The Fragment Plan
B Proper 18 September 10, 2006 Mark 7:24-37; Psalm 146
There's an old Yiddish saying: We plan; God laughs. I've heard this said another way: Do you want to make God laugh? Tell God your plans. Your plans. The plans we make or the direction we think we're going, or the way we wanted our lives to turn out, seem too often not the way it happens in real life. Every once in a while something happens the way I thought it would, and I say to Barry, "This is what I thought it was going to be like." But not all that often.
Five years ago, where did you think you'd be today? Ten years ago, what did you think you would be doing in your life? In September of 1996? I can tell you one thing for sure. I had no idea five years ago that I would be standing here as your pastor. And neither did you. I imagine Joe Cullen had no idea five years ago he would have his picture on the front page of the Detroit Free Press because he went nude through a Wendy's drive-through for a burger, fries and a drink, and that he'd be suspended from coaching a season opener for an NFL team for THAT. The thousands of fans in Michigan stadium yesterday never planned on having to clear the place and then return for the game because of a storm. Things don't always work out the way we imagine they will.
Today we meet a Syrophoenician woman in our Gospel lesson, a mother who is begging Jesus for even the crumbs that fall from the table -- the fragments that no one else wanted, so that her daughter might be made whole. I imagine it wasn't part of her plan, either, to be in a position of such desperation, going for the last possible hope -- this Gentile woman, resorting to challenging this mysterious Jewish healer and teacher. I can't imagine this act of desperation was ever part of her plan. But we often do what we never thought we might do, especially when our children's lives are at stake. When is it ever part of any mother's plan for her child to be ill or demon-possessed?
And then we meet a deaf man. We don't know much about him either. But have you ever met anyone who planned on being deaf? Who's working on the ten year plan and says, on September 10, 2016, I'm going to lose my hearing and make sure my speech is impaired. I don't think that was part of his plan.
What does all this remind you of? My guess is your life. Because you all know very well that life is what happens to you and me when we're making other plans. Life happens, or as I saw on a T shirt, "E Coli happens," when we want to be about other things. My agenda. My plan. And then comes the crisis. The divorce. The death. The lay-off. The cancer. The infertility. The arterial blockage. The pregnant teen-aged daughter. The hurricane. The feeling of betrayal. The shock. The grief. The loss. The pain. The fear.
Those of you who went through Stephen Ministry training many years ago probably remember some wisdom gleaned from our Chinese cousins. In the Chinese language, letters are symbols. The word for crisis in Chinese is depicted by a symbol that means two different things at the same time. In Chinese, the symbol or the word for crisis means both danger, and opportunity. A crisis presents us with both a danger and an opportunity at the same time. When we go through a crisis we can open ourselves to it and become better, or we can close ourselves off and become bitter.
At one point in my life I paused to look at the big picture and I thought, there just seems to be one crisis after another, and I don't get it. I went to see a nun, a spiritual director. One of the things she asked me is "What do you think you are learning from this?" Oh yeah. Life. The great curriculum. At one point I said to her, "I'm tired of learning." I found myself becoming bitter. And then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the lesson I was refusing to learn, the lesson that kept hitting me in the face, was the very verse that's quoted in our psalm today: Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them. And then, Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help, whose hope is in the Lord their God. I realized, as I reflected some more, that I kept trusting in people. I kept making people my God -- the center of my life. Or the church. Or my husband. Or my kids. Or my house. And there's no peace in that. So the curriculum for my spiritual growth was in front of me -- much as all the students returning to school this past week were presented with a curriculum too. I needed to learn how, or even better, to or at least to begin practicing to trust in God.
I identify with that Gentile mother we meet today. Sometimes trusting means settling for fragments. But it's amazing what God can do with those fragments. I served on the staff at a church in Ann Arbor that went through not just a conflict, but a war. And I was torn up in the middle. After two years I finally gave up. But finding another call was not easy, because at that time I was only willing to work part time. Our kids were much younger then. So the Bishop, Phil Wahl at the time, asked me to train to be an interim pastor, and to use my experience to serve congregations in conflict and transition on a part time basis. That certainly wasn't part of my plan. I had waited nine years for that call in Ann Arbor. My plan had been to stay there for twenty years, working in adult education and small groups. And yet, the fragments I got from all those experiences are turning into the bread pudding that's helping to sustain me through this challenge -- serving as your pastor through a time of transition, and discerning together God's vision for the next chapter for Holy Cross.
Crises in our lives can be dangerous. We may become bitter or blocked. And we can also become better. It wasn't part of your plan to have cancer. It wasn't part of your plan to lose your wife when you still had so much to experience together. It wasn't part of your plan to have arterial blockage. It wasn't part of your plan not to have children. It wasn't part of your plan to lose your job. It wasn't part of your plan to be on your third husband. It wasn't part of the deaf man's plan to be meeting Jesus. It wasn't part of the mother's plan to beg Jesus to cast out a demon from her own daughter. But in her time of need she accepted even the scraps from Jesus, because she believed that was all she needed. Even a scrap, a fragment of God's grace, brought healing and life to that girl.
The deaf man's friends asked Jesus to lay his hands on him. Instead, Jesus stuck his fingers in to the man's deaf ears, spat on his tongue, and spoke a word of life into the deafness. Undoubtedly, just a fragment of Jesus' words penetrated his ears and pierced his deafness. And the fragment was enough. The man heard clearly and spoke plainly. The Word of God to us today tells us that even the fragments of God's grace are enough. And somehow, it's when our plans don't work out that we seem to be most open to seeing and hearing and receiving those fragments of grace. In fact it's the fragments God seems to prefer to use the most: The gathered community, a small part of the whole body of Christ; a fragment read from Scripture and received in the heart; the good news shared; the embrace of peace; a fragment of bread, the fragmented body of Christ; a sip of wine, Christ's spattered blood. God uses the fragments all the time to satisfy our hunger. To heal our brokenness.
A family in Palestine recently had quite an interruption in their plans. Their 9 year old son was killed in a car accident. In the midst of the devastation, they were left with some rather unwelcome fragments: their son's heart, his lungs, his liver, and both kidneys. These healthy organs were successfully transplanted into five other young people. All five of these other young people were Israelis. The parents told the doctors: "We want it to be an act of humanity." Danger became opportunity. Potential bitterness became an opportunity to be better. Death became life, five times over. Fragments became grace. If you think about it, there seems to be a pattern here. After all, God used the death of his own son to bring healing to the world. I imagine the same God will even use the fragments of a hamburger, fries and a drink from a Wendy's drive-through in Dearborn to help Joe Cullen finally get the help he needs. It's not your plan. It's not my plan. I guess it's the fragment plan. God's plan. AMEN.
Pastor Dana Runestad
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Livonia Michigan
13th Sunday after Pentecost