Thoughts on Mosaic Saturday, February 21

Julie, was leading singing and she talked about the evening being like an image of water pouring over a heart and getting into all the nooks and craggily bits, which was a beautiful image of God's healing.

That reminded me of something that happened at Tenth a while back. It was Sunday morning and the service had already started. While the congregation was singing a man was wheeled to the front of the church. He was on something like a wheel chair, but it was more like a flat hospital gurney. His body was horribly misshapen, contorted, deformed. There he lay while we sang. He couldn't sing or move to the music, he just lay there. Then I had an image of the songs we were singing, the actual sounds, being liquid and washing through the whole building, and flowing over this man who couldn't respond but who was there and could let the sounds wash over him. The liquid sound wasn't gentle and float-y, it was rushing and dynamic, it moved and it was filled with light. The man didn't suddenly jump up all dramatically fixed, but it felt like there had been healing that morning, for me and for him. We didn't speak, I don't know his name, but we were there, together.

Then I thought about the disciples and who they were and what they became. They were living lives as broken, mangled scuttling versions of themselves; being what Rome said they were allowed to be, what their religious leaders said they were allowed to be, what their families said they were allowed to be. A fisherman, railing against 'the man.' An eye-rolling tolerance of religious leaders who didn't really get what life was like for a working man living under Roman occupation. Family, expectations, responsibilities. Small and powerless. Invested to the core in a hope as a special people, but every day waking up a cog in the brutal crushing violent machine of Roman rule. That hope now thin, torn and mottled, like a crisp leaf in the wind.

Then Jesus arrives and the healing starts. The disciples start to become themselves, as they were created to be. I see this image of a gaggle of hospital patients following Jesus around in their green hospital gowns with their asses hanging out the back. Bandages on their heads, knee braces, casts on their arms, casts on their legs, crutches, shuffling by with their squeaky wheeled I.V. drips. Slowly, surely almost imperceptibly the casts and braces, bandages and I.V. drips start falling away. Slowly, surely, like the return of an atrophied muscle, this weak shuffling flock start to understand The One who makes them who they are. From the scrabbly little life of a fisherman, Peter becomes The Rock, a friend of The Master. Is he still a fisherman? Probably. But it doesn't matter, he's no longer defined from the outside in, he's defined from the inside out. He is defined by The Master and the power The Master places inside of him is stronger than anything outside of him. While Jesus was performing miraculous and dramatic healing, he was also performing this equally miraculous, but much quieter healing.

Then I put together liquid music and quiet healing to get at last night. The thing about the liquid music image is time and space, it happened among a particular group of people in a particular place. It seems that at Mosaic when we proclaim, declare and praise together, in what ever state of incapacity we might be in, acknowledging our aching alienation, we are then at the same time reminding each other of the more real reality of belonging available to us. Together, in our pain and hope, we are enveloped by our shared proclamation, we are washed in our declaration. Each time we do this, by little bits and pieces, we are made more ourselves. We experience a bit of that quiet healing Jesus brought to the disciples.

Maybe that's part of why Don felt he needed to stop for a bit. Yes, to wait on healing God wants to bring—and bring it on God what ever freaky fireball jumping up and down instant healing you want to do, go ahead and do. But also to notice,—to be mindful of—the quiet healing that has already happened. The slow and sure almost imperceptible movement of healing.

Mosaic shuffles behind Jesus, our asses hanging out of our green gowns. Crutches, bandages and braces, we're quite a sight, but there we are, following. We've been following together for a while now and there we are, still following. One brother is so ill—so not himself—that he's lying on a gurney, still, eye's closed, shallow breathing. He's being pushed along by friends, he's one of us, he's following too. We stop for a bit, there's wheezing and coughing. And then, on the gurney, the twitch of a finger. One tiny movement. Beautiful, silent and sure. Healing is happening among us. We notice because we are still.