The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany,   February 9, 2003

The Rev. Dayle Casey

The Chapel of Our Saviour

Colorado Springs, Colorado

5 Epiphany-B

2 Kings 4:18-21, 32-37

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39

In a "Baby Blues" comic strip several years ago, three-or-four-year-old Zoe and her toddler brother Hammie hear about a mail-order offer. If they send in the card, the company will send them some live caterpillars, which they can then watch grow into butterflies. 

Dad thinks this is a great idea, so he helps Zoe and Hammie fill out the card, and all three of them take the card out to their mailbox at the curb to be picked up.

Dad holds Zoe up so she can reach the mailbox and says, "Okay, now just put the card in the mailbox, and raise the little flag." "Then what?" asks Zoe. "Then we wait for the company to send us our live caterpillars." "Okay," says Zoe. Dad puts Zoe down, and she turns and watches the mailbox for a moment. Then she turns back to dad and asks, "What's taking them so long?"

At dinner the next day, Zoe asks, "Did our callipidders come in the mail today?" "No, not yet, guys," says dad. "Awwwww!!!" complain the children. "You just mailed the card yesterday," says dad. "It might take a week and a half for the caterpillars to get here." "A WEEK AND A HALF?" gasps Zoe. "Come on!" says dad. "It's just ten days." "How many cartoon shows is that?" asks Zoe.

For days Zoe and Hammie wait impatiently for their live caterpillars. At last, the day comes when they arrive, and the children are dancing with excitement as mom helps them open the box. They look in the box, and they shrink back and scream, "AIEEEEE!!!" "What's wrong?" asks mom. "We thought they'd be cuter," says Zoe. "Let's stomp 'em," adds Hammie.

But mom helps Zoe and Hammie get their caterpillars settled in their new home. "Now we put the caterpillars in these little jars and give them this special food," she explains. "I'm so glad our callipidders finally got here," says Zoe. "I was SO tired of waiting. Wait, wait, wait, all we did was wait! So what do we do next?" "We wait," mom replies.

Waiting is a big part of human life, a hard part of life for some of us. We like to have things NOW! Instant coffee, instant success, even instant butterflies. But anyone who has ever had a baby knows that there are no such things as instant children, and most people who have lived beyond adolescence know that there are some things in life worth waiting for and some things that can be had only by waiting.

Peter Gomes once noted that what Satan tempted Jesus to do was to refuse to wait. Satan tempted Jesus to go for the superficial quick fix, tempted him to grab what would satisfy for the moment rather than to persevere in search of that which satisfies for eternity. 

First, Satan tempted Jesus to satisfy his physical hunger in the wilderness by turning stones into bread, tempted him "to buy survival at any price" rather than endure the hunger of the soul that alone can lead to intimacy with God. Next, Satan tempted Jesus to grab the power that comes with temporal authority, and that seems to satisfy for a time, rather than to persevere in pursuit of the spiritual and moral authority obtained by remaining true to the deeper strength of God. Third, Satan tempted Jesus instantly to prove his identity as God's Son by casting himself off the temple, tempted Jesus to dare God to catch him if he is really God's own Son, rather than by revealing who he was by the much more strenuous, but genuine, way of living the life of God all the way to the Cross.

And Gomes reminds us that Satan, having failed to best Jesus, "departed from him until an opportune time." In other words, Satan, too, waited. Satan, too, knew the necessity and importance of waiting.

And perhaps one of those opportune times Satan waited for came that day when Jesus and Simon and Andrew and James and John left the synagogue at Capernaum and went to the house of Simon and Andrew. There they found Simon's mother-in-law in bed with a fever. And Jesus took her by the hand and raised her to her feet, and her fever left her.

And that very evening, on the evening of the same day on which Jesus had taught with such authority and had driven the demon out of a man in the synagogue and had healed Simon's mother-in-law, on that very same day, says Mark, the people brought to Jesus "all those in town who were ill, or possessed by demons. And the whole town was there, gathered 'round the door. And Jesus healed many that evening, and he drove out many demons."

But the next morning, Mark says, "Jesus got up and left. He walked out. He went away to a remote spot, and remained there in prayer."

"Well, Simon and his companions went searching for him, and when they found him, they said, 'Hey! Everybody in town is looking for you.' But Jesus said, 'It's time to move on. I've got to proclaim my message elsewhere as well, because that's what I came to do.'"

I wonder if this isn't one of those opportune times Satan was waiting for, waiting to tempt Jesus once again through his friend Simon, waiting to tempt him to satisfy the needs of the present moment at the expense of his message and his vocation.

Can't you just imagine what Simon said to him? "For heaven's sake, Jesus, with the way you've got with words and the power you've got for healing -- just imagine it! -- why, they'll be ready soon to make you mayor of Capernaum, maybe even governor of Samaria! And once we've established your credentials here in the provinces, well, who knows, maybe you could even get elected to a post in Jerusalem. And then, well, the sky's the limit." 

But Jesus knew, as Eliot later said, that "the last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason." 

Jesus knew that if butterflies arrive as if by magic, rather than by being born of caterpillars, then we can enjoy the momentary fluttering of their wings but can never know the mystery of creation and life. Jesus knew that if he grabs our allegiance by healing only our aching limbs and itching skin, we might follow him as long as he can provide relief, but that if he does not reach our hearts as well, we will never know the deeper and lasting healing of the enduring love of God that cures the soul. And for Jesus, to do the one without the other would be the greatest treason, the right deed done for the wrong reason.

One of Frank McCourt's best lines in Angela's Ashes is found on his very first page: "When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood; the happy childhood is hardly worth your while." 

On one level, of course, the statement is absurd. A happy childhood is a good thing, not a bad thing. What parent would seek misery for his child on purpose, as a good thing?

But the happy childhood, in the sense of the care-free childhood, the pampered childhood, the childhood in which every desire is met and every expectation granted and no knee is ever skinned, can lead to misery in the long run. The spoiled child often makes for the most rotten and miserable adult. Mature happiness, something worth waiting for, is often the fruit of childhood expectations unmet.

I wonder. When everyone was crowded 'round the door -- crowds pressing so hard at another time, the Gospels say, that Jesus could hardly breathe! -- crowds looking for Jesus to fix all their problems, to heal their every infirmity -- I wonder if Jesus didn't recall then his temptation in the wilderness. I wonder if that moment wasn't part of his temptation in the wilderness! "Just scratch their itch, Jesus. Just fix their problems, just meet their expectations, just heal all their infirmities and miseries. You're the Son of God; you can do it! And when you do, they'll follow you anywhere, and you can be king of all this world for as long as you live."

"But what about God's world?" Jesus must have wondered. "And what about after I've died? A kingdom of 'all-this-world-for-as-long-as-I-live' is a pretty puny kingdom. Is that the limit of God's hopes? Is that the limit of my vocation? Or is there something more, something more worth waiting for, something more worth hoping for?"

And Jesus said, "Get behind me, Simon - er, uh, Satan -- for you think as men think, not as God thinks. I've got to get out of here and go to other towns so I can proclaim my message there as well, because that is why I've come."

So who is this Jesus? Here we are crowding around him today, all gathered 'round his door just seeking his touch, just seeking healing, just wanting him to throw our demons out as he did for that man at the synagogue, just wanting him to lift our fevers as he lifted Simon's mother-in-law's fever, just seeking to have him touch us to get rid of our troubles and meet our expectations, just wanting him to scratch our itch. Here we are all gathered 'round his front door, and Jesus slips out the back door to go preach somewhere else. Who was that masked man anyway?

A few Sundays ago, at our celebration of Jesus' baptism on January 12, we knew the answer to the question. Or we thought we did. Jesus is the Son of God, the One God is pleased with, the long-awaited Messiah. But today, just 20 or 30 verses after we heard who he is and thought we knew who he was, Jesus slips out the back door, acting like anything but a messiah. Just who is he?

William Willimon says that he remembers going into a classroom as a college student, when he was full of assurance about Jesus and ready to defend Jesus against the world, and finding that some student from the previous class had written across the blackboard, "Will Success Spoil Jesus Christ?" 

"That question has haunted me ever since," says Willimon. And he wonders, and I wonder, if it didn't haunt Jesus himself, with the whole town crowded 'round his door, impatiently wanting to wait no longer, wanting Messiah now, wanting healing now, wanting answers now.

"After all, isn't it the job of a messiah to do God's work?" we ask. "Isn't it the job of a messiah to do good things? Isn't healing a good thing, part of God's work? Isn't it a good thing that crowds of people are pressing 'round you, Jesus? And isn't it a good thing that we're building mega churches and TV networks and 'Christian' web pages and retail outlets for all kinds of 'Christian' consumer items? Isn't this all good?" And wouldn't it be good, Jesus, if you'd just take charge of this messed up world of yours, this world of economic uncertainty and war and terrorism, and throw the evildoers out? Isn't that what a messiah is for, for heaven's sake?"

Well, I don't know. Today's Gospel reading leaves us with a bunch of questions, and I don't think we like questions. Don't we come to church, and read the Bible, to get answers, to have things explained to us, not to get more questions?

But what are we to make of a messiah who seems afraid of crowds? What do we do with a messiah who seems concerned about too much success, and who runs out the back door looking for a place to be alone to pray when there are still a lot of people to be healed and a lot of other things to be done?

Maybe today's Gospel story is about patience. Maybe it's saying that we need to wait, as Jesus seemed to need to wait. Maybe it's saying that we need to wait upon God, to pray and wait as Jesus prayed and waited, for further clarity about what messiahs do and what disciples do. Maybe, as Thomas Keating suggests, we need to wait to see where Jesus goes, and to wait to see what he says and what he does during the rest of the year, as he makes his way on through life from Epiphany to Maundy Thursday to Good Friday. Maybe we need to wait to see where Jesus goes from Capernaum to wherever it is he is going to end up, washing people's feet and dying on a cross. Maybe we need to wait for Jesus to be revealed to us as messiah is, and as he is going to be, not as we want him to be.

Maybe, in the long run, as we stumble along after him, sometimes thinking we see for sure and sometimes not knowing what's going on, maybe the point, maybe the good news, is not to have answers, but to have Jesus.

Maybe the point, maybe the good news, is to have Jesus on the road with us, to have a Jesus who shares our infirmities and fevers and demons and doubts, to have a Jesus who is as uncomfortable with crowds as we are, to have a Jesus who is as skeptical of success as we are, to have a Jesus who is in need of prayer as much as we are. Maybe the point, maybe the good news, is to have a Jesus who shows us how to live and to love even in a messed up world like this, to have a Jesus who is just as human as we are, and who is just as reluctant to die as we are, and who hurts as much when he suffers as we do when we suffer.

Maybe the point, maybe the good news, is to have the Jesus who comes to us as he is, the Jesus who keeps on proclaiming the message he was sent to preach even when we're suffering and when he's suffering, the message that God loves us no matter what, no matter our fevers and demons and doubts, no matter our fears, no matter our success or failure.

Maybe, in the long run, as we stumble along after him, sometimes thinking we see for sure and sometimes not knowing what in the world is going on, maybe the point, maybe the good news, is not to have instant butterflies, but to have caterpillars. Not to have answers, but to have Jesus love us as God loves us.

Maybe, in the long run, knowing and sharing that love and that life, rather than having answers, is the point of life, the Good News worth waiting for.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.