Jesus Is Not A Mother Squirrel

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time (and money) watching the “Eliminate ‘em” guy remove a baby squirrel that had fallen down my chimney and was stuck in the area that surrounds the gas fireplace. Apparently, a mother squirrel had made a nest in the top of the chimney. The pest removal man attempted to get her out of the chimney by leaving the little guy in a big trap in the yard. The baby squirrel cried and called but the mama did not come. She remained perched on the side of the chimney watching the whole thing. Either she was afraid of the man or worried about leaving the other babies. Either way, she left the little squirrel on his own and did not attempt to rescue him.

This whole episode made me think about the story of the lost sheep:

What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. (Matthew 18:12-13)

In this wild world where we live, there is strength and protection in numbers. But in the realm of God, when I am lost -- one alone -- Someone will come and find me.

That is comforting, but now this morning there is another squirrel in the fireplace……

A Tiny Taste

from Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul by Tony Hendra, page 63:

It took my breath away: the curve of the great path, the contrasts of raw earth against rushing cumulus, of tumbled old stone against tall young grass, of leaf-speckled oaks against the sea. A very different landscape than my placid, green-shaded Hertfordshire; this was impeccable and classic, every element of natural beauty in exact harmony, a foretaste of perfection, an amuse-bouche of Paradise.

I confess: I like to watch the Food Network. That is where it have learned that an amuse-bouche is a wonderful little dish that is only one bite. It is meant to tempt and delight the palate, similar to but not to be confused with hors d'oeuvre. This is a tidbit, often tiny, served as a free extra to keep you happy while you are waiting for your first course to come. It gives you an idea of the chef's approach to cooking and the restaurant's attention to your appetite. It is literally a happy mouth.

What an amazing way to think about this beautiful earth: a tidbit, just a taste, given to us now to show us God’s approach to all of eternity and God’s attention to our needs. As the psalmist says: O taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34.8a).

Work

My garden has been slow in ripening this year. I planted things late and then the weather has been (until recently) cool and wet. But this week I have picked beans, cucumbers, and a few tomatoes. I’ve cooked food that has traveled only a few steps from plot to plate. It is good. I have also been sewing. Last weekend, I made pillowcases for my three young neighbors, two with cars and tools on them for the little boys and one with fashion items for their sister. I suppose that was a frivolous project, making something that is so easily available already made, but I loved doing it.

I spend my days in a job where “work” is something I do with my brain, and I live easily in that world. But the joy of these homely tasks where I physically do something reminds of the psalmist’s prayer: “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90.17)

And here is my version: Prosper the work of my mind. And give me work for my hands, too, because that will prosper the peace of my soul. May it be so. Amen.

Kitty Spa

A David kind of world

In my readings this summer, I have read through the whole story of David. It is fascinating – full of intrigue, plotting, revenge, power struggles, heartbreak. David is not a priest or a prophet; he is a warrior and a ruler. He lives in a world of danger and politics. He does not spend his days cloistered in worship. But even so, he is always consulting God about what to do. And despite all his faults and failings – and they are significant – he is the one known as a man after God’s own heart.

Sometimes I think I live in a David kind of world. I am certainly not a warrior king, but I do have my own battles to fight. There is no pulpit for me to hide behind, no quiet sanctuary or study to settle my soul. I live and work in the midst of a world where there are problems without solutions, struggles that cannot be overcome, pain that has no anodyne, and difficulties that seem to surpass the wisdom one needs to cope. And I carry my own significant sins and sorrows. So am I consulting with God in the midst of this worldly life I lead? Do I believe that my actions have God’s blessings? Sometimes. Do I miss being more immersed in the holy, living and working in a place where the Word is central, where matters of the soul are given serious reflection, where prayer is a constant? I do miss it. But then I think, maybe to seek that way of life is to have it – even in the most unlikely places. Maybe to long for the sacred is to find it. And maybe there is no context so odd and unlikely that it is beyond the shelter of God’s presence.

So as I go off to do battle today, let me be reminded to consult with God, and to try to follow after God’s own heart.

Touching Faith

Mark 5: 21-43

This passage from Mark’s gospel is a little like a set of Russian dolls. It is made up of nesting stories, one contained within another, and both of them wrapped around the center, the most important part. In the Russian dolls, often called “matryoshka” for “mother,” it is often the case that each one is painted a little differently but at the same time, there are common elements all through. So it is with these stories.

The outer layer, the story of Jairus and his daughter, and the inner one, the story of the dying woman, have enough similarities to let us know that they are related, that they are pointing to the same reality. Both stories involve great faith; both stories contain a miracle, a touch that heals. The girl is twelve years old when she dies and the woman has been dying slowly for the same period of time.

These are major themes, no doubt, but there is an important subtext here, too. Both the little girl and the woman are unclean; they are untouchable. To have any contact with a strange woman, especially one who was bleeding, or with the dead, was to become contaminated oneself. This is outlined in portions of the Book of Leviticus, in what came to be known as the purity code. When the children of Israel were about to enter the Promised Land, these prohibitions helped shape them into their own nation. The code formed the structure that they needed in this time of transition. The penalties for violation were serious: separation from religious observance and participation, until the specified remedy had been satisfied. Really, what this meant was separation from community, a high price to pay. And since any form of contact could bring about contamination, intentional or accidental, those who were unclean were generally not allowed in the mainstream of society. They were isolated, kept at the margins.

There was a whole array of contaminating conditions in addition to death and bleeding, things like skin rashes, mildew on fabric or the walls of a house, childbirth, especially if the baby was a girl, some conditions associated with baldness, (yes its in here, you can look it up), even the use of two kinds of material in a single article of clothing -- cotton polyester???

Certainly from our twenty-first century perspective, the fear of contamination from these almost-normal conditions seems primitive and superstitious. But the codes served their purpose in their time, separating the people from those tribes already in their Promised land, so they could establish a pattern of life and worship that was centered on the one true God. Eventually, though, the rules became an end in themselves. The people lost sight of the purpose and got all caught up in the process of compliance and enforcement.

And you know, we ourselves are not immune from all this. Oh, perhaps we are a bit more sophisticated than the ancient people of the Bible, but underneath it is pretty much the same thing. We, too, can become preoccupied with keeping ourselves at a safe distance from those who threaten us, from those who seem unclean.

Now, of course, we do not necessarily say it that way, and we do not observe the purity codes of the Old Testament, at least not in their entirety. No, we have our own words, our own version of the code, and we go to great lengths to enforce it. Just ask those who work on behalf of persons who have AIDS. They know how society has isolated those with this terrible disease. Or ask those who are elderly and have no place to live except a standard-issue nursing home. They will understand the isolation of age and infirmity. Those who are poor and homeless, and maybe literally unclean because they have nowhere to wash, are outcasts in our society. Even with the election of our new president, race is still a sign of differentness among people. We may not practice the extreme segregation of the past, but separation and suspicion between races still exist in too many places. And those who have lost a job or lost a marriage may find that old friends and colleagues soon avoid them, almost as if these conditions were somehow catching.

But what does Jesus say? When confronted with the outcasts, the unclean, the hopeless cases, what does he do?

In the two gospel stories, it may appear that it is the faith of Jairus and the woman that creates the healing. And there is no question that they both demonstrate a powerful, moving faith, touching in its single-mindedness. Their stories show us two facets of such faith – the woman’s willingness to touch Jesus and the father’s willingness for Jesus to touch his daughter.

But at the heart of these two stories, nested within them, is the source of the healing, and that is the power of Jesus, a power borne of faith. In him, in his power, the two facets of faith come together, because he is the one who is willing both to be touched and to touch. In faith, he overrides the rules and regulations. He places himself on the other side of the prohibitions, with those who are other. He ignores the religious conventions of contamination and he does it deliberately and intentionally.

In the press of the crowd, after the woman touches him, it would be so easy to keep going, for him to let the woman go her way, healed but unacknowledged, and for he himself to continue on with none the wiser. But he does not do that. He shows the same deliberateness with the little girl. When he gets there, she is dead, dead enough for the family to have called the mourners. Surely there is no reasonable expectation for him to intervene. And yet he does. He goes into the presence of death, the ultimate condition of otherness, that which we fear the most, that which we seek to avoid at all costs. But Jesus does not avoid it. He is not afraid. He takes hold of the dead girl and raises her up, once again aligning himself with the outcast, showing us how he is that way, too, foreshadowing his own death and raising up.

What he is doing is fulfilling the law, opening the layers of interpretation and rules and regulations to reveal anew what is at the very center, which is God’s precious shining love, the powerful love of the One who has created life – all life – and has pronounced it good.

A child who is dead and a woman who might as well be: and contact with Jesus restores them both to life, to health, to community. Because his is a faith that conquers fear. His is a touching faith, a faith that reaches out in healing; a faith that restores relationship.

And where does all this touch us? Where does Jesus take hold of our lives? If we claim to have faith in Jesus Christ, must we also have the faith of Jesus Christ? How would it be to live this way? Perhaps it would mean acknowledging those who reach out to us, those on the margins who want to have contact with the Body of Christ; or it could mean taking the risk of a hands on approach with those that the world deems untouchable; or maybe it would lead us to form relationships with those who are different from us.

Is this easy? No. Is it necessary? Well, it seems that it is for Jesus Christ, and we are called to follow him, to be Christ-like. And to be that way, to be Christ-like, is to touch and to allow ourselves to be touched. It is to open our hearts to the great pain of the world, to the fear, the suffering, the isolation. Because nestled within the gospel, at the heart of all our stories, there is this central truth and it is the whole truth: In Christ, there is the power to heal the world’s hurt. In Christ, there is the faith that overcomes fear and suffering and isolation.

Those who are in Christ are called to this faith, this touching faith. This is the faith that will save the world. And it is the faith that will save us, even us.

(c) Martha C. Highsmith

Blight

Hartford has had electronic billboards for a long time. I don’t drive that way often so I’ve been spared them for the most part. When I do have to pass them, I find them incredibly distracting – and annoying. In the past several months, one has gone up in the path of my daily commute. It is situated ahead of a curve in the road. You come around the curve and there it is, right in front of you. The colors are garish and over-bright; the display flips from one message to another in a way that demands attention; and the whole thing is ugly.

There are laws about littering on the highway, and people get fined for throwing out trash and polluting the landscape. How is this any different? It is a form a visual litter that pollutes the view. I suppose from an advertising standpoint, it is just perfect – unavoidable, in your face, seen by thousands each hour. But it seems to me another way that our society of excess consumerism intrudes on what little peace and quiet is left in one’s line of sight.

Peace and Beans

When I was growing up, it was rare to see a grownup sitting down in the evening without a pan of beans or peas to shell. It was a perfect activity to go with story-telling, conversation, or gentle motion in a rocking chair. Last night I shelled and peeled the fat fava beans I got at the farmers’ market. I don’t know how long it has been since I have done something like that. But it brought me right back home to the farm, and I had that deep peace that I feel when I am there. The beans were done all too soon and I will enjoy cooking and eating them, but maybe I will savor the peace of their preparation the most.

Funeral Food

In the Bible stories that tell of events after Jesus’ death, there is a lot of eating going on. The two disciples from Emmaus have supper with the risen Christ; Christ shows up in a locked upper room and asks if there is anything to eat; he cooks breakfast for the disciples on the beach. This, apparently, is what you do after someone has died: you eat. Certainly, we have done that. Our friends and neighbors have brought wonderful, comforting, abundant food: fried chicken, barbeque, casseroles, pound cakes, strawberry pies, devilled eggs, butter beans, ham, homemade biscuits, gallons of iced tea. We have eaten food from the hands of those who love and care about us, and it has nourished our bodies and our souls. We have been fed and comforted, renewed and strengthened. And in that eating, that food, we have known the presence of the risen Christ, just as those sorrowful people did so long ago.

Easter Sunday

Unfinished Business

Isaiah 25:6-9
Mark: 16:1-8

What kind of Easter story is this that Mark tells? There are no alleluias, no appearances of the risen Jesus, no blessing of forgiveness for those who abandoned him at the cross. Well, there is a young man in the tomb – he might be an angel but Mark doesn’t even say that for sure. Compared to the other evangelists, to Matthew, Luke and John, this is an odd story. It doesn’t even have a proper ending. In fact, in the Greek, the last sentence is incomplete. A more literal translation would read: “and they said nothing to anyone; they were afraid, because…..” It just leaves you hanging, waiting for what comes next. The ending is abrupt, the gospel unfinished.

And if that is not strange enough, then look at the ending itself, if indeed it is an ending. It is the story of a bunch of women, terrified, running away from an empty tomb in the dawning daylight. It wasn’t the disciples who went; it wasn’t the religious officials who discovered what had happened. It was just some women -- the least important of all. Oh certainly, they had traveled around with Jesus, and some of them provided for him out of their own means, but the gospels do not name them among the twelve. In their time and place, they had little credibility, no power, and even less authority. Who would believe anything they said anyway? What business did they have bearing the message about the resurrection? No business at all …but they were the ones who went and they were the first to know that the tomb was empty.

These women were faithful from beginning to end. They walked with Jesus; they waited and watched at the cross; they came back when it was all over to offer a final act of service. It is clear that they loved him, so you can understand why they fell apart when they saw that his body was gone. We greet the news of resurrection with celebration, with lilies and music, with family gatherings and new clothes, ham and lamb and chocolate eggs. It is spring. There are buds popping out, the daylight lingers, and the world seems new again. It is a holy day, a holiday, and it feels wonderful to have an occasion of joy. But it wasn’t that way for the women who were there on the first Easter. Try for a moment to imagine what it was like, going to the grave of someone you have loved, someone who died a terrible, terrible death, going to pay your last respects and finding that the grave seemed to have been vandalized, robbed of the wounded body it contained. No wonder the women ran away in terror.

But you know, there is one thing Mark got wrong in this gospel. He records that they told no one, and obviously that is not true. Here we are, after all, and if we don’t know this story first-hand from the women, we do have it handed down from those they finally told. Their fears and their tears and their silence gave way at some point to courage and proclamation. Who knows why or how or when – it just did. Maybe it was a new reality setting in. Maybe it was recovering from the initial shock. Maybe it was remembering that everything was happening just the way he had said. Maybe it was realizing that everything was changed.

However it happened, these women who had no business carrying such earth-shattering, death-defying news, were the ones commissioned to bear the message. And the message was that Jesus was not in the tomb anymore, that they were all to return to Galilee, and that somehow he was going ahead of them and they would see him there. Now if I had heard that, I wouldn’t know what to say or do either.

The crucifixion seemed to be an ending – maybe the end -- and it was not. The women fleeing the tomb seemed to be an ending and it was not, either. And death had always seemed to be the ultimate ending and even that wasn’t true anymore. Somehow Jesus was alive and let loose in the world. They would not find him in the tomb as they expected. Instead he was going back where it all started, back to Galilee, back to the beginning. And they were to follow him there. Galilee was home; it was where they lived their everyday lives; and that was where they were supposed to go now. That was where they would see him again.

That was the message to the women on the first Easter – and it is the message to us on this Easter, too. He is going ahead and we are to follow. We will find him in our Galilee, in the place where we live our everyday lives – not at the cross, not at the tomb, not limited to Sunday morning at church. We will see him where he lives – in the world. We will see him where we live. And it will be as the poet said: “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” (T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding) Know the place for the first time, know ourselves for the first time, and know Jesus for all time.

But if we are going to follow Jesus into our daily lives, if we are going to see Jesus everyday where we live, then how we live will be completely changed. And maybe it is a natural response to want to run away from this message, to be afraid, to keep silent because speaking about what has happened will mean that it is really true. We will have to live out God’s vision for the world as told by Isaiah. We will have to work with Christ to make a feast for all people; as Jesus fed the multitudes, so must we. We will have to stand with God in trust and faith and belief as God destroys death. We will have to work to remove the shroud of war that we have spread over the nations. We will need to bring healing and hope to the poor and the abandoned, comfort and care to the grieving. We will be called to wipe away the tears of our weeping world. We will have to live in a world that seems hell-bent on its own destruction, and to do that in the sure and certain knowledge that the One we have waited for to save us, to save everything, is with us.

Is this more than you want to do, more than you think you can do? Does it make you feel overwhelmed, terrified, like running away? Now you know, maybe, how the women felt. And what business do we have anyway, thinking that we can change the world? No business at all, except resurrection business. And that means that nothing is business as usual anymore. As one teacher says: “Business as usual is no longer safe because Jesus goes ahead of us to call us to discipleship again and again. The resurrection is not a onetime event in the past, but the promise of more surprising, disturbing encounters to come. The resurrection is not primarily about empty tombs, but about the living Christ who continues to encounter us in the world and call us to discipleship.” (The Lectionary Commentary: Theological Exegesis for Sunday’s Texts, ed. Roger E. Van Harn, p 284)

Because of Easter, business as usual has given way to unfinished business. The gospel is not done. Jesus is not dead. God has not given up on the world. And our business is to tell this good news, to tell it with our own lives – to tell it with our words, our actions, our service, our love.

Find your voice, let go of your fear, follow the risen Christ back into your own life. That is where he is waiting for you. And remember the promise, given to the women and now given to us: “He is going ahead of you… you will see him, just as he told you.”

Alleluia! Christ is risen! And that is just the beginning.



(c) Martha C. Highsmith