Ever feel like your plans for the day keep getting interrupted? One of my mentors in the ministry told me that he didn’t even make plans for his day. He just prayed in the morning – “well Lord, here I am. How do you want to use me today? I’m game for whatever you have in mind!” When he recommended this to me, I found it difficult to imagine – offensive actually. I love my calendar, and planning, in my mind, is a Godly activity.
But the more time I have in the ministry, the more I have come to see the wisdom of this older clergy’s approach. I’m sure, he too, at one time, had loved his calendar. After all, before he was a priest, he was a military officer! But now I think he was experienced enough with our Lord to know this basic truth – when someone is suffering or in need, God rather casually sweeps our plans aside so that we can be instruments of hospitality and healing.
If Jesus is a clear window to God, given what we see Jesus doing throughout his lifetime, it is pretty clear that God is interested in relieving suffering far more than he is in our plans and time lines.
In last week’s gospel, Jesus crossed the sea – it was a stormy crossings – as crossings usually are when you are reaching out to others who are not within your own circle. On the other side of that storm, he healed a man who’d been so destructive and disorderly that his neighbors had chained him up a good long distance from town. When Jesus spoke to him and healed him, he was thrilled, but his neighbors were not. Upset would be a good word for how they took it. “Go away”. They said. “Go back to where you came from. This is too much for us.” So he did.
He crossed the sea again. And suffering met him as soon as he set foot on shore. In that way – the people on both sides of the sea were alike. In this way, all people are alike. In the need to be included, held and healed – it doesn’t matter whether you live in Salinas, California or in Kerala, India, or in Jalalabad, Iraq.
“Come help me. My daughter is dying.”
And if you or I are going to respond to that kind of plea, - whether it is from a neighbor, or a family member, or a community far away, it most likely means that we are going to interrupt some other plans that we might have had. It most likely means that we are going to change the way we spend our money and our time. It might mean that we are going to change the way that people see us.
Jairus’ interrupted his life and laid his reputation and status and future on the line on behalf of his daughter. For us, who will go to any lengths for our children, it is almost impossible for us to grasp how much he risked.
First of all, he was a member of the elite - the same elite who harassed and ridiculed Jesus at virtually every turn. His friends included him in their scorn when he arrived home with Jesus in tow.
Secondly, he acted against common sense. In his time, it was not unusual for a child to die. In many parts of the world, it is still the case that many children die before adulthood. And it is still the case in some parts of the world that a girl child is less valuable than a boy child.
Thirdly, being around an almost dead girl child, would have bordered on unclean and it certainly would have negated his credentials to lead the community.
But Jairus – whose name means Enlightened in Greek - was a father first and foremost.
He was a father who loved his little girl – beyond all measure of what was appropriate or wise or in his own best interest. And so, he interrupted his entire life and future to kneel in the dust at the feet of this itinerant rabbi to plead for her life.
And Jesus was a healer first and foremost. He lived and breathed hospitality and healing and wherever he went, he bent himself towards the relief of suffering. He allowed himself to be continually interrupted in order to respond to someone else’s need. In fact, this happened on his way to the little girl’s bedside.
An older woman, sick for the same length of time that little girl had been alive – 12 years, had been isolated and held at arm’s length for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to have someone protect her or touch her or love her. It required tremendous courage or total desperation or both to reach out and touch this man – even anonymously.
But once she reached out, she didn’t stay anonymous for long. Jesus called out. “Who touched me?” And in that moment her isolation and her illness were completely disrupted. Because when she came away from the crowd, and stood on her own, she had no way of knowing what would happen to her. She had violated all propriety and law. Stoning could easily have been the result.
But in response to her faith, Jesus’ immediately reached out in hospitality and healing to cover her with compassion and to include her in his family. He protected her and he acknowledged her. “Daughter,” he said. “Daughter. You are well.”
My mother and I were at the Salinas Farmer’s Market yesterday morning, and stopped by the Health Awareness booth. My mom was immediately put to work – she sat in a chair and helped prop up a sign for health care reform. I met Santos, who is a nurse at the hospital. He and his wife and his 20 year old daughter had interrupted their normal Saturday routine to talk with people about health care issues and offer blood pressure checks. A young couple came by, obviously pregnant. While the daughter and I chatted about her college, Santos sat with the couple to check in with how she was doing, and to check her blood pressure. Before they left, they had signed up to receive ongoing support.
Like Jesus, Santos and his family were willing to let their lives be interrupted in order to practice hospitality and healing.
And it is a practice.
Because hospitality and healing don’t come naturally. It doesn’t come naturally to practice the hospitality to stop what you’re doing and get down at eye level with your child and give him your full and wholehearted attention – especially when it means interrupting your other plans.
It doesn’t come naturally to make a priority of listening with the ears of your heart – it takes work and it takes practice.
It doesn’t come naturally to deep down understand and agree that your time and your resources and your relationships essentially belong to God – not to you.
But it is the truth. Our lives belong to God. And growing into that takes daily practice. It means living with your calendar held a bit more lightly and praying each and every morning, “Lord, what do you have in mind today? Because here I am, ready to go where you need me.” Amen.
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