Mark 8.31-9.1
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
I suspect that many of us at Plymouth don’t particularly like talking about the cross and crucifixion. It can be hard for us to make sense of it today, just as it was in the first century when Paul wrote, “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.”[1] And yet, when you look at the predominant symbol of Christianity, when you look at the front of Plymouth’s sanctuary, you see the cross, an ignominious and horrific means of execution employed by the Roman Empire. And we know that Jesus died a tortured and shameful death upon a cross.

I need to tell you something: I do not fully understand the meaning of the cross. Yes, I’ve been to seminary. Yes, I’ve been ordained for a couple of decades. Yes, I’m a pretty bright guy. But there is an aspect of the cross that I may never understand.

I get it that Jesus was put to death by Rome because he was a threat, a political agitator who proclaimed a radical regime change that he called the kingdom of God. I see the collaboration of the religious authorities and the scribes. I understand that early Christians explained the cross in the context of Isaiah’s prophesy of the suffering servant. But I still don’t understand it on a visceral level, because I am a white man in America who lives with incredible privilege, including the privilege of not having lived the connection, the echoes, the resonance of the cross and the lynching tree.
Jane Anne tells a story that during her ordination process, she included a bit more about the theology of the cross than most candidates and it made some people uncomfortable, and that one of her defenders was a saint of the UCC, the Rev. Clyde Miller, who was our conference minister for 13 years. As a Black man raised in the South, Clyde understood the cross and its significance for the Black church in this country. He had an intimate understanding of the cross as God’s critique of the powers of this world and the way that God can turn suffering and defeat into victory.

I don’t know how aware you are of the history of lynching in our country or if you’ve ever thought of it as a system of tacitly legitimized terror perpetrated by white Americans against our Black sisters and brothers. Even into the 1920s, anti-lynching bills passed by the US House of Representatives were defeated repeatedly by a solid bloc of Southern Democrats in the Senate, and the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was finally passed by the House 366 days ago, on February 27 last year…but it was held up by the Senators Paul and McConnell from Kentucky, and it died with that session of Congress. What does that say to our African-American sisters and brothers in the wake of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery who was shot and killed while jogging by two armed white men in a suburb of Atlanta? Doesn’t it say, “We still think it’s okay if Black lives are forfeit?” Doesn’t it say, “Black lives don’t really matter?” And lynching Black Americans wasn’t just a southern phenomenon, though the vast majority of lynchings occurred there; in 1900, John Porter, a 15-year-old Black adolescent was lynched in Limon, Colorado…he was burned alive.

Theologian James Cone writes, “If white Americans could look at the terror they inflicted on their own black population — slavery, segregation, and lynching — then they might be about to understand what is coming at them from others. Black people know something about terror because we have been dealing with legal and extralegal white terror for centuries. Nothing was more terrifying than the lynching tree.”[2]

Have you ever thought about the crucifixion as a lynching? About Jesus as the “victim of mob hysteria and Roman imperial violence?” I invite you to use your imagination and try to walk for at least a few yards in the shoes of Black Americans who saw the lynching tree as the ultimate symbol of terror. You’ve seen the horrific photos of crowds of white terrorists, sometimes with their children, gathered around the mutilated body of a Black man or woman hanging from a tree or the mother of 14-year-old Emmett Till looking at her son’s disfigured body in a casket. It wasn’t simply a death, but a visible message about white supremacy. New Testament scholar Paula Fredrickson says that crucifixion in ancient Rome was analogous to lynching in the United States. “Crucifixion,” she writes, “was a form of public service announcement: Do not engage in sedition as this person has, or your fate will be similar. The point of the exercise was the death of the offender as such, but getting the attention of those watching. Crucifixion first and foremost is addressed to an audience.”[3]

James Cone continues, “Because of their experience of arbitrary violence, the cross was and is a redeeming and comforting image for many black Christians. If the God of Jesus’ cross is found among the least, the crucified people of the world, then God is also found among those lynched in American history.”[4] That understanding of Jesus’ crucifixion is difficult for white Christians to fully understand. Black liberation theology sees the experience of Black Americans as a permanent underclass resonate with the experience of Jesus, a Jew who lived under Roman occupation and suffered its institutional violence.

“If the American empire has any similarities with that of Rome,” he writes, “can one really understand the theological meaning of Jesus on a Roman cross without seeing him first through the image of a black man on the lynching tree? Can American Christians see the reality of Jesus’ cross without seeing it as the lynching tree?”[5] Can you see the cross as a reflection of the lynching tree? When you come back to Plymouth, I hope that when you see the large wooden cross in our sanctuary, you will pause and consider that.

Dr. Cone writes, “It has always been difficult for white people to empathize fully with the experience of black people. But it has never been impossible.”[6] I invite my white sisters and brothers to work at empathizing…especially when it is deeply disturbing.

As we continue our journey through Lent together, may you take time to ponder the cross…what it means for you, what it means for Black Christians, and how it informs your faith in God.

If we really stand up for God’s kingdom of justice, of the first being last and the last being first, it is likely going to cause some turbulence for you and for your church. If we are going to make “good trouble,” as the late Congressman John Lewis said, we have to be prepared for the consequences.
I invite you also to consider what it means for you to take whatever privilege you have in this life and be willing to forfeit it for the sake of the gospel. What are you willing to risk for God’s liberating reign, here and now and still unfolding? Will you take up the cross and follow Jesus?

Amen.
 
© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact [email protected] for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.
 
[1] 1 Corinthians 1.22-23 (NRSV)
[2] James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), p. 16.
[3] Paula Frederickson, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. (NY: Vintage, 200), pp. 233-34.
[4] Cone, op. cit., p. 33.
[5] Cone, op. cit., p. 64
[6] Cone, op. cit., p. 49

Genesis 9.8-17
First Sunday in Lent
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
Intro to Scripture:
The story of Noah and the ark is, perhaps, one of the best-known stories in Hebrew scripture. Adopted by widely in popular culture because of the beauty of rainbows and little animals prancing two by two out of the ark into a new world. And echoed in many creation stories from ancient and indigenous people around the world. But it is also a harrowing story of loss and destruction brought on in the version in Genesis by God’s grief and anger at the rebellious ways of humanity. God sets out to wipe the slate of creation clean with a flood covering all the earth. Plunging creation back into the primordial chaos from which it came. Saving only a remnant. Much to God’s surprise, retributive justice does not work well. The remnant of humanity saved has not been greatly changed by 40 days and nights at sea in a boat with several hundred squawking animal friends needing to be fed. Humanity is still contentious and prone to sin. God changes God’s mind about how to deal with human being. And that is where our text for today beings.
 
Genesis 9:8-17
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 9 "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." 12 God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." 17 God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."

Sermon
Grace and peace to you as we stand together at the beginning edge of our 2021 Lenten journey. As one often does at the beginning of a journey, we stand looking at where we have come from and towards where we are going. Today we can look behind us at a year that was like a plunge into the primordial destructive flood waters of our scripture story. We are attempting to look forward surveying, like Noah and his family from deck of the ark, a wilderness land still devastatingly deconstructed by the chaos that we hope is now subsiding. Over this threshold moment we see a bow in the clouds, a rainbow.

And we hear God’s ancient covenant with Noah. “Never again will I plunge the world into the chaotic waters of destruction. My bow in the clouds will be a sign that I will always remember my love for humanity and all creation. I will remember, even when I am grieved, that retribution will not resolve the issue of humanity’s hard-heartedness. Punishment will not coerce humankind into changing its rebellious ways. I make a covenant to always be present with my beloved creation, with humankind made in my image, to protect, not destroy.”

As God says, the sign of this extraordinary covenant is the unstrung warrior’s bow in the clouds. The bow was the war weapon of choice at the time that this story was written down in post-exilic Israel, a time when the people were coming out of the extreme chaos and confusion of exile. A bow strung and ready for war is a different shape. It is longer, thinner, taut. But this bow in the clouds is unstrung and its warrior edge from where the arrows are launched is pointed away from the earth. The disarmed bow, the rainbow, may be beautiful and inspiring to us, but it is a personal reminder to God. In its multi-colored light God is reminded to be “One Who Remembers,” even in the midst of chaos and rebellion of creation, “One Who Repents.”

God repents. Isn’t that a stunning statement? God makes a covenant to repent, to turn from vindication to forgiveness, patience, and steadfast love despite knowing that the human heart may never completely change. The creatures made in God’s image may always resist God. Yet God lays down God’s weapons and makes a covenant that is unilateral…it limits God’s power while setting no conditions on humankind.  God does not demand that we change. God changes because God remembers to be lover, as well as judge, to be protector, as well as creator. God repents, turns from the path of destruction and anger, to the path of compassion and peace.

So, it seems to me that our story today implicitly asks us, what is our response to God’s repentance? Since God repents, can we? Can we repent? Can we unstring the bow of falsehoods that we cling to making us feel important? Can we unstring the bow of grudges that we hold, of anger that makes us feel entitled? Can those us born with the privilege of being white in this nation, unstring the, often unconscious, bow of prejudice? Can we unstring the bow of needing to “be right,” so we can see new ways to peace? Unstringing the bows of self-righteous defensiveness, laying down the weapons that defend our hearts, is the way of repentance.

From the time it was conceived as a season of the liturgical year preparing Christians for Holy Week, the Lenten journey has been about repentance. Repentance is not a very popular word in progressive Christianity. Forgetting that the prophets first cry is “Repent,” we like the revolutionary cry of the prophets., Justice!” Perhaps the word, repentance, speaks to you of over-emotional wallowing in unproductive guilt. But the repentance that Jesus spoke of meant literally “to turn around.” One must have keen sight to make a proper turn. I imagine repentance as standing at a threshold and taking a good hard, unsentimental look at where I am going. Do I want to stay on the same path I am going down on this journey in life? Or risk a new path?

Humanity is wont to continually choose the path to division and destruction. I believe it is time to risk a new path, as God did in the covenant with Noah, a path that leads to understanding and reconstruction. I believe that we can best cry “Justice!” speaking truth to the powers of the world, when we have the courage to first say honestly to our own hearts, “Repent.” Rainbows are reminders of God’s holy repentance and our invitation to turn toward God to participate in holy repentance.
Let me share a story with you – a true story and a story that actually happened to a friend of mine. One day a young mother was taking a walk with her small son and they saw a rainbow. The four-year-old boy looked up in wonder and said, “Mommy, can we take that home and put it in our house?” His awestruck question prompted the mother to write a poem she titled “A Rainbow in My House.”  She took her son’s question literally, imagining what it would be like to have a rainbow in their house, on their walls, emanating from the windows and doors, coming out the chimney. The house was transformed, and it could not contain the glory of the rainbow and its colors.

“….When the door opens
Bursts of blues, greens and yellows
Pour out and float up towards heaven.
 
Inside I breathe in warm reds
And sleep on soft pinks….
 
Sometimes I pull back my curtain
To let the passersby
Take a peak.
 
They stare amazed…at the rainbow in my house.”[i]
 
I heard my friend tell this story and share her poem at a justice event for homelessness prevention many years ago. Our sons who are about the same age are now both grown men. In revisiting her beautiful imagery, I am prompted to imagine what my “house,” my inner soul/heart house, might look like with God’s rainbow covenant of repentance inside? What about yours?

And what about other houses we inhabit? God’s rainbow bending over Noah’s ark with its doors wide open and spilling out pairs of animals into a new world is an image painted or hung on the walls of many a church nursery. We love to tell this story of God’s love and hope to our children, starting at the earliest ages. We want them to know that, even in the midst of the worst times, God is with them and never forgets them. But why relegate this message to the church nursery? Why not let the rainbow colors emanate down the hall from the nursery into worship and committee meetings, into youth group, adult education and mission projects, into choir rehearsal and church potlucks? What might the entire body of Christ look like in the light of God’s rainbow? What might our world look like?
God’s rainbow covenant of repentance does not guarantee a utopia. Instead, it invites communities of all shapes and sizes to be places where people are willing to let their hearts be remade in the image of God’s repentant heart. Led by humanity’s siblings of color and our LGBTQ+ siblings, our communities can stand under rainbow flags of justice and inclusion where literally “all the colors of the rainbow” are welcome and equal in God’s sight. We can be communities asking the question, with the wonder of the child, “Can we take that rainbow home and put it in our house?”

My friends, today we stand together, in God’s grace, at the beginning edge of Lent, looking back and looking forward. How will we journey with Jesus this Lenten season in the light of God’s rainbow? May we allow it healing colors of repentance  to penetrate our hearts, our homes, our life together in this community and beyond. May it be so. Amen.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. Reprint with permission only.


[i] Personal story and excerpt from unpublished poem by Michelle Sisk, 2008.

Mark 9.2-9
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning,
Plymouth Congregational UCC
Fort Collins, Colorado
 
Our Sunday Forum Ministry Team had a great one-liner: “Haven’t we been doing Lent for a year now? I’m tired of giving stuff up!” And if you read my Tuesday reflection, you got my take on Lent: Maybe in this pandemic year, don’t give anything up for Lent. Perhaps there are even a few things that you can shift to build back some of your deepest yearnings, whether that’s calling a friend, writing a letter, using our Lenten devotional booklet…Find something that is life-giving and restorative.

This has been a year of monumental changes for all of us, and many of us resist change not because we are curmudgeons —but I know there are a few of us who self-identify that way — but because we often equate change with loss. About 15 years ago when we were renovating the sanctuary, some of our members thought of changes in this space as loss… “My children were baptized in front of that altar,” “That railing was a memorial gift,” “We like having the choir sit off-stage behind a wall.” But there were also comment and actions that looked at the transformation of the sanctuary more positively. “We like the new acoustics,” “We appreciate being wheelchair accessible,” “We enjoy the new organ.”

The past year has been one of nearly perpetual change for us, moving our meetings to Zoom, pastoral care appointments outdoors, the sleepout vigil over FM radio in our parking lot, and numerous changes in the way we broadcast our worship. (I can tell you that this one feels especially chaotic to the staff right now!) One of the serious advantages of the pandemic is that no one can say, “We’ve always done it this way!” because none of us has ever done it this way before.

One of the advantages for our Strategic Planning Team is that in some ways, we have a nearly blank slate for some big, hairy, audacious goals, based on what we’ve heard from you all in focus groups. But instead of thinking about loss, try to think about change that is positive. You can see that right now if you try…what have we changed during the pandemic that we’ll keep around? Streaming services for one, so that if you’re not feeling well or you’re out of town (or across the world, like someone watching right now), you can still be part of Plymouth’s worship. Meetings by Zoom allow folks who don’t like to drive at night, or who live far from the church, to participate in meetings. (And some of you are probably wearing pajama bottoms and a nice, presentable shirt in those Zoom meetings!) We can preserve some of the changes we’ve made.

William Sloane Coffin, the great sr. minister of the Riverside Church in New York, once said, “Most church boats don’t like to be rocked; they prefer to lie at anchor rather than go places in stormy seas. [And God knows we’ve been in some stormy seas this year!] But that’s because we Christians view the Church as the object of our love instead of the subject and instrument of God’s [love]. Faith cannot be passive; it has to go forth – to assault the conscience, excite the imagination.[1]

What have you learned as part of this church as we’ve sailed through stormy seas over the past year? Maybe you learned that the building is great, but it isn’t the church. Perhaps you’ve discovered just how important fellowship with other folks here is to you. Maybe you’ve learned how to be connected to God in ways you hadn’t expected. What have you learned as we’ve sailed the stormy seas?

- - - - - -

The Transfiguration is a rather odd story, isn’t it. And I’m not entirely sure why it is an annual celebration. I mean, we don’t have an annual celebration of the Beatitudes, which present Jesus’ message in concise form, so why the Transfiguration? Maybe because it is a story of the miraculous? I sometimes irreverently refer to our observation of the Transfiguration as “Shiny Jesus Sunday,” but I think there is more to the story than just Jesus’ aura.

This is an earlier painting, completed in 1311, still in the style of a Byzantine icon, by Duccio, and it was originally in the cathedral in Siena…and somehow it ended up in the National Gallery in London. It is splendid, but it has none of the movement of Raphael’s famous Transfiguration, which is in the Vatican Museum. Raphael’s Jesus is airborne…which doesn’t actually happen in any of the gospel accounts, and it always made me wonder if Raphael decided to add a touch of the Ascension onto his canvas. In any case, this enormous, magnificent painting helps us to know how important the story was during the Renaissance in Italy.

But why should the Transfiguration be important to us? That’s the $64,000 question. What if we started by taking a look at the term, itself. “Transfiguration,” isn’t a word we use in our everyday discussions to describe a change of appearance or a change in the state of being. Transfiguration has two Latin roots, trans (across) and figuratio (form or shape)…but the Bible wasn’t written in Latin, so I went back to the original Greek of Mark’s gospel, and the word used is one that we are more apt to use today than “Transfiguration.” It’s the verb form of metamorphosis meta- means beyond and morphe means shape.

If we think about Jesus having a metamorphosis on the mountaintop, perhaps that is reason to think that it was an important experience in who he was becoming. We often think of metamorphosis in biological terms: a tadpole losing its tail and growing arms and becoming a frog…a caterpillar weaving a chrysalis around itself, growing colorful wings in the darkness of the cocoon and emerging as beautiful butterfly. In this story, something happened to Jesus when the cloud descended over him. He emerged as a different person, or perhaps he emerged as a person who was even more authentically himself and who he was meant to be. It is also the second time God makes an appearance with Jesus and tells his followers, “This is my son, the Beloved, listen to him,” just as he appeared at Jesus baptism.

I wonder if this pandemic is our chrysalis time, a space when we are being changed in ways of which we are not yet aware. So, what about you? Have you ever had a big change in your life that has left you profoundly transformed? I know some women have been changed by the experience of childbirth. Others of us have been metamorphosed by getting sober. Some of us have experienced laying on of hands in an ordination service and been changed by the experience. In our mission statement here at Plymouth we talk about inviting, transforming, and sending, and that center element, transforming is a big piece of our spiritual journey. We aren’t supposed to begin our faith journey and finish it in the same place…that’s why it’s called a journey. Have you experienced a spiritual transformation? Has it happened just once, or has it occurred on multiple occasions? Some people speak of being born again and again and again… You may not hear the audible voice of God, but her presence does break into our lives, especially if we are listening for the still small voice.

Lent, which starts this Wednesday, is a time when you are invited to pay attention to God’s presence in your life. And so, as we journey through this long season of pandemic, I invite you to look not just for things to comfort yourself, but also for things that have shifted, and to try and embrace them.
I’m no Pollyanna, and I know that sometimes changes in our lives leave us with scars, physical, mental, and spiritual. You may have experienced the metamorphosis of a cancer journey that left you with bodily scars and may have robbed you of different abilities. You may have gone through the grief associated with the tragic loss of a loved one. You may have been told by a church you grew up in that your sexual orientation or gender identity was sinful. There are any number of hurts that we absorb as a part of our life histories, and as my colleagues have spoken of healing the past two Sundays, I encourage you to look for the love of God to know that scars are part of you, part of your history, part of yourself.

In Japanese tradition, when a precious ceramic vessel breaks, it is not discarded, but rather handled with reverence. In a process called kintsugi, the crack is not hidden, but rather filled with gold, so that the repair glints in the light and takes on a beauty all its own. My prayer for you is that whatever seems broken within you will be filled with the golden presence of God.[end Japanese bowl] And may all of your metamorphoses become a part not just of who you are, but of who God is calling you to become.

Amen.

© 2021 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses.

[1] Wm. Sloane Coffin, Credo, )Lexington: Westminster John Knox, 2004), pp. 140-141.

Mark 1.29-39
5th Sunday of Epiphany
Plymouth Congregational Church, UCC
The Rev. Jane Anne Ferguson
 
29 As soon as Jesus and his companions left the synagogue [in Capernaum], they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon's mother-in- law was in bed with a fever, [she was very hot and sweating a lot], and they told [Jesus, “She is very sick.”] 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and [she got up from her bed] and she began to serve them. [She gave them some food to eat.]
 
32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons, [the people with bad spirits in them.] 33 And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34 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.
 
35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." 38 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." 39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
 
Looking at the first chapter in Mark, which we have heard most of in worship throughout January and now into February, you might think that the writer knew about modern movie trailers. The scenes move very quickly giving us the essence of what Jesus and his story is all about. He is committed to and blessed by God at his baptism….he gets his strength and power by  going into wilderness solitude for prayer…he proclaims a new message about God’s presence in the world saying, "Now is the time! Here comes God's kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!"[i] Then he begins healing folks who are outcast because of their illnesses, unclean by religious law, like the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue who Carla lifted up for us in last week’s sermon. You could say that Jesus is now really on a roll!

Everyone is bringing people to Jesus for healing and he is casting out their disease and their dis-ease, their bad spirits. First Simon’s mother-in-law and then all the sick of the city of Capernaum! Just as the disciples think, “Wow! We’ve got a good thing going here in our hometown,” Jesus tells his them that his purpose, his mission, is to proclaim God’s message and take the healing throughout all of Galilee, not just in Capernaum. They are on the move! Proclaiming the message of repentance and trust in God goes hand in hand with healing, “casting out demons.”

We love Jesus, the teacher, the storytelling rabbi, the proclaimer of wisdom, the social justice prophet who speaks truth to power about change. But what do we make of Jesus, the healer? In our time of pandemic, what do we make of Jesus as one who not only prays and proclaims, but also heals? Does the talk of spontaneous healing and being possessed by demons make us squeamish? We know and trust science. We know the advances of medicine in the last 2000 years. We are particularly grateful for the advances of medical science in this time of pandemic!  More and more of us are getting the vaccine. Much to be grateful for! Medical and mental health sciences do not have all the answers. Yet the answers they do have heal so much! Unlike Simon’s mother-in-law, when we have a fever, we can take a pill.

So what do we as 21st century people, disillusioned by radio and tele-evangelists who are shysters and money grubbers, do with Jesus, the healer?

I found help from the late scholar, Marcus Borg, who is much beloved here at Plymouth as our first Visiting Scholar and as a much-read author guiding us in faith formation through so many profound books. You may know that Marcus was part of the Jesus Seminar, a think tank of scholars and lay people, who worked in the 1980’s and 90’s on the quest to discover more about the historical Jesus. Marcus, spent much of his career asking, “What can be historically verified about Jesus? In his last posthumously published book, Days of Awe and Wonder; How to be a Christian in the 21st Century. Marcus writes that historically Jesus was a traveling rabbi and mystic healer following in the tradition of other Jewish mystic wisdom teacher and healers of his time.

Revering Marcus as a scholar and knowing that he had the research to back it up, this statement about Jesus was took me by surprise! Marcus believed Jesus was a healer, who healed through the power of his relationship with God, a relationship that involved his heart as well as his head, in fact, the devotion of his entire being, body and soul, a mystical relationship, if you will. Marcus goes on to define a mystical experience as an episode that invokes “sheer wonder, radical amazement, radiant luminosity [and often] evokes the exclamation, “Oh, my God!”[ii] He claims his own conversion to mysticism even as a scholar, through these experiences that take over all your senses. Experiences of the Holy that connect one with the “more” that is God. Not with a supernatural, parentified, Santa Claus God who will give me what we want or think we want if we just pray hard enough. But with the transcendent “God who is more than the space-time universe of matter and energy” AND the immanent God who dwells within, “the presence of God everywhere.”[iii] The God in whom, as the apostle Paul said, we “live and move and have our being” (Acts17.28). 

I have had these, usually too brief, numinous moments of “knowing” God, trusting with my whole being the God who is vaster than the cosmos, yet as intimate as my breath. Have you? And they connect me to Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of history who made God manifest in the world. These moments are not sought. They come upon one, not frivolously, but unexpectedly. I have found that I have to place myself in way of such moments by simply opening to the opportunity of them through habits of paying attention to the whole of life as sacred and to listening for the Holy in prayer. Just as Jesus did.

Leaning on the scholarly and heart-felt testimony of Marcus Borg, I confess to you in simple confidence, not needing to know with my head all the scientific or theological facts, that I trust Jesus was a mystic healer in his day. He healed people of whatever ailed them – from fever to “bad spirits.” Bad spirits that might have been mental/physical illness, such as depression, bi-polar or epilepsy. But also, bad spirits that might have been being allowing anger, resentment and holding grudges to consume life, seeking relationship to power over relationship to people. Jesus healed not through his own power, but through the power of God. He sought perfect attunement to God in his whole being, in his prayer life and his religious study life, yes, but also in his relational life, his community life of love and fellowship and in his life of social action for justice. Through being in-sink with God, he healed with his presence, his touch, his love bringing people into wholeness and new life. How, exactly? I don’t know. But I believe, I trust in Jesus’ healing.  I know he still heals souls. And that healing goes hand in hand with proclaiming God is here Now and God is love.

We can participate in the liberating message and mission of the historical Jesus in our own time which we know needs so much healing.  I am not saying we are called to lay hands on people and spontaneously heal them of Covid! We are not Jesus. What I am saying is that we each have the opportunity to open our hearts to healing change and redemption through the wholeness of God’s love. And then to share that opportunity with others.

The healing process of God the historical Jesus participated with began with bringing folks in and meeting them right where they were. In whatever state they were in. Loving them with the fierce, unsentimental, unconditional love of God. Seeing them for who they were created in the image of God. Calling them into this image. And then casting out whatever was harmful, not needed, not useful, what was bad for the health of the body, mind and soul, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual.

Try something with me for just a moment. Let’s put ourselves in the way of the Spirit, open our hearts and minds to the opportunity of God’s healing through Jesus. Close your eyes, if you’d like. Take a deep breath and let it our slowly. Using your prayer heart or meditation mind or simply your imagination, bring all of your Self to stand before Jesus as if you were one of those folks brought to the door of Simon’s mother-in-law’s house in Capernaum. Bring all your longings, your frustrations, your illnesses of any kind. All your angers and resentments, your failings, your successes. Bring all your relationships. All the things you love and the things you don’t love about yourself. Your self-hatreds and lack of self-forgiveness, your pain in body, mind and soul. Bring your gifts, your joys, your thanksgivings. Present yourself before the spirit of God in Jesus for healing. God in Jesus sees you just the way you are created in God’s image. (pause) Is there anything standing in your way to wholeness that needs to be cast out by God’s powerful and loving presence? Let that thing go. Perhaps, there is there a healing word or image or idea that has come to you. Nothing is insignificant. Acknowledge what you receive and bring it more deeply into your soul. Let it anchor you in God.  Is there a surprise gift that has popped up in an image and is yearning to be used for God’s good in the world? Receive it and say, “Thank you.” Take a just a few moments to be in this place of before the power of God we know in the face of Jesus.

Now I invite you to take a deep breath. Let it out slowly. Open your eyes if you closed them. Wriggle your finger and toes. Come back into the physical space of your home. Standing before Jesus’ presence for healing is a place you can go again and again. Because healing is a process. And you don’t have to do it all alone – that’s why there are ministers, friends, counselors and therapists, doctors, spiritual directors, the fellowship of a faith community. Remember the people came as a crowd.

Jesus calls us to healing so that the world may be healed. Remember the woman from Children’s Time? “But this is all I know of dancing.” I invite you to know the healing power of God through Jesus so that you may dance your life with both hands flung joyously into the air! Remember Simon’s mother-in-law? Her healing prompted her to servant leadership. She got up and fed all the disciples and Jesus, the healer. She was dancing in the Spirit with both hands up! May it be so with each of us.

Amen.

©The Reverend Jane Anne Ferguson, 2021 and beyond. May only be reprinted with permission.

[i] Bible, Common English. CEB Common English Bible with Apocrypha - eBook [ePub] (Kindle Locations 39204-39205). Common English Bible. Kindle Edition.

[ii] Marcus Borg, Days of Awe and Wonder; How to be a Christian in the 21st Century, (Harper One Publishers, New York, NY: 2017, 43.)

[iii] Ibid., 39.