Epiphany V - February 5, 2006

[Grant M Gallup <grant73@turbonett.com.ni>]

 H O M I L
Y      G R I T
S                                 
                             
The Fifth Sunday After
Epiphany                                                                       
Year B February 5, 2006
                                     
 Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the
liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son
our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of
the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary -
2 Kings 4: (8-17) 18-21 (22-31) 32-37 She came to the man of God at Mount
Carmel
Psalm 142 Voce mea ad Dominum - I cry to the Lord with my voice
1 Corinthians 9: 16-23 I have become all things to all people
Mark 1:29-39 Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever
____________________________________________________________________________




Elisha's adventure with the great lady of Shunem is one of the best of
Bible stories, isn't it?  A racy story line for a telenovela, with a
famous itinerant preacher and a wealthy woman of great influence offering
him hospitality whenever he's in town.  Andrew Greeley has already
done it all in "Cardinal Sins", hasn't he?  Her own aged
husband couldn't provide her with a child, so the Prophet, grateful for
all her kindness, for the penthouse she had built for him and his servant
at her estate, promises her that she shall have a son.  A great
story that could sizzle with the right temperature.  Jim and Tammy
Baker might have done it early on.  Then comes Part II:  the
Shunamite's son is now a little boy, out in the fields with the farm
hands in the heat of the day, and suffers sun-stroke and apparently dies
in her lap at midday.  Lady Shunem rushes to ask her husband for a
servant and a donkey, that she may go to Elisha, the Man of
God.   Husband asks, "How come?  It's not a holiday
or anything, is it?" But she goes to get Elisha at Mount Carmel,
where the Carmelites got started, for Elijah is credited with being the
first to embrace the contemplative life on this mountain, whose name
means "garden" (1) .  He returns with her and adminsters
what looks like artificial respiration to the boy, resurrects him and
gives him back to Lady Shunem, and goes on his way.   Elisha
had just before this come from the clergy widow who was destitute,
and  with an empty olive oil canister.  Like Old Mother
Hubbard, her
cupboard.was bare.    But Elisha supplied her with all
olive oil to fill every vessel she had, and bid her borrow all the empty
bottles of her neighbors, and he filled them so she had enough oil to
sell and pay off her bills. Thus  he might be remembered as the
patron saint of cottage industry.  Before that, however, Elisha had
ben heavily involved with international politics, for he was in the
Battle of the Kings.  Israel, Judah, and Edom were arrayed against
the King of Moab. Great power plays that affected the destiny of
thousands of people in the ancient middle east.  Elisha had
commitments that were beyond his local concerns.  Yet the
enterprises of great pith and moment did not keep him from the concerns
of simple pity, the needs of those nearby.  .  Like great
people, Elisha made no little plans.   Paul writes in the year
56  to the church in Corinth, which he had planted in the year
50.  He deals with all their local concerns:  a case of incest
in the community, fellow churchfolk suing each other in court, others who
were backsliders into California-type cults, controversies
about what believers could eat, about women's rights, about contempt of
the poor on the part of regular communicants--all sticky parochial
concerns.  Today he fusses with them about their attitude to him,
reminding them that he had always refused a stipend from them. 
These are particular and parochial concerns, but they all have dimensions
of significance that go beyond Corinth to the gospel itself, to the whole
world and its liberation.  As Paul moved from Corinth to Athens, to
Ephesus, Troas, Phillipi, Thessalonica, from Turkey to Greece, to Crete,
Cyprus, Sicily, and to Naples and Rome--the capital of the world--Paul
grew into a big view of Church in the Oikoumene.  Paul and Elisha
both sound as if they had been trained at Maryknoll, where I spent five
weeks in the summer of 1987, in Liberation Summer, where the motto of the
missionary society is: Think Globally, Act Locally.  Here in Managua
I and a delegation from San Francisco had tea with Father Miguel
D'Escoto, the Maryknoll priest who opted for Nicaraguan citizenship and
served as the Foreign Minister in the years of the terrorist war the
United States waged on Nicaragua, and it was Father Miguel who got the
World Court's judgment against the U.S. for 17 billion dollars in
damages. Never paid. Miguel remains a prince of peace, like our Lord
himself, and wages peace against the terrorists and warmongers. 
Think Globally, Act Locally, has to be the motto for all of us disciples
of Jesus.   Church life becomes ingrown and narrow if its
concerns are only parochial and private, scheduling services and rummage
sales, bible classes and prayer circles.  The oil can in the
kitchen, the gas tank on the car, the sick child in the bedroom, these
are vital concerns.  The Prophet leaves the Battle of the Kings to
attend to them.  Paul writes from Ephesus across the Sea to focus
concern on the problems of the Church in Corinth.  He's facing
opposition in Ephesus, and even a riot of silversmiths whose sales from
their Artemis idol factory had fallen off because he preached a
boycott.   He doesn't forget the Church across the sea in
Corinth.  Maps of Paul's missionary journeys were one of the things
I remember most about Bible study in my school days, and they are one of
the few things about Bible study that have not changed since those
days.  Paul travelled all over the world as it was known to
him--whereas Jesus didn't travel much at all, unless you count the
fabulous legends of his tours to India as a youth, or William Blake's
fantasy about his trip to England:  "And did those feet in
ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb
of God On England's pleasant pastures seen?"   But
especially in the life of Jesus and in his teaching do we see the
principle expressed of Think Globally, Act Locally.  

A few weeks ago we had Jesus understanding at his Baptism that he had a
global mission: "You are my beloved Son.  On you my favor
rests."  So the voice had whispered to him then, and then he
goes from his retreat in the wilderness to the synagogue at Capernaum,
with his first disciples Andrew
& Peter, James & John.  He heals a man with a hankering for
the non-kosher. Then he goes to Peter's mother-in-law's house. 
There he finds at meal time that Mother isn't well; she has a
fever.  Jesus takes
her by the hand and helps her up, and soon the fever leaves and she is
able to wait on them like a good Jewish momma.  By sunset, as the
Sabbath ends, all the sick folks in town, all the "possessed",
which probably included everybody from epileptics to schizophrenics--they
are all there
at the door of the house, seeking attention from the Great
Physician.  The Muslim poet Jalal-al-Din Rumi wrote in his
Mathnawi:  
  "The house of Jesus was the banquet of men of heart.  O
afflicted one,
quit not this door.
       From all sides the people ever
thronged,
       Many blind and lame, halt and
afflicted,
       At the door of the house of Jesus at
dawn,
       That with his breath he might heal
their ailments
       As soon as he had finished his
orisons
       That holy one would come forth at
the third hour
       He pondered those impotent folk
sitting,
       Troop by troop, at his door in hope
and expectation.
       He spoke to them saying, 'O stricken
ones,
       The desires of you all have been
granted by God,
       Arise,  walk without pain or
affliction,
       Acknowledge the mercy and
beneficence of God.'
       Then all, like camels whose feet are
shackled,
       When you loose their feet on the
road,
       Straightway rush in joy and delight
to the halting place, 
       So did they run upon their feet at
his command. " (2)

 All the local concerns of the people are attended to, or some of
them.   Or some of them.  The text says Jesus was not able
to do great deeds in places where there was no faith.  Early in the
morning, Jesus is up and goes out to the edge of town, and there he is
absorbed in prayer.  By
this time it's the first day of the week, and a working day in that
world, and his friends track him down and tell him "Everyone is
looking for you.  We have appointments scheduled for the rest of the
day."   But Jesus now declares, "Let's move on to the
neighboring villages for I have good news for them as well.  This is
why I came out.  This is what is on my agenda." This is why I
left the house this morning.  And he went over all the towns telling
good news and evicting demons, throughout Galilee."  So local
concerns are not allowed to domesticate the gospel bird and trap it in a
cage.   The Evangel cannot be housebroken like a puppy on the
Sunday newspaper.  The gospel  acts locally always or it
fails.  But it must always act with Global Awareness.   

In every community of believers, from cathedral congregations to mission
committees,  from seminary trustees to monastic chapters, attention
is called to situations that cry out for global awareness. There are
daily promptings from Jesus: "Let us move on . . . for this why we
came out."  It's why I got up and came out of the house 
today.

If our gospel agenda is so near sighted that we only see our own empty
cup, if our vision of the gospel is no near sighted that we can only see
the needs of our own,  our kinfolk who are in sickbed, our own
parish needy,  then we have missed the point of the Epiphany cycle,
of the gospel's goodness for all the world.  The sharply pointed and
tragic message of 9-11-01 should have been translated at once by the
Church into an appeal to all our consciences to turn with compassion to
our sisters and brothers in Afghanistan, in all the Middle East, instead
of misdirected revenge.  That we have failed to do so will live as
an infamy for the name of the Western Church. We especially in the U.S.
of A. have failed to join the human race to give it the example and the
leadership which our immense wealth enables us to do.  
Instead, we have hastened to place weapons into the hands of the world's
children hungry for bread and "ardent for some desperate
glory."  We shall have missed he point of the Magi stories, if
we forget  that the alien vistors bring wondrous gifts to the
Messiah King, and adorn the universal Church with their faith, while they
avoid collusion with the imperial hegemon,  and go about the divine
agenda by an alternative route..   

There are local concerns that are of global significance.  Where
minorities in our own communities are enabled to take charge of their own
future, to have a decisive say-so in the use of land,  for all land
is
the Promised Land--it is promised to God's poor, Gods pilgrims.  And
a decisive say-so in the allocation of housing.  "In my
Father's house are many dwelling places."  And none of them is
a gated community that excludes the dispossessed and the homeless. 
How can something which is
bad news to the poor be so frequently and eagerly embraced by the rich as
good news to them?   Socrates famously said that the unexamined
life is not worth living.  We might also consider what Jesus, by his
praxis, preaches:--that the unexamined ministry is not worth doing. 
It must be
submitted to reflection, contemplation, theological insight, listening
for the Call of God in all its aspects.  The three movements of
ministry development, if you will, are right here in the gospel
lesson:  There is first of all immediate local action in relief of
urgent need,  in relief of those pressed about the door at
eventide.   Then there is reflection--to arise a great while
before it is yet day and contemplate (take to the Temple) our activity,
our busyness.  And then there is the move to wider concerns, larger
issues.  For this we are ekklesia--for this we are called out. 
Don't get trapped in the church basement, nor marooned like a new puppy
on the comic section.   Self-study should look
at where we've been, recalling why we were called 
"Church" and how that is a synonym for Mission. Wherein we are
to think globally, and act locally. l      

GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
grant73@turbonett.com.ni
GRITS 4th series now on-line:  
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits

(1)  Perhaps after the
third crusade (1189-191) some pilgrims from Europe
stayed behind to live at Mount Carmel as lay hermits, and built a 
chapel
to the Mother of God there. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, living near the
mountain (1206-1214) wrote their formula of life and during the years
they grew into an important religious order.   The Saracens
chased them
out of the Holy Land in 1235.  They were refounded in modern 
times.
(2) Kenneth Cragg, Jesus and the Muslim: an Exploration. Oxford:
Oneworld
1999. Translations of Masnavi-i-Ma'navi, Spiritual Couplets by E. H.
Whinfield, London 1887.





____________________________________________________________________________