Sometimes my words are found on the page. Sometimes they come out via a Janet Jackson lapel mic or in a short homily at our little neighborhood church. Today you get the first part of the latter, still chalk-full of coloring outside the lines theology – or if you want to listen to it in full, just click here. Enjoy!
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A year and a half ago my family moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle. And if you’ve ever moved, you know what a big deal it is: moving is a transition, an uprooting, a starting over. Moving is not for the faint of heart, children and grown-ups alike. Although I was taking some time off from writing, I still found it necessary to hire a babysitter for a couple of hours. So I did. And so it was a most glorious two hours to myself.
Upon getting back to the apartment we were staying in for the first couple of weeks, the boys and I loaded up in the car with our friend and babysitter. And it wasn’t until after we dropped her off at home and started heading back to our corporate housing apartment that I realized she still had the keys to get into the garage …and into the elevator …and then into our place.
So, we turned around and we got the keys, but then, all hell broke loose: I thought this would be a quick 20-minute, there and back drive. But instead, it became a there and back, and there and back again, right when the children are starting to get hungry and the skies are getting dark, because it’s four o’clock in the afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, and the rain is pouring down, and the traffic’s getting crazy.
Like I said, the boys were starting to – how shall I say it? – turn feral in the backseat, and I hadn’t brought any snacks with me. One started yelling, while the other began to scream. Chaos reigned all around me and I couldn’t take it anymore.
So I too begin to cry.
But then from the backseat, I hear a tiny voice start to sing: “Haplelujah, haplelujah. Haplelujah, haplelujah…”
My two-year old son was singing along with the Pentatonix remake of Leonard Cohen’s, “Hallelujah,” singing his own version of the complicated word over and over gain. Soon, I too began to sing and so did my older son, holy haplelujahs over the top of the verses, until we arrived back to our apartment.
As I sat with this last week’s passage, I couldn’t help but think about holy interruptions, including the holy interruptions that happen in our lives on a daily basis. Really, the scene in Mark 3 isn’t all that different: according to the gospel writer, Jesus and his disciples are on it. Part of this is Mark’s interpretation of the Good News: God is here! He’s moved into the neighborhood! He’s on the move, and because this Kingdom Come, “actively seek[s] to help us in the way we most need help,” (Eugene Petersen, The Message) THIS is good news. It’s as if Mark invites us into the action with exclamation points galore – come on! Come and see WHO God is and WHAT God’s doing, complete with healings and miracles and teachings and people made whole, just by interacting with the God-Made-Flesh. This is exactly what Jesus is proclaiming in today’s gospel passage …but to the people then, and maybe even to our ears now, his words don’t feel like the cheeriest of messages. Instead, they kind of feel like one big, fat interruption.
In fact, he kind of feels like a big, fat interruption.
To the crowds that hover around Jesus and his disciples, vying for his attention, there is not enough of him to go around. So, the disciples try to rescue their friend from all the commotion, because they kind of think he’s getting away with himself. The religious scholars believe he’s working some sort of black magic, and then his family shows up at the end. Yo, Jesus: our son, our brother, we need a word with you. Ahem. You know what I’m talking about here. You know the drama has reached an all-time high when family enters the scene.
To every group represented here, Jesus has gone over the top. He’s a rabble-rouser. A disrupter. An interloper. An instigator. And for good reason: Jesus, a “dark-skinned first-century Jewish rabbi living under Roman occupation in Palestine,” (Jon Huckins and Jer Swigart, Mending the Divides (52) existed outside the realm of their expectations for the long-awaited Messiah.
But still, Jesus was there in the midst of disruption, proclaiming the good news of God. Still, Jesus was present, in interruptions of heartache and pain and questions. Still, Jesus continued to make himself known, in between interludes when the closest people to him weren’t able to see his divinity in all the yelling and all the screaming and all the commotion.
And I don’t think it’s all that different for us today: Jesus is with us now, in the midst of disruptions and interruptions and interludes of our world that oftentimes feel more chaotic than of peace, singing holy haplelujahs along with us and joining in our pain.
Of course, too often, my mind wants to separate chaos from peace, creating divided worlds that somehow seem to go together in my mind. Here, God’s presence is made full in the calm but somehow seems to lack in the midst of turbulence. Here, dualism reigns. Here, maybe because of my religious upbringing or perhaps because of pure and simple human nature, I want to create boxes and compartments of black and white, good and bad, pain and pleasure, around everything, including God, so it all makes sense in my mind.
Here, I don’t think that the presence of God can be made manifest in every place, nor do I recognize that the interruptions of life might actually be the voice of God, speaking to me.
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Curious as to the rest of the sermon? It’ll be here for you on Friday! Otherwise, if you’re eager to hear it in whole, click here to listen to the 15-minute homily. Otherwise, what are holy interruptions to YOU?
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