Jesus and the Power of Love

Sunday, February 4, 2024 – Mark 1:29-39, Isaiah 40:21-31, Psalm 147:1-11, 20c, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23

In Jesus’ Presence

Do you ever wonder what it must have been like to be in Jesus’ presence? What would it have felt like to be near him, to walk beside him, to hear his voice, to be touched by him? Even more, what would it have been like to feel his love? I’ve had two experiences that I believe gave me a glimpse of what it was like. Both are a bit surprising, and both happened between 2005 and 2007.

In those days, I was living in the Atlanta area and part of a group of people who had created and staged two conferences there called Mythic Journeys. During our second conference in 2006, our leadership group was hired to help produce a different event in 2007. Because of my software industry work experience, I had the opportunity to spend five days in Puerto Rico managing a staging and audio-visual company to produce the plenary sessions with keynote speakers. It was a lot of fun and while in that beautiful place, I also marveled at the iguanas walking around the island like our own little Florida lizards, but much, much bigger

The “Living Saint of Thailand”

One of the speakers was a Buddhist nun from Thailand named Mae Chee Sansanee. The name Mae Chee is a title that means nun. She led a ministry there that helped pregnant young girls and victimized women by giving them housing and a mission. They would spend their days meditating and working small bits of pink wax into flower petals that they then assembled into beautiful rose candles that were sold to support the program.

Mae Chee didn’t speak any English. Her keynote address was translated into English by an interpreter. When she began speaking, I was busy at the back production table, and so I wasn’t really able to listen. But when I looked up, I was transfixed by her presence. It was as if she exuded the pure love of God.

Mae Chee’s talk was followed by a reception in the ballroom lobby, and I saw her resting in a chair in the midst of the crowd. I have no words to express how it felt to just be in her presence. Again, it was like the pure love of God flowed out of her and into all of us. I just wanted to get closer to that Love. When I bent down next to her chair, all I could say was “I love you” with tears in my eyes. She looked at me with such kindness and said she loved me too. And that was the extent of my interaction. But I swear, a part of me wanted to sell everything I had and move to Thailand just to learn more about that love.

I just found out that Mae Chee died in 2021 and that during her life she was referred to as the “Living Saint of Thailand.” I’m not surprised by that title, because that’s how I experienced her. I imagine this is the way people felt around Jesus – that being in his presence was like standing in the pure love of God.

Singing Jesus

I had already experienced a bit of Jesus in another surprising way sometime before that. When I lived in Marietta, Georgia, I was a member of the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection there. Helen, our music director, was organizing a production of the musical “That You May Have Life,” based on the Gospel of John.

In those years, I was touring as a performing singer and songwriter. “That You May Have Life” is a beautiful musical – one I’d love to be part of again – but when Helen asked if I might sing one of the solo parts, I was unwilling to commit to a solo in case I was offered a paying gig. I asked her to just put me in the chorus. We each got a copy of the CD with the music, and so I’d listen to it often to practice the songs.

A week or so before our production, I was reflecting on my spiritual life, thinking how I often felt more of a connection to the Holy Spirit than to Jesus. I prayed that I might be given more insight into who Jesus was, and who he might be for me.

Within a day or two, Helen called, saying that the young man who was singing the part of Jesus had come down with mononucleosis, and would I be willing to fill in and sing his part instead? She said I was the only person in the choir at the time who could pull it off within the week we had until show time. I said yes.

It seemed as if God answered my prayer by saying, “You want to know Jesus? OK, why don’t you be Jesus?” I’m still shaking my head at God’s sense of humor about that. But something magical happened for me that night. In my sung interactions with Nicodemus, the man born blind, the woman at the well, and washing the feet of the disciples, I felt a presence within me that was not just my own. It was a presence of love and of the “peace that passes understanding.”

Sadly, I can’t say I’ve been able to hold onto that way of being in the years since. But I’ll never forget it.

Our Christian tradition tells us that Jesus reveals who God is for us, and how God relates to us. If this is true, then our gospel reading, alongside our other texts, show us a God of healing, of wholeness, and of Love. They show us that we can connect directly to that healing Source through prayer and through awe, wonder, and praise.

A Healing God

Our reading from Isaiah shows us that God is both above all as a transcendent mystery that created everything and is at the same time the Holy One who calls each thing by name and takes care to see that not one is missing or lost. If we pay attention, God’s majesty and presence in the world can fill us with awe and wonder as well as an overflowing love. In this same reading, we see that when we have patient trust in this God, we will be lifted up and renewed, no matter how traumatic or painful our life is or has been.

In the Psalm, we see that God is delighted when we notice God’s majesty. We are not nothing to God. In our translation, it says that God “takes pleasure in those who fear him,” but we can understand this to mean that we delight God when we respond to God with awe, wonder, and praise.

We also see that when we feel like outcasts, God gathers us in. So many of us feel like we don’t belong anywhere. But we always belong in God. When we are brokenhearted, God heals our broken hearts. When we are wounded, God wraps up our wounds and heals them. God loves us and wants to bring us back to health.

In the gospel, we see that Jesus immerses himself in the healing and loving of others, but then also takes time apart to reconnect with God as Source for that healing power and as Wisdom for the way forward. We might say that prayer primes the pump for God’s healing Spirit to flow in our lives and through us into the lives of others.

We learn another important lesson from Paul. Last Sunday, I spoke of the Church’s language problem and the need for us to speak to people where they are today. This is exactly what Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, that he becomes like his audience in order to reach them.

I think Paul is absolutely right. But there’s something else that I learned in Puerto Rico. I learned that it’s not only the words or the translations that matter. It’s the love that carries the power.