Rev Barbara Peddie

God’s work – and ours

Epiphany 5B and Waitangi

This was one of the times when I was tempted to move away from the set lectionary readings – although as it happens there was a choice for this Sunday. There’s a separate set for Epiphany 5 and Waitangi Day and this is the closest Sunday to Waitangi Day. But, in the end I opted for the readings for Epiphany 5. But, let’s face it, they’re a challenge!

In these days, where the news is full of death and disaster, both in the wider world where there is war and misery and desperation in far too many countries, and in our own land where the new year has begun with fire and storm, far too many deaths on the roads and in the water, and violence in the streets, it’s hard to take real comfort from Isaiah’s hymn to the everlasting Lord who “gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless”, or from the Psalmist who sings of the Lord who “heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” Tell that to the people of Gaza and Ukraine and wait for their reaction!

And the reading from Mark has its own challenges. Jesus’ healing stories are hard for us. We know both too much about illnesses and not enough. We know that fevers are often caused by infections, and we know how to deal with them. We know that some mental illnesses are genetic in origin, and some are caused by chemical imbalances, and there are ways of treating them. But we also know that some diseases are unexplained and uncontrollable. And we know that wellness means more than physical wellbeing. There is a spiritual dimension to health, and there is a ministry of healing.

I’m not saying that God doesn’t heal. There are times when the veil between us and God – between what we see as reality, and what we feel as something other, or sacred, or numinous – whatever we call it – is thin. I think there are people with a healing ministry – who can make themselves channels for God to act as God chooses to act. I don’t, however, have much time for people who claim that power for themselves. And there’s more than one sort of healing ministry. We have people walking among us with gifts of reconciliation, or of mending the earth, or of recognising and calling out gifts in others. They’re all healers too.

The first time I was challenged by today’s reading from Mark was just after I’d been asked to take a family vigil service before a funeral mass for the daughter of friends of mine. She was only 40, happily married, with two lovely children. Her cancer was seen as life-threatening from the very beginning. In the three years that followed the diagnosis, with serious operations and three lots of chemotherapy, she fought hard for a cure, and her family and church friends prayed hard for a cure. It’s hard when the prayers aren’t answered in the way we want. It’s hard for young children when those sorts of prayers aren’t answered for them in the only way they can think of answers, and it’s hard for family members to answer the children’s anger. It’s hard for all of us when these illnesses overtake those dear to us, and nothing we can do seems to change the outcome.

And yet, as the priest at the mass said, she came to the last days of her life in a place of peace, and the funeral mass was truly a time of hope and celebration. Who knows what those prayers had accomplished for her and for her husband and children? Who knows what the love and practical care of her church family and the children’s school families had accomplished? Sometimes we can’t put words to what the true outcome of prayer is.

Of course, there’s more to Mark’s gospel than the stories of Jesus’ healing ministry. it’s stark, uncomfortable, and uncompromising. It sits there like a chunk of rock we can’t go round, or a great tree in the middle of our path. It doesn’t go away, and, in the end the only way forward is to engage with it.

For Mark, Jesus is first and foremost a teacher. The primary conflict throughout the gospel is: whose teaching has authority from God – that of Jesus, or that of the leaders of the synagogues and the religious parties in Jerusalem? Who, if we use the education-speak of our system – was the certified teacher?

Mark’s Jesus is challenging. He names the things that are evil and claims the power of God to overcome them. But he doesn’t stop at recognising evil. He acts to transform the situation. His healing word causes things to happen. When Mark says Jesus spoke with authority, the Greek word we translate as authority isn’t power, but a different word entirely. It means he spoke with a willingness or right that has everything to do with seeing justice served.

The teaching of Jesus wasn’t ‘teaching’ as we think of it. He wasn’t someone to listen to and think, well, we might take that away and think about it and maybe do something about it – later. He is not one choice teacher among many. He’s the one teacher worth attending to by setting everything else aside; the one teacher whose life is stamped with the divine spark.

He is also a worker. I spent three days last this past week at our Synod’s School of Theology, and one of the key speakers was Sr Dr Kathleen Rushton. She’s a very fine biblical scholar – someone whose words I do take away and think about. And two things in particular I carried away in my kete. First was that verse we hear every Easter Day: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14) Kath pointed out that this is better translated as “The Word became flesh and was “tabernacled among us,” or, “pitched a tent among us.” In the Hebrew Bible, “tabernacle” is used to indicate where God moved in and lived with his people. Ther’s nothing static about this image. Tents are not pitched permanently in one place. God is forever moving on and our task is to move with God.

The second gift from Kath was a focus on the ministry of Jesus as work on the move. Work to complete the unfinished work of God which included the need to create new communities and respond to the cry of the marginalised and the cry of the earth. Let’s go back to Mark for a moment. Think about what happens with Jesus in this very first chapter. John baptises him in the Jordan and immediately he goes aside into the deserted places, to come to terms with his calling. He comes out of the desert and calls the first disciples. Then he preaches in the local synagogue and heals a man with an unclean spirit. He goes to Simon and Andrew’s house for a meal and heals Simon’s mother-in-law, (who, as usual remains nameless). She gets up and gets busy being hostess- back to work! Jesus then heals a crowd of other people, and when they finally go off to bed, he goes out into a deserted place to reconnect with God. Next day he and the disciples set off to another village to continue the work.

God in Jesus is continually on the move among the people throughout Jesus’ life on earth. There was never a time – or any indication of a desire – to settle in one place and have the people come to him. You might remember that Peter once thought it would be a great thing to build a sanctuary and live in it, but Jesus said to him: “My work – our work – in is the world.” We are called to take part in completing the ongoing, evolving works of God. Waitangi Day is a reminder to us here, in this land, that part of our ongoing, evolving work is to build a community that honours all people -tangatawhenua and tauiwi.

God’s call isn’t an easy call. Ministry is costly. It drains energy. There are times when we move into an heroic mode and go from one thing to another, until each new request becomes a burden and a duty? That’s when we need to make time to re-connect ourselves with God. Everyone will have a different way of doing this, and it doesn’t even need to mean that you disappear from sight for a while. Like Jesus, like Isaiah, we need to wait upon the Lord and renew our strength. We all need those times when we go back to the source – to God who gives us strength, and picks us up when we fall.

Blessed be God, who calls us to the work of building true community for the peoples of this land; for the Tangata Whenua, and the Pakeha people who covenanted together in Te Tiriti O Waitangi, and the diversity of later migrant peoples. Amen