Moment of Clarity With Rev. Lorrie Daly-Price

The reading this week comes from the gospel of Mark. It begins with a dialogue on divorce but then the focus is on the children in Jesus’ time. The children were expendable in the first century. To some they were just nuisances and nobodies. In this encounter Jesus’ companions want to silence them. Instead though Jesus blesses them. It appears that Jesus was trying to point out that welcoming the children, that is the vulnerable, those at risk and those in need is what matters most in God’s kingdom. This whole passage is about community.

Today’s reading from Mark’s gospel reminds us to expand our circle of healing and inspiration beyond our own communities. The disciples have been quite pleased with themselves for preserving the purity and practices of Jesus’ movement by silencing the healing done by an outsider from their group. They are surprised however when Jesus rebukes them for their narrow-mindedness and limited understanding of what his mission was truly about. Anyone who promotes life is on God’s side, regardless of their own ancestry. Where can we see God’s healing touch?

The reading we hear this week from Mark’s gospel is said to be one of those great moments where the disciples struggle to understand who Jesus is and what following him means. Such a human moment and a reminder to  each of us that even those who walked with him on a daily basis didn’t get it right all the time.

 

Jesus begins by telling the disciples about his fate and how he will be betrayed, killed and rise again but, of course, the disciples have no idea what Jesus is going on about.

 

The next scene is quite comical. Jesus and the disciples are traveling and it seems that Jesus may have been out in front of the group, not necessarily engaging in their conversations but still attentive enough to hear what they are saying. When he asks them what they are arguing about.

 

The disciples are like children caught whispering about something in a classroom by the teacher. They fall silent. It is interesting that Mark never says that they actually told Jesus what they were arguing about. They must know in that moment that Jesus heard them arguing about who was the greatest. So, Jesus takes this moment to try and get the disciples to understand his vision of the Kingdom of God.

In the reading we hear today from Mark’s gospel, Jesus and the disciples are in the district  around Caesarea Philippi, where Herod the Great had built a temple and renamed the town after the emperor. It is during this time that the disciples’ assumptions and hopes about what Jesus would accomplish begin to collapse around them. Jesus’ announcement about what would happen to him was the beginning of the end. Up to this point, Jesus seemed unstoppable as a healer, a teacher and a miracle worker. Things seemed to be looking up! 

 

This is the pivotal chapter of the gospel, where there is a shift in the journey now heading toward Jerusalem. Jesus and the disciples are “on the way,” when Jesus asks them (and us, the readers) “Who do you say that I am?”

Our reading this week from John’s gospel comes right after Jesus fed 5000 people and now they are hungry again. Since they were fed by him the day before why not again today? Having enough to eat in Jesus’ time was a challenge for many so it would be understandable that they wouldn’t want to lose sight of what they have just experienced. 

 

After the feeding Jesus and the disciples got in their boat and crossed the lake and many decided to follow them. When they meet up, the original question is asked again - what signs are you going to give us so that we will believe in you? How about a regular diet of manna raining from heaven like our ancestors enjoyed? Jesus seizes on their opening to explain who he is and why he's here: I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.

 

To the disappointment of the idlers, Jesus is not promising an endless buffet of material goodies. He is offering himself as the spiritual food that will fill our deepest needs.

In our reading this week from John’s Gospel Jesus is followed by a large crowd. As the day comes to an end and it is growing dark, Jesus asks Philip where they will find food to feed them, but Philip expresses that it would be far too costly to try and feed them all. Then Andrew points out one youth’s five loaves and two fish. Jesus blesses the food and has it distributed to the crowd, and everyone is fed.

 

When the values of God’s role are brought into play, we can truly believe in a different way, which often leads to surprising solutions to our problems. Like when a crowd is hungry, faith means that a boy’s lunch can be the catalyst that ensures that everyone is fed – most likely through the simple miracle of sharing. Hunger, a natural part of the day, finds itself fed by fragments: fragments from us, fragments of generosity, fragments of goodwill.

It’s summertime and we are in one of the warmest months of the year here in Canada. For many  that means vacation time. Time to get away from our usual routines, schedules and to do lists for even just a short break. Our passage this week from Mark’s gospel shows us that even Jesus and his friends needed to get away from it all once in a while. It didn’t work so well for them though. There is very little rest for the weary in ministry, it seems. There is almost nowhere that Jesus and the guys could go that there were not needy people waiting for them, hoping for a touch from Jesus.

Jesus’ life has been a continuous flurry of activity as he moves from one event to the next. All are amazed at his miracles and the wisdom of his preaching. Jesus has selected his team of disciples and the ministry is making great headway. That is until the reading we hear this week from Mark’s gospel. Jesus has gone home to Nazareth where he is met with a combination of amazement, resentment and open hostility.

 

This was obviously not a social visit where Jesus came to see friends and family. He came as a teacher and a rabbi, with his disciples in tow. Those who heard him became critical of his wisdom and power. They took offence at.

 

So, Jesus packs up his campaign and for the first time he empowers the twelve disciples and sends them off to other lands to share the good news.

The famous opening words of the Bible in the Old Testament, set the scene for all that is to come: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. All that was, all that is, all that will be, all this comes from God. The opening chapter goes on to describe the scale, the diversity,  the goodness of God’s creation. Basil of Caesarea, a Bishop in the fourth century compared God the creator to a potter who, after painstakingly crafting a series of beautiful pots, ‘has not exhausted either his art or his talent’. The creation of the world was not a one time burst of energy that left God exhausted, rather it was a pouring out of something deep within God—a desire to create, to bring about beauty and order and all that is good. God created because God is creative and God’s creativity does not run dry. 

 

This creative heart has left its fingerprints throughout the creation: in the wild evolution of nature, in the instinctive desire of our earliest ancestors to make art on the walls of their caves, in the stories that we tell to our children. The world is filled with creativity because it was created by a creative God whose art and talent are inexhaustible. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth—and that was only the beginning!

 

This week we reflect on some of the amazing parts of God’s creation!

Our gospel reading this week is a story of two women who are healed. Both are anonymous, one named by a condition and the other by a relationship. There is a bleeding woman who is cut off from her community because of her condition and has been impoverished by physicians whose skills have failed her. She would have been invisible to those who did not know her and those who did would have shrunk back for fear of contact contamination. In her desperation she doesn’t care. “If I but touch the hem of his robe…” Her faith in this moment has everything to do with the one in whom she places it. After being made well, free to walk away, steps forward and admits to touching a man in public while she is bleeding and that Jesus did what no one else had been able to.

   Then we will hear about the 12 year old daughter of Jairus. Her father shows the same sort of courage born of desperation that the woman did. No doubt members of the synagogue have heard of this Galilean preacher and wonder if their leader has lost his mind, but Jairus believes that Jesus is his daughter's hope. 

What gives you hope? What gives you reason to get up in the morning?