Holy and Whole

Matthew 9:1-8

There are very few slow news days anymore. Every day, there are more than enough problems to fill columns of newsprint and hours of newscasts. The question is which story will rise to the top and get a piece of our attention. Recently, stories about mass shootings were among them. Last week in Boulder Colorado. Ten people, as innocent as any of us, dead. And we grieve it, as we have grieved so many other similar incidents. 

We had barely finished absorbing the details of another event in Atlanta the previous week, which cost eight human lives. 

When we hear about these violent incidents, one of the first thoughts we have is, why? What reason did this person have for committing such a terrible act? Why?

“Why” is a fundamental question of life. We often ask why things happen. When a loved one gets sick, we ask: why? When they die we ask: why? When we suffer great losses of any kind, we are likely to ask the same question: why?

Why, we ask God, are you letting this happen? Are you angry at us, Lord? How have we sinned against you, Lord, to deserve this pain?

In the gospel story today Jesus makes the connection between sickness and the brokenness of sin, and brings us into that uncomfortable space where we have to examine the connection for ourselves. Which is sometimes easy, and other times impossible.

There are times when we find it easy to play the role of diagnostician. Even those of us with no particular expertise are often eager to tell others what they have done to cause their particular ailment. There are times when we are ready and willing to say, “here, let me get that speck out of your eye. No, don’t worry about this log in my own eye – I can see around it quite well.”

This is nothing new in the history of the world. John’s gospel tells the story about Jesus’ encounter with a man who was born blind and his disciples are puzzled by this matter. For them, it’s a question of “why.” They ask Jesus, “Who sinned? Was it his parents, since he was born this way? That must be it. This young man must be paying the price of his parents’ sins, that could be the only explanation.” Cause and effect – it helps us make sense of the world. 

Still, I don’t think this paralytic man in Matthew’s story, nor his friends who carried him to Jesus, were thinking at the time about his parents, or their own, sins. They had heard about this Jesus, an amazing healer, and they just wanted to get close to him. So great was their desire for healing, their love for their friend, that they came together and picked up his bed with the man in it, and carried it to Jesus.

They came for healing – and yet words of forgiveness were the first thing Jesus said to them. Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven. The reader might feel a disconnect between their need and his response – but I wonder if these men did. Perhaps they never doubted that somehow their spiritual brokenness was all intertwined with their bodily brokenness. 

Jesus’ critics took exception, however. They would not have objected to a simple healing – but for Jesus to declare forgiveness of sins, that is blasphemy. Humans can perform acts of healing. But only God can forgive sins.

Yet, we see, Jesus is insisting that they are inseparable. 

And even while I say this, I am mindful of the fact that these are harsh words to our tender souls. In our hearts we harbor the fear that, like most everything else in this world, our relationship with God is transactional. We bear the suspicion that God, like so many people we know, will be nice to us if we are nice to God. But that, if we are not nice enough, God’s displeasure will show.

Yet the message of the gospel resists such notions. Through Jesus we have come to know a God of extravagant love, of boundless forgiveness. Jesus, in his acts of healing, never asked anyone to bow and scrape, to show themselves worthy of this gift. He gave it freely.

He gave so much, so freely: he gave everything – freely.

For God so loved the world, he gave his only son. Freely.

And still, we live each day in a world that is wracked with brokenness, suffering, and death. And we cannot help but wonder why.

Many years ago I knew a family whose son had cancer. His parents did everything in their power to beat the disease. His doctors did everything in their power to heal him. His church family prayed for him constantly. They loved this boy and his family very much. One member of that church, deeply troubled by their suffering, asked the pastor: Why would such an awful thing as this happen? 

It is always dangerous to try and answer these “why” questions. But this pastor did. He answered with one word: sin. 

And the member became angry. This young child is innocent. He has committed no sin that could possible justify such punishment, Pastor. What is wrong with you? How can you say such a thing? 

But the pastor said, no. I don’t mean any particular sin. I don’t mean he is responsible for his illness. I am referring to the state of the world in which we live. This is about the brokenness of everything. It is about the human condition.

It is always about the human condition. We are part of a fallen creation, with brokenness at every level; we are suffering in every way because of our brokenness, but with a dim memory of our original wholeness. Once, we remember, we were holy; once we were created in the image of our creator, holy and whole.

When Jesus walked this earth, his every word, his every act, was a reminder of this truth. His very presence was a promise that our wholeness may be restored. 

There were many witnesses that day to the miracle of healing. When the paralytic man stood up and walked, they were all filled with awe. And they sang praises to God, who gave such power, such authority to human beings.

Human beings – Jesus … and through him, the church … you and me.

For he said: you who gather in my name are given authority to bind and to loose, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. All of us together, the community of faith, have this authority to begin to repair the brokenness.

It’s a heavy lift, no doubt. There were 20,000 deaths in our nation from gun violence last year – a year in which we had hundreds of thousands of additional deaths from COVID-19. The brokenness is on full display. Yet we are called to join in the effort, to lift up the broken, the hurting, the grieving and carry them to Jesus.

We are called to sing songs of God’s grace that rains down on all of creation. To sing our hosannas – save us, Lord; heal us, Lord!

We are called to lay a path for King Jesus to come today.

 

Different Pictures

Matthew 9:18-26

We are seeing a lot of remembrances right now from one year ago. As a nation, we are remembering together how this pandemic began a year ago. Remembering what we were doing last year at this time.

March 15 of last year was the last time we gathered in the sanctuary for worship. We knew then something big, something ominous was coming. Many of us had decided already to stay home. And for those of us who were here, we were introduced to new practices – social distancing. Hand sanitizing. No touching. 

No touching. This felt very strange. 

We knew something big was on the horizon, but we had no real understanding of what it would be. I listened to the news, I watched what was going on around me. And it seemed like every time I said to myself, “that can’t happen,” it did happen.

It just didn’t seem possible that we would shut down schools and expect families and teachers to deal with it. But we did.

It didn’t seem possible that hospitals and nursing homes would say no visitors allowed. But they did.

It didn’t seem possible to me that it could go on for so long. But it did.

I did not have the imaginative capacity to understand what was about to happen, but it happened anyway. We adjusted. We adapted. And we began waiting for the time when things could return to the way they were before.

Gradually it began to dawn on us, though, that things would not go back to what they were before. Not really.

It has been a year of letting go, and I mean really letting go. Sure, some things we just set down for a while, knowing that we would pick them back up later. But there are other things we have had to let go.

My daughter said to me last week, “Can we just talk about how truly disgusting it is to be bowling and eating at the same time? To pick up this bowling ball, stick your fingers in it, roll it down the floor, then go pick up a sandwich?” That kind of carelessness about where our hands have been? That’s gone. Although I won’t shed any tears about it.

Because there are much more serious things we have had to let go of. Our sense of invincibility – the thinking that we have dominance over anything and everything the world can throw at us. It turns out we don’t.

Or our sense of individualism, total self-reliance – this notion that I am free to do what I want and I am dependent on no one but myself. It turns out we are really much more interconnected than we might have thought.

And, of course, the loss of more than a million lives, and all that those lives might have been.

Through it all, our belief in the world as it is, without concern for what it might be – this also has been shattered.   

But hope is a very human characteristic. And as people of faith, our hope finds focus in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which shows us that, through loss, we find our way to new life.

The passage today combines two stories of healing together. Jesus has been sitting at table with some Pharisees who were questioning him about his practices, when he is suddenly interrupted by an official – a leader of the synagogue. His need is urgent. His daughter is dead. He wants Jesus to revive her.

We should pause a minute and realize how extraordinary it is that he would see this as possible. Has he seen Jesus bring life from death? Matthew give us no reason to believe so. Yet, through Jesus, this man has the ability to see something entirely new. Jesus responds by rising from his seat and following.

While they are walking, a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years approaches him from behind. She kneels down to touch the hem of his cloak, believing this will heal her. Jesus turns and says, “Take heart, daughter, your faith has healed you.” And upon his words, the bleeding stops. 

Then we go back to the synagogue leader and his daughter at his house. The crowd gathered around the house laugh at Jesus because they cannot imagine anything other than death inside that house. But Jesus goes inside, touches the girl’s body, and she rises.

And in these short, sweet stories woven together the gospel reaffirms to us that Jesus brings new possibilities that shatter old assumptions about the world. The gospel shows us that Jesus touches us and, out of what was dead, gives new life.

We know this is true in a real, physical way. Every time we gather together for the funeral of someone who has died, we call it a witness to the resurrection. This is so central to our faith, that just as Jesus overcame death in his own body, he also does it for us. We believe that through him, we will rise to new life, eternal life.

But that’s not all.

It is also true in another way, here and now. We know from his words and healing actions that Jesus brings us new life even in the midst of this old life. We know that he has ushered in the realm of God and shows us a whole different way, here and now, of seeing and living.

If we can just do it … let Jesus be our vision and see something different.

Together, as we mark this one-year anniversary of our COVID-19 pandemic, we are finding our way toward something different; we are healing.

And as we journey through healing, let us each ask ourselves: in what way is Jesus calling us to new life? How is Jesus awakening us, awakening our spirts and calling us into the holy work of creativity? What are we letting go of, and what are we taking from the old life and shaping into something new? 

What kinds of dreams is Jesus giving us?

We take our broken pieces and through Jesus imagine something new. We let go of old pictures of what the world is like, and together – through Jesus – we create some different pictures of the way the world can be.

Stories

 

Matthew 9:27-33

I have been wondering recently what we will say about our pandemic experience after it is all over. When we look back on this time, with the perspective of months or years, what will we say? What stories will we tell?

I listen sometimes to Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar, who writes and speaks a lot about spiritual things. I heard him say that there was surprisingly little written about the great flu pandemic of 1918. The reason, he gathered, was because people were ashamed of themselves. Some people abandoned their families. Many people acted in selfishness and fear. And after it was all over, they were too ashamed to speak of it. They only wanted to forget about it.

If we are honest with ourselves, each one of us can probably identify with that in some way. There have been times in our lives that we were not our best selves – far from it. There have been chapters in our lives that we have chosen to forget, somehow – by rewriting the story; by deciding it was unimportant; by literally blocking it from our conscious memory.

We tell a lot of stories that are untrue. We learn at a young age. Many families have unwritten codes about what sorts of things can be talked about, and what topics are off-limits. Some things are just too painful to say out loud. Sometimes we cannot admit the truth because it feels like the truth will break us – shatter us into a million pieces.

Pain frightens us; fear hurts us; and it becomes hard to get out of this cycle of dishonesty.

But all over the world, in all kinds of circumstances, people find that truthful storytelling has the power to heal; that truth will, indeed, set us free.

This was so in South Africa, in the years after apartheid was dismantled. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided a space for both victims and oppressors to tell their stories and be heard.

This is so in every 12-Step group, where addicts practice telling their story as an essential part of their recovery.

Telling our story is a healing art, drawing a thread through the events of our lives and shedding light on them. This is why the scriptures are full of stories, especially the gospels.

Matthew tells a lot of stories about healing in his gospel. In this one he tells about two blind men who are following Jesus. They are crying out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” And they follow Jesus into a house, where he turns and speaks to them. He asks them if they believe. They say they do. And then he heals them. Their eyes are opened, their sight is restored. He tells them to stay quiet about this, but they promptly go out and start telling everyone they see.

I don’t know why they did that. Nor do I really understand why Jesus seemed to be always ordering people to keep his healings secret. In reality, you cannot keep these kinds of things secret – they are too awesome to hide. Possibly, the men who had received their sight simply found it impossible to be obedient. And possibly, Jesus was only trying to control the chaos that will undoubtedly follow when people learn there is a really effective miracle worker in the vicinity.

But the question that ought to be asked is why did Matthew tell the story this way? Why are these particular elements of the story important?

One detail that is easy to overlook comes at the beginning of the story: Two blind men are following Jesus. They have already latched onto him as disciples before he even speaks to them. Before they have seen him, they know who he is – Son of David, they call out to him. The Messiah.

They enter a house with him, a place where there may be some privacy, and he speaks to them. Do they believe? He asks. Yes, Lord, they say. We do believe. They come out of that house with their eyes opened.

The story tells us that, even though they had a disability they were able to believe. That even though they lacked eyesight they had a different, more powerful, kind of vision which enabled them to see Jesus as the Son of David, the Lord. In fact, maybe it was because they were blind that they could see and have faith.

Much as we might hate it, it is true that hardship can be a powerful teacher. Challenge can become opportunity for growth. Knowing – confessing – our weakness can increase our faith. Knowing who we are, in all our frailties and brokenness and scars, can help us know God. And telling our stories can help others know God.

When we are fully on the other side of this pandemic, what stories will we tell? We might choose to never talk about it – put it behind us and shut the door on it. Or we might, in some way, remain stuck in it – never letting go of the fear and anger that has been such a big part of it. But I hope we will look back at it and speak of it truthfully: speak of the great suffering we endured, the fear we felt and possibly the shame of acting not as our best selves, because we were afraid or angry.

I hope we will speak of the ways we were so interconnected, knowing that whatever way we chose to act, this would have an impact on others. For better or for worse.

I hope we will speak, too, of the beauty, the courage, the compassion we witnessed all around us.

And I hope that – even in the midst of this – we will know how God’s love and healing strength is woven through it all. There is much evil in this world – I will not deny that. But there is just as much, and more, good.

I hope when we tell our stories we tell the truth, because the truth will make us whole.

Safe-Keeping

Matthew 8:5-13

Last weekend Kim and I took our dog, Chuy, to Ocean City to walk on the beach. We like going there now and then throughout the winter months. On that day it was pretty cold and windy, so there were very few people there. We let Chuy off the leash to give him the rare joy of running free while we walked near the shore.

I am always torn between wanting to look out at the beautiful vista of beach and sky and sea and wanting to keep my eyes to the ground lest I miss some treasure. Shells, bits of coral, sea glass. Sometimes, not often, I find some perfect little shell. But more often I find some broken, imperfect thing that is extraordinary in its own way, and I pick it up.

I think perhaps the most wonderful treasures I have are the imperfect things, because they are unique and interesting in the way they look and feel. I don’t think I am alone in this; just last week someone showed me the stone she has chosen to carry in her pocket as a reminder of the brokenness in her own life – something we talked about last week. Her stone has what looks like a growth coming out of it, which is strange, and … absolutely beautiful.

So often we are drawn to objects with some kind of imperfection, some flaw which we don’t even think of as a flaw – just as some special quality. We like these imperfect wonders of nature. I do wonder, though, why it seems so much harder when we are talking about people.

It’s true, isn’t it? We try to make ourselves perfect, and we try to make other people perfect. Too often, when we see difference we don’t say that’s beautiful; we say that’s wrong. We say that’s unacceptable.

But Jesus doesn’t do that, does he? Right after he reached out and healed that man with leprosy – leprosy, the most unacceptable affliction – he encounters a centurion asking for his healing grace. This man was, of course, a Gentile. An outsider. Another kind of outcast.

He doesn’t have any right to ask anything of Jesus – no more than the man with leprosy had a right to be touched by Jesus – but Jesus’ immediate response to him is, “I will come.” No hesitation. No apparent distaste for the job. Just, “I will come.”

Extraordinary. But even more extraordinary is the centurion’s response to Jesus: There is no need. I know your power and how far it extends. I know that you need only say the word and it will be done.

And we see this man’s faith is of a different order than what we have seen before. He knows that Jesus’ power to heal and to save extends beyond himself. Only say the word, Lord, and it shall be done.

Story after story in the gospel tells us that Jesus came for the most unlikely souls – the sick, the lame, the outcasts, the outsiders. And again and again, we see Jesus act in ways to bring them in. To restore them to the shelter of community. Again and again, he does this, and his actions and words are saying to us: This is what the kingdom of God is like. All those who have been cast out will be brought in. All who have been broken by the diseases of their body, mind, or spirit – broken by a society that shuns them or simply doesn’t understand them, doesn’t love them. Yes, Jesus says, they will all come – from the East and the West and sit at table together in the kingdom of God.

This good news is for us, all of us! We might feel his arm around our shoulders gathering us in, saying “I do choose you,” as he said to the man with leprosy. Saying, “I will come for you,” as he said to the centurion. In our frailties and imperfections, and all our vulnerability, we are chosen. Jesus has scooped us up from the beach and holds us in his hand.

And the challenge for us is this: to have the same kind of faith this centurion had and recognize the healing power of Jesus that extends beyond himself. Extends to us and through us to others.

Do we have the boldness to approach Jesus with our needs as this centurion did?

Do we believe that, by our faith, Jesus’ healing will reach and bless our community?

Can we see the people around us as Jesus does? No matter their imperfections, no matter their differences, as beloved children of God, to whom Jesus would say, “I will come for you.”

May it be so. Amen.

Treasure

Matthew 8:1-4,16-17

A lot of the time you can keep your health issues to yourself. You don’t have to announce them to the world if you don’t want to. You can have as much privacy as you like. But it’s different with infectious diseases. And in a time of pandemic, it’s very different. People are hyper-alert to any signs of illness in themselves or the people around them. I know. Whenever I sneeze into my mask, I can feel people giving me the side eye and inching away.

It was like this, but worse, in the ancient world with leprosy. Anyone who had leprosy was shunned. Leprosy was serious business. It meant potentially disfigurement, rotting skin, and loss of limbs; something highly contagious and incurable. People believed that merely touching a leper could cause you to become infected.

And so the lepers in Biblical times were banned from community life. People were afraid of them – of their disease. The custom in Israel during the first century was to label these persons unclean, which made them subject to certain rules. They were required to live outside cities or villages, to travel alone, and to wear torn clothing, so they would be easily identified if you happened upon one. If you touched someone with leprosy, you would also be deemed unclean.

We know now that most of the people who were called lepers had some milder skin disease – maybe eczema or psoriasis. And we also know now that you don’t catch leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, from touching an infected person. It is an airborne infection, transmitted by coughing or sneezing.

But people didn’t know then and they were afraid. Untreated, Hansen’s disease can have terrible effects. People were afraid of any kind of skin disease, because it might be the worst kind of skin disease. And their fear made it a social disease. A leper was socially dead.

It was harsh. Maybe everyone was on board with that. Maybe even the lepers understood the necessity of their isolation, even while they were shattered by it.

Or maybe not. Maybe, standing outside the community, they felt a bitterness toward those on the inside.

I think I might. Definitely.

Because there have been many times in my life I have felt left out … isolated … overlooked. And I did feel bad for myself and resentful of others. This probably happens to all of us at one time or another. Many times it is due to a misunderstanding. Assumptions are made about our own and others’ motivations and desires. And sometimes our assumptions get us into trouble.

There are so many people outside the church. I don’t just mean outside the church building, as most of us have been for about a year now. But I mean, there are a lot of people – our neighbors, our co-workers, family members – who are outside the fellowship of the church. and most of the time we, who are on the inside, just assume they are out there because they choose to be. We assume that they know how friendly we are and that they would be welcomed warmly as soon as they made the decision to come in. And, so, if they remain outsiders all their lives it is only because that’s what they chose, not because of anything we did. Or anything we didn’t do.

There are so many assumptions in that.

Once, about ten years ago, I decided to explore online worshiping communities – long before I ever imagined that phrase would become a part of my working vocabulary. I was looking at a website called Second Life. It’s a virtual place where you can create whatever kind of life you can imagine. When you think of it that way, it has a certain appeal, doesn’t it?

There are churches in Second Life, and I wanted to see how they worked, so I joined. When you join Second Life you have to create an avatar that can walk around in this virtual space and interact with other people’s avatars. Some people get really creative with this. I know a young woman who designed clothes for Second Life avatars and sold them to other players in this virtual world. People paid her real money for fake clothes. They want their avatars to look good.

But I was completely clueless about how to do anything at all in this world. When I signed up, I was offered a handful of stock avatars, so I just picked one. It looked like the Michelin Man – you know, that character that’s made out of a stack of white tires? Yeah, that was my second life.

So I took my pudgy avatar over to the first church I found to see if anything was going on there. But I was confused by everything so I just stood outside, pretending like I was reading the signs or whatever. Someone approached – a woman who was going inside – and she asked if she could help me. I told her I was interested in attending the church. She said there was a daily prayer service about to start and I was welcome. But … I couldn’t figure out how to make my avatar walk through the door.

She was very nice. She tried to explain the controls, but when I still wasn’t getting it she offered to just teleport me inside. I thought, wow! You can do that? great.

She got me inside and it looked like a beautiful classic church. Familiar. There were several people already there. Everyone, obviously, had custom-made avatars. They probably purchased designer clothes like the ones my friend made. Which means, they looked like normal people.

There was a semi-circle of chairs set up, so I moved toward a chair and I thought, this will be fine. I stood there by my chair. The woman who helped me in told me I could sit down now – but I couldn’t figure out how to make my avatar do that. While I was clumsily trying to sit down, while everyone was waiting for me to sit down, this was the most excruciating moment of my short time in Second Life. Finally she said, “that’s okay. You can stand.”

So I stood through the prayer service. Totally humiliated.

I left when the service was over – that is to say I checked out of Second Life world, never to return again. It was just too embarrassing. I was sure they were talking about me: the woman who couldn’t make her silly, puffy body sit down in a chair. No one said anything mean to me. No one gave me a dirty look or laughed at me. They all just politely pretended that nothing weird was happening. It was almost unendurable.

Which was a shame, because it seemed to offer a lovely experience of community – for those who could figure out how to do it. Not me. It was just too high a hurdle for me to get over.

There are so many ways communities exclude people. There are always certain boundaries that have to be crossed over to join a community. It’s not because we are bad people – it’s just the nature of community. Some are in and some are out.

A fact that has been evident in some very painful ways this past year. Suddenly last March our church building shut down. And our community went online. And in this process, there are some who have been left behind. Not because we wanted to leave them out. Not because they wanted to be left out. Only because they could not make the shift to online, and we couldn’t do enough to help them make that shift.

And we have tried to find other ways, when possible, to keep these people in the community. We have tried to keep a positive attitude about everything, to look for the hidden gift in everything. But we know that there is really no substitute for in-person community – the incarnate fellowship that God has created us for. Second Life is great when there are reasons you cannot be together in-person. Second Life is great as a first step for someone who wants to try a new thing, like being in church. But there is nothing like First Life.

When Jesus reached out and touched the leper kneeling before him he was saying as much. He crossed a boundary that others were afraid to cross for the sake of telling this man that he, too, was treasured by God; he, too, was a beloved child of God; he, too, belonged. When Jesus touched this man he restored him to community, restoring him to life.

When we do come back together again, which will be soon, I pray, I hope we will bring back with us an awareness of all healing power our community can offer. When we come back together I hope we will not forget the ones who joined us online, but who have possibly never been inside our building – and not leave them behind. When we come back together I hope we will bring with us an awareness that we are all, every human being, treasured by God. That we are all loved and we all belong. And this we will celebrate.

This Ash Wednesday at WPC

One Piece at a Time

Isaiah 40:21-31

Mark 1:29-39     

There are many stories of creation, coming from a variety of different cultural and religious traditions. We know best the two creation stories in Genesis. And we know them in a different way than we might know others, outside our religious tradition. But they are stories, like the others. And the reason we need such stories is simply because a story can contain greater, deeper truth sometimes than a whole pile of factual statements.  There’s the old saying, a picture paints a thousand words. I think of stories as word pictures. They use words imaginatively to paint pictures that help us understand who we are and where we came from, and why we are here.

The two stories in Genesis about how the world came into being, the story in chapter one, about the seven days of creation, and the story in chapter 2, about Adam and Eve, both come from Jewish tradition. But they are not the only creation stories in Jewish tradition. There is another one I want to tell you.

You could start this story the same way such stories often start: In the beginning … When God began creating the heavens and the earth,

But here is where the story begins to differ, in that before the storytellers can tell us about the world that God created, they need to tell us something about the God who created it; the God who created everything in it, and humankind in God’s image – male and female, both, in God’s image.

Where was God before the creation of the world? God was everywhere. God was infinitely expansive, there was no place where he was not. God was so much in everyplace that there was no place for her to create. So God had to sort of withdraw himself, make a little space. God drew in her vast girth, and used that new empty space to create a world.

God created something new in the empty space she had cleared out. It was a new thing, but God put something of himself into it. A stream of the divine light poured into this new thing God made – the earth itself and the first human God made, called Adam, which means man, or human. The divine light shone through them.

But then, the storytellers say, the divine light proved to be too strong, too powerful, for these creations, and it destroyed them. A violent explosion occurred. Everything shattered apart in a million pieces, bits of the divine light, sparks, scattered everywhere. And this shattering, this separation, created an opportunity for evil to move into the world God created. It did, swarming everywhere.

But evil did not have a life-force of its own. It was a parasite. To survive, evil needed to capture some of the divine light, and so it did. With the divine light shattered into millions of tiny pieces it wasn’t that hard for evil to grab hold of a piece, borrowing its life energy. It is how evil continues to survive in the world even today, by attaching itself to good.

We might end this story the same way so many stories end, saying, “So that is how it came to be that evil co-exists in the world with good.” Or “That is how God’s good creation got spoiled, broken.” We can say that, but of course this is not the end of the story. It is only the beginning.

The story goes on to tell about the work of repairing this broken world, tikkun olam, the Hebrew phrase meaning the mending of the world. The way this world will be repaired is for all the fragments of goodness that are scattered around the world to be gathered back together. When all the God-pieces are put back together, evil will be gone, goodness and light will be restored. The world will, once again, be whole. There will be shalom.

According to the tradition, every time a human being performs a mitzvah, an act of obedience to God, a spark of divine light is restored to its place. Every good deed is like a stitch in the cosmic mending. Each act of love brings some healing to the world. Hence we seek to be obedient to God’s word not just for ourselves, but for the sake of God’s world.

It’s a story that says we are co-creators with God. We are partners with God in the repairing of this world. God depends on us to do our part to heal the creation. And, of course, we cannot do it without God. God shows us the direction to go and gives us the means with which to act.

The scriptures today are two kinds of healing stories, words of hope and encouragement to a people in exile. For all the people who have ever lived who felt like they are somehow separated from God, for everyone who ever felt like they had been abandoned by God, these stories from the prophet Isaiah and the gospel of Mark say no – that is not true. God is always with you.

As the prophet Isaiah said, “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.” This powerful and awesome God is always with you; God will never leave you.

As the gospel of Mark tells us, Jesus went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out evil; bearing the message: God is always with you. God will never leave you. God is at work, even now, repairing the world.

This is what I tell the children more than anything else: God is always with you. God will never leave you. They need to hear it; you need to hear it. I people in the midst of pandemic need to know: God is always with you; God will never leave you. The whole world needs to hear it.

Because the world is broken. The goodness of God has been shattered, scattered in pieces all over, pieces of divinity so small it is sometimes hard to recognize them. But they are there, because God is there, ready to do mending and caring and healing work wherever it is needed. And God calls us to be a part of that work too.

Wait. As the prophet Isaiah says, wait. Listen. Devote yourself to prayer and good deeds, as Jesus himself did. Speak words of hope, sharing the message of Jesus Christ, about the healing of the world, wherever you are. Be a part of the work of restoring the world, one piece at a time. Tikkun Olam.

Photo: Mosaic in the entryway of the YMCA, Salisbury, Maryland.