Rev. David Boyd

One of my favourite little stories comes from Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great Jewish theologian of the last century. I've shared this before, but it seems apropos today. Heschel tells a little parable of God getting up in the morning and asking the angels of heaven gathered around, "Where does my world need mending this morning?" Heschel then says that theology and the work of faithful people consists of worrying about what God worries about when God gets up in the morning.

The two readings this morning from the book of Psalms and from Mark both point to God's response in specific situations—God's desire to mend the lives of three individuals. Firstly, we have the Psalm writer who has experienced some calamity; it is an intensely personal Psalm, Ps. 130, and yet can be universally applied. It is an acknowledgement of our brokenness: "Out of the depths I cry to you, O God. God, hear my voice." Who of us hasn't experienced some time in the depths? Who of us hasn't felt abandoned and alone? This is the beauty of the Psalms—they express real human emotions!

And Mark tells the story of two incidents of healing involving Jesus. The first is one of a woman with a haemorrhage for 12 years. One can only imagine the agony that this woman experienced; because it was blood, she would have been ostracized as one who was untouchable, unclean, according to Jewish Law. She would have felt alone and abandoned much like the Psalm writer.

And the second person we hear about in Mark's story is a young girl of the household of one of the leaders of the Synagogue, Jairus by name. Jairus' daughter has a mysterious illness and is at the point of death. In fact, the crowd tells Jesus before he arrives that the girl has died. The death of a child in any age and culture is always devastatingÑcertainly no less so in the time of Jesus. Again, one can feel the poignancy of this story.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to identify with these struggles and a sense of abandonment, "out of the depths I cry to you, O God." It can come with the loss of a job, with the loss of a loved one, or with the loss of home due to fire. It can come with the loss of hope, as many in Iran today might be feeling. Because we love, we open ourselves to the possibility of experiencing loss and grief. That's partly what makes us human.

And as God gets up in the morning and asks the big question about mending the world, we all figure in this mending. The wonder of God's love is that while God is concerned with the big things in life—freedom of expression and political belief in Iran, for example, ending the AIDS pandemic, bringing an end to the forced recruitment of child soldiers, beating swords into ploughs and spears into pruning hooks—God is also intimately part of each of our lives. The wonder and mystery of God is that while concerned with mending the world on a global scale, God is intimately connected to our lives and our concerns.

Part of what we believe, though, is that we are part of this mending the world. We are agents of God's love when we reach out to others. We participate in the mending of creation when we receive a touch, a word, a moment of care and concern from others. Part of why we put people on the prayer list is that we intentionally name individuals in particular need. We name them in our hearts and we become part of the healing process. And I purposely used the word healing because a cure doesn't always happen. In the mystery of faith and prayer, we hope that something mysteriously life-giving happens, that a new opportunity for life opens us, and that a new hope comes about—and this is healing.

I'm currently reading the wonderful book Three Cups of Tea. It is the story of how a mountaineer named Greg Mortenson formed the Central Asian Institute and began building schools in remote Pakistani villages. He'd tried to climb K2, the 2nd highest mountain in the world and failed. And while descending, he became disoriented and lost; he was rescued by one of the Pakistani porters who lived in the area. The area in which K2 is found is remote, isolated and very poor. So, because of the hospitality of one village that helped save his life, Mortenson decided to make it his life's work to build schools in the isolated villages. He didn't want to be a mere mountaineering tourist walking through and caring nothing for the people that live in the region. He wanted to help mend this part of the world, and he deliberately targeted the education of girls because he saw the importance of empowering women in these patriarchal regions. Here is an example of someone participating in God's mending of the world. And he did so not in an arrogant fashion, but with humility, with respect and with a sense of mutuality. It is a wonderful story of hope, of how one person with passion and intention can surround himself with others of like mind and begin to make positive changes. That's the beauty of Dr. Greg as he's known, he was a person like you and I who decided to do something.

Part of what we are about as an intentional community of spiritual people in the Christian tradition is that we open ourselves to the mystery of God's presence and movement in the world. We seek to be open in our own lives; we seek our own mending and healing; we seek to deepen our relationship with God. And we seek to partner with others to work with God and God's angels in mending the world both in the macro sense and in the micro.

Then, we can say with the psalmist, "I wait for you, O God, my soul waits, and in your word is my hope. O Israel, wait in hope, for with God there is love unfailing." May we be open to the Spirit's healing and mending ways and may we be open to the Spirit's urgings to share in the mending of the world. This is our prayer.

Amen.