City of…Searching for faith, justice, peace, community, and snarky humor from Jerusalem to Washington, DC and beyond.

This is a sermon I preached on October 6 to the American University United Methodist-Protestant Community (along with some Wesley folks who trooped over to hear some word. These are my notes, and I never stick completely to my notes when I preach, but this is the gist of it anyway. I preached on Mark 10:46-52 and 2 Corinthians 1:3-7. The art, which I added for the blog, is from Palestinian artist Zaki Baboun,

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I don’t know about y’all, but when I was in college the question “What am I going to do with my life” weighed on me heavily. Actually it’s still weighing on me heavily even in college version2.0. In the tradition of the Christian faith, this question is often posed in terms of “calling” or “vocational discernment,” which we usually take to mean the same as “What am I going to do with my life?”, just with “God?” added at the end of the question.

Tonight I want to talk about calling, and I’m going to tell you all what you’re going to do with our lives. First, though—will you pray with me?

Holy Spirit, speak to us tonight. Holy Spirit, speak through us tonight. Holy Spirit, speak in spite of us tonight. Amen.

“Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart, get up; he is calling you.”

I want you to imagine this scene with me. Jesus is leaving Jericho, with the craggy hills of the Jerusalem road looming in front of him. He’s being followed by what Mark describes as a “large crowd,” or in the King James Version, “a great multitude.” Anyway, a whole lot of people.

So we can imagine that there was a cacophony of noise, of shouting and laughing and singing, pouring out from this
crowd. And in the midst of this cacophony, one man is yelling out, over and over, as loud as he can:

“JESUS! SON OF DAVID! HAVE MERCY ON ME!!”

Now the people in the crowd nearest him want to shush him, because even with all this noise this guy is being obnoxiously loud, and it’s a bit uncouth to just be shouting out for help like that.

“JESUS!! SON OF DAVID!! HAVE MERCY ON ME!!!”

Ok. So here’s this guy who’s totally down and out, causing a ruckus, ruining a good parade. If we could just shush this guy up, we could get back to what we’re supposed to be doing, which has something to do with following this Jesus guy.

Except that something strange happens.

Jesus just…stops.

In the midst of the throng of followers and curious hangers-on, Jesus comes to a halt. The text says: “He stood still.”

The whole crowd must have stumbled into each other, startled. I keep thinking of the scene in Forrest Gump when Forrest finally stops running, says “I think I’m going to go home now,” and starts walking away. “What are we supposed to do now?” says one of his running companions, plaintively.

Like Forrest Gump, Jesus just stops.

A remarkable thing has happened here. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is always on the move. Mark uses the word “immediately” as if he is paid royalties every time it’s said. Mark’s Jesus is action action action until suddenly…BAM. He stops.

He stands still.

And he calls Bartimaeus.

Now you might accuse me of making too much of it, but there it is, 3 times in a row in the text: call, called, calling.

Bartimaeus has a calling. He is called, called to Jesus, to be healed. Not to perform any great work. Not to take on a task or a job. Simply to be healed.

So up he runs and finds Jesus, standing still in the midst of the crowd. And Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Rabboni,” he says, “my teacher. Let me see again.”

Heal me.

Now, throughout college and beyond, you are going to be engaging in the process of discerning your call, of figuring out what your vocation is, that thing that Frederick Buechner so beautifully called “Where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And you are going to find that people are called to do all sorts of different things for the kingdom of God. All of this is good, and I hope and believe that this community will be helpful to you in that discernment process.

But I want us to stop for a minute, and forget about careers, and forget about assignments, and forget about your major or graduation or GPA or whatever. And consider Bartimaeus’ call.

Friends, as hard as it is to see and to believe, sometimes we are called to stop. To stand in front of the Christ Who Stands Still. And to be healed.

I won’t lie to you and pretend that I am good at doing this. Over the past 3 months, I have had ample time to consider this call to be healed. In June, I, with the help of a lot of friends, admitted myself to Sibley Hospital because of a major depression. This hospitalization was the first of four that I went through this summer. And until this last hospitalization, I was convinced that this was just a bump in the road, an obstacle in the way of my primary purpose of completing seminary and getting to hang out with you all.

But slowly the voices of people saying, “You need to take time to heal,” and, “Take this one day at a time,” began to sink in. And so I am going to do something that for me, a person who has always been the excellent student, the activist, the journal editor, the high achiever, is very difficult. I am going to step away from all the things that must indeed be done, and take on a new vocation, a new job, of letting myself be healed.

I hope that your experience is not as drastic as my own. But mental illness impacts 1 in 4 families in the U.S., so I want to make very clear right now that if you are going through depression, if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, that you are not alone and that there is help. Know this. Know that it was Mark Schaefer who drove me to the hospital. Know you are not alone.

But no matter what the struggle or the hurt that you are facing tonight, tomorrow, over the semester is, I hope that you will listen to the voice calling you to come and be healed. This will look different for each of you. This service, we hope, is one place where healing can take place. Some of you may want to start a support group to share struggles and pain. Perhaps you need to find a counselor or even a trusted friend to share hidden pain with. Some of you might just need to get away from campus every now and then, get out of DC, get some dirt under your fingernails. Some of you might need to take time for prayer in the morning, even if it means getting to class a bit disheveled. But ALL of you are going to need to find ways to respond to Christ’s healing call.

Now if I was sitting where you are, here’s what I’d be saying: “Now WAIT A SECOND! We have papers to write, we have wars to end, we have reconciling statements to renew, people to serve! We have things, important things, to DO! Aren’t you just preaching a gospel of self-indulgence?”

And you’re right–you here in this community have so many ministries, and so many important things to do. And that’s why I think that the passage that was read from 2 Corinthians is so important. Our calling to be healed is not just for us. It is for those around us. When we take time for recovery, for prayer, for embracing each other with healing intention, we show the world that such time can be taken. And as each of us suffers through trials and tribulations of our own, we find shared experience, times of solidarity with those who have similar struggles. We find out that we are, indeed, not alone. So ultimately, by following the healing vocation, we build up not only ourselves but those around us as well. We can, as Paul says, console each other—hold each other up and support each other—in all of our broken places.

Now the Gospel text tells us that once healed, Bartimaeus immediately receives his sight and follows Jesus. But I imagine his healing, like our own, took time. That his newly restored sight took some getting used to. That he had to repair and restore relationships, broken community ties, things that had been lost in the day-to-day struggle to get by. I imagine that Bartimaeus was not only healed in order to follow Jesus, but that he continued to be healed in the process of following Jesus. And so it is with us. Healing is always a process.

So remember as we go about our busy lives, trying to be followers of Jesus AND get our papers written, trying to figure out what to do with our lives, that in the midst of ALL of that we are called, also, to stop. To meet the Christ who stands still for us. And to simply. Be. Healed.

And that, friends, is good news indeed. Amen.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.