And he went about making his proclamation in their synagogues all through Galilee, and driving out the demons.
the more things change
the more they remain the same
while traveling changes location
it is always ourself making a homemothers’ anonymous is everywhere
does your mother know you are doing this
preachers are also always on duty
healers always have one more boo-boo to kisswe find our niche for rehearsal
consolidating technical options
honing gifts and crafts
until we are who we will be
Br’er Rabbit had his briar patch. Jesus has his Galilee. What is the place where you know the lay of the land and the heart of the people?
Wheresoever this place might be is the place of your calling. There your piety and your mercy are to be enacted.
Of course it is not this place alone where we engage heaven with earth. This engagement is also not limited to formal opportunities for preaching and healing.
A conversation with a friend or grandchild is a preaching time, a time to reveal the best you know. Likewise, engaging a political or economic structure as both metaphorically and all too really demonic is a healing time. As we learn more about the strange calling to come learn from Jesus’ relationship/partnership with G*D, we find these categories to be too stilted and limiting. There is no end to the preaching we need to hear or to offer. There is no end to the healing we need to experience or to extend to others.
Discouragement and despair, illness and disability, go hand in glove with poverty. Preaching and healing are the political and practical tools needed regarding the poor and wilderness our decisions and institutions continue to create.
Inasmuch as healing is not just a personal matter, but recreates community by removing barriers and prejudice/discrimination against those whose status is seen as tainted, sinful, unclean, etc., preaching and healing are never private, single, individual acts of piety. The whole of the prophets is found here.
Discipleship practice takes place in the most difficult of places, home territory where we are all too well known and easy to dismiss. These travels of preaching and healing are on-going models for us.