Epiphany V

Epiphany V (Mark 1:29-39) “There he prayed.”

Communication facilitates relationship.

Just as we need to talk to each other and to listen to each other to preserve our interpersonal relationships so we need to speak with God and to listen to God.

This is one of those patterns God designed into the universe and our species. It is a pattern Jesus himself entered into and embraced.

It is important to remember that Jesus is fully human. The co-eternal Son surrendered all of his divine prerogatives of knowledge and power when he united his divinity with our humanity in Jesus Christ.

Jesus prayed because he was fully human. Prayer is  conversation with God. Prayer is a practice we cultivate, ignore or distort.

Jesus sets the pattern before our eyes as he rises early in the morning, goes off alone to a deserted place with minimal distractions and then enters into a conversation with God.

Do you ever have trouble sleeping? That may be your invitation from the Holy Spirit to enter into a conversation with God through prayer. Are you ever frustrated while stuck in traffic? That also may be an invitation from the Holy Spirit to enter into a conversation with God in prayer.

Mother Teresa once said: God whispers to us in our pleasures and shouts to us in our pain. God the Father designed us and created us by the power of God the Holy Spirit to be the forever friends of God the Son. God wants to enter into a conversation with us. He delights in our conversation with Him.

We see in this passage how people flocked to Jesus from the place of pain. Where the rich and powerful stood off to the side with an arrogant condescending contempt of Jesus, the poor, the sick and the lonely flocked to him.

Many left as soon as Jesus healed them or met their need. Others stayed to find out more. They asked: who is he? What is his teaching? What does he want? What else will he give?

Jesus withdrew from his followers, the disciples, and the crowds to spend time in conversation with God the Father. He lived as we live: day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, moment by moment. He experienced the duality of this world as we experience it. He experienced pleasure and pain, join and sorrow, expansion and contraction.

As King Solomon observed about a thousand years before Jesus came, to everything there is a season. There is a time for active engagement in life. And, there is a time for quiet reflection and conversation with God through prayer.

Had the disciples only been paying attention they might have learned more about God and accomplished more for God. They were still lost in their own beliefs about God. They had eyes but they could not see. They had ears but they could not hear. They were looking for a program. God was offering them a relationship.

That relationship is the triad of love. It is a relationship with God through worship, a relationship with other people through service, and a relationship with our true identity through growth, development and change.

That’s it. That is what our Heavenly Father was (and is) offering us in Jesus Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, few people then or now were paying attention. They were filled with inherited beliefs and demands. They were distracted by their own plans and programs. They wanted Jesus to fit into their expectations. At best, they observed the outward and visible signs of the Kingdom of God even as they consistently and willfully missed the inward and spiritual grace.

Mercifully, God is patient and persistent. He has the passion and creativity of a suitor writing romantic love poetry to his beloved. He has the consistency and loyalty of a spouse waiting to bring forth a blessing at the right time and in the right place. He has the wisdom of a parent helping a child and a teen through the joys and sorrows of growing up.

God is real. God is personal. He is less concerned about programs, policies and procedures than he is with the triad of relationships that form our identity and ground our being.

The Holy Spirit inspired Mark to record these events for our benefit. Notice the pattern of human need and insistent demand. Notice the pattern of active engagement and solitary prayer. Notice how even in the physical presence of Jesus the disciples keep missing the meaning and the purpose and the gift. The gift is the relationship.

Then, apply Mark’s observation to your own life. Ask, where am I too busy for God? Where am I looking for a program or a policy and missing the relationship? Am I making a real choice to allow the Holy Spirit to form my life according to the pattern of the life of Jesus Christ?

Jesus did not presume to live his life apart from God the Father. Even though he was (and is) the Son of God he made the time daily to enter into a conversation with the Father in prayer. Prayer is the life breath of our spiritual lives. Prayer forms the quality of our relationship with God.

In all of the details and demands of our daily lives ask the Holy Spirit to help you make prayer your first priority in the day as you aspire to make worship the first priority on the Seventh Day God designed into the universe. Prayer is an essential aspect of the pattern of our lives. It is the choice to spend time and pay attention to the one and only relationship than endures forever.