Sermon: "Belonging to Truth"

Scripture Intro - John 18:33-38a

33 Our gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday is one that we’re accustomed to hearing during Holy Week rather than the week before Advent begins.

This text from the gospel of John recounts the conversation that Pontius Pilate had with Jesus just after Jesus was arrested and brought before Pilate to receive sentencing for his alleged crimes.

If this were an episode of Law and Order we might picture Jesus standing in a court room with the judge standing over him asking him how he pleads – guilty or not guilty.

One caveat we need to mention whenever we read from John’s gospel, is that we should hear this gospel in its context.

John was writing in the late 1^st century some 70 to 80 years after Jesus died.

This is a time when the Christian community was experiencing infighting between those who wished to stay connected to the faith’s Jewish roots and those who wished to distance themselves from the synagogue and create a distinct Christian identity.

The community also contained a mix of Gentile and Jewish Christians who for various reasons wanted to distance themselves from the religious leaders who played a part in the death of Jesus.

In John’s gospel, which was written for those who wanted to break away from the synagogue, we find the entire Jewish tradition lumped into one monolithic group and labeled as “the Jews” –

We’re told the disciples hid out of fear of “the Jews”, and it was “the Jews” who called for Jesus’ execution. 

Taken out of context, these texts have fueled anti-Semitic beliefs and acts of discrimination and violence for thousands of years.

Even if we don’t hold such beliefs ourselves, whenever these texts are read aloud in our worship spaces we should acknowledge how they have been heard and how they are still heard – both by those sitting in our pews, and by our Jewish brothers and sisters.

Context matters. As always.

Liturgically, we hear this text today because as we come to the end of our Christian calendar year, before beginning anew with Advent, we reach the culmination of Jesus’ ministry. That pivotal point where we, like Pilate, contemplate whether this man who stands before us is truly the revolutionary leader the world has been waiting for.

And ultimately, we consider, in what way do we allow Christ to rule in our lives?

Beyond asking ourselves on occasion – What Would Jesus Do? – how do the words and actions of Jesus influence our own words and actions – in a real and life changing way?

To whom do we belong? And whose truth do we own?

 

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

November 25, 2018 – Christ the King Sunday

John 18:33-38a

“Belonging to Truth”

What does it mean to belong?

What does it mean to belong to Christ?

What does it mean to belong to a Community of Christ, like this one?

As some of you may know, our congregation is participating in a series of workshops called “Creating and Leading the 21^st Century Church” offered by the NH Conference of the United Church of Christ.

Every other month, myself, Kate, and members of our church council, gather with the pastors and lay leaders of 9 other churches in NH and MA to talk about what it means to be church in this ever-changing world.

We share our success stories, explore our common challenges and struggles, and learn about the underlying historical, relational, and cultural forces that shape each of our congregations, as well as our individual understandings of what it means to belong to a community of Christ.

The workshop we attended this month focused on the way we approach and implement change in our congregations.

Specifically, we talked about the differences between technical change and adaptive change.

As the world changes around us, we often talk about how we as a church must change  - to meet and serve people where they are in today’s world,

to come up with new ways to show others that being a part of a faith community adds value, meaning, and purpose to one’s life,

and more practically, to ensure that our congregation continues to be a presence in this community for many years to come.

But while we may recognize the need to enact change in our congregations, and show a willingness to adopt change, too often the change we apply involves a technical fix, when what is needed is an adaptive shift.

For example, how would you respond if someone came up to you after worship and said,

“I don’t know why I keep coming to church, I can’t hear what’s being said during the service, most of the time I have no idea what’s going on.”

A technical approach would be to assess the problem –

perhaps the person has a hearing impairment, or the people speaking are not projecting as they should, or there’s an issue with the acoustics in the sanctuary or the sound system – or all of the above.

The next step would be to explore possible solutions with someone with expertise in this area – in this case, we’d bring in our resident and gifted sound technician, Herb Archer.

The last step would be to make the necessary changes to address the problem – have the participants speak louder and clearer, adjust the levels of the microphones or speakers, provide personal amplification devices for those with hearing impairments, or if needed, install a whole new sound system.

A technical approach typically has an identifiable problem and solution,

and often one person, or a small group of people, can enact the change with clear results.

An adaptive approach is much more complicated.

What if we make the needed technical changes and the person who shared the initial feedback about not knowing what’s going on in worship continues to feel like they’re missing information or being left out of the loop with what’s happening in the congregation?

Perhaps their concern goes deeper than hearing what is being said in worship?

Perhaps what they’re expressing is a wider sense of not feeling connected – not feeling included – not feeling as if they belong?

In this case, it may be tempting to identify a technical problem that can be solved with a technical change, when the real issue may require an adaptive change – a change that is not as easy to identify,

a change that may involve multiple issues and solutions -  none of which is guaranteed to provide a lasting fix.

And most importantly, an adaptive change involves not just one person or a small group enacting the change, it involves the congregation as a whole.

It involves changing expectations, changing attitudes, changing behaviors, and in this case, changing the congregational culture to one where every effort is made to include, involve,  and communicate – so all members of the community experience a sense of belonging.

But as we know, feeling like we’re connected and included is only one side of belonging to a community of Christ.

The other side of belonging involves the commitment and covenant we make to be an active follower of Jesus, within this community and in the wider world.

It’s the commitment we make to serve others,

to grow in our relationship with God,

and to grow in our relationship with others –

which is the part of the commitment to Christ that we often struggle with the most.

Jesus acknowledged this struggle in his conversation with Pontius Pilate on the night he was arrested.

He said, “My Kingdom is not of this world…and my followers know this.”

As followers of Christ we stand hesitantly in two very different worlds.

One world where we’re told to love our neighbor, forgive our enemy, and care for the least among us.

And one world where we’re told to mistrust our neighbor, fear our enemy, and to care for only for our country, our family, our own people, and leave everyone else to fend for themselves.

In one world we’re encouraged to live as a communal body, to reach consensus, and to ensure every voice is heard and every need is met.

And in the other world we’re encouraged to live as individuals, to seek out what is best for us, and to reprimand or silence those who point out inequalities in privilege, power, and partisanship.

In one world we’re told the last will be first, the meek will celebrated, and those who turn the other cheek will prevail.

And in the other world we’re told the last will lose out, the meek will be trampled, and those with the biggest weapons and the mightiest fists will prevail.

It’s no wonder why many of us stagger in here on Sunday mornings, seeking respite and peace.

We have these conflicting messages playing in our heads all week long and we come here hoping to make some sense of it all.

Yet here again we encounter Jesus talking about this utopian world –

this Kingdom of God that he talks about more than anything else and expects us to help usher in  –

while at the same time we have no choice but to live and function in this less than utopian world - the one that consistently contradicts the teachings of the One whom we’ve committed ourselves to follow.

To say that we belong to Jesus and that his teachings rule our lives is to invite constant conflict as we navigate in this world….

because almost every word and action of consequence presents us with a point of decision, and conflicting choices.

Do we store up treasures on earth, by putting away money for retirement, or do we store up treasures in heaven by giving all that we have to the poor?

Do we welcome the stranger and the refugee, opening our homes and our hearts to those seeking sanctuary, or do we honor our laws and our borders and insist that it’s only fair that all follow the same rules and process?

Do we punish those who do wrong and seek retribution, or do we leave the judging to God and offer forgiveness to those who trespass against us?

These are not easy choices to make, and as members of the community of Christ, we don’t all agree on which are the correct choices.

Some would say that neither is correct – and that what God requires of us while we’re still in this complex and broken world is a nuanced response that lies somewhere in between.

But we can’t deny that the constant wrestling that takes place within us when we’re confronted with these choices can be downright tiring.

In our gospel reading, we can almost hear the weariness in Pilate’s voice as he struggles to keep a foothold in two different worlds. 

Pilate served and derived his power from the world of the Roman Empire, but as a ruler in the Roman province of Judea he also inhabited the world of the descendants of Abraham, who prayed to a God Pilot didn’t recognize and followed a law that he couldn’t comprehend. 

The province of Judea sat at the edge of the Roman Empire, where uprisings could quickly gain momentum and spiral out of control, and Pilate had orders to keep the peace at all costs. 

Which he did. Pilate had the blood of many on his hands,

but he also understood that playing the part of politician in two worlds sometimes required him to bend to the will of others.

Thus, with one foot in each world, it worked in Pilate’s favor to appease the Jewish leaders and keep uprisings from occurring.  

So we can imagine what Pilate must have felt when he encountered Jesus, who was dragged before him in the middle of the night and threatened to upset the balancing act that Pilate had taken such great care to achieve.

Jesus told Pilate, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Not to the voice of powerful.

Not to the voice of politicians and kings and the ones who hold the purse strings.

But to the one who speaks for the marginalized, the meek, the ones who feel like they don’t belong.

There’s an invitation here.

An invitation to step from one world into another.

To stop trying to balance between the two and make a true attempt to shift our perspective, our allegiance, from the truth of this world, to the truth of God’s world.  

Of course, Pilate responded to Jesus’ invitation with the same question many of us ask ourselves, especially in today’s world:   “What is truth?”

Thankfully, God sent us Jesus to answer that question.

And we find the answer…

In the gospel, in the beatitudes, in Jesus’ teachings and parables,

in his life itself.

Which is why we seek to belong to a community of Christ,

So we can learn and practice that truth, together…and adopt it as our own.

If you’ve been in worship the last few weeks you know we’ve enacted a change here in the sanctuary – we’ve installed a new sound system.

The change was partly brought on by a technical issue.

The wireless frequency we use to operate our sound system has been reallocated by the FCC for use by broadband internet and cell services.

Which means if we didn’t make the change we’d soon be hearing cell phone conversations in the middle of worship.

Of course some may find those more interesting to listen to than the sermon.

But the change in our sound system was also part of our longer-term plan to adapt to our changing world and meet people where they are.

With the new system, we’ll now have the ability to digitally record the service and make it available on our website as a podcast,

so those who are unable to be here on Sunday morning can still hear the music and the message and the announcements, and feel connected to this community even when they can’t be with us physically –

because they’re working, or traveling, or have family obligations, or are homebound by illness, age, or other mobility challenges.

Making a change in our sound system is just one way we honor our mission to be welcoming to all.

To help those who wish to be a part of this community to feel like they’re included – like they belong.

Belonging to Christ is a daily challenge – as we seek to distinguish between the truth of this world and the Truth that Jesus offers us in God’s world. 

But I for one feel hope and joy and excitement – as we seek to find this truth and live it out, together, as this community of Christ. 

Thanks be to God, and Amen.

Sermon: "The Widow's Might"

Scripture Intro - Mark 12:38-44

If you listened closely to the reading of Psalm 146 you may have noticed the usual list of the powerless whom God lifts up – the oppressed, the hungry, the stranger, the orphan…and the widow.

Widows in particular make frequent appearances in the Hebrew scriptures, as well as in the parables and stories of Jesus.

Sometimes they’re named – like Naomi and Ruth - but most of the time they are nameless.

The widow who shared her last crumbs of bread with Elijah.

The widow who pestered a judge until he heard her case and offered her justice.

And the widow we encounter here in this passage from the Gospel of Mark –

the widow who dropped her last two coins - or "mites" - in the Temple collection box.

We hear about widows so often in our Bible it’s tempting to paint them all with the same brush – as poor and exploited and largely forgotten in a patriarchal world where woman who lacked a husband could not own property, had no source of income, and had no value.

These nameless, faceless women are often lifted up for their faithfulness, their generosity, their persistence, and the example they set for us all.

The widow in today’s scripture passage in particular has been the subject of countless sermons over the years in which she has been both lauded for her extreme act of giving – and pitied, as a victim of corrupt religious leaders who parade around in fancy robes while convincing those who least can afford it to give all that they have.

But rather than rush to judgment with an interpretation of this passage that either celebrates or laments the widows offering.

Let’s put ourselves in the place of Jesus.

And just observe.

As he sits across the room from the Temple treasury and watches the line of people make their way up to the collection box.

Noticing what they are wearing and how they carry themselves.

Listening for the sound the coins make as they fall in…both large and small.

Watching the expressions on their faces.

And simply noting the character of the giver - captured in that moment -

in the act of giving. 

 

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

November 11, 2018 – Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Psalm 146; Mark 12:38-44

“The Widow’s Might”

At the party celebrating the Christmas in Amherst Village House Tour last year, I was pleased to run into to Katrina Holman.

Katrina, as many of you know, is our resident Amherst village historian.

If you want to know the history of any of the historic homes in the village, you need only ask Katrina, and she can usually tell you down to the exact year who owned what property and what business or trade was once practiced in what are now all historic homes.

She’ll tell you which home was originally the town bank, which was a restaurant, which was home to the local blacksmith, and where the town taverns – all five of them – were located.

Last Christmas, as our congregation was just beginning to talk about launching a capital campaign to fund much needed repairs of this historic sanctuary and the parsonage next door, I asked Katrina what she could tell me about the history of the house that has been home to a multitude of ministers over the years, including myself.

I knew the house was built in the 1840’s but I was curious to know,

had it always been a parsonage?  Had the church always owned it?

Or did it have a previous life that I was not aware of?

Katrina looked at me and very uncharacteristically said,

“That’s an interesting question, I don’t know.”

About a month after we had that conversation, Katrina wrote an article for the Amherst Citizen that told the story of our parsonage,

a story which she said had never been told before.

The house was built in 1846 by a wealthy Boston merchant and banker.

He was the financial advisor for Ralph Waldo Emerson and was one of Emerson’s closest friends.

The original deed for the house names the owner as Abel Adams, Gentleman.

Katrina noted that historically, the “designation ‘gentleman’ in place of an actual occupation signified that a man had attained enough wealth that he no longer had to work.”  (today we just call it “retired”)

Adams paid $200 for what was prime acreage in the center of the village and he spared no expense in building the two-story house that stands there today.

But Abel Adams never lived in the house.
He built it for three of his sisters, Rebecca, Mary, and Lydia.

Lydia had become a widow at age 45, and had four children.

Rebecca was widowed at age 36, and had one child.

Mary was a spinster, which is considered to be derogatory term in our day, but historically referred to an older woman who had never married.

Because a woman who didn’t have a legal attachment to a man, had to be given some designation to identify her status in life.

Since Rebecca lived the longest, until 1884, the house came to be known as the Widow Rebecca Conant House.

Thanks to the generosity of their brother, the three sisters, and two of their adult daughters who also never married, lived out their lives at 11A Church St. 

Over the years, the women also took in their brother Levi’s widow, Lucy, after all her children had married and left home, and then the two unmarried daughters of their sister, Charlotte, moved in as well – Sarah and Mary Stewart.

Sarah and Mary lived in the house long after their widowed aunts had passed away.

They were often seen taking carriage rides together around the village, and were known to cheerfully invite their neighbors to join them along the way.

When Sarah passed away in 1918, the house was finally put up for sale,

and was purchased by the Congregational Church and Society of Amherst,

to be used as a parsonage for its pastors.

It’s humbling to know that during the first 72 years of its existence, the house where I now live with my wife, Stephanie, was home to seven women - widows and spinsters from two generations of the same family, none of them owning the home themselves, but instead being granted the privilege of a lease for life. 

When we place these women in their time and context, there are some assumptions we can make about their lives given their status as widows and spinsters.

As women living in the 19^th century they certainly didn’t enjoy the freedoms and choices that women living today have, regardless of their marital status.

But just as with the widows who appear throughout our Bible, we can’t assume that these women were poor, marginalized, or perceived as lacking in value, simply because they did not have a husband to give them worth.

New Testament scholar and Jewish historian, Amy-Jill Levine, proposes that our assumptions about biblical widows, while well meaning, are often lacking in historical accuracy.

And our tendency to depict the Jewish faith at the time of Jesus as uncaring and complicit in throwing impoverished women out on the street after the death of their husbands is not only not supported by Jewish historical documents and other texts we find in the Hebrew scriptures, but it is also laden with anti-Semitism.

Levine points out that widows in biblical times did have a legal way to retain their homes and their wealth, and plenty of them did. 

And while several of the widows that we meet in the Bible are described as being poor, not all of them are.

In fact the widow who pesters the judge until he gives in to her demands would likely not have been granted time in court had she not had money and means and status to have her case heard. 

To call her powerless and impoverished simply because she is a widow is to deny her power and place in the story.

It turns her into a victim, rather than one who is claiming her rightful voice.

But what does this tell us about the widow we encounter in today’s passage from Mark?

This is clearly a widow who is poor and powerless.

We’re told that she has given her last two pennies to the Temple treasury.

And we’re also told that Jesus has witnessed her doing so immediately after he warned his disciples about religious leaders who wear ostentatious robes and devour widows houses.

Surely there must be a connection between the greed of the religious scribes and the generosity of the widow.

She’s either a victim of an unjust system that takes from those who can least afford to give, or she’s a stewardship poster child, who gives all that she has, despite how little she has, because she just loves God that much.

When I asked the Rev. Dr. Mary Luti, a retired pastor and my former seminary professor whom I greatly admire, to share her thoughts on this text, she said,

“In my years as a pastor I noted that not many thoughtful people like this text very much. And when it was presented in the context of stewardship and pledging, it always raised more anxiety than money.”

The problem with plucking these widows out their stories and out of their context and using them to prop up whatever interpretation best serves the message we’re trying to get across, is that we become guilty of using the stories of these women as a means to our own ends.

It could be argued that the Gospel writers do the same.

We sometimes forget that the Gospels are not biographies.

And they’re not historical records.

They don’t present us with a series of chronological events with factual details that tell us what actually happened during Jesus’ lifetime.

They’re also not a collection of “How To” manuals that present us with practical examples of how we’re supposed to live our lives as followers of Christ.

The Gospel writers set out to provide their readers with a theological record of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ,

and in doing so they lay out individual stories in a specific order

that is unique to each gospel, to build a portrait of who Jesus was and is,

and to tell the larger theological story of God coming into our world in an arc that their readers are meant to follow from beginning to end.

When we look at it this way – when we step back and look at each Gospel as a whole - we recognize that each writer sets out to paint a different portrait, and tell a different theological story – one that is tailored for their unique community, time, and place.

Mark places this story about the widow’s extravagant gift soon after he tells us the story of the rich man who walks away grieving when he’s told he has to give away all that he has to be given eternal life.

This is the story we heard a few weeks ago where Jesus says it’s easier for a camel to walk through the eye of needle than for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of God.

We’re so tempted to pluck that story out of its context as well and make it a story about money and generosity, when it’s not just about money.

It’s about letting go of all the things that keep us trapped in our human systems of power and status and privilege.

Systems that benefit the few while exploiting the many.

As Jesus keeps telling us, any system that determines value based on “who has the most and who is the greatest” has no place in the Kingdom of God.

And we need to untangle ourselves from all of it to realize the freedom and the connection that we crave and long to experience in the presence of God.

So Mark gives us the story of a rich man who turns away from the promise of the Kingdom because he can’t let go of what anchors him in this world.

And then Mark follows it with the story of a poor woman, who gives away all she has, because she believes in the promise of the Kingdom, and she understands that in order to grab onto it,  she needs to first let go.

In the passage that immediately follows this one, Jesus predicts the fall of the Temple, and then the Passion story begins.

Where Jesus makes the ultimate sacrifice and lets go of his life,

completing the theological arc laid out in the Gospel of Mark.

Mark gives us a portrait of Jesus as a suffering servant.

One who sacrifices everything as an example of what it takes to break the cycle of suffering and death and enter the Kingdom of God.

So I apologize in advance to our Capital Campaign team and our Stewardship team, because this is not a text or a sermon about how we’re meant to follow the example of the widow and give generously to the treasury to support the work of the Temple.

But this is a text and a sermon that speaks to what it is we value.

Because as Jesus said, in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels,

“Wherever our treasure is, there our heart will also be.”

If we value compassion and kindness.

If we value community and connection.

If we value letting go of the things that hold us back, trip us up, and weigh us down….so we can grab hold of the things that push us forward, keep us grounded, and lift us up…

If we value moving towards one another in love,

Rather than backing away from one another in fear…

Then we value what God’s Kingdom has to offer.

We value the promise that we all have a seat at God’s table,

that we’re all meant to share in God’s abundance,

that we all are equal recipients of God’s love and grace.

If we value all of this, then we naturally seek out communities that share these values.

So we can figure out together what it means to live into and practice these values.

And be given the opportunity to practice mercy and forgiveness when we screw it up, over and over again.

When the widow dropped her meager mite (m-i-t-e) in the Temple treasury,

I like to think that she was declaring herself all-in on this promise of a kinder, gentler, more just and loving world.

Even from his spot across the room Jesus could see that she was kindred spirit.

One who was willing to sacrifice it all to gain what she valued most.

The widow’s might (m-i-g-h-t) is found in her act of letting go.

What do we value enough to do the same?

Thanks be to God, and Amen.

Sermon: "Take Heart"

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

October 28, 2018 – Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 31:7-9; Mark 10:46-52

“Take Heart”

Last year, during my sabbatical, I had the opportunity to fly to Spain on a pilgrimage/study tour. 

I took an overnight 7-hour flight, direct from Boston to Madrid.

I booked a window seat so I could read or sleep in peace without having to get up, and even splurged for one of the airline’s “extra” legroom seats -  

so I could stretch out a bit…and so when the person in front of me reclined, their seat back came to about here (4" away from my nose)….rather than here (2" away).

After I boarded the plane, I was surprised to find a pile of complimentary items on my seat all wrapped in individual plastic bags.

A thick blanket, a large pillow, a pair of headphones, and a travel case with an eyemask, earplugs, and personal care items.

I noticed that every seat had the same.

Having flown mostly domestic flights in my lifetime, I was unaccustomed to such luxuries.

Of course, once I sat down I had no idea where to put all this stuff.  

So I shoved it under the seat in front me.

And there went my extra legroom.

As soon as I got myself situated, a middle-aged woman carrying multiple carry-on bags squeezed her way into the middle seat next to me.

To help her out I reached into her seat and picked up her pillow, blanket, headphones, and complimentary personal care items, and held them in my lap while she got herself settled.

For the next 15 minutes, she fiddled with her carry-ons, fumbled with her seatbelt, and called the stewardess over several times to complain about being assigned a middle seat.

When I finally handed her the items I was holding for her and said, “Here these are for you,” she looked at me as if I was asking her to carry illegal contraband.

After I explained that these were items the airlines provided to each passenger she begrudgingly took them and piled them on her lap.

Then she reached into her carry-on and pulled out a pair of long compression socks and proceeded to put them on….in the middle seat, with her bags, pillow, blanket, headphones, and personal care items piled all around her.

Let’s just say, her feet, knees, and elbows were way outside the authorized zone of middle seat space.

She said she had read somewhere that it was important to wear compression socks on airplanes so you wouldn’t die.

Then she said this was her first time flying.

My heart went out to her.

She was obviously not familiar with the routine or etiquette of airline travel, and she was carrying a good deal of anxiety about flying.

But I found my sympathy waning as she spent the next hour flipping through the movies and news programs on the seatback TV while providing a running commentary on all that was wrong with the entertainment industry, our nation, the world, and anyone who didn’t look or think like her.

I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to get much reading or sleeping done on the flight.  

It was then that I remembered that I had the ability to put a stop to this flood of anxiety and negativity.

I’d been equipped to handle situations like this and I had the necessary tools to defuse this increasingly uncomfortable situation.

So I reached under my seat, pulled out the complimentary travel items, and did this….. 

For the remainder of the flight, I was in heaven.

Tuning out the world is one way to cut down on the negativity in our lives and lower our stress levels.

If you can’t see or hear what’s going on than there’s nothing to react to.

It is tempting to do this.

Especially in our 24-hour news cycle world.

We’re built to handle only so much stress, so much personal trauma, so much bad news about other people’s trauma, before it begins to weigh us down,

and crush our spirits, and split us at the seams.

Compassion fatigue is a real thing.

We only have so much bandwidth for feeling and responding to the pain of others before we feel overwhelmed or become indifferent to that pain.

But this was true even before there were 24-hour news channels.

Before we invited the horrors of the world and the darkness of the human heart into our living rooms on a daily basis.

In Jesus’ time, unless you happened to be royalty and were sequestered away in a secure and sanitized palace, there was no escaping the pain of others.

The blind man begging outside the gates of Jericho was likely one of hundreds who were there that day.

Camped out on his mat, sitting in his own filth, reaching out and calling out to anyone who might hear.

Our gospels are full of them.

The lame, the leprous, the lost.

We hear about withered limbs, and hemorrhaging bodies, and diseased minds that cause the afflicted to push through crowds and call out in desperation and orchestrate outbursts and social faux pas that even the disciples feel compelled to dampen. 

“Stay back.” “Be quiet.” “Leave us be.” They say.

But time after time Jesus says the opposite.

“Let her through.” “Call him here.” “Let them come.”

It had to be overwhelming at times for the disciples.

All those people pushing at them, trying to get to Jesus through them,

always wanting something he had – a healing, a word of hope,

to get close to the one who promised them so much when they had so little.

And still Jesus pushed his followers to keep opening their arms,

to keep opening their hearts, to keep letting people in,

when their instinct was to hold them back,

to keep them at bay, to tune them out when they got to be too loud,

or too demanding, or just too much.

Sometimes we NEED to tune it all out because it hits too close home.

When someone else’s pain reminds us too much of our own.

And it wounds us all over again.

But sometimes having the ability to turn our back - or turn off the TV

and tune out the trauma - is a privilege in itself…

When we’re not the one living it.

But for children living in war zones, and families living in refugee camps, and for anyone living in nations, neighborhoods, or households besieged by violence, drugs, poverty or oppression there is no switching off the TV, there is no tuning out the terror. 

If we’re going to own the promise of our Christian baptism and do our best to minister to this hurting world, and do what we can to seek healing, for ourselves and others, then we can’t tune it out either.

As much as we may want to.

“Take heart,” Jesus says.

This is something he says over and over again in the gospels.

“Take heart, do not be afraid.”  (Mark 6:50)

“Take heart, you have been forgiven.” (Matt. 9:2)

“Take heart, your faith has made you well.” (Matt 9:22)

“Take heart, I will overcome the troubles of the world.” (John 16:33)

“Take heart” is another way of saying “have courage” – “have hope” –   in the midst of pain allow it to seep into the core of your being and sustain you, until restoration comes.

Eleven people died yesterday while worshiping God.

In yet another mass shooting. This time at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

And as we weep over their senseless loss we find ourselves on the merry-go-round of outrage and blame all over again.

It’s the easy availability of weapons.

It’s the failings of our mental health care systems.

It’s the media’s obsession with violence, sensationalism, and fame.

It’s the breakdown of the family and the marginalization of God and religion.

It’s the ingrained and systemic evil of anti-Semitism, racism, nationalism, homophobia, xenophobia, and toxic-masculinity, which equates violence with dominance and power.

It’s the current cultural and political climate that cultivates and encourages all of the above – feeding terrorists, and hate groups, and lone wolfs who are destined to die for a cause, and take as many people with them as they can. 

But pointing fingers and arguing over who or what is to blame doesn’t seem to be helping, does it?

It just seems to divide us and hurt us even more.

If anyone had reason to point fingers it was Jesus.

He was familiar with all the ways that we human beings manage to build and sustain systems and states of mind that reward the few and fail the many, over and over again.

In the Beatitudes, and in his teachings and parables he named those systems and attitudes and talked about God’s plan to turn the world on its head, causing the last to be first, and the first to be last.

Yet each time Jesus was approached by someone who was seeking healing, in that moment he didn’t seem interested in blaming or naming the particular person or entity or system that that put them there.

He didn’t blame the limited availability of adequate health care.

He didn’t blame parental upbringing or lack of exposure to religion.

He didn’t blame the corruption and greed which kept so many under the thumb of poverty and oppression.

He didn’t blame the person in need of healing for not overcoming their affliction, or for making bad decisions and allowing their life to spiral out of control.

Not because some or all of these things weren’t to blame for the person’s predicament, but because in the moment placing blame was not helpful.

It did nothing to facilitate healing for the one who was seeking it.

We have to ask ourselves, in the wake of mass shootings, and gang violence, and tribal wars, and sanctioned genocide, how do we begin to seek healing?

How do we resist the urge to rush in and try to fix a horrific situation by naming the cause and shouting at those who disagree with our diagnosis?

How do we “Take Heart”, and have hope that in the midst of unspeakable violence and pain God is pulling us towards restoration?

It begins with recognizing the person in pain.

Acknowledging them, hearing them, calling them to us instead of pushing them back, turning them away, or tuning them out.

Whether it’s a beggar calling to us from the side of the road,

a woman revealing her anxieties as she sits next to us on a plane,

or a man who feels so powerless and is so full of fear that he lashes out, sending his pain out in waves so that others may feel it as well.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speak out against injustice and violence when we see it, and offer solutions to address the root causes when we can name them.

But restoration doesn’t begin with our need to fix.

It beings with our need to heal.

It’s worth noting that in this healing story from the gospel of Mark

that comes near the end of Jesus’ ministry,

the disciples have learned to mirror their teacher.

When the crowd tries to silence Bartimaeus, the disciples say to him,

“Take heart! Get up, he has called you.”

“Take heart” is the beginning of restoration and reformation.

It opens our heart just a crack, 

and allows the healing light to flow in.

It acknowledges that God is at work here, 

in ways that we cannot see.

This is the Good News that Jesus asks us to bring to the world.

May we take heart, 

and get up, 

for he is calling us to heal.

Thanks be to God, and Amen.