Hilton Head Island, SC – March 16, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 9:14-29
A Sermon by John M. Miller
SIX VOICES THE OTHER SIDE OF EASTER
1. The Father Whose Son Was Cured
I want to tell you about something that happened six months ago. It was on the 9th of Ethanim, to be exact; I shall never forget the day.
But let me first introduce myself to you. I am Natan bar-Schlomo; I think you would say Nathan, the son of Solomon. My father farmed a beautiful piece of land in the Valley of Jezreel which had belonged to his father, which belonged to his father, and so on for perhaps forty generations, and now I farm the same land. It is said in our family we have belonged to this valley since the time when Gideon fought the Amalekites and Midianites on the Hill of Moreh, two hours' walk south of where we live, where the Valley of Jezreel starts to be called the Plain of Esdralon.
I live with my wife Yael and our five children in the village of Endor. It is the same village of the woman who could talk to the dead whom Shaul ha-melech, Saul the king, sought so long ago.
Yael and I have had a happy life. Our children are bright and well-behaved, the rich soil of our land produces excellent crops, and, even though the Romans have taken control of our land, we live in a time of peace.
But there is this one particular thing. It is terrible, far sadder than my poor ability to try to tell you about it. Our third child, Mordechai, has suffered for most of his life with a strange and scary condition. For the first two or three years he was fine, and then one day, when he was with the older two outside the house, he fell down and became very stiff, and his eyes rolled back into his head. Michali and Simeon came running in to tell their mother. She ran to Mordechai, who was lying on the ground. His small fists were clenched, and his teeth were grinding.
Yael was never so frightened in her life. Then, as quickly as it began, it ended. Mordechai became limp, gradually he opened his eyes, and after he blinked a few times, he was himself again.
If that were all there was to it, it would be more than enough. But it wasn't. Nearly a year later, it happened once more. It was evening, and we were eating, and with no warning at all Mordechai pitched backward onto the floor. He began moaning, and his body stiffened. Then he started twitching. We could not stop it, no matter how tightly we held him. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. This was our son, our little Mordechai! He is such a lovely child, a boy to make any parents proud! How could this be happening to him? What had I done wrong that our son should have this? What had Yael done?
We are faithful people! We believe in Adonoy, the God of Yisroel! How could God allow this?
I remember that my father's brother was like this occasionally, although not nearly so bad. And they say my grandfather's cousin also may have been afflicted with whatever it is that Mordechai has, but I never knew her; she died before I was born.
Some of the people in Endor say we are accursed. It is so cruel! What did either Yael or I do that we deserve to be told that? More to the point, what did Mordechai do? He is a child! He never hurt anyone! But the taunts he has heard from the children of the village, the things some of the adults have said when the shaking comes upon him and the stiffness seizes his body: they have told him that a demon is inside him! To the face of a six-year-old they said this! This is Mordechai they said it to; he has the sweetest nature of anyone in Endor! How can they even think this?
Then he was twelve, and we were becoming absolutely frantic. We had taken to calling them "the troubles." The troubles were more frequent --- maybe once every three of four months. Sometimes they lasted for a few moments, sometimes for nearly an hour. They were starting to destroy his confidence. He had always been so bright and cheerful, but now he was turning inside himself. He spoke little, and smiled almost not at all. Our son was losing himself, and we were powerless to prevent it. What could we do?
It happened that when things were at their worst, we began to hear about a man from a nearby village. It is up on the crest of the mountain ridge to the north of us; we can see its houses from here. It is called Nazareth.
Nazareth is a new place; it has been there only fifty years. Endor, on the other hand, has been here for at least fifteen hundred years. It was here before Yisroel captured the land, when it still belonged to the Canaanites. Therefore nobody around here is very impressed with Nazareth; "Can anything good come from Nazareth?", we say.
Well, at least one good thing did come from Nazareth. He is known throughout ha-Galil as Yeshua ha-Notzri: Jesus of Nazareth in the Galilee.
For many months we had been hearing about Yeshua. He had left Nazareth, and then, after having been gone a while, apparently he came back. It was perhaps a couple of years ago. They say he preached in the new synagogue in Nazareth. Well actually, every synagogue throughout Judea is new; ours in Endor was started only ten years ago. The priests in Yerushalayim are angry about it; they say that the temple is the only proper place in which to worship Adonoy. But the Pharisees, whom we also have begun calling "the rabbis" (the teachers), tell us that we need to build our own places of worship, because the time is coming, they say, when the temple shall be no more. So there are now synagogues all over ha-Galil. I understand there still are very few in Yudah though.
As I was saying, I was told that Rabbi Yeshua came back to Nazareth and preached in their synagogue. At first the people liked what they heard, but then, the more they thought about it, the angrier they became. Who was Yeshua to be telling them anything? Wasn't he the son of Yosef and Miriam, they said? Hadn't they seen him grow up? So who was he to be attacking the Nazarenes? They were so furious that they almost killed him. They were going to throw him off the cliff above the upper town, but he managed somehow to get away.
It was a while after when that we often began to hear about Yeshua. People who had listened to him said he was an amazing preacher. He spoke like somebody who well understood what he was saying, and not like some of the oily types who tell people only what they want to hear, who always try to make people feel good about themselves.
But the thing which most interested Yael and me about Yeshua is that he was a healer.
He had cured many people of all kinds of conditions and diseases. And when we heard that, our hearts leaped to our throats: might Yeshua be able to cure our Mordechai? We had tried everything anybody suggested, from exotic boiled herbs to crushed mandrake roots, but nothing had helped. Might Yeshua be our salvation? After all, isn't that what his name means: Salvation --- Yah (God) Shua (Saves)?
One afternoon the four older children and I were working in the fields. It was the time of the latter harvest, the 9th of Ethanim as I said before, and Yael came running out to us. "Yeshua ha-Notzri is here!" she cried; "he is at ha-Tavor!"
The Tavor, Mt. Tabor as you would pronounce it, is the mountain to the north of us. From the southeast it looks almost perfectly round. No other mountain is near it; it stands by itself. Because it rises up more than two stadia from the floor of the valley, it has always been thought to be a sacred mountain. The Canaanites had a temple there before we took over the land.
When Yael told us about Yeshua, Mordechai and I began running toward the foot of the mountain. As we got closer, we noticed a crowd in the distance, to the east. We were breathing very hard by the time we got there. Mordechai never complained, but I was worried that the troubles might overcome him from the awful exertion of the run.
I recognized nearly everyone in the crowd. Either they were from Endor, or they were from nearby villages. But there were nine strangers in the midst of them. Everyone was talking to the strangers all at once, and they demanded to know where Yeshua was. "He is up on the Tavor," they explained. "Well when will he be back?" someone yelled. "We don't know," the men said. "You're his disciples," another man said; "why don't you know?" "Nobody can say what Yeshua will do next," a man named Andrew told the crowd; "we only try to follow Yeshua --- we certainly don't try to predict his moves."
As I regained my breath, a thought formed in my head: if Yeshua is not here to cure Mordechai, maybe these followers of his can do it. Yeshua might go down the north side of the Tavor, and then back to Kfar-Nahum, where I had been told he spent most of his time, and I would miss my chance. "Help me!" I shouted at the startled men. "Our son has some kind of illness, and he falls into a trance, and becomes rigid, and shakes, and grinds his teeth. If you are disciples of Yeshua, surely you can do something for Mordechai!"
The men turned as white as new ashes. It was as though I had asked them to make the waters of the Red Sea part. They had seen Yeshua perform miracles, but could they also perform them?
A kindly looking young man, called The Twin, (Thomas), came over and looked intently into Mordechai's face. Hesitantly, he put his hands on each side of his head, and said, "Come out." Nothing happened. Again, and louder, "Come out!" Once again, nothing. Once more, and louder still, "Come out!", but it was evident Thomas was able to do nothing.
Everyone had been watching us with such intensity that no one noticed the four strangers who had walked into our midst. Suddenly there they were beside us, and I knew just from the look on his face that one of them had to be Yeshua ha-Notzri. There was something about him that everyone would sense, something powerful and magnetic.
Yeshua asked what was going on. Without giving any of his disciples an opportunity to speak, I poured out why I had come there, and I told Yeshua all about Mordechai. He listened with great patience, never once interrupting me, although now, as I think back on it, I must have sounded like a madman. Then I told him that none of his disciples was able to cure our son.
A dark look came over Yeshua's face. When I had first glanced up at him, I had noticed a special glow about him. For an instant it occurred to me that he looked the way Moshe must have looked when he came down from ha-Horeb; Moshe's face shone, it says in the Torah. But I was too pre-occupied with my own problems, and my mind immediately turned to other things. Now, when I said his disciples couldn't do anything, Yeshua cried out, really to himself more than to any of us, "O generation without faith! How long am I to be with you? How long must I bear this?" Then, pointing to some neighbors from Endor beside whom Mordechai was standing, Yeshua said, "Bring him to me."
Instantly Mordechai fell to the earth. His legs shot out, his arms became like posts, his fingers began digging into his palms till they bled. His face took on the pallor of death. It was the worst I had ever seen him. I was convinced he must have died.
In the midst of this terrifying scene, Yeshua seemed to be utterly calm. I was astonished. How could he appear so unfazed by this? Did it not frighten him?
"How long has he been like this?" he asked me. Anxiously I told him it first happened when he was small boy, but it had gotten worse as the years went on. All this time Mordechai lay in the dust, unmoving, scarcely breathing. I begged Yeshua, "If you are able to do anything, have pity on us, and help us!"
"'If you are able,'" he said; "'IF you are able,'" a warm smile flooding across his face.
"All things can be done for anyone who believes!"
Yeshua was so gentle, so appealing, so inviting. But I, I was so scared and turbulent and anxious, and in my mind I recalled in an instant the first seizure, and then the next, and the next, dozens of them, scores of them, and I saw a picture of the terror in Yael's eyes, and I felt the raw grief i my own heart. I exclaimed to Yeshua, "I do believe --- but help my unbelief!"
I shall never forget what happened next. If I live to be a thousand, if more wonderful things come my way than any ten thousand people have any right to expect, I shall never forget what next Yeshua ha-Notzri did. He reached out his hand to Mordechai's hand, and he said, "Mordechai, arise." Instantaneously it was as though a thunderbolt had hit our son. He convulsed as I had never seen before; the twistings and contortions were so overwhelming and overpowering that I thought surely he must perish instantly from them.
Then, as quickly as he had started to convulse, he stopped. He opened his eyes, and stood up, looking only at Yeshua, as though somehow he had been waiting for him all his life. Yeshua smiled at him, and Mordechai smiled at Yeshua.
Then it was that I saw it. In Mordechai's eyes I saw the old light, the light which had been there years before, when he was a little child. And the look on his face had a new luster, one which had disappeared over the course of time without my being aware of it. Through the years I had not seen that the troubles had gradually removed the fire from his eyes, that his spark was slowly slipping away. Now, only when I perceived that it was back, did I realize it had somehow faded into near oblivion. Our son was dead to us, and he was alive again; he had been lost, but now, through Yeshua, he was found.
It is six months past that all this happened. It was a new Mordechai who came home with me that afternoon. Yael knew at a glance that whatever had caused the troubles in the first place would cause trouble no more. For the first time in ten years our family knew true inner peace.
I have thought long and hard about what I blurted out at Yeshua ha-Notzri that day: "I do believe; but help my unbelief!" I had always believed in Adonoy, the God of Yisroel. I always shall believe in Him. But somehow, through Yeshua, I believe things about God I otherwise could never have known. That autumn afternoon, in a manner I shall never fully understand, God reached down and touched us, and our son, who was being slowly crushed to death by something no one could really ever comprehend, was made well.
I still have doubts. I still have fears. I still wonder, when I see the tragedies of others, how such things could happen.
But I know this: our son Mordechai was dying, and now he more alive than he has ever been. Yael's heart was broken, and now she is a new woman. And before the incident at the foot of ha-Tavor, I was anxious and mystified and, if I am honest, very angry, and now I am at peace. No matter what might happen from now on, no matter how terrible anything might be, I shall trust that God is with me, because when I looked into the face of Yeshua, it was as though I was looking into the very face of God.
My sister lives with her husband in the new city on ha-Kinneret, the Lake of the Galilee, the town named after the Roman emperor Tiberias --- may God give rest to his tarnished soul. Rachel says that Yeshua has left Kfar-Nahum and has headed toward Yerushalayim. They are saying in Capernaum that the Sadducees and scribes drove Yeshua away, that there is too much opposition to him there. But I am told it will probably be much stronger in Yerushalayim.
I do not understand how that possibly can be. Yeshua is the greatest man I have ever met. And I can tell you this: the family of Natan bar-Schlomo will be forever be indebted to the gracious touch of Yeshua ha-Notzri. Without him I am loathe to think where we might be today.