Reading: Mark 10: 35-45
It`s funny that as we age we find that we also mellow. These days Nev and I wouldn`t strongly disagree very often. He is after all much older than me! However there is one thing that we don`t really see eye to eye on. And that is the role of fiction in bringing out truths about the human condition. I believe it can readily describe the everyday in beautiful prose or poetry and give us an insight into ourselves that we are often blinded to. It also has a way of revealing God to us, not a God of the heavens but that great mystery found within all of life and living and from which we are never separated.

Recently I have read a book called Cutting for Stone - a tremendous book of grace and passion, about twin boys raised by two doctors in Ethiopia and who themselves become doctors. It is a book of love for one another, of compassion and endurance. The boys` parents are not biological but are set the task of rearing the children when their mother, a nun, dies and their father runs away because he cannot face life without her. These two characters are people of warmth, flawed and oh so human who do the best they can, striving to heal with reconciliation and forgiveness. It is a book of moments, when medicine becomes not a profession but a craft, a gift to be given away, in order to help another. It is a book about people, people running a missionary hospital, misprounced as missing, not to make money, not to get awards, not to be powerful, but to heal the woundedness found all around them and provide some comfort for those suffering.

It is a book about the truth of life, and of God.

Matron runs the hospital, a woman who has been there almost her entire life, a nun who is practical stubborn and committed. The hospital is funded by many people abroad, particularly a Baptist church in America. One day one of the benefactors comes to visit to see how things are going. And he is shocked by a lack of what he thought was true Christianity in the people.

`When you look around Addis and see children barefoot and shivering in the rain, when you see lepers begging for their next morsel, does any of that Monophysitic nonsense matter the least bit?` Matron leaned her head on the windowpane. `God will judge us, Mr Harris, by` - her voice broke off as she thought of sister Mary Joseph Praise - `by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don`t think God cares what doctrine we embrace.`

`What we are fighting isn`t godliness - this is the most godly country on earth. We aren`t even fighting disease. It`s poverty. Money for food, medicines … that helps. When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right.` (p155,156)

What has this got to do with today`s reading? Jesus is described in many ways in the bible. Saviour of the World, Son of God, Son of Man, and is seen to be able to do many things, heal the sick, bring sight to the blind, and raise the dead. But his greatest act, the one thing that will bring transformation to this world is his call to love. And the call to love also comes with a call for compassion. We cannot really love one another without showing compassion to one another, without feeling another`s pain or joy, and seeing in them something of ourselves. Without compassion for one another how can we relate to one another, help one another, support one another. Jesus, through his intimate connection with God saw compassion as the core value of life, and called his followers to do likewise.

Somehow this compassion, this relational paradigm does not sit too well with the paradigm of power. Power needs to dominate, to take something from someone in order to control them. Power thrives on competition, where there is a winner and a loser. Often the loser can be another person or people, but it can also be another country or creation itself. We hear this conflict so starkly in the reading from Mark. The disciples reflect the community they arose from, where power gave privilege and riches to those with it, and suffering to those without it. They wanted Jesus to be a winner, but that was not his message, or the message of the kingdom.

The closer they got to Jerusalem, the more blinded the disciples were by their need for Jesus to be a traditional king. To John`s and James` requests for positions of power and prestige in the new kingdom, Jesus assured them that they can indeed share his journey - not as leaders, but servants. For `whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.` (Mark 10:43-44).

Today we live in a society that is overly competitive and rewards those with power while disadvantaging and marginalising those without it. And where the emphasis is on the pursuit of wealth, success and pleasure at the expense of others. But it is not the way it needs to be or should be. Jesus message was simple and could break this unjust status quo. He said, follow me, get in step with the creative God of the universe and love one another as you would yourself. Be compassionate to one another as you would be compassionate to yourself. Forgive one another as you would forgive yourself. Step into another`s shoes and stay there awhile, then give them what they need. It takes courage and strength and commitment and faith. But it can be done.

At the Missing hospital in Ethiopia, people came to be healed, and if not healed they came to be comforted and to feel the presence of another who cared for them as they died. They believed the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient, a quote found in the front of the book.

The secret to our faith journey is the same, in loving and being compassionate to all we see and whose lives we touch. In giving people what they need even if it is only a drink of water and a hand to hold and doing it with an open heart.

And in remembering there is much truth in fiction, if only we would take a look.