'Everyone is searching for you'

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 8, 2009

Mark 1:29-39

When I was in high school, one of my teachers earned his doctorate at Vanderbilt. I remember asking him if that meant he was going to be leaving the halls of our high school for more ivy-covered halls. But he said he had no intention of leaving to teach at the university level.

He told me that, yes, his degree might open a door at one college or another, but that he already was teaching the students he wanted to teach. He said, “Students from my class go on to study at Harvard, MIT, Vanderbilt and more – and I have the opportunity to teach them right here.”

I’ve remembered that conversation all these years. At the time, we couldn’t believe that someone who could teach at a university would teach at a high school. One was clearly better than the other in our eyes.

If that didn’t convince me of how wrong I was in looking at the world, I got another lesson a few years later. I and a few others from my college were working as interns at a newspaper. One of the reporters there was ancient – he was in his 40s at least – and we couldn’t figure him out. The idea we’d learned was that you start as a reporter and then work your way up the editorial ranks, ending up as someone who told reporters what to do.

Someone who was still reporting at his advanced, we figured, must be something of a washout and none of us ever took time to learn much from him. And then a couple of years later, we were surprised at the news that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting.

I like to think that I’ve learned a few things since those days. Things about what is important and the decisions we make. As youngsters, we were indoctrinated into the idea of hierarchy – that there’s a bottom to start at and a height to be reached, and those who ended up somewhere in the middle simply hadn’t worked hard enough or weren’t smart enough or had some other irredeemable flaw. You could measure success in job titles and college degrees and hefty salaries.

Well, all you have to do is read the newspaper or look at Wall Street to realize that this measure of so-called success doesn’t make any sense now. And, of course, it didn’t make any sense then.

What I did not pick up on back then was the subtlety of the lesson – not just that there are many measures of so-called success, but that there are many decisions to make along our paths. That life is filled with forks in the road and that some folks are better than others at choosing which path to take. Folks who see the value in the here rather than in the mysterious there, in the familiar rather than the exotic.

It may be strange to think of Jesus being in this position. But he was – and this is part of the mystery of Jesus Christ. In his divine self, as the Son of God, he always heard the voice of God and acted according to the will of his Father. But at the same time, in his human self, he made day-to-day decisions as a human among humans. These decisions often puzzled his followers.

Why did he go where he did? Why did he do the things he did?

There were many more perplexing things in his ministry – he called outcasts as disciples, he healed Samaritans, he heading straight to his death in Jerusalem – but in today’s story there is a small, strange element worth looking at.

But let’s start at the beginning. He leaves the synagogue and goes to the home of his friends – I’ve visited what’s believed to be Andrew and Simon Peter’s home, and it's only steps away from the ruins of a large synagogue.

After service here at St. Luke's, I’ve been known to go home for a nap. But Jesus wasn’t going to his friend’s home to put up his feet. Indeed, after his teaching at the synagogue, Jesus was going out to do his real work.

In this little stone house waited Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, lying in bed with a fever. This is what Jesus had come to do. To heal the sick, to show them the power of faith. He reached out his hand, he lifted her up, and she was healed.

And then she did something. When the fever left her, she began to wait on them. His ministry to her enabled her to begin a ministry of her own. She was healed and she immediately began to serve her Lord.

Word spreads fast when something like that happens. By nightfall, Jesus was besieged by those seeking healing. Many were possessed not only by fevers, but also with demons. And Jesus cast those demons out – demons who recognized Jesus, demons controlled and silenced by the Lord.

As I said, he was besieged. The Gospel says the whole city was gathered around the door. Jesus was suddenly famous – a stranger who could cast out demons, heal the sick, and preach with authority.

Fame comes so early in his ministry – surely if he were to stay here in this house by this synagogue in this town, then they would continue to come. His fame would be such that not just the city would come to his door, the whole country would come … the whole world.

So how does Jesus respond? He goes to pray. Before morning, gets up and finds a quiet place all alone. As the Gospels make clear, it was his custom to go off and pray alone whenever he could, especially when he was pressed upon by the crowds.

That part about praying alone I understand. But the next thing is what is peculiar about this story, something that comes up time and again in Scripture. He leaves. Jesus just up and leaves.

The disciples say, “Everyone is searching for you.” And he says, “Let us go on.” He does not say, “Then bring them to me. Let the crowds come to me.” No. Instead, he says, “Let us go on.”

This decision raises several issues that we face in Scripture. One issue is the need to spread the Gospel far and wide – Jesus does say he needs to proclaim the message in other towns. Another is the paradoxical secretive nature of Jesus’ plans for his mission – he was known to tell those he healed to keep it a secret.

But what interests me today is his reluctance to be surrounded by the crowds, refusing to stay in place and let the world come to him. Refusing to bask in the glory of the fame grew with every healing and every miracle.

Instead, he would push on, to new towns, to new people, to preach and heal in places where he was unknown, where he had no fame. In places that he would leave just as quickly.

We know that Jesus had been tempted before in the wilderness. And he told the tempter that he didn’t want glory, he didn’t want power, he didn’t want all the kingdoms of the world. Not for himself, for he eventually would win their inhabitants for the Kingdom of God, but then only after his crucifixion.

I cannot think that Jesus was tempted only the once. You and I are tempted in this life. And you know that you’re not tempted only once – you resist temptation today and it comes back tomorrow. You know how it is … turn down dessert tonight and someone’s already baking a pie for tomorrow.

Jesus was human. Divine, yes, but human also. And the crowds came to him. The whole city came to his door. And there stood Jesus at a fork in his road. Temptation on one side – a big name, many followers, fame. And on the other side? A lonely road. Away from those who admire him. Into towns where no one knows him, where the work will be hard and where many are ready to do him harm.

One choice is appealing to the typical man. The other is unappealing, in fact almost unthinkable. But we know what Jesus decided. And I suspect he made that decision every day, perhaps every hour.

It’s a hard lesson for many of us, who may long for recognition and perhaps just a taste of fame. To swim in the big pond instead of being a fish of any size in a small pond.

But think what happened with Simon Peter’s mother. She rose and immediately served her Lord. His gift would be remembered and passed on for generations through the work of that woman, who now had the gift of service. And this would be repeated over and over.

I think of my teacher and my reporter colleague and so many others who choose every day to labor out of the limelight, in the small towns and schools and, yes, even churches. Without romanticizing it, I do think that they made the sort of decision that Jesus made.

To prayerfully decide in the favor of others over selves, in favor of service over ambition. And we are asked to prayerfully decide every day, in favor of Christ over … well, in favor of Christ over everything else.

Amen.

Christ in the Blink of an Eye

Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 25, 2009

Mark 1:14-20

I’m pretty terrible at making up my mind. Now let me say one thing: I have absolutely no belief in astrology and horoscopes, but I am a Libra all over. Mister Balance.

I can see both sides of a situation. I often am ambivalent in that I believe strongly in two directions at once because I can understand how something looks from two different perspectives. That’s great if you’re job is to be a peacemaker or diplomat – not so good if your job is to decide “the green shirt or the blue one,” or “where do you want to eat tonight?” Flight attendants don’t care for me: “Sir, the beef or the chicken. The beef or the chicken?”

At least, I’m that way on the smaller, day-to-day decisions. On big life issues, I’ve been all right. Mostly because I over prepare like crazy.

Where to go to college? I laid out a range of schools and studied their brochures. Large national universities, small regional liberal arts colleges, and huge state football factories.

I visited within each category and brought home loads of information, then got on the phone and talked to alumni. And once I had learned just about all I could, I picked a broad category for good reasons, picked school within that category for good reasons, and never looked back.

When my wife and I bought our house, we loved the first house we looked at. But then we looked at about a more. We then went back and bought that first house, because by then we knew that it was the very best for us and it wasn’t based on just a guess. We never regretted it.

I’m like that with the big stuff. Graduate school, jobs, whole careers. I don’t dive into anything blind. I work through a lot of uncertainty in the process, but my mind’s made up when I get to the big stuff.

And that works fine, even when things go wrong. Ever go to the appliance store armed with the latest Consumer Reports ratings? I’ll give you a word of warning: there’s never a refrigerator or lawn mower or blender that matches exactly the ones on that list. But if you’ve studied up carefully, you’ve probably got a good idea of what you’re looking for and why.

So you may have go with your gut, but it’s based on what you’ve learned in preparation.

That’s part of the theory you’ll find in a book by Malcolm Gladwell’s. It’s called Blink, and it’s hugely popular. It’s a book about how we think, particularly about how we think quickly. About what we call “gut reactions,” about snap judgments.

We all know that we can make terrible decisions in a blink of an eye, but then again we also can spend a lot of time preparing and still make terrible decisions. What Gladwell found so interesting was it that not only can make good decisions in a blink of an eye, we do it all the time.

Part of what he and others have found is that we use what we’ve learned in the past to make decisions, and that masquerades as something we call intuition. We almost instinctively know deep down which measurements and bits of information are best used in quick decision-making – often because we’ve been there before.

At its worst, this can become stereotyping, and we all know how that can work: a tall man? a born leader. An ethnic man? better be careful. A woman? we can pay her less.

But at its best, gut decisions are made using facts and experience to make good decisions: is that a heart attack? does this road seem safe? can I stop this boat from sinking? It’s not decision-making based on emotion, though it may look like it. It’s decision making based on accumulated knowledge, maybe even concentrates study.

What fascinates me about the work of Gladwell and others in this field is the very attempt to explain the instantaneous. In other words, the explanation of how my slow-but-steady preparation isn’t that much different than go-from-the-gut decision-making.

This may not sound like Gospel territory, I suppose, but today’s Gospel is all about making decisions.

Jesus comes to Andrew and Simon. All he does is say “Follow me.” He doesn’t lay out an argument. He doesn’t explain his mission. He doesn’t give them a brochure or a tract or offer them a position. All he says is, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And they drop their nets. They don’t have a discussion or call a meeting or see a guidance counselor. They drop their nets and follow Jesus.

I’ve always loved this story, but sometimes have worried about how different it seems from my own approach. I often have worried that perhaps something was wrong with me and my commitment to Christianity.

Was I doing something wrong by studying the Bible so much when all the disciples did was drop what they were doing and, without any preparation, follow Jesus? Was I doing something wrong by wanting to know the details of theology when they simply dropped their nets and followed?

One of my problems was that I was mixing things up, putting the cart before the horse. There is life before a decision and life after. There is life preparing for a decision and then the life you live based on that decision. We shouldn’t confuse the two.

For example, I didn’t study up on how to pick a spouse. Oh, there are books and certainly magazine articles and Cosmo quizzes on that subject, but I never paid them any mind. Life had prepared me. I’d always given myself one rule: Never marry anyone you haven’t dated for less than a year, which certainly means you’ve known her for longer than that. So what did I do? I met someone and was married within 9 months – a very, very short time. And you know what? I never looked back.

I think that the initial attraction to and conversion to Christ is much like that. You know something about the world, you probably already know the difference between right and wrong, what is harsh and what is gentle, what is solid and what is ephemeral. And when you are confronted with the real thing, you don’t have to blink. You can convert in an instant. You can fall in love. And – I believe this with all my heart – you can fall in love with Jesus, commit to your savior with all your heart. You can do it in the blink of an eye. And never look back.

But did you ever see the movie “The Graduate”? In the climactic scene, Dustin Hoffman breaks up a wedding and runs off with the bride. Hoffman and Katharine Ross jump onto a bus, plop onto the back seat all out of breath and in awe of what just happened and then … and then, what? Their expressions are totally unreadable. And the credits roll. What’s going through their minds? We’re left to guess. We – and they – are left to guess, “What happens next?”

They have made this snap decision, this crazy in-a-blink decision based on what they both deep down knew was the right thing in their lives … but what happens next?

That’s our problem. Not so much the first decision – Do I go to this college or that? Do I buy this product or that? Do I marry, do I become saved? No, it’s not that first decision, but the next one. And the next and the next.

How do we live once we’ve committed? How do we stop living in the blink of an eye and start living for the long haul?

We sometimes overlook that. It’s no good to choose the right school if you’re not going to figure out how best to study and make it through to graduation. It’s no good choosing the right spouse if you’re not going to think through thousands of things, big and small, that go into making a long, happy and successful marriage.

And to commit to Christ is more than a moment’s warming of the heart, a one-time prayer or a shout of joy. It’s waking up tomorrow and thinking, “How would Christ have me live this day?” It’s asking yourself, “What has Scripture taught me about life in the Body of Christ?” It’s facing a crisis and thinking, “I have to decide in a blink of an eye. Is my Christian faith going to carry me though this crisis?”

Think about the disciples. Yes, they accepted Christ by dropping what they were doing, on a moment’s notice, and following their savior. But this is not all of Scripture. In the Gospel stories, they followed and observed. They learned at the feet of the Master. They heard the sermons and asked, “What does this mean?” They heard the parables and asked Jesus to dissect them. They asked questions: Jesus, what is the kingdom of heaven like? Jesus, teach us to pray. And, most of all, the disciples simply walked in the Way in the community of believers. Learning from one another, learning from the Master.

Dropping their nets was only the beginning. This is our model for the Christian life. It’s often Bible study and small group discussion and Sunday School and reading and time spent in fellowship with others who would model for us the way to live.

And that adds up in our lives, the time spent in reflection and study. Simply the time spent in Christian community. It all adds up to a more informed faith – which, I see now, was the life of the disciples.

All of this informs our faith, a faith that many of us took up in a moment’s time. And it prepares us, gives us the knowledge and the formation to live as a Christian disciple every day – and perhaps, even, to act in a moment of crisis. To act as a Christian when all we have is a blink of an eye.


Amen.