THE LONGING FOR WHOLENESS September 24, 2006 Elizabeth B. Andrews Minister for Congregational Care, Fourth Presbyterian Church Psalm 42 James 5:13–16 Mark 1: 35–45   The longing for wholeness, for healing, peace, salvation, shalom,is perhaps the deepest of human longings. Perhaps it always has been. One of the striking and moving things about our story from Mark is that it is framed with glimpses of the persistence, the hunger, with which people sought Jesus out. He went out to pray in a deserted place, and Simon and his companions hunted him down: “Everyone is searching for you.” And towards the end of our text, as the word spread, “Jesus could no longer go into a town openly but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.” Why did they flock to him? Because he fed them and spoke words that gave them hope and he healed them, made them well. Crowds gathering, pressing, so long ago, with such urgency, with awe and amazement and rejoicing at what he was doing. The Gospels are alive with vivid scenes and sound bites, if you will, from Jesus’ healing miracles. We watch as he lays his hands on a bent-over woman and immediately, she straightens up; friends lower a man through a hole in the roof; eyes of the blind are opened; ears of the deaf unstopped; a man picks up his mat and walks; a woman who suffered a hemorrhage for eighteen years manages to touch the hem of his garment and is instantly healed; a child thought dead is taken by the hand and raised up to life; a man who was beset by demons is found quiet, clothed, restored to his right mind. We hear, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table.” “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” So long ago. And still we call out, we yearn—or we sit at the edge of the crowd, afraid to ask, afraid we might not be heard, afraid that he would not see, afraid we have been forgotten, that he might leave without touching us. We long to hear his voice, for a word for us: “What do you want me to do for you?” “Do you wish to be made well?” “Go in peace, your faith has made you well.” Or perhaps “Your sins are forgiven.” What is wholeness? More than relief from pain or brokenness, something quite different from the anesthetizing of pain that we are so good at, the patchwork, the “fixing” we hurry to attempt. Wholeness is not always, we must understand, a physical cure in this world and lifetime, not always the restoration of exactly what has been lost, the mending of all that is broken and scattered in our lives, the filling of the empty place, but rather, as best I can say it, the gift of something that meets our longing for a sense of God’s presence and response to whatever our pain and incompleteness is. “My soul longs for you, O God,” cries the psalmist. “My tears have been my food; all your waves and billows have gone over me. Why have you forgotten me?” What we long for—and can find—is a well-being that rests in the assurance that we have been heard, known, seen by a loving God, whatever our condition, and touched by that assurance, we are transformed. It’s the wondrous intersection of the fulfillment of what we need most (whether or not it takes precisely the form of what we would ask for) and God’s intent for us. And it’s not always a “miracle moment” but sometimes a recognition of the slow, subtle work of grace over time. Frederick Buechner has written that peace, shalom, is “not the absence of struggle, but the presence of love.” That is the deepest longing. Go back to our story from Mark: The leper whom Jesus met said, “If you will, if you choose, you can make me clean.” And Jesus, moved by pity (the Greek word means literally “to have the bowels yearning,” that is, moved at gut-level, a visceral response to the need of the man kneeling before him)—never mind the prohibition of contact with the “unclean”—Jesus reaches out, touches him, and replies, “I will, I do choose. Be made clean.”This is not just a pronouncement of words, the uttering of a formula; Jesus reaches with compassion, touches with tenderness, God’s love in the flesh. Here is the good news for which we are still hungry. Wholeness is not just our wish, but God’s will for us. The longing for wholeness is not just ours, but God’s. Jesus’ miracles in the Gospels were not just passing wonders to be marveled at but understood to be signs of the breaking in of God’s kingdom, glimpses of the way things are intended to be, the realization of the Hebrew concept of shalom—wholeness, completion—hints of what’s on the way, where we’re headed, the fulfillment—already and not yet—of that will. It is where we belong, where we’re headed because God longs for that wholeness too and will prevail with a patient love that outlasts and outlives all that stands in its way. Wholeness is God’s will for all of God’s good creation. And that is our ground for hope; that’s what we mean when we say “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Meanwhile, as we live in that “already and not yet” place, we still go through our days some of us, carrying as we do this evening perhaps, pain, grief, guilt, physical illness or bringing, it may be, conflicted or disowned parts of who we are, seeking integration into a fuller, healthier self. And so we hope and we pray. Tonight in this gathered community some of you may choose to bring your prayer concerns to say aloud or whisper to another, to receive, with the anointing, with a hand that reaches out to you, a touch of compassion, of assurance of God’s care for you. We hope and we pray. And as we do so, it is good to remember some insights of Julian of Norwich, who wrote so reassuringly of God’s deep, tender, and persistent love. “Sometimes it occurs to us,” she says, “that we have prayed for a long time and still, as we think, have not received what we ask. We should not be depressed on this account, for I am sure . . . that we are waiting either for a better time, or for more grace, or a better gift.” Beyond what we can ask or imagine are God’s infinite possibilities: a better time, more grace, a better gift. So we pray and we hope and we wait. In one of his prayers, Walter Brueggemann writes, We crave a “yes” from you and wait. We wait . . . midst our disabilities of fear and anxiety; We wait . . . aware of our pathologies of hate and rage and greed; We wait . . . knowing too well our complicity in violence we need not see. . . . We cut below that. . . . We wait in weariness, in doubt, in loneliness. . . . And we pray: say the word and we will be healed; say the word and our bodies will move to joy; say the word and our body politic will function again; say the word that you have fleshed in Jesus; say the word . . . we will wait for your healing “yes. And while we wait, we will say “yes” with our trusting obedience. Yes. This time of year there’s something about the light in the late afternoon into early evening: a mellow glow that seems to fill and transform a room, a nearly palpable, honey-gold touch of blessing. I have a favorite place in Michigan where I love to sit on the screened porch and watch this golden light as long, slanting rays reach into the woods behind the small house, turning the leaves of the oaks and maples the most tender, most vivid shade of green, burnishing the needles of hemlocks to a rich gloss. What holds me there in wonder for an hour or more is the way the light moves slowly “unresting, unhasting, silent” as in the lovely phrase from an old hymn, and the shafts of vesper light penetrate the shadows, reaching deep into the woods to illuminate for a few moments the tall, rough trunks of trees that have stood in darkness all day. There is a beauty and a mystery to this spectacle that has never ceased to fascinate me. Day after day, year after year, whether I’m there to witness or not, that golden light comes to reach into the dark woods and touch and move among those tree trunks. Something about this is as old as time and yet new every time it happens. What is it that draws me there to watch and wonder whenever I can? The beauty of it, yes, but something more. Something of meaning and metaphor. For me, it’s a gorgeous way of imaging the tender and powerful and persistent love of God reaching into the deepest shadows to bless and illumine, to hallow and transform, testament that there is no place within us or in our circumstances, no bruise of the heart or hidden element too dark, too remote, that it cannot be sought out and touched by the light of God’s grace. It is not just our longing, our reaching for wholeness, but God’s longing, God’s reaching out to touch, as Jesus reached out to touch and heal. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” Amen.