Came across a rather amazing story this week. Not even a very new story. Going to different school districts I have different strategies. I am treated differently, but it is a fun part of my job cause people in education often think they do things the same. It isn't hard to figure out the places people want to be. These are the places I return as much as I can.
The school I went to on Tuesday doesn't offer guests internet access so I always come prepared with some lunch entertainment. I downloaded a number of podcasts. If you like those I would recommend one called Ologies, one of my new favorites and Radio Lab one of my old favorites.
Ologies is mostly interviews with these people who study specific things. The woman who does it, Allie Ward, is very funny to me. She often mentions that she reads every comment. She brings a real joy to her work.
She mentioned one commenter who's user id had seven numbers at the end. The first thing she said after reading the user id, out loud, was what a wonderfully appropriate number of numbers to have in a name. Just something wonderfully accommodating in her spirit.
In an episode on cosmology they mentioned a possible false vacuum end to the universe. The math showed quite clearly the universe could end at any moment. Probably one of the more easy things God could do. We often forget the sheer magnitude of creation. It is impossible not to. The size of creation is not something we have any idea beyond our visible universe.
Last Tuesday it was a Radio Lab episode I listened. The description mentioned a new organ scientist had found in the last five years. This was certainly news to me. If you heard this story you may already know what I am talking about. Not a story one could forget. Our modern medicine with the modern technology found a new organ hiding in plain sight.
It is visible to the eye for the surgeon but it wasn't something they were ever taught to see. This tissue which they are finding everywhere looks like a honeycomb. The connective tissue was a barrier and not that important they were taught. For so long doctors had been looking at dried materials through the microscope. Cracks they had always assumed were artifacts of the preparation process were ignored. It was the honeycomb that had collapsed and left these cracks
It was this interstitium, which google still thinks is misspelled, where amazingly more fluid flows than in our blood. That is what really gets me. How could something like this be missed. The descriptive words they used tributaries feeding rivers. Rivers flowing through us we had no idea about. The we here I will say is western modern medicine. The east has often talked about a flow. Some investigators feel they may finally have a chance to understand acupuncture. There really hasn't been any success there.
In a new study, researchers claim that interstitium -- fluid-filled spaces in tissue that are connected throughout the body -- should be considered a new “organ” and that these spaces may play a major part in a lot of what goes on in your body - this is what Web MD has to say.
In all our connective tissue this facia we always knew it was important, but assumed it was a barrier. Seems cancer has always known about this organ and used it as well. Amazing that we ever cure cancer. There has already been research to show this is how cancer moves easily from organ to organ. We have learned so much and I would say this story could never happen again, but how did it happen this time?
This last week as I contemplated our scripture from Mark I found the story almost impossible to believe. But I know things. We often see what we want to see. Makes me wonder what else we do not see before our face. If our lord had any advantage as a human we see in this story that he could see what was in front of him.
We may not in the end understand everything, but we know who is in charge from the start.
I like to be back in Mark. As we often note the backbone of the gospels. Built perhaps on an even older lost Q document. Where people say Mark doesn't have as much to say: I see grand vistas. There are no extra words in Mark. But there is so much to hear. He wants us to know who is in charge. He wants us to know that the battle is already won.
If you were going to write a book about Jesus how long would you talk about the time before his ministry? Mark takes less then one chapter to get to the public ministry of Jesus. Shows what he thinks is important. But Mark was part of this interstitium in our society. There was a core a message that had to get through. There was a network that was invisible to those in charge.
It is fair to say that the message of God's was going to get through anyways. But it certainly was an interesting trip in-between there and here. Down tributaries to flowing rivers of life. There is one way we got here. How we know which way time flows. It is up to us to take it further. In-between in this honey comb of stained glass.
I read Mark 1:21-28 from the Amplified Bible:
21 They went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 They were completely amazed at His teaching; because He was teaching them as one having [God-given] authority, and not as the scribes.
Authority comes in many forms. Some people are in charge but don't have the skill required to build anything. Anybody can preside over the slow death of an enterprise. In most cases they don't see the decline until it is too late. Jesus gave them answers they imagined God might give. They heard him.
23 Just then there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit; and he cried out [terribly from the depths of his throat],
Even before we hear him we wonder what is an unclean spirt. Something different here then ritually unclean. Sometimes people come into a room and the people just know something is wrong. This here Jesus is talking about is something different. With the little information we are not entirely sure about the nature of these" demons" as they are called. Yet there is plenty of information about who is in charge and who to depend on.
People don't always like this message. There are reasons and forces afoot in the world that we don't understand. These realities do no include the possibility that we succeed on our own. It is no great failure to fail without God. It is guaranteed an evil spirit would do what it wants if it could.
Something easy to dismiss, but it wasn't for Mark
24 saying, “What business do You have with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
So it speaks. The translation misses the flavor of the moment. It is more "what to me and to you." This idiom well know in Marks time seems more familiar. This unclean spirit continues talking to Jesus.
Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!”
Whoever or whatever this was talking to our Lord it like Jesus could see what was in front of them.
25 Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet (muzzled, silenced), and come out of him!”
Pronouns matter. Jesus was talking to something separate from this man in their synagogue. Not only that it seems something rather defenseless. Jesus rebuked him.
26 The unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions, and screeching with a loud voice, came out of him.
Convulsions, and screeching with a loud voice. This is not hard to find in this world of ours today. They sometimes come in the door here.
27 They were all so amazed that they debated and questioned each other,
Quite a scene. Of all the miraculous things this is still hard for us to comprehend. We have no difficulty calling the virus or the bacteria a demon when we find ourselves ill. When our spirits are unclean we often worry about fault. There is no discussion of it in this story.
Saying, “What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits (demons), and they obey Him.” 28 Immediately the news about Him spread everywhere throughout the district surrounding Galilee.
What I think Jesus is telling us is what approach we need to take with all problems. If they are physical or spiritual. We must learn to see what is in front of us. We also need people in our community to be responsible. To pray yes, but also to take action.
At the beginning again of Jesus doing his public ministry the people who knew God best knew him best. From there to here many a flowing river, but imagine the people in this room. They saw something they had never seen before.
Have you ever seen anything you never seen before. I know know for me these make the deepest impressions in my memories. The first time memories is like the ultimate highlight of my life that only I get to see. I remember more of them than anything else. How I managed to navigate myself to here.
Now I imagine many of those people there that day spoke the rest of their lives about this story. An eyewitness it seems to me could write an entire book about what they saw. The most mundane things that happen to me the first time can be very memorable for me. I would say each of the people there had never seen anything like our Jesus.
I think this is a call to understand the demons of mental health better and treat them like any illness. Direct action. Now we can have many discussions about these demons as we call them.
As they seem to call themselves when Jesus is around. The most important part of the lesson I think is that when your with Jesus he is in charge. And it is not a fair fight. Not even close. Evil got no chance and it knows it. This is the message Mark wants us to start with: the absolute sovereignty of Jesus. So when we start we are not afraid and we can finish with God.
If you think we know everything about the human body in western medicine you might ask how we missed the largest of all organs for so long. It wasn't that we didn't see it. Here too we see the secret networks that make up life, we just don't always know what we are looking at. This is the crucial help our lord and savior offers: to see.
Let us pray
Creator and sustainer of all.
Forgive us our blindness
Please help us see
We want to be an interstitium for our community
Let the rivers of your love flow out from Nottingham
But we can't do it without you
So we ask for your help in the name of your son Jesus.
Amen
Benediction
Go out and be a honey comb of love
See things that look like barriers that might not be
Imagine what we will find with God's love
Luke 7:35 Yet wisdom is vindicated and shown to be right by all her children.
Nottingham UMC 1/28/2024
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