Dr. Jon Burnham preached this sermon from Mark 1:29-39 on 8 Feb, 2009 (OT5B)
At around 4:00 or 4:30 A.M., without disturbing anybody else in the house, he got up, pulled some extra clothing around him for warmth, and went out beyond the edge of town to what the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible calls "a deserted place."
That translation, however, does not do full justice to the word heramos. The heramos is not simply an isolated place; it is a place where crucial decisions are made. It is the word often translated "wilderness," and "wilderness" catches something of the atmosphere of danger and crisis which heramos contains.
It is out in the heramos that John the Baptist calls people to repentance, a turning around, a radical change in direction. He is the one whom the prophet Isaiah had described as "a voice crying in the heramos."
It was out in the heramos that Jesus had done battle with the Tempter at the outset of his ministry. He had been enticed with three forms of ministry, all of which held more promise of success than the one to which he concluded that the Father was calling him.
It was a battle which he had to fight over and over. On the last night of his life, he fought it until sweat poured down his face. If there was ever a place which could be called heramos, it was the Garden of Gethsemane where the final cost of the ministry he had accepted was clear. "Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," he prayed. "Yet, not my will, but yours be done."
Between the beginning and the end, he was having to fight the battle again at 4:00 o'clock in the morning in the lonely place, a wilderness, the heramos outside Capernaum.
Get into his situation. The whole town was in a state of excited enthusiasm over him. He had preached like no one they had ever heard. He had brought a resurgence of health and wholeness to people who were crippled up by a variety of physical and mental illnesses. He was the talk of the town and the toast of the town, and they wanted him to stay there and be their teacher and preacher and pastor.
That is how most rabbis lived. They settled down and had a place and a people to whom they were committed. And they developed friendships and a lifestyle closely interwoven with the lives of others, and their ministries permeated the lives of people with the passage of time.
It was a deeply appealing possibility for Jesus. When he went to bed at the end of that tremendous day in Capernaum, he was moved by what had happened. He woke up long before dawn to go out and pray about whether to stay. Simon and others found him there in the heramos and simply reinforced his desire to stay. "Everyone is searching for you," they said excitedly.
What was the alternative there in the wilderness outside Capernaum? The alternative was a very different kind of life, an uncertain life, and it was the one which he believed God meant for him. It was the one he chose.
"Let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also," he replied to Peter, "for that is why I came out."
As we follow Christ in service in the world we may find ourselves entering into the heramos. When we are standing in the interval between the calling of the question and the taking of the vote on the complicated or controversial issue, and we are trying to decide which way to vote, we are in a lonely place where it is often very difficult to know which way to go.
When you are trying to keep peace in your family, but you feel that God is leading you to express a feeling or raise a question which is likely to ignite anger, you are in that wilderness place where battles are won and lost.
When fifteen-year-old Lisa sat cross-legged on the bed staring at nothing and told her friend, Tracy, that she was so unhappy she wouldn't really care if she died, Tracy was suddenly in the heramos. On the one hand she wanted to give her friend a pep talk and tell her that everything was going to be okay. It worried her when Lisa was like this. But a more compelling voice drew her in the direction of a more difficult alternative, the alternative of listening and saying very little.
In his book, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life, Henri Nouwen has this to say in reflection on Jesus' rendezvous with his Father at 4:30 A.M. in the heramos outside Capernaum: "…the secret of Jesus' ministry is hidden in that lonely place where he went to pray…. In the lonely place Jesus finds courage to follow God's will and not his own; to speak God's words and not his own; to do God's work and not his own."
You do not really have that option, because you are not Jesus. Your words and your deeds will always be your own. But you can accept that fact and still live with decisiveness and courage if you believe that in every heramos of life, in every lonely and tempting place . . . you are, in fact, not alone.
The story is told of a little boy and his father. They were walking along a road when they came across a large stone. The boy looked at the stone and thought about it a little. Then he asked his father, "Do you think if I use all my strength, I can move that rock?"
The father thought for a moment and said, "I think that if you use all your strength, you can do it."
That was all the little boy needed. He ran over to the rock and began to push on it. He pushed and he pushed, so hard did he try that little beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. But the rock didn't move — not an inch, not half an inch. After a while, the little boy sat down on the ground. His face had fallen. His whole body seemed to be just a lump there on the earth. "You were wrong," he told his dad. "I can't do it."
His father walked over to him, knelt beside him, and put his arm around the boy's shoulder. "You can do it," he said. "You just didn't use all your strength. You didn't ask me to help."
The world in which we live tells us that it is all up to us. It tells us that we have to be strong and independent. It tells us we can't and shouldn't count on anyone or anything else. And yet, what faith tells us and what Jews and Christians have known forever is that we have a ready resource in God, strength for those who ask.
Jesus found strength through spending time alone in prayer with God, whom he called "Abba" meaning "Daddy." His relationship to his Divine Father was precious to Jesus and he set aside time to develop that relationship. Jesus had a special relationship with his Abba and so may we.
A father took his small son with him to town one day to run some errands. When lunchtime arrived, the two of them went to a familiar diner for a sandwich. The father sat down on one of the stools at the counter and lifted the boy up to the seat beside him. They ordered lunch, and when the waiter brought the food, the father said, "Son, we'll just have a silent prayer." Dad got through praying first and waited for the boy to finish his prayer, but he just sat with his head bowed for an unusually long time. When he finally looked up, his father asked him, "What in the world were you praying about all that time?" With the innocence and honesty of a child, he replied, "How do I know? It was a silent prayer." (Our Daily Bread, Adapted.)
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Let's enter into the heramos together as we take a moment for silent prayer and reflection.
Loving God, we are all making decisions day by day, week by week, year by year.
We are making decisions about how much of our free time to spend on ourselves and how much to spend in service to others through our church and community organizations.
We are making decisions about how much to intervene and how much to remain detached from the problems of persons whom we love.
We are making decisions about how much to let our political commitments be influenced by what we know of your will and how much to let them be influenced by our own natural proclivities.
We are making decisions about whether we will keep on doing the work that is ours to do day by day or whether we will change course and do something else.
We are making decisions about how we will manage our spiritual lives and our sexual lives and our social lives.
It both encourages us and makes us uneasy to know that we are not alone in this decision making.
It encourages us because we know that even if we make decisions which turn out to be unwise, you are still our strong companion as we recollect ourselves and move on.
But your presence in our lives intimidates us because we know that you are looking for us to reflect, as best we can, your will and your way in the decisions we make. And that often pulls us in directions contrary to ways we want to go. We know that in some, very specific instances, you are calling us to do or say things we would rather die than say or do and are calling us to stop doing things we would rather die than stop doing.
The only problem is that we know the way to fullness of life lies in our being willing to accept when necessary the death to which you are calling us.
Grant, dear God, that we may embrace you more completely with our hearts that we may enter more fully into the deep joy you have in store for those who love and follow you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
*This sermon and prayer is adapted from a sermon by Rev. J. Harold McKeithen.
