Scripture: Mark 1:29-39
Holy One, Healer of our every ill, touch my mouth and all of our hearts, that we might more fully know you and more deeply love you and one another. Amen.
It was 6:15 on Friday evening, September 1st and we had just turned onto Highway 55 outside of Hastings. We were caravanning with Teresa and Jim, Maggie’s brother and sister-in-law and Teresa started honking and swerved to miss an oncoming car that was driving diagonally into our lane. We were going 55 miles an hour and Maggie remembers me saying, “there isn’t anywhere for me to go, we’re going to get hit.” While I was able to steer slightly to the right so that Maggie and her brother, Michael who were both sitting on the right side of the car broke ribs, Susie and I, who were sitting on the left side of the car, were much more seriously injured.
I was conscious through the forty-five minutes it took to cut off the back of my seat, the door, and the roof to get me out. And I distinctly remember two things: wondering if I was dying, and the hands that held me.
As I’ve reflected on that life-changing forty-five minutes and the five months of healing thus far, I return again and again to the deep sense of calm I felt the whole time. It was as if the answer to my wondering about dying was the hands that held me, and treated me, and began my healing journey.
I now know that it was Dean and Julia’s hands. It was Dean who literally had my back with both of his large, strong hands after they cut the back of my seat off. He held me for most of those forty-five minutes, speaking calmly and explaining what was happening. And it was Julia who was able to reach over, calmly describing what she was doing, and place a tourniquet on my right leg which saved my life.
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…
This biblical story has me thinking and praying a lot about hands and healing: about Jesus’ hands and our hands. Jesus’s hands and our hands.
Before I say more about that, let me set a bit of context.
Today’s scripture comes at the very beginning of Mark’s gospel in which Mark is introducing us to Jesus and laying out what his ministry is to be. Our text shares the two primary focuses of that ministry: healing and exorcism.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a visceral reaction to the notion of exorcism. I think, particularly as a lesbian, the specter of too many of my queer elders, and frankly, queer contemporaries, experiencing literal exorcisms as well as attempted psychiatric ones makes me deeply suspicious of that word. But I have been greatly helped by Ched Myers’ commentary on Mark’s gospel called Binding the Strong Man.
Myers encourages us to recognize a lot of symbolism in Mark’s gospel. In particular, Myers says about the few verses right before our text, “From the moment he strides into a Capernaum synagogue, it becomes clear that Jesus’ Kingdom project is incompatible with the local public authorities and the social order they represent. A ‘demon’ immediately demands that Jesus justify his attack upon the authority of the [political and religious] establishment; Jesus vanquishes this challenge and commences his ministry of healing.”
In other words, in order to be about the constructive ministry of genuine healing, love, justice, and peace, Jesus must also be about the deconstructive ministry of exorcizing the status quo of some people having most of the power and stuff, and others being outcast, impoverished, and oppressed.
This context helps me hear our text very differently. How about you?
That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons… 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, … [the disciples] 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 throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message… and casting out demons.
That kind of Jesus, I am definitely able to follow. And I think you’ve heard me preach about the deconstructive, exorcising-the-demons-of-Empire Jesus before. And that is a really important part of my faith and call to ministry. And it’s a really important part of our call to ministry here at Lyndale.
But this morning, at this moment in my life, I am particularly drawn to Jesus’ healing hands and what they invite us to receive.
Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
God finds so many hands to hold us if we can but receive. Sometimes it is the hands of the ocean or the firm hands of the earth. Our family discovered how we were held in the hands of this community: hands on the rake and lawn mower for Fall yard clean-up, through cooking hands, and card-writing hands. And, maybe most importantly, through praying hands.
About a month after the accident, I was starting to get scared because I couldn’t sing. It probably had to do with three intubations and the powder from the airbags that got into my lungs. But every time I tried to sing a hymn, I wasn’t physically able. And I was scared I might never be able to again. And then a friend sent along a video of Bishop Yvette Flunder giving a talk about some of the hatred that has been directed toward her because of who she is. She talked about how she felt deeply afflicted and how her soul was wounded. And then she paused and very slowly sang, “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the struggling soul” And as she sang, she lifted up her hands and it was as if she were reaching out to me and I began to sing along.
My friends, there IS a balm in Gilead. There IS a balm amidst the war in Gaza and Israel, in Ukraine; amidst disease and injury in our personal lives. There is a healing balm.
Even as God-in-Jesus reached out a hand to Simon’s mother-in-law, God finds myriad ways to reach out healing hands to us if we but receive. For me it has been Dean and Julia and Yvette’s and all of your hands. Whose hands has it been in your life?
And, it doesn’t feel like a debt, but having received so exquisitely, I am so curious how God will use my hands and your hands and our hands in the healing of this broken and beautiful world.
Amen.
Invitation to Communion Prayer from enfleshed
Beloveds..
We come to this Table because we are claimed in covenant
Because we long for liberation
Because we thirst for justice
Because we know the need—fierce and urgent—
for grace and freedom and nourishment in our flesh and our bones
Because this is not a table of Lyndale United Church of Christ
This is Christ’s table
and you are invited to bring your whole lives
and all are welcome here. Period.
Prayers of the People and the Prayer of Jesus
(The New Zealand Prayer Book)
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother and Parent of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:
The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed
by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom
sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and testing, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
now and forever. Amen
Words of Institution
We remember that on the night before Jesus was killed by those who feared him…
On the night before he was gunned down in a school, or a grocery store, or a Walmart …
On the night before he was suffocated by the knee of a policeman…
On the night before her trans* body was murdered…
On the night before he was infected inside an ICE facility…
On the night before her body was destroyed by a pipeline…
On the night before he was arrested and crucified…
Jesus sat at table with those he loved. And as they gathered, they did so with laughter and love, they told stories and remembered all they had done together—healing and blessing, creatively resisting, worshiping and celebrating. It was a brief moment of Third Space and Interbeing. And as they were celebrating, Jesus took some bread and blessed it and broke it. And to remind them of all that had been and to give them strength for what lay ahead, He said “this is my body, broken open and shared with you. Each time you eat this ordinary bread, remember the extraordinary, transformative power of our lives when they are broken open for justice and love.”
Then he took the cup, the cup that had been raised in toasts and celebration of all the good and great they had done, or at least attempted, and he said, “this is the cup of blessing. Each time you drink of this cup you participate in the promise of new life, here and now, in communion with God.”
My friends, this is a table that is open to all. You do not need to be a member of this church, or any church; For Christ is the host, Christ sets the table and Christ welcomes all.
At this time, I invite you to partake at home or come down this direction and leave in that direction. Let us come for all things are ready.
Post Communion Prayer from enfleshed
Jesus said, “Share this, and remember.”
And so, we do.
We remember.
We offer.
We receive.
And we share in this nourishing feast.
Because we know how to nourish each other in ordinary and
extraordinary ways.
Because we need each other
and we need this sacrament, this visible sign of life-giving healing
and grace, flowing and overflowing. Amen.
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