Making Room

I was out for lunch with my son Julian who is 11. I asked him the classic question you ask kids. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And I failed to respond appropriately to his answer. I believe that God has placed in each one of us a desire to be the person that God has designed us to be. We spend our whole lives trying to do just that. But we constantly have to battle the distractions of this world to find what that really is.

So when I asked him what he wanted to be, he said he wanted to be a superhero. As a fearful parent my red flags went up. I asked him what he meant.  He said he wanted to put on a suit and beat up bad guys. As the law abiding citizen that I am I felt duty-bound to tell him that he would indeed be arrested if he went around beating up people and in-fact no one is going to pay him to do that sort of thing.

Do you see the failure?

God has written on his heart to defend the powerless; to lend others his strength; to take action for what is right. It’s just that the world has taught him that to do those things means being a superhero like Captain America (his current favorite).

To make room for god we have to live the story that he has written on our hearts.

Let’s get right into the Gospel lesson for today. We started in verse 32 but if you look a little further back we learn that this happened on the Sabbath, which explains why people waited until it was evening, after sunset, that the people brought the sick and demon possessed to Jesus.  It was contrary to the law to do work on the Sabbath. Carrying someone would be considered work and must not be done on the Sabbath. This was their understanding of the law. But again, if you look a little further back in the passage Jesus was with James and John and Simon and went to Simon and Andrews house because Simon’s mother-in-law was sick and had a fever. Jesus healed her. The fever was gone.

Tell me you who are familiar with the New Testament. Does Jesus ever get in trouble for healing on the Sabbath?  Yes, indeed he does.

So Jesus is breaking the traditional understanding of Sabbath law to heal. Can you see where Jesus is placing his priority? He is saying with his actions that healing this individual is far more important than a regulation concerning rest on the Sabbath.

The town hears about this healing and wants their loved ones healed as well but they don’t dare break the law so they wait until the sun goes down and the Sabbath has come to an end.  They knew that Jesus healed on the Sabbath.  They knew that he broke the law. They also knew that they wanted their loved ones to be healed as well. The law said one thing and their hearts said another.

To make room for God, we have to live the story that he has written on our hearts.

What does scripture say has been written in our hearts?  The law.

Hebrews 10 says that because of the sacrifice that Jesus made, we are made holy. Because of that the Holy Spirit makes the connection and the claim of the prophet Jeremiah (31:33) “I will put my laws on their hearts and I will inscribe them on their minds, their sins and their lawless deeds will remember no longer.

Through Jesus the laws are on our heart and inscribed on our minds. The Law. We don’t want to break the law. It’s written on our hearts but that’s not the only thing written on our hearts.  Every wound, every experience, every temptation contributes to the story written on our hearts and it isn’t all good. Does the writer of Hebrews and the prophet Jeremiah mean that every regulation that is written in scripture will be memorized by God’s people? Of course not.  Is it more likely that God’s spirit will dwell with ours and give us wisdom and insight if we seek it? I think so.

God’s law is written on our hearts we just have to make room, so that we can find it.

Julian has a strong sense of justice written on his heart.  He fights for it. And that gets him in lots of trouble because some very important people in his life failed him early on. He gets confused about what to fight for and how far to go.  Well-meaning people like me forget to listen for the story written on the heart when he says he wants to be a super hero. I responded in fear because I don’t want him to get in trouble and I don’t want him to be unemployed as an adult. My experiences both negative and positive are written on my heart as well.

The people waited until after dark as to not break the law.  Jesus was healing on the Sabbath. Jesus is the bringer of the new covenant, the new agreement between God and people. Jesus is the example.  Jesus shows us that the law is one of compassion and love. The law is not intended to be a burden or a barrier.

I wonder how Jesus felt that day.  He intentionally healed on the Sabbath so show preference for the love of people as the lens through which we follow Gods law. And the people didn’t see it they just saw the healing. The lesson was lost.

Fear is a huge distraction from being able to read what is written by God on our hearts, both our fear and the fear that others place on us, like I did to Julian.

In Matthew 4:1-11 there is the story of the temptation of Jesus. He was out in the wilderness for a good long time and he saw the dangers. He experienced the world’s temptations; he was given every reason to fear and was given every opportunity to seek earthly solutions for those fears. But he didn’t give in to those fears. It is here that I see that I have a lot of growing to do to become more like him. What did Jesus do after this temptation?  He preached. He did what was written in him to do.

The walk with Nkemba and Mbwizu

A walk to the state park with Nkemba and Mbwizu. It was a lovely
autumn day in Michigan. 

There was never any question that Jesus would be able to resist the Adversary. When you have seen something better, there is nothing that can make you forget it and make you stop striving for it. Jesus knew where he was from and knew his mission.

I have always had a picture in my mind of what life should look like. It didn’t make a lot of sense but it was the picture of the ideal for me.  In this ideal life it is fall. The leaves have changed and have not yet fallen and I am living on a horse farm.  That part never made sense to me because I don’t particularly like horses. I don’t mind them but I am certainly not drawn to them. This is just the image that comes to mind when I think about living the ideal life.

One day as I was going through the posts on face book I saw a picture of my family. I was just a baby. In the picture I was sitting on my mom’s lap and my older sister was sitting on my late father’s lap.  It’s a nice picture. It was taken at my grandparents’ house. But then I noticed that behind us on the wall was a painting of a horse farm in the fall. I had forgotten about that paining but it is the exact image that is in my mind of the idyllic life. At my grandparents’ house I experienced unconditional love, generosity, security. It’s no wonder that I associated an image in their home with the life that I wanted.  

After all the healing that Jesus did he went to a place to pray. He retreated for a time. Perhaps he went to remember his mission. Perhaps he needed to refocus after the people failed to understand his priorities.

You can only seek what you have seen.  God gives us glimpses of the kingdom of heaven so that we strive for it. Think of the happiest times.  Think of the times when you spirit is at peace. These are glimpses of the kingdom. We go out of our way to celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas. We exert great effort to make those experiences.  They are good because we recognize in them the story that is written on our heart, the story that God has placed there.

I understand that it is earthly. That’s okay. We have an incarnational faith. Everything on earth can mediate an experience of God. Last week we talked about the bread and the juice and how we could find God in those particular things. We can also find God in all things.

Jesus retreated after healing. But he didn’t stay away. He resolved to go to another town to do what he came to do.

What we have to do is to slow down. We have to retreat. We have to look at our thoughts and assumptions.  We have to look inside and discover where our motivations are coming from.  Are we motivated from a desire to create God’s kingdom on earth or are we reacting in fear.  We had a moment of silence a little earlier.  We are going to have another.  In the silence I invite you ask God to reveal the story that is written on your heart.  We all have the same basic story but what part has God given to you specifically?

This is a lifelong process of discovering your place in the Greater Story. We need to set aside regular times of quiet and solitude so that we can quiet the distractions of those who would impose their fears on us; to see past the immediate and to embrace where God is leading you.

There is great wisdom in this room.  There are many people that can guide you along the path. But you have to discover first, that there is within yourself a story that God has written on your heart.

We retreat not to stay away but to refocus on what God would have us do.