From Evernote: |
2012-02-12 Mk 01 35-39 Healing Words - Searching |
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." 38 He answered, "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." 39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
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February is a short month, and so we're doing a mini-series of messages called, "Healing Words." Last Sunday's word of the day was, "Serve." Today's word is, "Search." Search.
Your sunglasses... are on top of your head. Your keys... are in the door. Your reading glasses... are hanging around your neck. Your cell phone is at the bottom of your purse, but you can't find it, and it keeps ringing, like a child crying out for its mother, but it's sucked into the black hole of lost lipstick, calling, "Answer me, mommy! Answer me!"
There are so many things we search for, but can never find.
The ketchup in the refrigerator door.
The $10 pill that rolled off the counter and bounced across the floor.
That sock.
Someday, you'll find them. All hiding together. Laughing. Mocking you.
I've got no problem with losing stuff. I'm excellent at that. It's searching for it that drives me crazy. It's like I tell the girls. "It didn't just sprout legs and walk away on its own. It's gotta be around here somewhere." Which makes them feel so much better. Someday, they'll thank me for these pearls of fatherly wisdom. If they tell me where they live.
I've got no problem at all with losing stuff. I'm really good at it. And I'm getting better and better at it as I get older. Maybe it's because over the years, I'm accumulating more stuff and so there's more to remember. Yes, that's what it is. It's the stuff's fault. Oh, to be young and carefree, when all you had lose was your homework. The older you get, the more there is to lose. Oh, that almost sounded like wisdom. The older you get, there more there is to lose. Some of you understand that. Some of you are too young to have lost anything of consequence. Some of you are teenagers and you're thinking about losing part of yourself, or giving it up, and you're confusing loss with achievement, or worse, you're confusing loss with conquest.
Life used to be so simple. If we lost something, we called out for our mom. That's why when kids lose their mom in the grocery store it's so traumatic. They know if they lose her, they'll never find anything. That's why men search so hard to find the right woman who's going to spend the rest of her life searching for his stuff. Life's simpler with a good search engine.
These days, the search engine of choice is called, Google. Or, if you're over a certain age, Yahoo. Even very tiny children know that if you need to know something, you Google it. If you want to find out about someone's past, you Google them. I Googled you. Have you Googled me? Let's look at his Facebook timeline. Her employment history is Linked-in. It's so easy to search when you have an engine to do it for you.
We live in a world where searching is a mechanical process. A digital process. And all digital processes are binary, on or off, one or zero, yes or no. Searching is either found or error 404 not found. The system works or it doesn't work. It's up or it's down. You find what you're looking for, or you don't. You press the right button on the phone, or you don't. You talk to the right person, or you don't. Yes or no, on or off, please hang up and try your call again later.
If you'll allow me to go out on a preacher-ly limb here, it's my opinion that we live in a world where we have confused the difference between searching and finding. I think we have lost the difference between searching and finding. Google isn't a search engine. It's a find engine. We don't use it to search for answers, we use it to find answers. Searching takes time. Finding takes 0.0001 seconds. It takes time to search for something you've lost. Finding it only takes an instant.
Dictionary.com says to search means: to go or to look through carefully. To explore or to examine in order to discover. To look at or beneath the superficial aspects in order to discover a motive, reaction, feeling or basic truth. To search means to look into, to question, to scrutinize.
On the other hand, Dictionary.com says to find means: to come upon by chance, to meet with. To find means: to locate, to attain, or obtain.
Searching takes effort. Searching takes time, and energy, and hard work. Finding is the result of a successful search. When you find, the searching stops. That's why things are always in the last place you look. Find, and ye shall stop seeking. Finding is a solution. Searching is the problem. Problems are bad. Finding is good. Searching is annoying.
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Here's where I think we're heading with this as a society. And this is the kind of thing preachers think about. I think - and again, this is just my opinion; you can disagree with me if you want, and you probably should - I think that if your mind is trained to find, find, find, find... if your brain is wired to find, find, find, find... if your habits reinforce answer, answer, answer, answer... then eventually, your soul will be trained to behave that way, too. As we think, and as we behave, eventually so we shall believe.
If belief is based on finding, then you pick a church because you like the music. If belief is based on finding, then you pick a religion because it fits the way you already think. If belief is based on finding, then what you're looking for is really a like-minded group. And if you don't like the way the minds in your group are going, you're free to find one you do like.
I was at Maryville College the other day, a historically Presbyterian institution. And I was watching a presentation on faith. One of the students they interviewed talked about how he is a follower of Lakota Indian Tribal Rituals. He said he knows it kind of freaks some people out, especially the conservative Christians. And while I certainly don't want to be judgmental, I do wonder that if he was at a college in the Lakota Indian Nation if he wouldn't be a Presbyterian. That may be the only place left where Presbyterians freak people out.
Partisan gridlock. Red state, Blue state. Rachel Maddow or Rush Limbaugh. We find people or groups or churches or political parties we already agree with, and there we plant our flag. If the group changes, we can change groups, as easily or as often as we change our hairstyles.
Which is why, I think, in our day and age, in our society, in the world in which we live, the scripture today hinges on the word, "search."
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Verse 35 begins, "In the morning, while it was still very dark, he [Jesus] got up..."
Do we have any early-morning people here? Do we have any people who simply loathe early-morning types? That's something you should know before you get married. It's OK for early-morning people to marry early-morning-loathers, as long as the early-morning people don't spring out of bed singing Barry Manilow's, "Daybreak." That's considered justifiable homicide in most states. You skip through the room saying, "Wakey, wakey," you're taking your life in your hands. Jesus knew that. This is why...
"In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up... and went out to a deserted place."
If you are an early-morning-type, at least take it outside. Jesus did, and so should you.
"In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there [Mark says] he prayed."
Jesus reminds us of the importance of finding - finding - a deserted place where you can pray by yourself. That's another sermon. I just didn't want to let that get by without pointing that out.
But here's where the searching comes in. Verse 36 says, "And Simon and his companions hunted for him." Makes me feel less guilty for turning my cell phone off and not checking my email. Not only did Jesus get away, he hid from his church. They had to hunt for him. But here's the thing all of us need to remember. Even the people who were closest to Jesus had to hunt for him. Even the disciples who were closer than family didn't know where he had gone. He didn't tell them ahead of time. Didn't leave his itinerary. Think they might have been a little peeved? Jesus just went off into the dark, by himself, and away from them. Hold that thought. We'll come back to it in a minute.
"And Simon and his companions hunted for him." And then verse 36 hits the home run. It says, "When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you.""
When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you."
Everyone is searching. Searching.
In a world where we have light-speed engines to do our searching for us... in a society that doesn't know the difference between searching and finding... how can we even possibly understand what that sentence in the Bible is saying? "Everyone is searching for you."
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This runs the risk of getting really deep and personal, but it's church, so you have to forgive me. This runs the risk of getting really personal, but it's a question that can be asked of the greatest disciple as well as the person who's just browsing. And it's this.
Are you searching for Jesus? Really?
Are you searching for Jesus? Really? And if not Jesus, then what?
If not Jesus, then whom?
You see, I think, as people, as a people, I think we're not really interested in searching for anything, least of all, Jesus. I think we're really interested in FINDING. Finding answers, finding Jesus. But not searching. I think we're really happy to come upon by chance, to meet, to locate, to attain, or to obtain. What we're not so keen on is to go or to look through carefully. To explore or to examine in order to discover. To look at or beneath the superficial aspects in order to discover a motive, reaction, feeling or basic truth. Searching takes time. Searching takes lots of time. Searching means scrambling around in the dark, before the light of day breaks. Searching means stumbling. Searching means exploring, means hitting dead-ends, means getting really, really exasperated. Searching means getting exasperated by yourself and your lack of ability. And sometimes it means getting exasperated at Jesus for being so hard to find.
In the Bible, the disciples tell Jesus, "Everyone is searching for you." No they aren't. Maybe they were on that day, in that time. But everyone is not searching for Jesus these days. I'll tell you what everyone's looking for. We're looking for time. We're looking for hope. We're looking for calm in the midst of a world that's coming apart at its own seams. We're looking for the things that make it possible to search in the first place. We're not able to search for Jesus because we're so far from ready to search we don't even know it. We don't have the time or the hope or the calm it takes to search. We can't reach it. So we settle. We settle for what we find. We settle for what we find by chance. We settle for what we find by attaining. We settle for what we find by obtaining. We settle. We settle because it's easier than searching for Jesus. We settle because it's quicker than waiting on God.
This is hard. I don't like it, myself. I don't like saying it, and I'm pretty sure you don't like hearing it, but it's from the Bible. Even the best disciples had to hunt for Jesus. Even the best disciples had to search for Jesus. Even the people who followed in his footsteps lost track of him. And not because they strayed from the straight and narrow. Even the people who followed in his footsteps, who listened to his words, who obeyed his commands, lost track of Jesus because he went away from them and didn't tell them where he'd gone. This is hard to say. It's hard to hear. Because it IS hard, and it's so incredibly counter-cultural. It runs so incredibly counter to everything else in the world. If you want to find Jesus, you're going to spend more time searching than finding. And even when you do find him, he's going to get up while you're dozing off in your own comfort, and you're going to have to hunt for him all over again.
Finding Jesus takes time. If you find Jesus too quickly, you need to ask yourself, have you really found Jesus, or have you just someone who's telling you what you want to hear?
What does that mean for you? What that mean for your life of faith? How do you really, really stay on God's trail? And I'm talking about you, personally. You know, the Bible doesn't say exactly, but maybe that's what Jesus was trying to figure out when he went away that early morning, by himself, to pray. Maybe your life is so hectic that you don't even have five minutes to do that. Maybe you really don't. That's OK. Because someday you will. And you'll be ready, then. To stop finding and start searching.
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Those who like to find immediate answers - and, honestly, don't we all? - often think of the words from the Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 7, verses 7 and 8, where Jesus says,
"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
The thing is, Jesus never says how long you'll have to ask, how long you'll have to knock, or how long it's going to take your personal search engine to find. The promise, though, from Jesus, is that eventually - or maybe quickly, we don't know - the door will be opened, the asker will receive, and the searcher will find. And that's where this scripture in Mark ends up, too. This is why "search" is a Healing Word.
"When they found him [that is, when they found Jesus], they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you."
And when Jesus hears this, this is what he says. He says: "Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Of course, it's a hypothetical question, but what if? What if the disciples hadn't gone searching for Jesus? What if they hadn't gone searching for him after he had gone away to be by himself and pray? I mean, really. If your boss, or your teacher, or someone you consider your superior went away by himself or by herself to get away (perhaps to get away from you) would you want to go disturb him or her? If mom goes upstairs and locks the bedroom door, do you want to be the one who goes knocking? That's why you have a little brother. But somehow the disciples screwed up their courage and went hunting for him, and found him, and told him, "Everyone is searching for you." And then Jesus said, OK. And he went, and he taught. And he healed.
Here's the miraculous God-part of this. And I can't explain it. I don't know how it works; I just know that it does. Even if you're still searching for Jesus, even if you haven't found him to your personal satisfaction, you can still bring him to somebody else. Even if you're exasperated with God, even if your glass of faith is way less than half-full, you can still pour out what faith you do have, what you have found, by bringing Jesus to someone else. You don't have to BE Jesus; you just have to bring him to somebody who needs him. You probably know someone who's off by himself, or off by herself, in mind, or in spirit, or in body. You probably know someone who's lost, or who's lost her way, or his way. Go search for them. Go sit with them. Go take your care to them. Again, I don't know how it works, but somehow, Jesus gets the call, and somehow, he shows up, too.
Let's pray: Jesus, everyone is searching for you. They just might not know it. Or they might not say it so directly. But they are. And we are. Help us not to settle. Help us not to find you too quickly and then give up searching anymore. Help us to search for you among the people who need your love and compassion the most. Help us to search for you by searching our own hearts, and doing the hard, but brave work of faith. In Jesus' name. Amen.
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