Today I want to speak with you about distraction. My late wife , after we had been dating for a few months, said, somewhat incredulously, “you’ve never been dx’d with ADD.” She was fond of saying that I was the most stimulus bound person she’d ever met!
Every day I walk into my office at the Diocesan Ministry Center with the best laid plans and a beautifully structured To Do List. And then the Bishop needs me, a parish administrator calls with a question, a priest from a small parish needs advice and….there goes my plan and off in the distance I hear it: a divine giggle! We plan, God laughs.
Again. And Again. And Again.
Of course, I’m not in the least bit unique. This happens to many of us. A lot. We have good intentions, exquisite plans, a stunning to do list.
And then, life happens.
In today’s Gospel, “life happened” to Jesus. Capernaum, was a pretty busy place with a lot of people in a not very large area.
We could call it the Buffalo of first century Galilee—you could get just about everywhere in 20 minutes! For reference, consider where we sit right now the synagogue, the Sea of Galilee was about 2 blocks down the road, and Peter and Andrew’s home was about as close to us here as Main Street.
Jesus has just wrapped up worship in the synagogue where he healed a man from demonic possession. He’s taking the short walk across the street to Simon Peter’s house for dinner and, hopefully, some downtime.
He must need it right? I mean, look at what’s happened so far in the first chapter of Mark---
Jesus has been baptized by John; thrust into the wilderness for forty days, thrust out of the wilderness and into his ministry due to John’s arrest and imprisonment; he’s called Andrew, Peter, John and James, and is establishing himself in his new “hometown” of Capernaum. All in 39 verses! Phew!
My guess is that as he strolled over to the house he was thinking---hoping, longing---that this crowd of people at the synagogue would go home and give him a chance to catch his breath….but….his plans, his hopes, his wishes, his desires, whatever it was he was planning on doing at Simon Peter’s house, doesn’t happen because Peter’s mother-in-law is sick---really sick.
So of course, Jesus heals her.
[By the way, can we talk about that line in the Gospel, right after Jesus heals Peter’s m.in law: she immediately got up and began to serve them. This proves that the Gospel was written by a man, right?]
He does what needs to be done, regardless of his best laid plans. And then, before he can say “hey, what’s for dinner,” half of Capernaum is lining up to get healed by him. And, of course, Jesus goes ahead and heals them, accepting the change in plans and helping out. And then, the next day, after going to that deserted place to pray, Peter arrives, clearly annoyed that he had to waste all that time searching for Jesus, and pulls Jesus out of his very much needed solitude to attend to the throngs of people seeking him.
Can’t the guy catch a break?
But, Jesus doesn’t snap, doesn’t whine, doesn’t complain. He simply gets up and goes to where he’s being called to go.
This doesn’t mean that he wasn’t frustrated, or annoyed or mad, it means that he realized something we all can benefit from realizing:
While distractions may take us away from what we think we need to be doing, even what we want to be doing, they don’t take us away from God.
As a matter of fact, God is there, smack dab in the middle of the distraction.
God is in the distraction.
Now, this doesn’t mean God’s not in our carefully laid out plans, what it does it mean is that God is also in the distractions, the change of plans, the interruptions.
I think for a lot of us, the distractions of life can feel like catastrophic derailments ….especially in our faith lives………”well I meant to pray every morning and every evening but this and that happened and I didn’t. I’m such a failure”
Or
“I signed up for a committee, a job, a role at church and then I forgot about it, or I was late, or I made a mistake while I was doing it, so I can’t show my face there again. I messed up, there’s no going back.”
What the readings this week tell us is this---none of that is true. It may feel accurate, it may seem true, but it’s not.
God doesn’t have a scorecard about who stays on task and who doesn’t. Jesus felt as if he needed rest, yesterday the people in need of healing kept coming. Sometimes the distraction leads us to exactly where we need to be!
God is in everything. God sees everything, God knows everything, God is truly in our going out and in our coming in. So God knows our intent, and God knows our desire.
There’s no limit to God’s wisdom….so please trust that God knows we aren’t distracted because we reject God, we get distracted because. …well because life happens. The life God created, gave to us and lives with us.
And as Jesus so brilliantly exhibits in today’s Gospel….if you intended to pray, if you intended to volunteer to help out at church, if you intended to finish your to do list, but things—life---got in the way? Give yourself a break. Because God? God’s right there with you, in the midst of all those distractions, detours and changes of plan.
Every single time. God
We plan, God laughs. And on we go. Amen.
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