The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scripture: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
It’s a scary moment in time. There’s uncertainty about the future: the future of institutions, the future of faith, the future of some people’s very survival. There’s a huge chasm between the wealthy and the poor, and more and more people are becoming disenfranchised—socially, physically, politically. It feels like teetering at an edge. What’s going to happen? How will power shift? Are we safe? some people are asking. Will we be safe?
This is the setting in which the gospel of Mark was likely written. Most scholars agree that the author, who we’ll call Mark, wrote it in the years before 70 AD, or CE, the Common Era, when the Romans destroyed the second temple, the heart of life and faith not only for the Jews in Jerusalem, but for all Jews. During that period of time, Jews from all over the known world descended upon Jerusalem for Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. The city’s population swelled by tens of thousands.
During that same time, the Roman colonizers were slowly pushing Jews in Jerusalem and Judea more and more to the margins of society. Their wages kept going down. Corrupt tax collectors working for the empire extorted what little money they did have.Their access to certain work was restricted. It all came to a head when the Romans arrested several Jewish leaders and seized money from the temple treasury.
The Jews of Judea rebelled. It came to be known as the First Jewish-Roman War. During that war, the Romans besieged Jerusalem, eventually sacking the city, and laying waste to the temple.
Like I said, the gospel of Mark was most likely written in the years just before the temple was destroyed.
In chapter 13, he writes:
When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come…As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them…sibling will betray sibling to death, and a parent their child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name.
This is all already happening in Mark’s world. It seemed he was afraid that destruction was inevitable. For him, it felt like the end times.
Sound familiar?
When I returned from my vacation on Tuesday, I felt a heaviness in our St. Luke’s community. I felt it at Bible Study, in individual conversations, in your posts on social media. We’re uncertain, afraid even. Afraid for the future: the future of institutions, the future of faith, the future of some people’s very survival. We’re like Mark, waiting for something to come down the pike.
This is the context in which Mark situates his story of Jesus. And it’s where we, as Jesus-followers, situate our story. And we get to see how Jesus responds in such circumstances.
And let’s be clear, Jesus himself was in a similar circumstance in his own time. The Romans are getting nervous about his popularity, the religious fundamentalists are trying to undermine his ministry, and his own disciples can’t seem to wrap their heads around who he is and what and why he’s come to do what he’s come to do. We all know where all of this leads to. The cross. It seems like they’re heading towards the end of the world.
So, what does Jesus do?
In our gospel today, he and the disciples are trying to get some rest by going to a deserted place because they had been so busy they hadn’t even had a chance to eat anything. But as they approached the supposedly deserted place, they found a crowd of people all waiting for Jesus.
He’s so tired, so hungry, but the need he’s confronted with is so great, so urgent. It must have felt like so much. Maybe even too much.
And this kept happening! Wherever he went,
people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak.
I can’t imagine how overwhelmed Jesus must have felt. Every person with a life-threatening illness, and every person who loved them enough to bring them to Jesus—each must have felt like the end of the world was at stake.
Wherever he went, Jesus encountered the end times in face after face after face. A sea of despair and devastation all looking to him for hope. How could he, just one person, possibly address all that need?
So what did he do? I don’t know exactly, except that we’re told that first, he had compassion for them and, second, they were healed. What I imagine is that he went up to one person on a mat. He introduced himself and asked their name. He spent some time praying and laying hands on that person, and they were healed. He smiled at their joy, gave them a hug, and then headed to the next mat, the next person.
Jesus had compassion and he healed. One person at a time, one miracle at a time. Marketplace after marketplace, town after town. That’s how Jesus changed the world.
And he’s showing us how we change the world. Compassion. Healing. One person at a time.
But I’m not Jesus, you might think. What healing do I have to offer? What miracles do I have to offer?
This week, I visited Linda Davis in the hospital. A lot of you don’t know Linda and her wife Robby. They’re not able to make it to in-person worship, but they are faithful members of our St. Luke’s family. Linda has been in the hospital for three months with a condition that the four? five surgeries she’s had in that time haven’t been able to quite fix. As you can imagine, all those surgeries and all that time in a hospital bed have taken their toll. She’s pretty frail. But she was awake and eager to chat when I visited. We were talking about all sorts of things when a nurse came in and said she had to prep Linda for a procedure. The prep was pretty simple, the nurse told me. It would only be a few minutes. So I left the room to give Linda some privacy. I stood in the hallway outside her door, and I waited. And I waited. More than a few minutes went by. Maybe 15. I was starting to wonder if something was wrong.
But after another five minutes, the nurse finally came out.
When I went back in, Linda said something like, “Sorry for the wait, the nurse and I got to talking.” She told me that she had told the nurse what a blessing she is, how grateful she is for the care she’s given her, especially in this really scary time, what a good job she’s doing. Apparently, the nurse then opened up to Linda. She told her that her infant granddaughter had recently gone into cardiac arrest and how scared she felt. That even though she was a nurse, there was no way she could help. She could only look on and hope and pray that her grandbaby would be okay.
Even as Linda was lying in a hospital bed, had been lying in a hospital bed for literally months, weak and uncertain, she offered compassion to this nurse and, I believe, some healing. Because that kind of connection, the freedom to be vulnerable with another person, the safety to really reveal oneself, is healing.
I’ll tell you what my spiritual director told me recently: simply embodying who I am joyfully and authentically is healing to others. Simply embodying who you are joyfully and authentically is healing to others.
But that requires risk. That requires making yourself vulnerable, revealing yourself to others. But that’s what compassion means. Broken down to its Latin roots, compassion means “to suffer with.” To see the vulnerability in others and offer your own vulnerability.
It can be easy to get lost in the magnitude of the sin and suffering of our world. We are drowned in accounts from Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, from what feels like the very shaky democracy in our own country, and it’s easy to wonder, What difference can I possibly make?
Compassion. Healing. One person at a time. We have proof that it changes the world. Not just Jesus, but Mother Teresa, Marie Curie whose discoveries led to being able to treat cancer, Harriet Tubman whose courage led to scores of enslaved people in the South being freed and eventually abolition itself.
One person at a time. One act of kindness at a time. One lab experiment at a time. One conversation at a time.
No matter what situation you’re in, if you can offer the gifts God has given you, with compassion, one person at a time, you will be a healing presence. I believe that when we’re all doing this, it scales, it grows exponentially, it changes the world. Amen.
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