Lady GaGa, baby Jessica, fracking and the Gospel?

Today's readings:
Psalm 45, Genesis 37:12-24, 1 Corinthians 1:20-31, Mark 1:14-28

This past Sunday I sat in the community room of the Simsbury Public Library drinking lemonade and listening to Lady Gaga's original DJ Brendan Jay Sullivan (DJVH1)  spin tales of his childhood and his early years in NYC when she and he were nothing close to being  Her and Him, much less a "them". 

I've known him since he was a freshman in high school and I have lots of stories. That day I was here to listen.
I heard what I did not expect.
Such is the case with all great stories.

Brendan is a great writer and he shared some truths he had gleaned along the years. He pulled from various authors and, interestingly enough, from the rescue of "baby Jessica", the toddler who spent spent a horrifying 58 hours 22 feet below ground after she had fallen down a 20 inch wide well pipe in Midland, Texas.  Sullivan took us back to the vigil the world kept because it was there he learned the true art of writing, and in it, I heard the Gospel:

"she was sitting on top of a tangle of branches. They couldn't simply come down on top of her for fear of unsettling her position and sending her deeper down the well. Instead they drilled along side her but the solid bedrock quickly broke the hardest of drill bits. One man had a new solution, which ironically would later become known as "fracking". He drilled a hole alongside Jessica, eventually reaching her and bringing her to safety. Great writing is like this. Getting us right up next to the story, without disturbing what is happening at all."

There it was. The Greatest Story.

People have tried for 2,000 years to explain the greatest escape story ever pulled off:
humanity from death.

This is the Cross.
Looking at it is Lent.

In today's reading Paul fracks alongside the Cross to show the rescue and our futile attempt.
He can't do anything else but come alongside it. He  refuses to do so.

 God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 

but we preach Christ crucified: 

a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,  

but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, 

Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 

For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, 

and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:21-25

Brendans' life was changed by a rescue story. Will yours?
How?
I found a side-story while researching baby Jessica about a man named Ron:
 "Ron Short, a muscular roofing contractor who was born without collar bones because of cleidocranial dysostosis and so could collapse his shoulders to work in cramped corners, arrived at the site and offered to go down the shaft; they accepted his offer, but did not use it."

The world was offered a rescuer of abnormal birth whose plan was also not used.
He came on Christmas to those who had had not yet become anything folks would go ga-ga over, but he was ga-ga over them...even to the point of death.
His name is Jesus. What do you make of him?
 amen.