Be Opened Mark 7:31-37 September 7, 2003, Year B Proper 18 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Most of us, if we are honest, fear chaos. We all hope for at least a minimal sense of order in our life, many of us spend much of our life creating rules with the hope of establishing order, and for some any sense of order is only a pretense. As a priest, I am invited occasionally into the internal chaos of homes and families when folks reach that point that the chaos has exceeded their toleration level and trust the priest as representative of the Church, of God, or at least someone who may be able to bring some order into the unbearable chaos that sometimes overtakes us. Allow me to share a chaos into which I was invited. For obvious reasons, I use fictitious names. Mary had always sought to keep her life in order: always following the rules, always doing the right thing, preparing adequately for retirement, paying bills on time, not getting overly involved in the lives of her siblings or allowing them to get overly involved in hers, keeping others at a proper distance, attending church on a regular basis, you know what those orderly lives look like. Well, her chaos started with a diagnosis of lung cancer and then the decision of the treatment regime to follow. As her daily routine fail into disorder, the chaos stepped up its magnitude. Her daughter, Sara, was arrested for embezzlement from her employer. While jailed Sara's three children, a senior in high school, a seventh grader, and a fifth grader moved in with Mary. Because the children's father was in prison (I never asked why), and Sara had estranged herself totally from her siblings, Mary proved the only alternative. One would think when Sara was released and returned as mother to her three children she would help restore order. However, when her employer dropped charges, Sara, along with her live-in boyfriend, also moved in with Mary (by the way, this was a 2 bed room home). As I got involved and began to sense the high probability of sexual abuse of Sara's two daughters by the boyfriend, he suddenly disappeared. One problem of being a former, or as one my past colleagues calls us, a recovering mental health professional is the tendency to diagnose those with whom we come into conflict. Well, my peripheral diagnosis of Sara proved true when she did at least go to the local mental health center in hopes of getting disability income. Her diagnosis was major bipolar personality, with extreme manic tendencies, accompanied with a major anti-social personality disorder. For the psychologists among us, you recognize the significance of this combination. For others, allow me to describe a little of Sara's behavior to give you an idea of what it meant. As her mother was getting closer and closer to death, Sara did nothing to assist with the living conditions, allowing her mother or high school senior to do all cooking, cleaning, and shopping. She began stealing her mother's pain medication - either taking it herself or selling it. She over-drafted her mother's checking account and opened numerous credit cards in her mother's name, accruing over $10,000 in debt, mostly for electronics such as a tv, dvd player and stereo equipment. When she finally got part-time employment at a video store, within a week, she was arrested for stealing videos. I'd like to tell you this was one of those stories in which miraculous redemption occurred, but it wasn't. The week Mary died, Sara's siblings arrived, began procedures to evict her from the house and had her arrested when she drove her mother's car to another town to meet with her probation officer. Mary died lamenting that despite following all the rules, her life seemed hopeless in the end. After Mary died, Sara was arrested for stealing a U-Haul truck she rented and never returned. While in jail, her three children lived with no adult supervision in a house trailer for which I used my Rector's Discretionary Funds to pay the rent while waiting for Dept. of Human Services intervention. Why such a bizarre story in relation to today's readings? I do so because our collect and our Old Testament, Psalm, epistle, and gospel readings all ask us in one way or another: "How will deal with fear? Will we trust in our self-created sense of order or will we trust in the grace of God, which will not be bound by rules and rituals and pre-conceived notions of order that do not really exist. As we approach the second anniversary of the terrorists attack, let us remember that September 11, 2001, changed nothing but revealed to us that we are not as secure as we think. If we have listened to the author of Mark the last few weeks, including today, we have come to understand that not only was Jesus not bound by these rules or pre-conceived ideas of order, but his very existence continually shattered them. Based on Mark's account, the healing of the deaf man occurs in a Gentile area. Thus, Jesus encounters a Gentile, someone whom the rules clearly identified as a societal reject and suffering from a deformity that the rules would have blamed on immorality, and Jesus breaks the rules and reaches across the gap. He could have easily said to this reject, "Be healed." and been on his way. But Jesus always responds not with the easiest, not with the most socially appropriate, but with what best brings him into the most intimate, healing presence of the chaos. He put his fingers in the man's ears, spat, and touched his tongue. Can we get more intimate? Jesus sighed. Now, I often sighed when my children did what I didn't want them to do. Diane sometimes sighs toward me. This is not the sigh we are talking about. We are talking about the type of sigh Jesus sighed as he hung on the cross. He moaned; he suffered in this man's suffering. Notice he doesn't say to the man, "You can hear now." No, he said, "Be opened." Throughout the Gospel of Mark, the author offers examples of how the twelve, Jesus' closest followers, those with him day in and day out, did not have eyes to see or ears to hear who Jesus was. Yet, this reject's ears were opened and his tongue released. Where would I place myself in the story? Debating whether this man was worthy of being healed? Debating whether Jesus should use spit or oil? Already convinced that anyone who touched such a reject was a trouble-maker in the first place? Would I be with those pleading for my friend's restoration? Or perhaps would I even be the deaf mute who didn't care if Jesus was a Messiah, a Jew or put spit all over my tongue; who just wanted to be restored, who just wanted redemption to break into the chaos? Where will we place ourselves September 7, 2003? Jesus is present once again. The moment will come. You will be invited to communion today. The Church, the collected body of those who are here today, who worship elsewhere in the world today, and who have done so in generations past and in generations to come, will present you before God. Christ will come to you, asking you to not to be afraid, asking whether you will trust in your pre-established sense of order or will you allow him to touch you in your pretense of order or in your chaos. Christ will present himself to you in bread and wine and say to you, "Be opened." In his gift of himself, you will be offered new life, the opportunity to hear his words, to see his presence, to speak his promise for yourself. Will you trust in your rules and sense of order, or will you trust in this amazing Grace? Will your life be changed because today, you have opened just a little bit more and allowed him once again to step across the gap and, if only for a second, to touch you one more time? Because you allowed yourself to be presented in your weakness before God and he took you aside and touched you with his life and love, what will it mean for you? Will you go forth from church proclaiming what God has done for us through Jesus Christ? Will you, with ears opened hear the cries of the world searching for life, and along with Jesus step across the boundaries of your established order and rules and touch the outcasts? Will you with your tongue released go into the world of your children, of your work, of neighborhoods and tell how Jesus has given his life so that we might be able to hear, to speak, to live new lives with him even in the chaos of our lives? Grant us, O Lord to trust you with all our hearts!