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Standing
on the Edge of the Miracle It’s amazing, isn’t it? How people can do so much for others when they love them-–when they hold them dear to their heart? And it’s also amazing to watch how people flourish when they know they are loved. I’m not talking here of romantic love-–I am speaking of the deep genuine love that nestles down into the core of one’s being. The kind of love that is so profound that it cannot help but bring people back from the weariness, sickness and death that they have known in life. The kind of love that will be expressed no matter what the cost. It is a hard love, a soft love, a selfless love, an eternal love. It is the love given by parents to their children. It is the love that stands by a family member during the worst of times in their life. It is the love of Maximillian Kolbe who offered his own life during the Holocaust in order to prevent the senseless murder of someone else. It is the love that sees the purity of someone’s heart even though their actions are evil. This love has the capacity to completely change lives because gaps are created for miracles to occur. But an absence of such a love leaves a void, even worse it drives people downward into their pain and isolation until their lives shake with emptiness. Out of that emptiness possibilities diminish and life is squandered. Helplessness and hopelessness stand ever close to snatch away the joy that love could shed.
Imagine what love Jesus must have been feeling as he prepared to return home –-the love not only for the people in his life there, but all the familiar surroundings. The desert night breaking into the purest pinks and oranges of a desert morning sunrise; the pungent odors of the desert plants, the sunset that stretches across the sky in patterns that mirror the ground below, the faces and greetings of those he had grown up with in his faith community. And when he first arrived, what he had anticipated occurred. He felt the wonder of being home and he even astounded his community with his wisdom and powerful deeds. But, oh, how quickly everything changed. And while the most familiar phrase of the Gospel reading this morning is “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown…” the most critical words are these: “He could do no deed of power there… he was amazed at their unbelief.” It is easy to jump readily to the conclusion that the whole problem was focused on their lack of faith: If only they had been convinced about who he was and what he could do, then the story of that visit to his hometown would have turned out very differently. Maybe so. But I’m not so sure it was a lack of being convinced of the truth of who he was and what he could do that was the heart of the problem. Before we come to that conclusion we need to understand the nature of the word belief. The word belief comes from the root word lief which actually means dear-–to love-–to esteem something or someone dear in one’s life. This might seem a surprising way to understand faith. It definitely makes faith more an act of love than an intellectual assent to a set of facts. Rather than the question “What do we believe?” we are left with the question “What do we hold dear?” Jesus was amazed, not that they didn’t have faith in who he was or what he could do. He was amazed at their lack of love-–their inability to hold their community and the members of that community, including him, dear. Their focus was misplaced and because they did not act from the center of that deep love that grasps and claims, revives and restores the brokenness of life, they could not see the gaps where miracles could occur. No deeds of power could be done among them, because that deep love was missing. In contrast there is the story that Anthony De Mello tells about a monk.
The reason the monk could give away the gem was because he had true belief –-not just faith in a set of facts but belief that he was dear to God and because he was dear to God he knew he had all he needed-–the gem could really offer him nothing. He had a freedom from greed because he was grounded in love. I had an encounter with a man this week that brought tears to my eyes and that exposed my own shallowness of belief. This man is not a church-goer and his lifestyle would probably surprise and offend us, but he is the kind of person that Jesus would have been spending his time with. In my conversation with him, he said, “I am so happy – things seem right with my world. And you know what my prayer is? My prayer is only that God will have mercy on my soul. I do not ask for anything else, because there is no need for me to do so. God has given everything to me already. There is no need for me to ask for anything else.” He, like the monk, is freed from greed because he is grounded in that love that cuts through all the duplicity and falseness and lodges deep in the recesses of the soul. I realized that he was clear about his answer to the question, “What do you hold dear?” I’m not so sure I have that same clarity. This man may not hold all the proper theological doctrines and dogma, but his heart is pure, and because his heart is pure, he can see God-–he can hold God dear-–he can know that God holds him dear. Those moments with that man made me ask myself, “How can I practice this kind of belief-–this belief that truly holds God dear and that is assured of being held dear by God?” So I went to my futon and got into my position for prayer and I asked Jesus, and this is what I wrote in my journal of what he told me: “Child, the human heart was made for belief-–it was made for love. If you stare in silence at your heart, your soul, you’ll feel a hunger for love. But because you do not stare long enough at it you never really encounter the untold depth of that hunger. You may notice a lack in your life, or an uneasiness, or a ‘missing’ of something and as soon as you notice that you stop staring in silence and try to fill the lack, or bring balance to the uneasiness, or try to satisfy what you are missing with what cannot really satisfy and you do not come to belief. To come to belief you have to keep staring until you realize that you never come to the end of that hunger on your own. You need to stare until you sense your soul swirling into an endless space that has no known form or shape or identity. That very space is the embrace of God-–the arms of heaven wrapping around you. In that space your soul finally comes to rest.” “Jesus, why must I fall into a seemingly endless abyss in order to come to belief?” I asked. “Because if you do not, you will always stop staring too soon and you will choose something less than God to fill your hunger. But when you go beyond your known limits and risk the fall into what is unknown, then you will know that it is only faith-–only belief that can save you. In the embrace of the abyss you will seek only the heart of God, and in seeking you will find and be found by God. Then you will have all you need.”
When Jesus came to his hometown he could do no deed of power and he was amazed at their unbelief. They had not come to the point of belief. They had not figured out that the question was not what do you believe in terms of theological facts, but rather what do you hold dear? They had not developed the love that allowed them to see the gaps where miracles can occur. What about us? What would happen in our own lives if we would come to belief? I think we would stand on the edge of miracle and would readily give away the gems that seem so valuable to others because we would know we have everything we need. Copyright 2003 Calvary Episcopal Church Gospel:
Mark
6:1-13 |
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