Becoming an action hero

Saturday February 29

Readings: Isaiah 58: 9B – 14; Luke 5: 27 – 32

The scriptures are always filled with action words.

In today’s reading from Isaiah we hear the following:  remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech;  bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted.

We’re then told that once we do that, our light will shine, God will guide us, and our strength will be renewed.  We will be known as “repairers of the breach.”

I have always loved that phrase, “repairers of the breach”.  In so may ways, that sums up discipleship: repair what has been broken wherever you find it (also known as reconciliation).  But this is not always easy work.

In 2016, the STREB Extreme Action performers were part of the Rochester Fringe Festival.  This experimental dance company created by choreographer Elizabeth Streb (a Rochester native), does all kinds of tricks and maneuvers with their bodies that leaves the audience mesmerized and amazed. In 2010 Elizabeth Streb wrote a book called, “How To Become An Action Hero,” and I think of her when I think of these readings.

God wants action heroes – people who will remove oppression, bestow bread and satisfy the afflicted.  Yet like the Streb dance company knows, there is a great deal of practice involved and some level of risk and danger when one engages in these kinds of activities.  Personal comfort and safety is not guaranteed.  We might get hurt somehow.  We might fail.  People might turn on us – even as we try to repair the breach.

But the promise is given that if we do these things, God will guide us and our strength will be renewed (notice that it’s not the other way around – we don’t get the strength and guidance first…).

In the gospel, we get to witness an action hero, Levi, who hears the call from Jesus and then invites a “large crowd of tax collectors and others” to his table.  What seems like simple table fellowship was actually a radical act.  It still is.  And it is one part of the repair – the restoration of relationship.

My hope is that we, too, will become “action heroes” this Lent – putting our bodies and our lives at the service of the afflicted, the hungry and the oppressed – and also paying attention to what needs healing within ourselves as well.  This is what God is inviting us to. 

One last thing. Notice that Jesus said that he came not for the well but for those in need of healing.  God is not asking us to hide any brokenness. It’s kind of like the first step in Alcoholics Anonymous where we admit that something is wrong and is in need of repair. It is we who are sick and in need of a physician, and Jesus is the good doctor who will make a house call for us.  But first, we need to invite him in.  And when he asks us, “What can I do for you?” my hope is that we respond, “I want to become an action hero…”