Sermon: Mark 1:29-39 Prayer and Relationship as Self-Care
One of the things I love most about the Gospel of Mark is that Mark takes the Incarnation seriously. Mark doesn’t paint Jesus as God incognito, as God camouflaged in human form, but retaining all the omni-powers and the inexhaustible strength of God Almighty, totally devoid of human weakness. No. Mark portrays Jesus as extraordinarily human, with human needs and frailties. Mark’s Jesus gets frustrated, irritated, angry, impatient, grumpy, sad, disappointed, and in Gethsemane, even reluctant and frightened.) I’m not suggesting that Mark denies the divinity of Jesus. Only that he emphasizes Jesus’ humanity.
Emphasizing the humanness of Jesus is important to Mark because Mark also takes discipleship very seriously. Mark recognizes that there is more to salvation than the cross and resurrection. The life and the teachings of Jesus are also important and need to be followed as examples for kingdom living. A disciple is literally a student who follows in the footsteps of his or her teacher—learning to walk and talk and think and live his life the same way as the teacher. By stressing the humanity of Jesus, Mark can insist that Jesus is, indeed, someone we can truly follow and imitate. It makes discipleship something doable, something reasonably possible. It obliterates the excuse that being like Jesus is impossible because no human can become perfect, like God. Mark insists that Jesus’ way of life and his teachings are to be studied thoroughly and applied and incorporated into our own lives. Jesus is our example to follow and emulate.
In today’s gospel, Jesus goes to Peter’s house, (right after he casts a demon out of a man in the synagogue) and heals Peter’s mother-in-law. He and his new friends then sit down and relax as she gets up and sets about the business of hospitality, providing them with food and lodgings, as was an important custom in those days. Somehow, the whole town hears the news that there’s a miracle worker in town who can heal people, and as the saying goes, good news travels fast—even without cell phones, radio, or newspapers. Come evening, every person in town that is diseased or disabled or emotionally disturbed shows up outside Peter’s house, hoping to be healed, and the rest of the town comes to witness the event. Jesus dutifully obliges and goes about healing many who are sick or disabled, and casting out demons.
Now if we think of Jesus, as we tend to do, as God with all God’s strengths and powers, we might imagine that this is a nearly effortless task for Jesus, who just walks along touching them all and saying, “Be well,” or “Be clean,” or “Get up and go home and sin no more.” But we know that when the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years just touches his cloak, Jesus feels power drain out of him, and looks around to see who touched him. So, if we think of Jesus as a human being who must take some time and expend some energy, feel some empathy, show compassion as he heals person after person, well, then you can imagine Jesus might feel exhausted, drained physically, emotionally, and spiritually, by the time everyone finally leaves.
I know a little bit about how tiring it is, physically and emotionally, to work for hours with people who are sick, or dying, day after day. I spent a whole summer doing just that. Every Seminary student that intends to become a pastor or deacon is required to take one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education—CPE for short. I did mine two summers ago, at the hospital in St. Cloud. Yep… my commute was almost twice as far—too far to make every day. So, I had to rent a dorm room in a nearby Catholic college for the summer and drive home on weekends whenever I didn’t have overnight weekend shifts in the hospital. CPE is intense. It’s not just spending lots of time ministering to patients in every part of the hospital and learning and practicing ministry skills, which can be exhausting by itself. CPE also includes difficult self-analysis, identifying personal biases, strengths and weaknesses and emotional triggers, analyzing personality traits, questioning everything you say and do and why you say and do them, and helping others to do the same. It can be a very stressful and confrontational process. And the instructor is always looking for red flags, evaluating your progress and your fitness for ministry. As you might imagine, I felt totally drained at the end of every day. And to top it off, there was homework every night.
I expected it to be hard. I was in a strange town, in a dorm that was practically empty aside from myself and a couple of monastics. My dorm was on the third floor, with no A/C and the temperature was about 90 degrees every night the entire summer, so I got very little sleep. I didn’t have my family and friends with me to lean on or cheer me on. It was the first time I was ever away from my husband and kids and pets for such an extended time. I also had to give up my gardening, which was always very therapeutic for me. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but this was where God had led me. As you can imagine, I often found myself feeling lonely and stressed, and my eyes tended to sprout leaks whenever it was time for the class to focus on me, my strengths, and my deficiencies.
The college I was housed at had lots of beautiful monastic gardens, but they were off limits. Ther was also a lake with hiking trails, so, I tried hiking along the paths. But it was hot and muggy, and the mosquitoes were unbearable on the trails. Worse yet, when I got back to my dorm, I discovered I had picked up lots of hitch-hiking wood ticks. All the next week I was continually finding more and more of them, in my bed, even crawling on the walls and carpet. So, suffice it to say that hiking in the woods along the lake was not a viable replacement for the garden solace I was longing for.
My classmates were two women from Luther that I hadn’t met and two Catholic priests-in-training from Wisconsin. We spent so much time questioning and analyzing each other, that we got to know each other well, really fast. My new friends quickly realized that I was getting run down and having a hard time finding a way to recharge my batteries. The guys figured out how much I loved and missed my gardens and being outdoors and started scouting out the neighborhoods around the hospital and locating all the yards with beautiful gardens and began taking me on walks with them during breaks, making sure to stop by all the gardens they had found. The girls quickly followed suit and located walking paths along the river behind the hospital, lined with wildflowers, and started inviting me to hike with them. We all started having lunch together, outside, as often as possible. This was all helpful, but still not enough. No matter what I tried, I just felt my cup running dry, and I just couldn’t understand why. So, the next time I went home, despite how exhausted I was, I decided to spend a few hours sitting in the grass weeding my flower beds. That’s when I figured it out.
I had forgotten one of the most important lessons in this gospel reading. It was the same lesson my prayer professor tried to drill into all her students. And it was the reason I missed my gardens—because in my gardens, whether I am pulling weeds, planting seeds or picking beans or tomatoes, I am constantly meditating and praying, constantly talking to God. Sometimes, when there’s no one else around, I even talk to God out loud. Don’t get me wrong, I was praying all the time. I was praying with and for my patients and their families, and for the doctors and nurses who tended them, praying with and for my classmates, praying for my family and friends. I was praying more often than I think I had ever prayed in my life, and I had lots of people praying for me, too. And I was listening, as well. I listened as I entered each patient’s room, for the Holy Spirit to guide me in what to say, what to ask, what to offer my patients and their families. I was even practicing guided meditation with some of my patients whose pain wasn’t managed well enough by medication.
But I wasn’t doing these things for myself. I wasn’t praying and meditating the way I do when I’m gardening. I wasn’t having the same sort of personal, two-way conversation with God. When I’m gardening, I remember that God is my best, closest and most devoted friend, and that I can tell God anything and everything. I can be completely honest with God, and I can be me, and that is enough. When I’m gardening, I pour out my heart and soul to God the way I would to my husband or a dear old friend. And I ask God questions about things I wonder about and things I wrestle with, about whatever pops up in my head when I’m hot and sweaty and covered with dirt, all by myself in my back yard. I take time to be still and listen, waiting patiently and expectantly for God’s reply to come floating on the breeze, or whispered amid the chatter of the birds, or fluttering to me on butterfly wings. And I listen to the sound of my heart, the sound of leaves rustling, the buzzing of the bees, and let them inspire me, forming images and ideas in my mind. When clouds pass by, I imagine them raining down God’s love on me, soaking me to the bone. This is the sort of prayer that fills my cup. This is prayer that keeps my batteries charged for ministry—because it nurtures my most important relationship—my primary source of strength. Because "my primary relationship,” as my prayer professor told us over and over and over again, “is my relationship with God.”
Drained and exhausted though Jesus is after healing a whole town full of ailing people, Jesus gets up, well before dawn, and goes to an isolated spot to pray. Jesus is fully aware that his relationship with God is his most important relationship. Jesus never forgets that, and he always carves out time and space for conversation with God. It is this primary relationship that gives him strength, guidance, power, hope, assurance, and confidence. Like every other human being, Jesus is designed for relationship, relationship with other humans, and more importantly, designed for relationship with God. Jesus constructs for himself a support network of human beings, but above and beyond that, what Jesus needs most, what Jesus relies on most, is a close and healthy relationship with God, and such relationships are founded on prayer, one-on-one, private, open, honest, conversation with God that includes asking questions and listening long and close with an open mind and open heart, in the pre-dawn stillness, for answers. No matter which Gospel we read, we will find that Jesus goes off to pray frequently, before and after big miracles, to recharge his batteries, to replenish his energy and refresh his spirit. This is a lesson we all need to learn—and something we should all be practicing.
So, I have a few questions for you to ponder. How is your relationship with God? How often do you engage in deep, one-on-one conversation with God? Is it part of your daily or weekly routine? How often do you listen for God’s voice in the stillness? Is there a place or time that works best for you? Remember, we are all in ministry together, and ministry is most effective when supported by frequent conversation with God. Take time to nurture that primary relationship. God wants to hear from you. Take it from someone who learned the hard way—it’s worth the time and effort. It’s more than worth it—it's nourishment for your heart and soul, fuel for your journey through life.