"Raised
Up, Raising Up"
Mark
1:29-38
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
February
8, 2009
Evensong
I want to begin our evensong meditation with, no surprise, a poem, that is both a nod to Louise Tefft's delightful painting (her last painting, she says) that we have used as our bulletin cover this evening and an antidote to the general sense of anxiety that has gathered over life in these days of a faltering economy. The poem, by (surprise!) Denise Levertov, is entitled Celebration and I invite you to hold Louise's painting (of the evergreen trees) before you as I read.
Celebration
Brilliant, this day - a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadows cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green -
whether it's ferns or lichen or needles
or impatient points of bud on spindly bushes -
greener than ever before.
And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for blessing,
a festive rite, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.
Levertov's poem is a lovely way of describing not only
a winter day that, in its beauty, seems out of step with the ethos of despair
that hovers over us these days but also the gospel of Jesus Christ that Mark
writes for people who, as we have said in previous weeks, are suffering
"reasonable gloom." Mark
means for his gospel to be for his suffering readers "like a day that
shines in the cold" and "like a first-prize brass band swinging
along the street of a coal-dusty village."
I think it is important that we do not think of the
Bible's four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - as biographies of Jesus.
The writers did not intend that. They
were writing to the early followers of Jesus the Christ as they struggled to
establish and to grow strong communities of steadfast discipleship that would
live and work and carry out the ministry of God with the same spirit that was in
Jesus. Mark's purpose was to
encourage his readers to hang in and to hang on as they suffered in and from the
maelstroms of persecution, doubt, and diseased social systems.
Mark was writing about the kingdom, or as it is referred to today, the
reign, of God.
Tonight is not the time to delve into whether or not
Jesus really performed the exorcisms and healings attributed to him in
the gospels. Let me say for now that
there is no good reason to suppose that he didn't.
And let me also say that there is no good reason to suppose that
Mark's purpose in writing about them was simply to paint Jesus as a healer or a
miracle worker. Jesus already had
died by the time Mark wrote his gospel and his readers were reading it.
So any of the healings and exorcisms that Jesus did in while he was alive
would hold no direct relevance for the people who were reading Mark's gospel
since Jesus no longer was on earth to do exorcisms and healings for them.
I believe that Mark tells about the healings and
exorcisms of Jesus as symbolic actions.
In the reign of God, and by the power conveyed in and through the Spirit
of God, Mark means to say, life and lives and living get healed and raised up
and liberated and transformed for and toward the good of all life and lives and living.
Ched Myers, in his book entitled Binding the Strong Man, says that when Martin Luther King,
Jr. “knelt and prayed in the face of
police dogs and water cannons, or when his colleagues sat at lunch counters or
at the front of city buses, they were engaging in symbolic actions.
Their significance cannot be interpreted apart from
factors of socio-symbolic ‘space’ (segregation in the south) and ‘codes’
(discriminatory law and traditions). In
(this) example we can see actions whose historical character was not diminished
for their being ‘symbolic.’ Nor
are they any less ‘miraculous’ for being nonsupernatural.
Their ‘divine power’ lay not in a manipulation of nature but in
confrontation with the dominant order of oppression and in witness of different,
(alternative) possibilities.”
So, even if we grant that Jesus acted with
“supernatural” powers, it was not because those powers challenged the laws
of nature that they gained their power and were told by Mark in his gospel.
It was because they were used in the service of challenging
the “laws” of social construction wherever and whenever they were unjust,
unfair, or untenable in terms of establishing the beloved community Jesus came
proclaiming as the dream and will of God for life on earth.
The point that Mark was lifting up for the people in the writing of
his gospel was not that there was a once-upon-a-time superstar healer that had
amazed the people, for where is the good news in that for Mark’s contemporary
readers and for us if the superstar is no longer performing?
Mark’s point is that healing, hope, and harmony are the hallmarks of
the reign of God brought to light by Jesus and that they are meant for all
people.
An example: There
are many wheelchair-bound people who do not believe that their liberation or
fulfillment as persons depend on their being able to walk. They
are not, most of them, living every moment of every day hoping for some kind of
medical “miracle” that will allow them to walk. Many wheelchair-bound folks
say that what impedes their ability to live into their true and full humanity
are social laws and attitudes that define them as “handicapped” because they
are in some way “different” than most people.
What constrains their lives is when they are socially marginalized by
lack of equal access or by policies that keep them dependent and segregated.
The evolving social consciousness that has seen our country adopt the
Americans with Disabilities Act is consistent with God’s reign on earth and is
a modern “miracle.” So, it is
worth every penny to cut ramps into every sidewalk and street corner so that all
may have more complete access to and in our communities.
In our story tonight, Simon’s mother-in-law was
healed in contravention of the religious law of the day because Jesus healed on
the Sabbath. In so doing, Jesus
demonstrated that any law that precludes or hinders healing is not a good law.
Mark surely did not intend for liberals and conservatives to wrangle for
centuries over whether or not Simon’s wife’s mother, and others like her,
was healed supernaturally or if Jesus really performed miracles.
Rather, Mark wanted to encourage us, living as people in and under the
reign of God, we who have experienced the healing grace of God in our lives, to
awaken and effect miracles in our own time.
“The whole city was gathered at
the door where Jesus was healing,” Mark wrote.
That is still true today. There
is such great need for healing and hope.
Mark tells us that “Jesus came and took Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifted
her up. Then the fever left her, and
she began to serve them.” The
word translated as “lifted up” can also be interpreted as “raised up.”
It is the same word that is used about the resurrection of Jesus when it
is said of him that he is risen. What Mark really
is writing about in his gospel is the raised up life, the resurrection life, the
risen life that comes on the wings of the reign of God.
And, did you notice, once we have experienced the
reign of God in any of its healing or liberating ways, we are to pass it on, to
embrace it, to go to work on its behalf. Simon’s
mother-in-law, once she was raised up,
what did she do? She began raising
up others, seeking the benefits of the reign of God for her larger human
family.
Our sermon hymn testifies to the reality that giving
our lives in the service of raising up life for everyone can be tiring,
fatiguing, wearying. Storms will
blow into our lives and there will be darkness.
The “demons” and “diseases” that plague our common life and make
society sick and seep even into our own lives do not easily or willingly release
their grasp. But the power of God is
greater than the other powers, Mark wants his fellow-sufferers then and now to
know. So he writes his gospel to
exhort, to encourage, to enable, and to ennoble those who have seen in the life
of Jesus the Christ signs of God’s hopeful reign not to give up or give in to
any reign or powers that are contrary.
Having been raised up to the hope heralded by the
reign of God on earth, we are invited to be about the work of raising up the
whole world until life for everyone is like “a
first-prize brass band swinging along the street of a coal-dusty village, wholly
at odds with the claims of reasonable gloom.”
That should give us something to do this week!
Amen.
© Copyright 2009 First Presbyterian Church