Finding Backbone Among the Conformists

Isaiah 40:21-31

Mark 1:29-39

All writers know that the first draft – the first attempt – is never any good.  Part of teaching kids how to write is helping them understand this.  When you first put pen to paper, or type it out on your laptop, it won’t be any good.  If you want to write something good, you’ll have to rewrite it.  Again and again.  There will be many drafts.  You’ll slash stuff, amend it, move it to a different place, find a better word.

The reason first drafts aren’t any good is that first drafts are full of clichés.  The first things we write down are tired, unimaginative attempts to express ourselves. 

 

“He was as big as a house or strong as an ox.” 

“She ran like a gazelle.” 

“I was hungry as a bear”

“It was so heavy it felt like a ton of bricks.” 

Those are clichés.  And when we use clichés, it means that we’ve failed to say what most needs to be said.  You’ve failed to say what only you can say. 

We live in clichés too.  We default into what comes to us easily.  We settle for what we see other people doing.  We live in patterns familiar to us.  We do what our families and friends expect us to do.  What we wear, what we eat, the books we read, the movies we see, the music we listen to – in most of this we’re doing what others tell us to do.  We’re “conforming” to the expectations of others, or to the unimaginative habits of our neighbors, or to the compelling voices of those who market products. 

And I don’t think this is a terrible thing.  It would be pretty stupid and time-consuming to try to live a life that was completely unique.  I don’t want to knit my own shirts, or cook every meal from scratch, or compose all my own music.  I don’t have time for that.

But I will admit, I fear living in a way that’s cliché.  I don’t want to look back on my life and have to say, yep, I was a conformist.  One of the most difficult things to do in life is to find the red hot center of it.  To find the thread going through your life that makes sense of everything else.  To be fully yourself, to live with gladness and purpose the life that God has given you.  To live out your own calling and not someone else’s.  To live with a keen sense of how God has gifted you, and not with envy about someone else’s path.

So let’s come back to our gospel reading for today.  There is always more than one sermon that could be preached from the same Scripture reading.

Today, we could have a perfectly fine sermon on Simon’s mother-in-law.  She is a picture for all disciples of Jesus.  As soon as Jesus calls us and heals us, we immediately find ways to serve others.

We could have a perfectly fine sermon on the healing that happened for the crowds who gathered at the door of the house of Simon’s mother in law that evening.  That scene reminds us that the good news brings wholeness and freedom to people in pain.

But I’m not preaching either of those sermons today.  As I read and reread the story, my mind and heart kept snagging at the same place: the place in the story where Simon and the disciples blunder out and find Jesus praying by himself.  “There you are!  Everyone is looking for you!” 

They want Jesus to come back – back to the place where he was the night before.  But Jesus refuses.  It’s a moment of profound misunderstanding between Jesus and his disciples.

The disciples say, “Everyone is looking for you!”

And Jesus responds, “We’re going somewhere else.”

These two lines are wonderfully strange.  They suggest the dullness and misapprehension of Simon and the disciples.  And they suggest something mysterious and powerful about Jesus’ way of life, his habits of prayer, and his sense of mission.

This day of ministry in Capernaum had been a smashing success.  The whole town of Capernaum had swarmed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law’s house the evening prior.  Jesus’ popularity was growing.  The crowds were increasing.  News of his powerful preaching, his authority over demons, and his ability to heal the sick was spreading fast.  His surging popularity was such a problem that he had to warn the demons not to speak and draw more attention to him.

So early the next morning, Jesus left the house to pray “in a solitary place” (v. 35).  A solitary place.  That same phrase is translated as “lonely places” in 1:45 and as a “quiet place” in 6:31.  When Jesus was stressed, or exhausted, he sought out places away from the crowds.  This reminds us of the “wilderness” place where Jesus was sent by the Spirit immediately after his baptism.  There in that wilderness place Jesus was tempted by Satan.  Perhaps we can imagine this morning prayer in a solitary place as another intense period of temptation for Jesus.

Like most of us, Jesus is tempted to be a people pleaser.

When people close to us come and find us with their urgent needs, we usually do our best to give them what they want.  We give them the benefit of the doubt – surely what they’re asking is reasonable.  We get in habits of saying “yes” to all who need us.  That way we avoid the friction and conflict that might emerge if we were to say “no.”  We don’t like to disappoint people.

Like most of us, Jesus was tempted by the appealing idea of getting more done.  After all, the people he’d healed the evening before needed more time with him.  They had follow up questions.  My legs didn’t work but now I can walk.  I used to be mute but now I can talk and sing and shout.  I used to be blind but now I can see, and I see lovely things – faces, sunsets, fields of grain.  What now?  What next?

And there were new people to deal with.  Those who were healed went and told their family and friends.  So through the night and early in the morning the crowds had swelled again.  The disciples were giddy with excitement.  They were part of this cresting tide of something powerful.  Where is he?  Where could he have gone?  When will he be back? 

Simon Peter and the other disciples thought they knew what kind of life Jesus should live.  They assumed that the popularity of Jesus with the crowds was exactly what he was after.  They were like the posse managing the career of an emerging celebrity.  And they loved being part of the excitement.  That’s why they run to find him - “Get back here.  Let’s go.  The crowds have gathered again.  Let’s do our thing!”

And I imagine Jesus was tempted to get up from his praying and go with them.

He had come to bring the good news of God’s powerful, healing reign.  And these people were eager to hear it and receive it.   And here come the disciples with the urgent demand – Everybody’s waiting for you!

There were all kinds of good reasons for Jesus to go back to the house.  But he didn’t. In the face of rising popularity and success, Jesus remains steadfast and firm in his calling to announce and to demonstrate God’s reign in other places.

There are two dimensions of this good news for us this morning.

The first is the good news that Jesus is the one who loves us at great cost.  He loves us with tenacity and resilience.  He knows who he is and what he’s come to do.  He is the healing, liberating presence of God in the midst of our confusion and pain.  And nothing is powerful enough to divert his course.  He keeps to the path for our sakes.  He prays in the garden for the resolve to be faithful to the end.  He enfleshes God’s love in a way that invites the fear and hate and violence of those currently running things.  And he lets them do their worst to him.  And he bears it for our sakes.  This is amazing love.  Costly love.  And it’s all for you and me, our friends, neighbors, and enemies, those nearby and those on the other side of the globe.

The second bit of good news is that Jesus loves us by inviting us into a new way of life.  And today he shows us a new way of praying.

This is a different way of praying.  This is the kind of praying that helps you find the real nerve at the center of your life, so that you can stay with it.  In this kind of praying we’re like a dog who keeps working the bone.

On many days I’m tempted to think – I can’t go for a run today, I’ve got too much to do.  And I keep doing this, even though I know for a fact that the days I go for an early run are ALWAYS my best, most creative, productive days.  I’m better with people, I have more energy, I’m more creative, and I get more done.  Why is that?  It’s partly the exercise and the brain chemicals.  But it’s also the getting away from others and being by myself.  And it’s time to think and recenter – the whole time I’m listening to music or to literature and sort of dreaming/reflecting on what most needs to be done that day.  And it turns out I often decide to cancel stuff I had planned on doing, and taking on new stuff I hadn’t before thought important.  This kind of praying works like that.

Jesus invites us into regular rhythms of work and rest, productivity and playfulness.  He himself does not maximize every minute of every day.  He lives like the tide, out with people who need him, then back to some quiet where he can recharge.  He knows that he has limits.  He knows when he’s feeling tired.  He knows when he might be drifting along with others’ expectations, conforming to other people’s demands. 

When we follow Jesus by sharing his way of life – and his way of praying – all kinds of good things happen.

We will find ourselves able to say “No” when we need to.  We will learn to be ok with disappointing other people – even those close to us, even the most demanding people.

We will develop backbone in a culture full of people-pleasers and conformists.  We’ll begin to live with a sense of what’s most important.  We’ll prioritize what gets our best time, energy, and attention.  We’ll learn to be ok with not pleasing everyone. 

This kind of praying will allow us to finally begin the work it takes to become ourselves.  We’ll no longer waste our time living other people’s lives, bowing to other people’s ideas for how we should live.  We’ll no longer miss out on joy and energy because we’re hewing to paths others have told us to travel.

So if your praying seems stale and tired, let those clichés go.  Find language that is fresh and vibrant.  Find ways of praying and rhythms of rest that return you to the center of who you are as a person loved and healed by God, and called into a new way of life.