Sunday 20th July 2014, Trinity 5, evening

Mark 6:30-34; 53-end

by Revd Kate Tuckett

All of us, living in 21^st century London will listen to a lot of people telling how busy they are. It’s a kind of default response whenever you ask someone how they’re doing. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: ‘That’s a good problem to have.’ Or ‘better than the opposite.’

The 19^th century American author Henry David Thoreau said that ‘We have more and more ways to communicate, but less and less to say.’ And that was before the advent of screen-based technology. There are so many voices in our everyday life that it is almost impossible to stop and to listen. But when we discover what lies beyond the noise and settle into it, it often comes as a great relief to know the space that comes when we stop striving, when we switch off our phones, settle into something different, gain perspective, breathe, and expand into the people we were create to be – into a being and a way of being that is grace-filled and expansive. This is hard, because there is always more to see and do, and it is so hard to rest. Yet this is what Jesus calls us to do.

This reading comes after Jesus has sent his disciples out to cast out demons and heal people. And it seems they were quite successful. They come back full of energy and joy, hoping to tell Jesus everything they had done and ready for more. There is always more to do, even then. But Jesus calls them to rest. It’s a passage in which we see a journey from a movement inwards to a movement outwards. Jesus and his disciples rest and from that place are able to teach and heal. Contemplation and action. Both incorporate Christ. Just as it is only after Jesus has gone into the wilderness for forty days is he able to preach the reign of God and heal the sick, so we see this same movement here.

And this beautiful passage seems to give us a glimpse into the very soul of Jesus. He and and his disciples have only managed to withdraw for a short time before the crowds have followed him, pressed on him, made demands of him. And when he sees the people, we’re told that he feels deep compassion for them ‘for they were harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd.'

Jesus looks at our broken world and our broken selves and his heart is deeply moved. There is no bitterness or anger at our messy or confused lives. Instead we find compassion for those who struggle with suffering, loss and pain; patient goodness for those and for all of us who are searching for love and meaning in all the wrong places; kindness for those living in silent despair.

Before Jesus starts to teach and to heal, he is moved and filled with compassion. In most of Jesus’ healings he touches people – physically touches them. His healing comes from the heart. Healing can not be done through the head, through explanations, through theories and theologies, through quick conclusions, but somehow through a communication of the energy of compassion. Even the early church calls the sacrament of healing, the laying on of hands.

And perhaps if we are to show the love of Jesus to the world’s suffering, we have to allow ourselves to be moved to the core of our being. Simply intellectualising, thinking and theorising will not do. To offer the healing love of Jesus will always come with our guts as well as with our heads.

To feel compassion with our guts means, in some way, to enter into this suffering. Spiritual writer Richard Rohr notes that in classical mythology, the hero is always wounded. The term ‘innocent’ (meaning not wounded yet) is not complimentary in mythology. The innocent is the young boy (and in classical mythology it always was a male figure) who refuses to be wounded, or more exactly, refuses to recognise and suffer the wounds that are already there. He’s going to remain nice and normal so that everyone will accept him. In our culture he might smugly remain middle class, healthy, ‘sinless’ and happy, maybe drive a smart car or wear the latest clothing. He refuses to let it fall apart. He refuses to be wounded.

Likewise in classic tragedies, everyone sins and fails but somehow they retain their human dignity. In classic comedy, everything is fine, but they all end up looking ridiculous. Without the wound, there is no mystery, no greatness, no soul, and surely no Spirit. The them is so constant in poetry, literature and drama. The wounded one is always the one with the gift; the comfortable one knows nothing.

If we have never walked through betrayal, abandonment, rejection, despair, divorce, loss of job, struggles with sexuality, failure, fear, whatever our own issues might be, we will probably respond to other people with our heads. If we can hold our own woundedness and dare to place it in God’s compassionate gaze, we can enter a transformative pattern of healing for ourselves and for others, that we celebrate at the heart of every Eucharist.

Regarding ourselves and others with compassion does not always come naturally to us. But I suspect that how we do anything is probably how we do everything. If we are brutal in our inner reaction to our own littleness and sinfulness, our social relationships and our politics are also likely to be brutal.

We all here will have had plenty of opportunities to see our own failures, shadow and sin. Our instinctive regards are often critical, negative and demanding either to ourselves or to others. But guilt and shame are never from God. They are merely the protestations of ourselves as we are shocked by our own poverty of spirit. God leads by compassion towards the soul, never condemnation. If God related to us by severity and punishment, God would only be giving us permission to do the same – which is of course what we see happening over the world. God offers us the grace to weep over our sins more than to perfectly overcome them, to humbly recognise our littleness, and to be filled with compassion for a suffering world.

In this reading we see Jesus resting and preaching and healing. St Francis of Assisi instructed his followers to ‘Preach the gospel at all times. Use words only when necessary.’ Grace and kindness, gentleness and love, the regarding of ourselves and one another with compassion preach the gospel so much more beautifully and truthfully than any dry sermon or dusty theology.

So many of the great social activists of our time have also been people of prayer: Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Oscar Romero. Contemplation and action go hand in hand. And so tonight, let us consider where we need healing, and try to look with compassion on the parts we hide in the dark, the parts that aren’t the popular bits, the parts of which we aren’t proud. Let’s try and look with compassion on the people we meet around us, the people we find hard to love, the noisy neighbours, the smelly drunk train, the people who are different to us and threaten us. Let’s look with compassion the world, to see the victims of the Malaysian plane crash as more than mere numbers, to imagine the fear and the horror of the lives of those in Gaza, to consider the terror of those forced to flee their homes in Iraq.

And in the quiet, we may hear another voice that we cannot fully know or understand, that may not immediately seem to answer our prayers or provide comfort, but promises love and will never let us go.

So as we bring whatever needs healing in our lives before God tonight, may we know God’s love for us. And may we be empowered to regard ourselves and one another with compassion and to be God’s ambassadors of healing, discipling, ministering, loosening chains, throwing open doors. And may we show forth God’s love in our lives, loving ourselves, loving our families, loving the orphans and widows, loving the broken and hurting, loving God, until we come into the full expression of his image bearer that he created us to be.

The reading started with a call to contemplation and rest. I want to finish with a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver that speaks of rest in God.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just pay attention, then patch

a few words together, and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest, but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Notes

This sermon uses material from:

Bessey, S. (2014), Jesus Feminist, London: DLT

Rohr, R. (2001), Hope Against Darkness, Cincinatti: St Anthony Messenger Press, especially pp55 and 57

http://www.contemplative-life.org/richard-rohr/-the-authority-of-those-who-have-suffered.html