The Cry for Wholeness (Jewell)

Without going out of my door
I can know all things on Earth
Without looking out of my window
I could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows

Without going out of your door
You can know all things on Earth
Without looking out of your window
You could know the ways of Heaven

The farther one travels
The less one knows
The less one really knows

Arrive without travelling
See all without looking
Do all without doing

That is a song called “THE INNER LIGHT” by George Harrison. And it captures the essence of this week’s Gospel

Rabbi Jesus is teaching us an ancient practice this morning—how we ourselves—and those we teach can find wholeness—in the first century Christianity was called “the way”—the way was and is, the way toward wholeness. All of the world’s traditions, including Jesus’ Judaism and early Christianity, teach that humans have lost their way due to be being disconnected from our divine origins.---We are broken—we are fragmented because of this. Where there was once a whole circle there is, in a sense, now a circle broken in half—the human half and the divine half---we are consciously estranged from God. Our tradition says we have fallen away from God—you know the the Eden story. Other traditions say that people have not fallen away from God—they have forgotten God—they have forgotten their divine origins. But all of the traditions agree on this—most of us are estranged from God. The way of Jesus is the way toward making that broken circle whole again…in fact Jesus or Yeshua means “salvation”—we are saved from our brokenness through reconnecting with God--this makes our hearts whole again. The New Testament gives us a great clue as to how these first century Jews reconnected to God…Today Rabbi Yeshua or Jesus is teaching us how to be made whole. Conscious Re-Union with God equals wholeness. All of the healing stories in the New Testament point to this—through Jesus the human being is Re-United with the divine. And the circle is whole once again!

 

Verse 31 contains a very important message, Jesus says to the exhausted disciples, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while”. This talk of going off to deserted places opens up a window onto the practices of Jesus and other first century Jews. The New Testament tells us that Jesus often went off by himself to lonely or deserted places to pray. Modern Jewish scholars like Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan note that internal and external seclusion was very important for the ancient Jewish experience of God. There is a strange Hebrew word I want to introduce you to, “Hitbodedut”—it is a word that literally means “self-seclusion”—and it points toward an ancient Jewish method of prayer and meditation that is still practiced today. For thousands of years Jewish Rabbis and prophets have gone off to deserted places to commune with God—to rest or abide in the presence of the divine. They go off by themselves--and then they go into themselves. That is where people are spiritually fed and that is where people are healed. That is where they are RE-UNITED WITH THEIR OWN HEARTS. THAT IS WHERE THEY ARE MADE WHOLE. THAT IS WHERE THEY ARE REUNITED WITH THE GOD THAT LIVES WITHIN THEM.

In verse 33 we hear that some people see Jesus and the disciples leaving for the deserted place and they follow them. Just like the people in our text today, we need to follow Jesus and the disciples into the deserted places—that is where we will experience Jesus for ourselves. As you can see, our scripture reading today is a little chopped up—but if we continue to go on to verse 35 we see that the feeding of the five thousand takes place in a deserted place where the people have gone to meet Jesus. All churches must ask themselves these questions---How do we help people follow Jesus? How are we helping people re-unite with God? Simply giving money won’t do it—simply having fun with people won’t do it. We must re-unite people with their own hearts--“heart” in the New Testament means, “inner-life”, or the deepest part of one’s being. For that is where God is—in our hearts, or in the deepest part of our humanity. The great theologian Paul Tillich said that modern western religion lacks a “dimension of depth”. If that is true—that is a serious crisis. We are not simply a community center—a place to hang out with friends—we are not merely a place to serve. We are a church and a church must help people access Tillich’s “dimension of depth” or it is reduced. As faith-ful Jews, Jesus and his disciples would go away to a deserted place and abide in God. As we see several times in the NT, even Jesus the man needed to go off alone to pray so that he could re-connect with God at the deepest point of his being.

In this era of uncertainty in the church we must remember who we are—first and foremost we are people of God—that means we are people of depth, people concerned with their hearts, their inner-lives. We will make disciples, we will heal, if we lead people along the way—the way that leads to their own hearts, the way that leads to wholeness.

The Gospels offer us several examples of people following Jesus into deserted or secluded places—to name just a few, Luke 4, Matthew 14, Mark 1, and our text today. As I said earlier—we are a church—we are people of God—as all are. As followers of the way—how do we go with Jesus into the deserted places? Our culture is undoubtedly the noisiest in the history of the world—our phones, our TV’s, our radios, our computers—they’re all fine—but does anybody doubt we overdo it? We are too often distracted from our own hearts, our own inner lives. Maybe our hearts, our inner-lives, are the deserted places we need to follow Jesus into. Can we shut off all distraction for twenty minutes a day and just be  with God? Can we have a Sabbath day in which we follow Jesus into the secluded places? Maybe we can have a regular practice of quietly and meditatively walking a labyrinth.

Even a few minutes a day with the divine—even one small taste—even just touching the hem of Christ’s garment--even that can be healing---even that can RE-UNITE us with the God that lives in our hearts. And that is what makes us whole.

AMEN.