Sermon February 1, 2009

Epiphany IV

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8: 1b-13; Mark 1: 21-28

I want to tell you two stories today. The first one's about the day I met Jesus.

One of the things I recall most vividly from my time at my English seminary in Birmingham is the program we did in our second year at one of the local hospitals. Actually it wasn't just a hospital, it was a cluster of institutions all on the same site - a regular hospital, a psychiatric hospital, and a nursing home.

It was difficult to tell the difference from the outside. All three were built at the same time - somewhere in the wheelhouse of the Industrial revolution in the mid- to late-1800's - each as dreary as the other. A century and a half of industrial pollution had turned their outer walls a nasty black. Inside there were high ceilings, small windows looking out on a physical desolation that seemed a good match to the human desolation inside.

One quarter we'd spend a morning a week on the wards of one of the institutions, and the afternoon in groups talking about the experience.

My sharpest memory is visiting on one of the psychiatric wards. These were not criminally insane folk - "they're mostly harmless" was how one of the staff described t hem. Their ages ranged from twenties to seventies, and, I remember thinking later when I saw the movie, "they look like those folk in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest".

The person I remember most was a twenty-something man named Steve.

Steve had a distant, haunted look in his eyes, one of those classic looks we describe with euphemisms such as "lights are on, but no one's at home". The look that waves caution flags in front of our faces.

Steve could talk about every day things as if he was just a regular guy you'd meet on a bus. He was always really nice, very solicitous. But occasionally he'd drop in a familiar, repeated refrain: "You do know I'm Jesus, don't you?" he would say. It won't surprise you to know that Steve's diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia.

The Chaplain of that hospital was on the ward the first morning Steve ever said that to me, and he overheard Steve's comment. "You know," he said, "Steve wold never make it on the outside. "But the good news", he continued, "is that this is a great place for him. The staff is totally dedicated - they really care. They treat Steve as if he's one of their kids. And he knows it - on some level, he knows it. He knows they love him."

The second story's one I heard Bishop Michael Creighton tell yesterday about his recent visit to Walter Reed Army Medical center for a meeting. As he walked through the corridors he kept passing very young servicemen and women who were missing arms and legs, or who had clearly suffered significant physical trauma. This began to weigh down on him quite significantly, he said. Eventually he found himself waiting for an elevator next to a very young vet who had lost both legs below the knees. Feeling he had so say something he said to this chair-bound man "how are you?" and winced at the banality of the question. The young man beamed at him and said "well, I'm learning to walk again." And, he said, with a nod to his legs, "I've lost some weight!" And then he went on to say how he couldn't have done it without all the wonderful people who were supporting him through his process of recovery.

Both of these stories are closely tied to today's gospel. The first is the closest, of course - what for the First Century readers of Mark's gospel was an unclean spirit would, today, be diagnosed as a medical-psychological condition. But those readers would also have understood the loss of limbs as related to some evil presence within the soldier - to use a Buddhist phrase, some sort of "bad karma".

Using the lens of these two contemporary stories the Gospel opens up for us. And it opens up in a way that has real contemporary importance for us when we look at exactly where this poor, possessed man shows up: in the synagogue. In a culture that spurned and cast out those who were "not like them", especially those who seemed to be suffering under some divine punishment, a culture that forced them to live "outside of town", the people who populate this story act differently - they allow the man to stay.

We now know that the Galilee region was really quite diverse - it included Jews, of course, but there were folk from all over the Middle-East, all over the Roman Empire. So this man was allowed to stay by two distinct groups: the local community, in all its diversity, AND the members of Capernaum's synagogue - they didn't cast him out of the synagogue because of his disability.

That simple fact contains a quite profound reminder to us of the importance of faith communities when it comes to accepting and embracing folk who are "not like us"....that we should be at the forefront of that welcome and that embrace.

To use the language of metaphor here: there probably isn't a person in this space who hasn't, at some time, been out of our minds - with grief, with anger, with a whole host of emotions and feelings. It's what "being beside oneself" really means, isn't it? That we're somehow not 'in' our centered selves.

And there are times when we feel that we are less than fully human, that, somehow, parts of us are missing, that our living is impaired in some quite profound way, and we have needed someone to help us "walk" again, someone who we can lean on.

In the community where Steve lived - his hospital ward - he was a cherished family member, he was embraced by those who knew of his struggle. And they were able to do that because, in the end, they loved him.

At Walter Reed this amputee in a wheelchair - and many thousands of wounded vets like him - are cherished family members, embraced by those who know their struggle, and who continue to work with them to get them back into the broader community outside the hospital. And they are able to do that because, in the end, they love them. That's the extra step in the gospel passage that Jesus takes - he seeks to love this poor, demented man back to health, he takes the witness of the Jewish believers one step further.

And that's the invitation to us - to know that we each are the "Steve's" of this world, and the "Amputee" to someone else and they are the same to us - and to act the way that the members of any community of reconciliation, and love, and grace are called upon to act: with reconciliation, and with love, and with grace to anyone who walks through these doors. Amen.