybe that’s why Jesus is always telling people – “sternly ordering them,” actually – not to tell anyone about his miracles and healings. Because Jesus was sensitive and kind and wise. And Jesus knew those kinds of miracles and healings wouldn’t happen for everyone, all of the time. So don’t boast about it. Don’t brag about how your prayer got answered, leaving someone else to wonder why theirs did not. Just accept it, gratefully, joy-fully, with humility. And live differently because of it, but quietly, perhaps …) But I digress.

I think the gift and the good news of this morning’s Gospel – and in Jane Marczewski’s story, too – is in the way Jesus receives and entertains those in such desperate need in the first place, and no matter what. Even Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, was welcomed by Jesus. As a leader of the synagogue, Jairus was supposed to be suspicious of Jesus, if not downright opposed to what he was up to. Still, he stated his case, made his plea, and Jesus followed him home – no questions asked.

And along the way, Jesus gets interrupted by this unclean woman who he could just as well have ignored or dismissed or driven away, even, for having the nerve to soil him with her unclean, uninvited, unwelcome touch. But he calls her out, instead. He announces her healing for all to see. And he sends her home, blessed and better, in spite of what the crowds must have wondered about her – or him – because of it all.

In other words, it would have been easier – and expected – and entirely acceptable for Jesus to have nothing to do with either of these two who approached him that day as he went about his business. But Jesus chose otherwise. And we can be grateful for the kind of grace that portends for each of us, just the same.

And Jane Marczewski tells a similar story. Not of a miraculous healing or of being raised from death or deep sleep or whatever was going on with Jairus’ daughter. But she tells of the desperate ways she has come looking for God’s grace in her sickness and struggles and has somehow found it. She says,

“I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it. I have told Him I wanted to die, and I meant it. Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for Him. These are the prayers I repeat night and day; sunrise, sunset.

“Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair. Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened. But count me also among the friends of God. For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow, squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: ‘I’m sad too.’”

And she writes about how she has learned to see God’s grace in spite of herself and her struggles and her sickness. She says,

“I see mercy in the dusty sunlight that outlines the trees, in my mother’s crooked hands, in the blanket my friend left for me, in the harmony of the wind chimes. It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do.

“Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me.

“Even on days when I’m not so sick, sometimes I go lay on the mat in the afternoon light to listen for Him. I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t really explain it, but God is in there—even now. I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.”

Unlike the woman in the Gospel, whose social status was such that we don’t even get to know her name, Jane Marczewski, has two names worth knowing about. See, Jane also goes by the stage name, “Nightbirde.” She tells the story of how she woke once in the middle of the night to birds singing in the dark, from a tree outside her window. She thought she was dreaming or imagining it, that it didn’t make sense, that it was too early for them to be singing because it was still too dark outside. The sun hadn’t risen yet. But the birds were singing, anyway, like they knew the sunrise was coming. Hence her second name, “Nightbirde.”

And that’s the kind of faith we long for, right? The faith of the woman with the courage to approach Jesus in the crowd… The faith of the man who asked Jesus to follow him home… The faith of Jane Marczewski, God’s downstairs neighbor who bangs on the ceiling to get God’s attention, who approaches God with songs and curses, apologies, hard questions, and more…. The faith of birds who sing in the darkness of night, because they know, somehow, that the sun is coming.

So let us be bold and brazen about our desire and our need for God’s grace in our lives – especially when it seems too dark to sing… or that we aren’t worth the bother … or when we’re too tired to find the words. Let’s not be shy about asking. Let’s not pretend we can live – or die – without it, God’s grace. Let’s not pretend we deserve it, either, of course.

But let’s go out of our way, nonetheless. Let’s fight the crowds and our pride and our fear and trembling, too. And let’s see what God does with our humility and our gratitude and our faith when we can muster however much of it is left.

God only knows what it might yield. And it may not be what we’re looking for. But we will always be God’s – Chosen, blessed, sought-after – as Nightbirde sees it. And that will always be enough.

Amen

Mustard Seeds and Manicured Lawns

Mark 4:26-34

[Jesus] also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  And when the grain ripens he goes in at once, with his sickle, for the harvest has come.”

He also said, “With what can we compare the Kingdom of God or what parable can we use to describe it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown in the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.  But when it grows, it becomes the largest of shrubs and it puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With these and many other parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it.  He didn’t speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything, in private, to his disciples.

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I bought an edger a week or so ago for my lawn partly because I have a couple of neighbors with perfect lawns. I don’t have the time or the energy or the desire, even, for the “perfect” lawn, really. But I guess I kind of like the challenge of trying to make the border where my grass meets the sidewalk look as neat and tidy as theirs does – like a highly piled, wall to wall carpet, with lines that look almost decorative – like the outfield of a major league baseball field, or like a freshly vacuumed living room rug.

My father and my wife are rolling their eyes right now. See, I will use that stupid edger, because I paid for it. And because I should probably keep the sidewalks in front of my house passable for dog walkers and bike riders and whatnot. But I really don’t think or care as much about my lawn as some people do – or as some people think that we all should. You know who you are.

For some of you, this might be the most controversial, offensive, upsetting thing I could say out loud in the house of the Lord, but here it goes: I’m inclined to believe there isn’t much more unnatural out there in the world than what we’ve been convinced to believe is the “perfect” suburban lawn.

If our lawns were supposed to look the way our Homeowner Associations and Home Depot and that madman down the street have tempted us to believe they should look (you know who you are – and some of us are just jealous about it) – it wouldn’t be so hard or so expensive or so time-consuming to keep them that way – with all of the water, the fertilizer, the weed-killers, the mowers and trimmers and leaf-blowers, and the gas and electricity it takes to run all of that machinery, I mean.

Which, oddly enough, brings me back to Jesus and his parable about the tiny mustard seed, that enormous shrub, all of those birds, and the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes we talk about the parable of the mustard seed, and about how God can take even the smallest of anything and use it for good; how God can turn the smallest acts of faith into giant instruments of grace; how God can grow even the smallest seed of belief into a full and living tree of faithfulness; how God can take even the least among us and turn them into something bigger than anything we might expect to accomplish on our own.

And those are all fair estimations about what this parable might mean. But I suspect, when Jesus met privately with his disciples, he might have had a little more to say about the mustard seed than the rest of the crowds might have been ready or able to hear, just yet.

See, the parables aren’t supposed to be so easy or obvious or as warm and fuzzy as we sometimes make them. Parables are also meant to teach us about seeing the world differently. Parables are meant to be a challenge to our understanding of things. Parables are meant to upset us, even, to make us uncomfortable, to up-end our expectations and to transform our world-view when we let that happen. I think that’s why Jesus told them to the masses – threw them out into the world, letting them land where they might – but only unpacked and explained them for the disciples and his closest followers, in private. I think Jesus knew that not everyone was ready for the whole enchilada, perhaps.

So, a theologian named John Dominic Crossan said this about the parable of the mustard seed:

The point … is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, or even higher, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar[tree] of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, [more] like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses -- if you could control it.

(The Historical Jesus, pp. 278-279).

See, mustard seeds weren’t something the average farmer would necessarily want planted in his field, because they’re hard to manage. Once these pesky little seeds take root, they’re difficult to control and they would take over the wheat or the barley or whatever grain you were really trying to cultivate.

And not only that, but these giant shrubs attract birds. And in a parable Jesus tells just before what we heard this morning, birds are a nuisance. We don’t like birds, earlier in this same chapter, because they pick up the seeds the sower is trying to plant, and they gobble them up before they ever get a chance to grow. I don’t like birds because they’re creepy and crappy – literally, crappy – like, they make a tremendous mess when they gather en masse in the bushes just beyond my deck in the back yard.

So, you see, there’s nothing warm and fuzzy or easy about these parables when you read them differently. For 21st Century, middle-class, suburbanites, Jesus might as well have suggested that the Kingdom of God is like a patch of dandelions – a weed, a nuisance, something uncontrollable, something despised by others, something your neighbors might hate to see growing next door, something that would attract birds, perhaps – undesirables of some stripe – who are bound to make a mess of your good order, no matter what you do to tend it, to manage it, to control it, or to keep it for ourselves.

In other words, the Kingdom of God doesn’t always look the way we want it to look. It means there are weeds in the mix – saints and sinners are allowed and belong here. The Kingdom of God is a nuisance – God’s love asks things of us sometimes we’re not always comfortable with tolerating, let alone loving. The Kingdom of God and those God welcomes might be despised by others – what some would pluck up or mow over or zap with weed-b-gone, God tends to… God loves… God fertilizes, even… and lets grow in our midst until we learn to see them as worthy and beautiful and loveable, too. The Kingdom of God attracts birds – undesirables that we’re called to make room for, to feed, to tend to, to protect, even, with the shade of grace we proclaim so loudly and proudly for ourselves.

So let’s think of the mustard seed – and the invasive, obtrusive bush it produces – as more like a patch of dandelions in the middle of our carefully tended, perfectly edged, micro-managed front lawn that is the Church in the world. And let’s let it point to a doing away with control, maybe; an undoing of the rules, perhaps; a call to let the sinners mix with the saints; an acknowledgment that the mustard seeds and the dandelions are just as worthy and pretty as all the rest, if we can forget that someone ever taught us they were weeds in the first place.

Because what if we let those wild yellow weeds take over whatever perfectly tended lawns we’ve come to love and to cherish and to protect so carefully in the Church? What if we let go of what we thought the mission field of God’s Kingdom in the world would, could, or should look like, and really let those annoying birds of the air – the strangers, the outsiders, the sinners – come near, move in, make their home among us, and flourish, too?

That would take faith, wouldn’t it? That would take an ability to forget what the neighbors thought about our lawn? It would take a willingness to let God be God and to trust that if we just sow the seeds of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and peace – and mean it – that blessings will flow, that love will grow, that the Kingdom will come among us, that God’s will would be done – through us and for the sake of the world, in Jesus’ name.

Amen