Sermon 2/7/21: "The Healing Power of Showing Up" (Pr. Ben Adams)

Pr. Ben Adams

Lectionary 5b

February 7, 2021

The Healing Power of Showing Up

As a result of the South Loop Community Table, the in person weekly meal that we serve to our neighbors experiencing homelessness, I was able to have my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine earlier this month. It filled me with hope that one day, maybe even as early as this summer, we would be healed from the devastating COVID-19 virus.

Ultimately though, healing from the virus itself is only part of our battle because after all the loss we have endured, there is no way to heal or bring back the 450,000 plus Americans that have died as a result of the virus and the 2.3 million people that have died worldwide. This unfathomable loss brings with it another need for healing on an individual and collective level, and this begs the question, how can we heal after such loss?

Camille Wortman is an emeritus professor of psychology at Stony Brook University and an award-winning expert on grief and bereavement and she says that the main strategy for helping one another heal from grief is to just show up and be there for each other. This is complicated by the fact that showing up or just being there for someone is risky given the pandemic is still ongoing but Wortman says, “It’s best if you can actually physically be there, but if not, you can still convey to the person that you are there for them.”

In our Gospel today, and in our second reading from 1 Corinthians showing up for people is exemplified by Jesus and extrapolated upon by Paul. So, let’s start by looking at what Paul said. It’s not a perfect analogy for healing from collective grief because Paul is much more concerned about winning over people and saving them, but Paul in his problematic way is trying to encourage us to show up and meet people where they’re at. In Paul’s own words he says he has “Become all things to all people” and that to me seems unhealthy at best, but if we can translate his words into our own situation we could say, even if I haven’t personally experienced loss as a result of the pandemic, I can empathize with those who have and together we can bear witness to our collective loss and begin the process of healing. That’s what it means to meet people where they're at right now.

Maybe Jesus’s example of showing up for people in Mark’s Gospel can help us develop a healthier understanding of what it means to show up. You see, the Gospel lesson today picks back up from last week with Jesus in Capernaum leaving the Synagogue and healing Simon’s mother-in-law and many others who were sick with various diseases. Jesus shows up for the people of Capernaum, but even Jesus can’t be all things to all people in this particular moment, so he retreats. It says, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”

This retreat of Jesus causes Simon and his companions to hunt for Jesus and when they eventually find him, they say to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” Jesus’ reaction to this urgency isn’t to go back into town and satisfy everyone’s desire for his presence, but he says to Simon, “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.”

Jesus’ message and miracle of healing cannot be contained to Capernaum. Jesus knows that in order for healing to be experienced more fully, he must personally have time alone to pray and tend to his own spirit, but also that his healing cannot be hoarded. It must be taken and shared throughout all of Galilee.

There’s no doubt in my mind that, this decision by Jesus to go on to the neighboring towns disappointed many in Capernaum, and when we are in similar situations where our presence is being demanded of us, it can be hard to say no, to draw boundaries for our own spiritual well-being, and to know when it is time to move on even if it means disappointing others. But that’s exactly what Jesus is able to do here, and as followers of Jesus we are being encouraged to do the same.

Healing from the coronavirus is one thing, healing the grief from our individual and collective loss is quite another. No doubt it will require showing up for one another and for ourselves, all the while trusting that even in our deepest grief and sickness God shows up for us with healing and wholeness.

In America, we not only need healing from the losses of the present pandemic, but of our past as well. Last night at HTLoop and next Sunday here at HTLakeview we will begin a series of conversations on reparations. Conversations which will honestly name the losses of our black siblings and begin the process dreaming of the possibility of restoring those losses so that we as a country can begin to heal and maybe one day experience wholeness.

As the starting point for our conversation, we will be using an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates titled The Case for Reparations. In re-reading Coates’ article ahead of tonight’s conversation, I was hit by wave after wave of losses that our black siblings have endured. From slavery, to Jim Crowe, to predatory lending, there has never been a moment of reprieve from this system of exploitation and extraction for our black siblings.

And in Coates’ article, Chicago is a case study of for how the ending of slavery or the passing of civil rights legislation did not mean full freedom for black people. He says, “Chicago, like the country at large, embraced policies that placed black America’s most energetic, ambitious, and thrifty countrymen beyond the pale of society and marked them as rightful targets for legal theft.”

But in America, there isn't the political will for us to even investigate this history and study reparations. The late John Conyers, a former Congressman from Detroit for over 25 years would mark every session of Congress by introducing a bill calling for a congressional study of slavery and its lingering effects as well as recommendations for “appropriate remedies.” This bill is now called HR 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, but it has never even made it to the House Floor even though, as John Conyers had said, “We study everything. We study the water, the air. We can’t even study the issue? This bill does not authorize one red cent to anyone.”

Coates then summarizes to say, “That HR 40 has never—under either Democrats or Republicans—made it to the House floor suggests our concerns are rooted not in the impracticality of reparations but in something more existential. If we conclude that the conditions in North Lawndale and black America are not inexplicable but are instead precisely what you’d expect of a community that for centuries has lived in America’s crosshairs, then what are we to make of the world’s oldest democracy?”

It’s not just a question of how we make things right, but it’s a question of who we are as a people. This is scary for us to face, but it is necessary for healing to occur. The problem as Coates says is that, “In America there is a strange and powerful belief that if you stab a black person 10 times, the bleeding stops and the healing begins the moment the assailant drops the knife. We believe white dominance to be a fact of the inert past, a delinquent debt that can be made to disappear if only we don’t look.”

The hard, but hopeful antidote to this is outlined by Coates, “What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.”

Healing is hard, especially from centuries old wounds. But we worship a healing God. One who shows up for us and shows us the way to show up for others and ourselves. Showing up for people experiencing deep grief due to COVID or showing up to talk about reparations especially when the conversation gets messy and complicated is how we heal. We might be running on empty this deep into the pandemic or feel powerless in the face of such long standing evils of racism and segregation, but we are reminded today in Isaiah that God, “Gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.”

So, dear people, as we comfort one another in our grief and interrogate and repair the history we inherit, let us trust that God will renew our strength, and we will move towards the healthy and whole future that God is leading us into by mounting up with wings like eagles, by running and not growing weary, by walking and not fainting.

Jesus’s healing in our Gospel could not be contained, and God’s healing will be experienced by all people, and on that day, not one will be missing for as our Psalmist proclaims, “The Lord heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Even for those who were not healed in this age, God promises resurrection in the age to come. God’s resurrection will bring us into this new day and age, but while we are still in this age, God’s hope and healing will show us the way to show up for one another and ourselves. Amen.