From Evernote:

2012-02-19 Transfiguration

2012-02-19 Mark 9:2-9 Transfiguration
James McTyre
Lake Hills Presbyterian Church (USA)

Mark 9:2-9
The Transfiguration
2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

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February's a short month, and so today we're finishing up a short series of long messages called, "Healing Words." We've been reading and talking about Jesus' ministry of healing and how ministry and healing go hand in hand. Jesus did many, many acts of physical healing. And that's what a lot of people knew him for. Not his preaching, but his healing. No one called him, Dr. Jesus, because medicine wasn't considered a real profession until attorneys became involved. But if I were ill and I had the choice between lining up for miraculous healing or lining up to listen to a preacher, I know which one I'd choose. So it's fair to say people knew Jesus at least as well for his healing as for his teaching.

We've heard the healing words, "serve," and, "search." Today, the word is, "listen." In our world, we don't usually associate "serve," "search," and "listen," with medicine, and with healing. But with Jesus, serve, search, and listen, were words permanently woven into, permanently fused into, permanently baked into acts of faith. Healing and faith are two sides of the same thing. Jesus dramatized this fact in all his actions. Healing produces faith. Haith produces healing. Does it work every time? No. Not even for Jesus. Sometimes people refused his healing. Sometimes they refused to have faith. But where there is healing, especially where there's healing from serving, searching, and listening, there will be learning, there will be change, and their will be faith. And on the flipside, serving, searching, and listening in the faith of Jesus produces healing, sometimes in us, and sometimes in the lives we touch.

Correct me if I'm wrong - and I can count on the choir to do that - correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there's any instance in the gospels where Jesus heals one of his disciples. I don't believe there's any instance where Jesus performs an act of healing on any of the 12 disciples. He heals Simon's mother in-law. He heals Lazarus, who is the brother of Mary and Martha, who are disciples by proxy. But there's no episode where he heals one of his twelve. 

I find that interesting. I seriously doubt they lived in a germ-free bubble. There's no evidence that being with Jesus gave them super-strong immune systems, any more than being with Jesus gave them any other kind of superpowers. They were ordinary human beings, who were just as succeptible to the sins and the faults and the germs that plague the rest of us. But, there's no account in the gospels of any of them being physically healed. And yet, we know they need healing.

The illness that gets the disciples isn't overtly physical. Time and again, the illness that strikes the disciples is a sickness of the soul. A sickness of the mind. A sickness of the spirit. The illness that strikes the disciples is every bit as virulent and every bit as deadly today as 2000 years ago. Time and again, the illness that strikes the disciples is the disease we call, "fear." Fear is a disease. Fear is a sickness. And no one is immune.

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Fear is a disease that enters through the spirit and spreads through the entire body, entire mind, entire soul. Fear infects our thoughts. Fear infects our actions. Fear infects everything we do. If you live in fear, there is nothing, nothing, you can do that isn't somehow effected, somehow infected. Fear is like a cancer that takes over the healthy cells around it. If you live with someone who's constantly in fear, their fear rubs off on you. If you live with someone who constantly causes you fear, it will grow inside you like a tumor. Some people are victims of fear; some people are carriers. In the end, it doesn't matter which, because fear is THE most highly infectious disease. Fear spreads faster than the flu. Fear is deadly.

If you're a kid in school, and you walk around a corner, and you come face to face with a person you fear, you get symptoms. Physical symptoms. Your heart starts beating faster. Your face flushes. You need to go to the bathroom even though you just did. 

If you work in an office with other life forms who appear human, there's almost always someone in the group dynamics who produces fear. Maybe not on a regular basis, which makes them all the more frightening. Or, maybe the whole goal of your job is to work hard to keep the beast from erupting all over everyone. There are companies where it's not uncommon for people to have heart attacks right there at their desks. Everyone's got a ready supply of Zantac, Xanax, and Zoloft in their center drawer. Quotas, charts, ROI, billable hours, delivery schedules. They're good things, but used to the extreme, they produce fear. This is why at Christmas there was that video of the FedEx guy throwing the flat-screen TV over the fence. His every movement is being tracked by satellite, and evaluated every second for efficiency, and compared to thousands of other delivery people with stronger passing arms.

The past couple of months, I've stopped listening to NPR on my way to work because it seems every piece of news is about fear. Usually, the opposite of the things Fox News says I should fear. I don't watch them, either. Fear of Iranians, fear of Greeks, fear of liberals, fear of conservatives, fear of people who want to get married, fear of people who don't want other people to get married. We've got a lot more to fear than fear itself. That's why I drive around listening to classic Zeppelin, and pay as little attention to the news as possible. I don't advocate a lifestyle of sticking your head in the sand. I'm just saying it's cheaper than blood pressure meds.

What scares you? Health? Debt? Outliving your retirement savings? Having retirement savings? Having retirement? Having savings? Or maybe it's gym class. Or girls. Or the girls in gym class. Or not having a body like the one on the cover of Sports Illustrated. (I'm talking about Jeremy Lin.) 

There are far too many people who are afraid of things no one should ever be afraid of. They're afraid of their parents. Or afraid of their husband. Or even afraid of their own kids. That is so, so incredibly, satanically wrong when the people who are supposed to be the sources of love and comfort and care become carriers of the disease, fear. That is so completely opposite of what the loving, Creator God intended. So incredibly opposite of what God teaches us through the life and example of Jesus. For something that should bring us greatest joy to be twisted backwards so it brings us fear, brings us terror, is not only wrong, it's un-God, un-Christian, and at a physical level, very, very, very unhealthy, maybe even deadly. Maybe deadly on a physical level, but always deadly on a spiritual level. Fear will kill your spirit.

Which makes the story from the gospel today, a healing story. Because it touches and speaks to the horrible disease, fear.

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Jesus takes three of his original four disciples - Peter, James and John - up to a high mountain, apart. He takes them away by themselves. And up on the mountain, Mark tells us, "And he [Jesus] was transfigured before them." What does that mean? Well, verse 3 goes on, "and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them." 

In the Bible, the glory of God is usually described with light. In the beginning, God said, "Let there be light." When God appears to Moses, God appears in bright, blinding glory. So what transfigured means isn't that Jesus changed, or morphed into something else. The brightness, the light means that the shades were lifted, the curtains were pulled back, and the trueness of who Jesus was shined through. Jesus was seen as "more" Jesus, more of his true essence was seen than anyone else had seen before.

The light, the drama, the robes that glowed whites whiter and colors brighter, were not the point. The point was not to make the disciples go, "Wow!" This wasn't like Madonna's halftime show with all the lights and Cee-Lo. The point was not the spectacle. The essence of Jesus was the point. The shades were lifted, the curtains were pulled back, and the true trueness of Jesus, his true nature, his true spirit and purpose was glimpsed by the disciples. In other words, they got it. They got it big time. Amen and amen, halleluia, brother. They saw the glory of God revealed in Jesus, and their human-sized brains, their tiny-little hearts, their distracted souls, got it.

But wait, there's more. Not only did Jesus show through as true Jesus, verse 4 says, "And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus." So, in case there was any doubt what was going on, the two other greatest figures in the history of their faith stood shoulder to shoulder with Jesus. The disciples not only saw Jesus as he was, they saw Jesus in context. Jesus was not a Lone Ranger. Jesus was part of a long history of faith. Again, the miracle isn't so much that Elijah and Moses were there. The miracle is that the disciples' tiny little human brains got it. They got who Jesus really, truly was. And they got who he was in the context of their faith. Jesus wasn't starting something new, off by himself. Jesus was part of the plan. And the disciples got it.

And then, what did they do? They jumped for joy and sang a hymn in 3-part harmony. No. That's not at all what happened. The disciples experienced one of the most mind-bending miracles in all of God's history. Were they happy? No. Were they thankful? No. Mark says in verse 6 what they were. Here were three people who had experienced Jesus in his truest form. And instead of the joy, the peace, the love, and the happiness that should have filled their souls, the Bible in verse 6 says, "...they were TERRIFIED." Terrified? Yes. Terrified. Where the greatest joy should have been, instead there was the greatest fear. Fear took the most magnificent moment of their lives and twisted it backwards, so instead of seeing Jesus, they thought instead of... themselves.

Verse 5 says, "Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us [US!] to be here; [Not good for Moses to be here. Not good for Elijah to be here. Not good for Jesus to be here. Good for US. Yeah, Jesus, good thing your were smart enough to bring US with you. Thank goodness for US. Peter said,] let us [US! again. Let US] make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

The greatest event of their lives, and immediately, the disciples let fear infect it, and twist it. Fear overcame their souls, so the miraculous moment could be about... them. Good for you, they said. Good for us.

Now, here's a preacherly back-story about the Gospel According to Mark. In Mark's version of the gospel, almost every healing story follows the same pattern. Jesus heals the person, or Jesus casts out the demon, or Jesus restores the sight to the blind person. They see and they recognize Jesus. And then Jesus tells the cured person not to tell anyone about it. Which is exactly what happens in this story. Maybe you were thinking, "That's not a healing story." It is a healing story; it's just not about a physical healing. It's about a spiritual healing, an emotional healing of the disciples' disease of fear. 

Mark continues, "Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

"This is my Son, the Beloved; LISTEN to him." Says the voice from the cloud. LISTEN to him.

Now, look. I don't have any doubt there were plenty of voices competing for the disciples' attention. They might not have had as many choices in the voices - NPR, FOX, Zeppelin - but I don't have any doubt they had people pulling them all sorts of different directions. And I don't doubt they feared listening to Jesus, following Jesus, because it was physically dangerous. Listening to Jesus, following Jesus could get you killed, back then. Listening to Jesus, following Jesus could get you kicked out of your family, or your town. Happened all the time. The disciples were smart to be afraid. But here's the thing that happened that day on the mountain. At least, for a while, there was no one else any more, but only Jesus. Jesus was the only one they listened to. At least, for a while, the fear was gone. They weren't worrying about the world. They weren't thinking about themselves. They listened to Jesus. And they listened without fear. At least, for a while, they were healed.

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The disease of fear infects you. It may be such a low-grade, chronic illness that you don't even notice it anymore. But it's there. Fear infects all of us. Fear effects us all. Fear infects our decisions. Fear infects our actions. Fear infects what we buy, how much of it we buy, and fear determines when or whether we're able to ever throw any of it away. And even if you're a supremely confident person, if you venture out of the house and hang out with someone else who's carrying fear, it'll try to rub off on you. That's what fear does. It's communicable. It's infectious. Fear is a Socially Transmitted Disease, an STD, and it mutates. It's a survivor. And it will find you.

So what can you do to protect yourself? It's not like you can stay at home or live in a bubble. Actually, you can, but if you do, then fear's already won. If only the solution was as simple as getting some kind of inoculation. What was it the Great Oz gave the Cowardly Lion? A medal, with the word, "Courage," written across it. (That was in the movie. In the book, Oz gave him drinks of an unknown liquid, which made him temporarily brave. That's another sermon.) The problem with fear is that it won't go away, no matter how many medals or how many drinks. And, the gospels are clear that even though the disciples' fear might have been taken away by Jesus, it came back. Fear is like that. There is no magic bullet. You can be healed for a while, but never cured.

The other day I was writing sermons in a coffee shop and in the comfy chairs across from me were a guy in a 12-step program and his sponsor. I know this because they were surprisingly loud. The guy was in the first steps of recovery and he was telling his sponsor all about it, as if no one else was there. So it's not like I was trying to eavesdrop. Actually, I was trying to ignore them, kind of wishing they were a little more anonymous. The guy starting recovery was kind of blabbering on, pretty much exclusively about himself. How he felt in this situation, or in that situation, or what this person said to him, or what that person said. But, eventually, his bottom line, that he finally got to, after everything else, was that today, at that moment, it was very good for him to be here. And it struck me: that's exactly like what Peter said, when he was blabbering on about building tents, and how good it was for him to be there. The sponsor was very wise. He was very calm. He listened. And he listened. And he listened way past the point most people would want to listen. And then he reminded his friend of some steps. And he reminded his friend of some wisdom. And he reminded his friend that it was OK to be afraid. Because everyone is. And so once you acknowledge your fear, you're not alone anymore.

The Apostle Paul, in another part of the Bible has some advice for a little church that was afraid. He told them this. He said: "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." (Philippians 4:8) 

Now, that's NOT a magic cure, but those ARE healing words. No magic bullet. But the message from the mouth of God that day on the mountaintop wasn't all that different. "This is my beloved son; Listen to him." Listen. And listen again. And listen again. And whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about THOSE things. Fill your heart, and your mind, and your actions with those things... and fear will look for an easier target. There is no cure for fear. But there is healing.

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One of the most amazing things Jesus did, in his entire life, was that on the night before he was going to be betrayed to his death, by one of his disciples, he invited them all to supper. On a night when it would have been very normal, very expected for anyone to be overcome with fear, Jesus invited his friends for supper. He talked about his body. He talked about his blood. And as far as we know, they listened. No one talked about building tents. No one talked about running away. They listened.

When we share The Lord's Supper, we're remembering that night. That night when maybe his disciples were afraid, when maybe even Jesus was afraid. We share in a supper that helps us remember it's OK to be afraid. Because everyone is. And that once you acknowledge your fear, you're not alone anymore. We share the feast openly, maybe less anonymously than we might like. But we share it, and we share it together. We share it in the knowledge and in the hope that if the broken body of the Lord can bring healing, maybe our broken spirits can receive it.

The final healing words of today's scripture are from verse 8. Where it says, "Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus." May we see past our fears, and may we look around and see none of them with us anymore, but only Jesus.

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.

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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.