Sermon prepared for Messiah Lutheran Church, Auburn WA

by Pastor Gregory S. Kaurin

8:30 & 11 AM services, 6/29/03

 

Texts:  Mark 5:21ff

Sermon:

Learning from the Merekats

 

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One of my favorite little creatures to watch on the nature channel is the African suricat, or merekat.  My wife is constantly complaining that I don’t talk enough about kitty cats in my sermons; so, I’m hoping that if I mention a few things about merekats maybe this will appease her a bit.

Except that merekats aren’t cats at all.  They look kind of like tall skinny prairie dogs, and they are actually a kind of mongoose.  If you’ve ever watched the Lion King movie, the character called Timon was a merekat.  They are carnivorous; they’ll eat bugs and grubs, mice and birds, small snakes and lizards.

It’s neat to watch these merekats forage for food; several will be in the middle of the group, quickly turning over rocks and digging.  Others take turns to literally stand way up on their hind feet to guard on the outskirts.  If they go roaming, some will run ahead scouting for danger, while a few stop to watch from behind to make sure they aren’t being followed.  It’s a shared task, and apparently a very important job. 

The Smithsonian’s small mammal house had a merekat named Pebbles.  After her mate died, she was a bit of a loner.  —She apparently didn’t trust the other merekats in the zoo to keep proper guard, and nearly starved herself standing guard instead of taking time to eat.  Finally she was united with two siblings from the Philadelphia Zoo named Fred and Barney.  She only trusted these two enough to let go of her guard duty long enough to eat.

 

So, why am I talking about merekats?  Well, I admit that sometimes I stretch an analogy, and maybe I am today with these merekats.  But there are a couple of important things that we can learn from them. 

Not only do they look like little people, but the more I watch and read about these creatures, the more they remind me of us, madly scurrying about, digging to make a living, or pensively standing guard, or quickly reacting to this crisis and the next.  We are busy either with tasks, or the crises of the moment, or we are worrying as we stare at the horizon.

 

Often, when you first hear about these social animals, they are described in ideal terms, almost utopian.  These merekats take turns standing guard, while others eat.  The whole group shares in the raising and protection of the little ones.  However, when you dig a little deeper, you find that these critters are “merekats” in the same way that we are “mere humans.”  “Social creatures,” and yet constantly competing with each other, to the harm and even starvation of others.  “Social creatures,” vigilant over our neighbors safety, and yet very specific in defining which neighbor we are willing to live with, and protect or care about.

 

And remember Pebbles, the widowed merekat.  She lived among many other merekats, and yet she was still alone in her worrying and suffering, nearly worrying herself to death.  Like the woman in the gospel, with a constant loss of blood, that made her religiously unclean.  She was surrounded by the crowd… but hidden by it.  She was incredibly alone, and personally embarrassed.  Psychologically she was dying, for years on end.

She was pressing along with a whole crowd of so many others, with all their own needs and fears and hopes.  How in the world could she ever matter?  How would Christ ever notice little lonely her?  And yet Jesus called her out.  She would’ve probably rather stayed hidden. 

But by calling her out, when she seemed impossible to notice in such a crowd, Jesus healed her still deeper hurt: her social and physical alone-ness.  In that moment he lifted her and put her back into the world, healthy, and re-established her as a faithful daughter of Abraham.  Jesus put her exactly where she should have been this whole time: right alongside of God’s people, where she needed to be.

 

We have a horrible tendency push people, and even to put ourselves into solitude—at exactly the worst times, when we need each other the most.  People—out of embarrassment, or to avoid the gossip—will even stay away from their churches and friends, at those very times that they need them the most.

The fact is, we are social creatures; God made us that way, and yet we do things to ourselves and each other to undermine the very health and healing that comes from being a part of a community.

We need to ask.  We need to reach out…yes in prayer to God…but prayers to God can also be acted out in the very reaching out to each other.  God has chosen to work his healing powers primarily through people.

 

So, we all need to be ready, because God wants a healing that goes even further and involves all of us.  He heals through relationships, relationship with him and with his people.  He heals through forgiveness and salvation that we can announce to each other.  You can be a mere human, but we can help you get dusted off and to try again and again.  —And here in community, we can remind you of the good news that you have a home over Jordan.  Through this assurance, you discover that you are never alone in the crowd.  Your Jesus is always with you.

 

This healing in the gospel story goes even further.  Beyond healing the woman, Jesus turned to the whole crowd, to all of us, and he called us to greater health and wholeness.  You see, Jesus did not just heal the woman when he put her back into the crowd.  In that action, Jesus also healed a broken piece of the whole crowd.  Without her, and so long as they pushed her aside, they were not whole.

It is connected to the whole sacrament of giving and receiving.  Sometimes you are here in this world because you need to be here, to receive what God can give to you through others.  And sometimes you are here because others need you to be here, to give what God has already given you in order to help others.

In either case, it is a sacrament.  When done in faith, to receive is a holy thing.  And giving is a holy thing.  It is this action of giving and receiving that draws us together, into the Body of Christ. 

And I truly believe that this is how healing really happens, physically and spiritually.  Most of the time, true healing happens quietly in our community, but powerfully, and profoundly.   Whole body healing, whole Body healing, happens whenever you and I show that we care for each other.

But maybe it happens on an even greater scale when we turn from each other to still others, apart from us, and show them and tell them, that by the grace of God, we care for them, too.  Sometimes when we look at the misfortunes of others, we’ll say, “But for the grace of God, that could’ve been me.”  Maybe instead, Jesus is telling us to turn to that person and say, “Because of the grace of God, already given to me, what can I do to help you.”

 

Whenever one of us is healed, whenever peace is re-established in some small way, whenever someone does something to care for God’s creation, whenever one less child is abused, whenever one more man or woman is made to feel like a part of the human race through good food or clean clothes whenever someone or something is healed or receives some kind of care, at that very moment: we are all a little more healed.  You and I need to be a part of that.  In prayer, and in action.  Amen.

 

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