"Nothing is God's Favorite Thing"
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| Christ healing. Follow link to see reference http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55111 |
Lectionary Scripture – Mark 1:29-39 (NRSV)
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went through Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Reflection on the Scripture
“Nothing” is God’s favorite thing to work with. It’s a statement I heard from a Luther Seminary professor this week and I love it! In the scripture story above, we have just such a situation. Simon’s mother-in-law can do “nothing” because she’s flat on her back in the grip of a fever. Today, we’re far less concerned about such circumstances due to the medical advances we enjoy. Typically, a good day resting in bed and two extra strength Tylenol is all it takes to break a fever. But in Simon’s time, a fever caused great concern as it often incapacitated a person in terms of crucial roles in their family, household, and community. Furthermore, it was not unusual for a fever to result in death and be even more devastating to a family or community. But here in this story, God’s messenger in the person of Jesus comes to Simon’s mother-in-law and doing “nothing” more than taking her hand, the woman is raised up and restored. She then returns to the calling that defines and matters most to her which is serving and attending to the people who visit her home. Phenomenally, by nightfall of this day, she has no less than the whole city at her door! What a dramatic and miraculous change during just one day she.
Personally, I marvel at the stories of how a thing or situation or circumstance goes from “nothing”, or from hopelessness, to a noble simplicity, or to something amazing because a visionary sees possibilities beyond the “nothingness” in front of them. In terms of something quite simple, I can recall when my father would take a small block of wood and with a pen knife transform it into a familiar and recognizable object over the course of a few hours. One time that I watched him, he ended up carving a horse no larger than the palm of his hand, yet it was majestic and reflected strength and character.
To my memory, my father never did much carving, but it was an amazing thing to witness when he did it. I wonder at times what he might have achieved and enjoyed from this gift had he spent more time and effort at it. But the fever that gripped and consumed him was his driving need for adulation from others. Couple that with the tremendous energy he expended seeking domination over people’s lives for ensuring a constant stream of such attention and you have one mighty fever that never let go of his life.
Despite the in-breaking efforts of God’s Spirit and God’s love into my father’s life, his choice was to remain in his fever for much of his life. It’s possible that in the latter years of his life, some of that fever let up. I think it may have been when he encountered and joined the recovery community of Alcoholics Anonymous. Why I say this is that he never updated his final wishes and funeral plans prior to his sudden death from a fatal heart attack on April 2, 2005. Had he done so, I think his wishes would have been different and reflected remembrance of his A.A. home group in Kansas City, Missouri.
The plans and wishes that my siblings and I located when cleaning out his apartment, reflected old desires that his body be transported to Woodbine, Iowa for a funeral service in the community he grew up so he could be buried next to his parents and a sister who died quite young in a car accident. Given that those were the only documented wishes we had, we honored those as fully as possible. Thankfully however, at his sparsely attended graveside service several days later in Woodbine, Iowa, a handful of members from his A.A. home group arrived to pay their respects. As the presiding minister for that service, I remember many things from the service; some worth remembering and others that are not. What I remember however from his A.A. friends is their admiration and deep appreciation for my father. Furthermore, they shared that if the service had been held in Kansas City, we would have been amazed at the many number of my father’s A.A. friends who would have attended to pay their respects.
Looking back on all of that now, I realize that the God of my father’s understanding had restored him in part from his fever, at least as much as he would allow in this life. And from the restoration that did happen, my father found a community capable of accepting and embracing him completely for the person he was. Because of that, I think Dad found the measure of peace that was possible for him in this life until the heart attack took him from this world. Strangely enough, when the phone call came from my younger brother telling me of Dad’s death, I was at that very moment watching the TV announcing the death of Pope John Paul. The coincidence and phenomenal convergence of those two events at the same moment has never left me. Two lives lived so vastly different, one that touched countless millions and the other beloved by a large Twelve-Step group; very different men from two very different communities with very different challenges who left mortal life the very same day to begin their next stage of life exploring and living in God’s presence. The Pope left behind the nothingness-ness he’d been reduced to by Parkinson’s disease. Hopefully, my Dad left behind the nothing-ness he’d been reduced to by his narcissism. As a fellow minister once told me, “Death is the ultimate healer of all things.”
In light of the above this is the message I proclaim: “Live an unencumbered life, in all the myriad of ways that entails, so there resides within you the fullness of unencumbered faith - a faith joyful and complete based on the God of your understanding.” And before you move on, I offer this prayer for the week ahead of you:
“Gracious God, we live in a world that wants us feverish in so many ways. There are the fevers of grief and loss so profound that we fear recovery is impossible from the suffering tormenting our souls. We don’t know how we’ll ever find our way back from the dark night that possesses us. Yet it is in the penetrating darkness of night that you are to be found anew, found anew in ways we could never have anticipated or imagined in our wildest freest moments of thought and experience. Come now; come this very moment to free us of the fevers that grip us, that consume us, that make us fear for life itself. Exorcise the demons they represent. Cast them out. And by your touch through your Spirit, by your touch through a friend’s touch, by your touch through the love of family and those who represent family to us, lift us out of the nothingness to which our fevers have reduced us and into the blessings and lightness of heart that bless those who chose to walk the path of healing and restoration -- knowing that such blessings will bring the end of our dark nights and the end of our isolations as your community of love gathers to the doors of our heart. We pray it and expect it God in the name of all your prophets, martyrs, teachers, priests, followers and monks who ever lived in praise and love of you. Amen!
Brad Shumate, M.S., M.A., LMHC
Free of Encumbrance
Vancouver, WA
Email: brshumate@freeofencumbrance.net
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