Cracks

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Mark 1:29-39

I’ve been a bit of a klutz recently. Actually, I’m generally klutzy, but usually I’m a klutz of no consequence: tripping over a rug, dropping my car keys in the dark abyss between the seats, having food fall off my fork into my lap. A bit embarrassing, but nothing too big. I mean, I’ve never misplaced my child…so that’s saying something.

But recently I’ve been a klutz with things that have had sentimental value. Last week I carelessly leaned a beloved fragile tea tray on the counter to dry in a way that wasn’t stable, I guess because... when I closed the cabinet beneath it, it caused some minute disruption (to my perception) but was apparently a magnitude 7 on the Richter scale for kitchen ware and it came tumbling down. Crash and crack.

And then again, in the kitchen this week, I was pulling down a plate for lunch and, distracted by Alistair’s excitement over the macaroni and cheese we were going to have, I accidently hit a small purple bowl we got in Japan and watched it in slow motion(I'm sure you know what I mean by this slow motion sequence), fall off the shelf,
bounce off the counter (at this point it is still in one piece),
towards the floor, bounce (it’s still in one piece),
bounce again and…crash and crack.

I have a box here of many of the other sentimental things we (probably I) have broken.
the teapot we got on our honeymoon in Dublin.
the cup a potter friend gave us our first year of marriage in Washington DC.
Two of the four other small bowls we bought in Japan, even before this most recent accident...all broken
A mug from my first ever contribution to a public radio station.
a bowl from France that had Sebastian’s name on it.

We keep these broken things and they just end up collecting dust in the corner, or getting in the way on top of the stove. I don’t know why we keep them. We’ve tried gluing them and it doesn’t really work. They’ve still got the cracks in them and really shouldn’t be used for anything practical. Maybe I’m keeping them because even though I don’t think they work the way they should, they remind me of something. The honeymoon, the trip, the person...

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” says singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen.

God may be a Potter, but Jesus... he sure knew how to show us the cracks that life can cause. The cracks caused by the bad decisions you’ve made. The cracks caused by the abuse others have put you through. The cracks caused by a life of struggle without reward, a life of loving without love returned. The cracks caused by disrespect either dished out or taken. The cracks caused by disease, or addiction, or failure. Or just sheer bad luck.

No matter how polished people look on the outside, I bet if you look closely, you’ll see…we’ve all got cracks somewhere.

We seem to have talked a lot about demons recently. Last month Charity invited us to have tea with our demons and Torin continued the examination of each of our demons that look less like horned little devils and more like real life struggles.

The book of Mark really likes talking about demons apparently because here we are again, a story about demons and sick people. People with a whole lot of broken places in their lives.

Jesus had just finished healing Simon’s mother-in-law--a tidy little story about healing, actually. He goes, takes her hand, lifts her up, and she’s healed. And then she gets right to work. No slow and painful convalescing. No kissing the feet of the man who healed her. Just goes on, business as usual. We don’t even know that if she saw Jesus in her house, if she would know it was he who healed her. Nice. Tidy. Smooth. To the point.

And then comes the sunset, when the new day starts in the Jewish tradition. And what a different day of healing it is. The floodgates open. No longer a tidy little scene of a tidy little miracle. This is like opening day of a free clinic at the beginning of flu season. Not to mention it wasn’t just people who were sick, but also people who were possessed. People who had… demons.

And here’s the perplexing part (I mean, we’re used to demons by now, so that’s not so perplexing). Jesus wouldn’t let the demons speak, it says. Why won’t he let them speak? Will they shout profanities? Will it begin a cosmic warfare between the spirits of the dark and the power of the Son of God almighty? Will they infect other people?

No.

He doesn’t let them speak, it says…because they know him.

Perplexing. Four times in Mark Jesus commands those he healed not to tell anyone. And we really don’t know why. He (or even the author of Mark) never says “Don’t tell anyone because I don’t want to get in trouble.” or “Don’t tell anyone because they must come to me on their own faith in order to be healed” or “Don’t tell anyone because I could really use a coffee break.”

We don’t know. And we don’t know how it is that demons knew him, when it took those following him years to even start grasping who it is they were following.

Some people who are really into the nature of evil spirits may say that Satan was involved and it was Satan who of course knew the power of God through Jesus’ work. Maybe. But there seems to be more than that to me.

But before going further...while we’ve been talking about demons this past month, I’ve been thinking not only about what our contemporary demons are, but also, who would have been considered sick, in need of healing, “possessed by demons” in Jesus’ time, that today, we would be ashamed to say was demonic.

In the book of Deuteronomy (Deu. 28:22-28),for example, it was predicted that mental illness was a punishment for the worship of idols. People who were punished for such sins might be punished with the demons...of madness. The medical and psychological fields have shed vast amounts of light on the area of mental illness. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, mental illness is simply medical conditions that disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning.

Many of the mental illnesses we know about today-- schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and more—were likely believed to be caused by demons in the culture of Jesus. We know that it is shameful that people would ever treat individuals with these conditions as demonic.

...Of course we have the benefit of 2,000 years of human experience to give us perhaps a more humane perspective, but, if we’re honest…
mental illness is not something most of reach out to embrace.

People with mental illness are not ones we quickly feel comfortable around.

We don’t really try to form relationships with people with intellectual disabilities and physical disabilities.

In that way, people with mental illness and other physical and developmental disabilities, disrupt our thinking, our feeling, our mood and ability to relate to them, and maybe ourselves. They tell us things we don’t see. They speak of the world in ways we might not understand.

And because of that, I’m sure…they see God in places we would never expect.

When a man named Jean Vanier began living with two men who had mental handicaps after his life as a British naval officer, and after he became trained as a philosopher, he probably didn’t know that he was beginning a counter cultural international movement. But he was...

He started a community called L’Arche (or French for “the ark”)…I know you’ve heard me speak about L’Arche before. There are over 120 L’Arche communities today, where core members with a variety of disabilities, live with the assistants who support and love them. They live together, work together, and worship together. They teach and learn from one another.

One person said of Jean Vanier that “he finds gifts where others see tragedy.” These tragedies we see--the demons that those around Jesus saw--are gifts in Jean Vanier’s eyes, and in the eyes of those at L’Arche. And it these gifts-- these people we might easily label worthless in a practical sense, and who make us uncomfortable—one gift of these people is that they see what we don’t see. They see a reality that we have masked with our own quest for power, and purpose, and functionality.

Vanier was speaking to a university group once and said in his soft, thoughtful voice: “I don't know whether around here you have some normal people, but I find them a very strange group. I remember…one of the characteristics of normal people is that they have problems. They have family problems, they have financial problems, they have professional problems, problems with politics, problems with church, problems all over the place. And I remember one very normal guy came to see me and he was telling me about all his problems. And there was a knock on the door, and entered Jean Claude. Jean Claude has Down Syndrome and I didn't even say, "Come in”…[when he] came in, and he shook my hand and laughed and he shook the hand of Mr. Normal and laughed and he walked out laughing. And Mr. Normal turned to me and he said, "Isn't it sad, [people] like that."

"He couldn't see that Jean Claude [had happiness]. It's a blindness, and it's an inner blindness which is the most difficult to heal. “

Those who see what we don’t, who know things beyond this material realm tht we don’tknow... We easily label them demonic. Or worthless. Or unaware of boundaries. Or simply sad. Or maybe, broken.

But then, that’s something we all share. All of us, broken in some way.

And why is it... that those who seem the most broken in most of the Jesus stories are the ones who see him? Who get it? Who let that Light in through the cracks…and send back out the openness to receive?

I have mentioned in the past Henri Nouwen, a priest and professor who left his academic life at Harvard to become a chaplain at a L’Arche community called Daybreak, in Canada. Nouwen wrote about his experience at Daybreak and about his relationship with one man in particular in his book Adam: God’s Beloved.

"I want to tell you Adam's story,” writes Nouwen. “After a month of working with Adam, something started to happen to me that had never happened before. This severely handicapped young man, whom outsiders sometimes describe with very hurtful words, started to become my dearest companion. As I carried him into his bath and made waves to let the water run fast around him and told him all sorts of stories, I knew that two friends were communicating far beyond the realm of thought.

"Before this, I had come to believe that what makes us human is our mind. But Adam keeps showing me that what makes us human is our heart, the center of our being where God has hidden trust, hope, and love. Whoever sees in Adam merely a burden to society misses the sacred mystery that Adam is fully capable of receiving and giving love. He is fully human—not half human, not nearly human, but fully, completely human because he is all heart. The longer I stay with Adam, the more clearly I see him as a gentle teacher, teaching me what no book or professor ever could.”

Why Jesus asked them not to share their knowledge of him, we don’t know. We struggle to wraps our minds around this healer, this Jesus, this son of God. And maybe that’s a reason why he didn’t want the demons to speak...

Because our minds will never understand. It’s our hearts, illuminated by the cracks in our lives, that will teach us.

“There’s a crack in everything. That’ s how the light gets in.” Amen, and amen.