Loading...When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” AMEN.
As the youngest of four sons, I missed out on a great deal of family history.
I have no memory of the first three houses where my family lived in my hometown, because I wasn’t born at the time of the first two and was only eight months old when we moved from the third.
My mother has this habit of collapsing time, speaking to me about the trip to Washington, D.C. in the early 1960’s, which I remind her I didn’t go on because I wasn’t alive. Trips, babysitters, countless cats that entered and then left my family’s world all took place before I arrived.
However, if you tell someone a story long enough, with enough detail, with enough passion, it is possible to backdate history into someone’s soul.
Over the years, I have heard the story recounted enough times by my older brothers about watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show to convince myself that I know where on the couch I was sitting when all the girls began to scream. I have watched the images often enough to believe that it is my junior high girlfriend who is shrieking and in tears at the sight of Paul or John.
Though I wasn’t born until 1967, somehow I am the one walking around in Beatles boots, wearing my Beatles wig, imagining my tennis racket is George Harrison’s black Country Gentleman guitar. The first chord of A Hard Day’s Night never sounded as good as it did on my wooden Spalding.
Beatlemania they called it, that time in 1964 when all the world was taken by the boys from Liverpool, when the screaming teenagers drowned out the sounds of the guitars and drums and the “yeah, yeah, yeahs.”
In reading this morning’s Gospel, we are being backdated into the story of Jesus, to a time when everyone, according to his early disciples, is looking for him. The word about the healings is getting out which only causes the crowds to grow with more calls for healing, for a chance to see this new wonderworker.
While we might not think of the early days of his ministry as Jesusmania, everything seemed to be possible. This is the time before the cross, before the hard sayings, before you had to consider losing your life in order to save it.
At sundown, the passage tells us, the crowds swell with the sick and the possessed and those who brought them to Jesus for healing. The whole city was at the door. Jesusmania is in full bloom. The people gathered, pressed against the doorway, and would remember this forever.
Later in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’ words would begin to divide things, causing confusion among some. Despite opportunities to play to the crowd, Jesus did the opposite and the crowds began to thin over time, so that when the time of the cross came, what crowds did remain were asking for his life, not for his healing.
But let us stay in the early days, with the crowds at the door, in the all-healing, all the time moment. In the early days, Jesus is a new light shining, the One to see for the cure.
Earlier in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days, to ready himself, to be tempted, to be among wild things. In the wilderness, Jesus said no to the temptations in order to go back into the world and proclaim the coming of God’s Kingdom.
In the wilderness, he had been alone, except for the tempter and the beasts and the sounds you hear at night when you are away from it all. In the wilderness, there were no crowds.
Now, in the city, Jesus is confronted by the wild things in the crowd, the sick and the lame and broken ones all pushed to the front. Heal him, sir. Heal her, teacher. Can you fix this?
In this time, at that moment, back in the early days, he healed and he cured and he fixed.
And this was surely one of the signs, that healing and hope were entering the world as the Kingdom broke in. Surely this is Good News, the healed and the restored bearing the mark of the One.
We do not know how long into the night the healing continued. If the whole city shows up, however, at nightfall, this could take some time.
And we do not know exactly when Jesus awoke, in the morning, to go to the deserted place to pray, except we know it was still very dark. The healings into the late night and the quiet prayer of the early morning probably would not have been all that distant from each other.
In entering the deserted place, in the early morning, Jesus returns to wrestle with another temptation. He has not come into the world in order to put down roots in one community, to set up a permanent healing clinic, to welcome the crowd each night, to keep his mouth shut and the healing touch flowing.
His call is to leave home, to cross all the boundaries, to blur the line between stranger and kin, between Jew and Gentile, to proclaim the message in every town. But the permanent set-up is nice.
When the disciples find him, after hunting for him in the early dark, they tell him enticing news. “Everyone is searching for you.” The crowds are pleased. The people are ecstatic. This is the time to capitalize on your fame. This is the time for the three-picture deal, the healing product tie-in, the endorsements and the tell-all book.
Remember, Jesus, you are a brand. Protect the brand.
Jesus came into the world in order to look upon the world, to see those who others miss, to touch those who others run from, proclaiming Good News to the very ones who have given up. In order to do those things, you have to go into the crowd, to see and touch, to be seen and touched, to listen and to speak, to be heard and to hear. The public ministry of Jesus has to have a public.
But in order to nurture the message, to remember what the Kingdom looks like, Jesus has to get up early, to go to the deserted place, to leave the crowd and their pleas and their praise in order to pray alone, to be reminded daily of the true call.
If you never leave the mass of people, if you go from crowd to crowd without end, then the faces cease to be real faces, becoming one big blur, one big shout, one long, agonized outstretched hand.
Jesus left the crowd, rising early, to pray, to be remembered to the Holy One, to remember that each face in the crowd was a real face, a solitary life, a child of God waiting to hear the Good News.
Responding to the Good News would require change, giving up a life in order to find it, walking a narrow path, letting go of burdens too great to bear any longer. But on the other side of that conversion was life, abundant life.
Because of Jesus’ commitment to a rhythm of crowds and prayer, of action and contemplation, of public and personal, he saw what others did not see. He saw the short man sitting in the tree. He felt what others did not feel. He felt the woman touch the hem of his garment. He counted what others did not count. He spoke to all, regardless of status or religion or gender or illness.
When we think of Jesus, it is hard to think of him without taking on the whole story, the whole sweep of teaching and torture, of blessing and cursing, of adoration and crucifixion, of beginning and end, of resurrection and life eternal.
Today, however, we are invited to go to the beginning, to be told with enthusiasm and passion and sincere belief that there was a time when Jesus healed all who came to him, when the city all approached one house, before anyone left his side, offended by who it was who stood next to them in the circle of Jesus.
We are invited to wade into that crowd, to stretch out our hands, to seek healing, to cry out to the One who hears us all. While the Church is divided from each other, while our present moment might cause us to question where God’s future is leading us, let us remember the beginning.
At the beginning, the One came who promised not to lose any of us and stood at the door and received us all, with our ailments and our anxiety and our anguish.
By the healing of the Christ, we are restored, restored to our true self, to our true call, to serve and welcome. We are called to welcome the city into the house, the sick into the healing place.
It is almost sundown, the crowds are gathering again. We all belong to one city, the city where the Christ has come. Don’t you remember? You were there.
