Into the Fray

Into the Fray--January 23, 2017

"When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fridge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed." [Mark 6:53-56]

Sometimes it feels overwhelming.  Doesn't it?

Sometimes, if we just lay our card on the table, the sheer amount of brokenness is hard to wrap our heads around.  The sheer scope of hurt and heartache, of injustice and wrong, of lingering old hatreds nursed at for generations, the insidiously powerful fears that make us view each other with suspicion and prejudice.  The suffering, physical and spiritual, the wounds in our flesh and in our hearts, can be too much to bear.  Like the terror of feeling your foot caught in an undertow, and you feel the rush of the waves swirling around you, reading to swallow you up. 

In those periods of life, it can feel like there is too much to do for the healing of the world around us... or even the healing of our own immediate spheres of influence... or even simply the healing in our own selves. It is powerfully easy to feel like it is time simply to give up.  No way to get traction.  No way to get a toe-hold.  No way to make enough of a dent in the pile of sorrows to make it feel like it was worth even trying. 

You surely know that old cliché story about the boy picking up the starfish along the beach, who insists to the cynic that it is worth it to save even one starfish by picking it up and tossing it back into the water so it will not get parched when the tide goes out.  I get the point that story is trying to make, but come on--sometimes, doesn't it feel like something is wrong with the universe if the waves and tides keep conspiring to kill starfish every day?  Sometimes, you look around, and you just think, "There is too much.  Too much to even make a beginning."  We have this special church service every year on the night of Epiphany where we take candles and go out and stand around the old brown Christmas tree from the immediately preceding Christmas to burn it--and every year, without fail, the naturally strong wind on the hilltop there snuffs out candles before we have gotten out from under the portico.  It is a repeated moment of futility that sometimes makes me wonder what the point was, that split second of flame, before the wind blew it out.  

It is easy to wonder, on such January evenings, why Jesus and his band of followers kept at what they did in the midst of such light-extinguishing force in the world. What's the point in being a presence of grace in a graceless world, or even trying to be a voice of truthfulness in a world that increasingly believes it doesn't matter whether news is real or fake, or facts are tethered to reality at all?  What's the point of crossing the sea and healing the sick when the powers of decay, the momentum of entropy, and the brutality of death keep creeping back? 

But that is exactly what Jesus did, isn't it?  And with such intensity!  Jesus doesn't just meander through the Gospels--he launches himself right into the darkness and lights himself up like a firecracker.  He throws himself into the suffering as a presence of relief.  And he teaches--and pulls!--his followers to come with him, like it was the exact bearing he was headed on all along in their boat, right into the heart of the pain of the world.  And he does it without regard for getting thanks or repayment--because that is part of the essence of Jesus movement, not simply to heal or tend a wound, but to do so free of charge and free of the baggage of tit-for-tat.  Jesus throws himself into a bean-counting world as a hand-grenade of grace.  He hurls himself into the world's ridiculous obsession with looking like a "winner" as the one who offers himself to all those who have been labeled "losers."  Jesus leaps out into the darkness carrying his light--and he is prepared to spend every last bit of fuel within himself to bring just a bit more brightness into it.  That's what his movement is about.

I suspect, if you pressed Jesus on it, he would concede that, indeed, all those people he and his followers healed on outings like these would eventually get sick with something else.  Eventually the healed become the relapsed, the once-again-sick.  Even ol' Lazarus, called forth out of the grave, went back to it eventually and laid down his tired bones a second time, poor guy.  Being a part of Jesus' movement means the acknowledgement that the light we are called to bring to the world may seem to be snuffed out awfully quickly, and it means admitting that we may make an awful lot of effort for very little visible return on the investment.

But--and this is our act of holy rebellion against the powers of suffering, sin, and sorrow--we do it anyway.  We go at it anyway.  We follow Jesus into the fray.  We head with Jesus right into the stormiest waters, anyway.  We say to the forces of self-absorbed fear, of envy and avarice, and of cultivated hate, "No.  You cannot silence or stifle us.  As long as there is breath in us, we keep at it.  As long as there is wick to burn, we will keep lighting it again.  As long as there is Jesus, throwing himself into the heap of the world's pain, we will leap with him."

And, yes, at some point, you and I, we will each run out of steam, and we will have spent every last ounce of love and of energy within us.  At some point, like Lazarus (either the first or the second time around) we, too, will lay our weary bones down. 

And when that day comes, the relentless resistor Jesus will come and raise us up.  I am putting all of my chips on that hope.  I am going all in--Jesus has taken me, and you, too, I can see, by the hand. Let's go.

Lord Jesus, give us honest eyes to see the depth of the need and sorrow around us, and give us your fierce courage not to give up our calling to be the presence of grace and truth and compassion even on the cold nights where we find ourselves.