Water-Processed

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Are you a coffee drinker? How many cups a day do you typically drink? What do you feel like when you don’t have your morning coffee? I used to be a big coffee drinker, but a couple of years ago I switched to drinking strictly decaf coffee.

Recently, though, learned something that surprised me enough to make another change. I learned how they get the caffeine out of the coffee to make decaf. Do you know? My sister told me that the most common way to decaffeinate a coffee bean is to soak it in a variety of chemicals, and the most common chemical used is formaldehyde. Did you know this? We know what formaldehyde is, right?

Formaldehyde is a chemical that is used in, among other things, embalming. Think back to your middle school science teacher’s classroom. If it was anything like mine, there were jars somewhere in that room that held things like frogs, floating in a yellowish liquid. That liquid was formadelhyde! I decided, after I found out that this is what my decaf coffee beans had been soaking in, that I wasn’t ready to be embalmed just yet…even if it was just in small doses through my daily morning coffee.

But, I also didn’t want to give up coffee completely. I was disturbed enough to make a change, but didn’t know if I could live without coffee. It was then that my sister went on to tell me about an alternative to chemically decaffeinated coffee. It’s called “Swiss Water Process Decaffeination” and now I’m a big fan of it. It’s a process that removes the caffeine from the coffee beans using only pure, clean, water. No chemicals, just water.

Because of this change to drinking only water-processed decaf I met a man in the grocery store who knows his coffee. I was there, in the coffee aisle, reading the labels on each bag, searching for those words: “Swiss Water Processed” when he came my way. I must have looked lost, because after he selected two bags and put them in his cart he looked at me and asked: “What kind of coffee do you like?” His question launched us into a conversation about coffee. He told me about his favorites, the ones he and his wife loved, including a variety that you can only get in Vermont. He pointed to bags on the shelf and told me about the flavor-mild or strong. Then, when I told him about my search for the water-processed decaf, he offered a couple of choices I might like. He even told me where to get coffee at the best price.

I called him the “Coffee Man” and told him that he must have been sent that day just for me. He smiled, and I thanked him and then we parted ways to finish our shopping. From our brief interaction, I could tell at least two things about this man. First, he LOVED coffee! Secondly, he enjoyed sharing what he knew about it, especially with someone who was so obviously lost there in the coffee aisle at the grocery store. That day, I was thankful to run into a real “Coffee Man.”

In our gospel lesson for today, there are lots of people who share something in common with my friend the coffee man. Only, they’re not in love with coffee, but with Jesus. These people are running all over the place in Gennessaret by the time Jesus and his disciples pull their boats into town. When they see him, they do exactly what the man in the grocery store did, they start telling people about it. They start running, this way and that way, telling everyone they know and bringing everyone they can to come and see Jesus. And every single person who comes experiences an enormous change in their life once they meet him. We’re told that all who even brushed up against the fringe of his coat were healed of whatever ailed them.

Imagine the conversations that were taking place in the grocery stores, the pharmacies, and the coffee shops of Gennesaret that week. People who loved Jesus, running into friends and even strangers who looked lost, or sick, or unhappy, and saying: “You know who you should go see? Jesus!” And then these Jesus fans would tell them where he was, or they would bring them, some literally carrying friends and neighbors to meet the man who could change everything for them.

So, wherever Jesus was, people would follow. Crowds and crowds of them. Wherever he traveled, there were already people there, ahead of him and waiting.

Imagine how our world would change if all the Jesus fans did this same thing. If we told people, brought people, met people…wherever Jesus was. What if even a fraction of the Jesus fans did what the people in Gennessaret did that week, and rushed to wherever we heard that he was.
Just as only a small fraction of our time each week is spent here in church, only a small fraction of Jesus’ time is spent here. I looked through all of Mark’s gospel this week, and made notes about where we’re told that Jesus spent time. (I could do this because at just sixteen chapters, Mark’s is by far the shortest gospel) Here’s what I found. Jesus spends about 1 ½ chapters in “holy” places: synagogues and the temple. The rest of the time, he’s elsewhere. He’s in the wilderness. He’s at the Jordan river. He’s walking the shores of the sea of Galilee and talking to fishermen. He’s at someone’s home. He’s praying in a deserted place. He’s at a tax booth. Then, he’s at the tax collector’s table, having dinner. He’s in a boat, on a mountain, beside the sea, in a crowd of people. For 14 ½ chapters, the bulk of what we read in Mark’s Gospel, this is where Jesus is. Mark even goes out of his way to tell a story where Jesus is in a grainfield on the Sabbath. On the one day when he’s supposed be in a “religious” place, he’s not. He’s with his disciples, walking through a field.

In his longest stay at a “holy” place-in the temple in chapter twelve-Jesus spends most of his time telling the most religious people around how they’ve misunderstood just about everything when it comes to God and the Bible.

In the culmination of the whole story, Jesus winds up in the least holy place you could imagine: nailed to a cross and hanging among criminals…and then laid in a tomb and left among the dead.

After reading through all of that, I began to think of all the ways that Jesus changes what it means for something to be called “holy.” The shores of the Sea of Galilee became holy when Jesus called fishermen to change and become disciples. The wilderness became holy when Jesus went there and overcame temptation. The tax collector’s dinner table became a holy place when Jesus came and told all of the guests something no one else had ever told them: that God loved them just the way they were. The crowds, in our lesson for today became holy when Jesus came and healed all of them. Even the cross, an instrument of punishment and death, became holy when Jesus went there for us and rose to new life beyond it.

Maybe you’re not a coffee person. Maybe you could talk to a complete stranger about something else: movies, cars, flowers, stamps, sports, birds, politics, restaurants… Maybe you’ve done something for someone like what the coffee man did for me-saw them when they were completely lost and took the time to help them, and tell them about something that you loved.

Maybe you’re not a coffee person, but you are a Jesus person. You became one the same way that the coffee I now drink became decaffeinated: by water. In baptism, Jesus washed us all in pure, clean, water, and when he did, he changed us forever. He changed us, not with something abrasive or harsh, but with water. He does it because he loves us, each and everyone one of us, without exception or condition.

Today, you and I have gone through our own water process, and we’ve been made into God’s children. As we remember this and give thanks for it, can we become also like the people of Gennessaret? Can we become Jesus’ men and women who hurry to wherever he might be-in town, by the lake, in the grocery store, at the bar, in the office, at school, on the street-and tell the people we meet there about someone we love, and someone who loves them just the way they are?