restoration, healing
generosity of gifts
of wholeness
or just the visionof Godd
I s a i a h 3 5 : 4 - 7, M a r k 7 : 2 4 – 3 7
Heart strangely warmed by the Divine Love, persevering.
It's a story really, about people who have been in a bad place. There have been wars and interference from nations outside their own and now the Divine One is going to come in and clean up a bit...
Oh, nope, sorry that's another section, this one is all about healing. The Divine One is coming to bless and heal the sick, injured, blind, deaf, and physically impaired, as well as going to break open the door to the supplies, to the most necessary things in a middle eastern country – water.
No, wait, this section does talk about coming of the divine in “terrible recompense”... Godd will heal...
That's not what we expect is it?
God's gonna come in here and clean up this mess
of oppression and violence...
-- by opening eyes, freeing tongues, and opening up water resources...
Well, let's look at Jesus then. Maybe he's gonna be more straightforward. He goes traipsing all over northern Palestine – off to Tyre this time. And he didn't want anyone to know, but somebody finds him, and comes in to ask for help. And she is NOT a Jew. She is a gentile and still she comes. And she has the nerve to ask Jesus to heal her daughter.
Here Jesus is way out of town, far from a lot of Jewish people and Jesus is asked to heal one of the people who lives there!?
Well, Jesus responds;
Actually, let's feed the kids first, before the ... dogs...
Then the woman who has sought and found Jesus out,
because of her devotion to her daughter,
pursues Jesus some more –
this guy whom she knows has healed people before,
who has come to her town –
having crossed boundaries to get there away from his people...
This mother says,
Yes, and even the puppies under the table eat the crumbs that the children drop.
Here's the rub, isn't it? Jesus the crossover guy, is being invited, cajoled, corrected by love – the love of a mother for her daughter. What will this man inspired by the Divine Love do?
I expect his heart sobers up, from the drunkeness of fatigue, or it opens his eyes that are rummy from sleep-travelling. I expect that some part of the Divine Heart that burns behind our own sleepy, tired, or tear stained eyes, ignites with some insight –
perhaps out of humility, perhaps out of some shame in putting on another the self-disgust, or just self-disappointment we feel – a mother agreeing she and her daughter are dogs to the man who can help them...
Jesus, the traveller beyond boundaries, and across borders,
assents... agrees... receives the request this mother has brought. More than that, this Mother draws him into the Divine Love again.
The healing that we hear about in the Isaiah text is all about the Divine One coming to shake things up!
She is going to bring... ... a heavy hand ... of...
eyesight,
of enough water to grow food,
and loosened tongues to tell of good work, and the marvelous acts of God!
Jesus, may be a bit slow, or un-seeing, but this mother, the woman takes his hand and lifts him up to the Life he is intended to live.
Do you notice what the key is though? It's the crossing, the going over, more, beyond the comfortable, the easy. Both of these texts are about the Divine going beyond, over, and healing.
That is our work. That is what our call is – to go beyond and over to the “other”. You know there is a whole religious tradition about loving the “Other” since really, though the Divine is working and resides within us. She is terribly concerned about the children of creation – the ones that are human and the others, whom St. Francis (among others) called our sisters and brothers – sun, moon, water, fire, birds, wolves, and other creatures.
Martin Buber is the one who especially articulated that our relationship with the Divine is a relationship with an other. What that means is that somebody's got to move for us to get to the Divine, or Godd-ess to get to us. This is helpful, even though we believe and claim Godd is within us, because it illustrates that we cannot control the Divine, nor can we totally understand her...
You can see how this text is really about Jesus crossing over again to the “other” who is the Lover, the One. We as followers of Jesus, then need to pursue the Divine in the other we meet – that is how we will see Godd. That is how we will serve the Divine, like Jesus who was collected back to himself in Godd's vision.
...So we are practicing peace-making, working out justice, answering calls to help make the way this world is more like Godd's vision.
We make way for the other and ourselves on this way, just like this mother and her son.
