RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - February 8, 2009

“Bookends”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Mark 1:26-39

Jesus was a very busy man, according to the Gospel writer Mark. Still within that very first chapter of Mark’s narrative, we have already learned that Jesus has become a baptized Jew, an astounding preacher, a brilliant expositor of sacred Hebrew scripture, and a miraculous healer.

Last week, you may remember, Jesus shouted down an unclean spirit festering inside a nameless man in the synagogue congregation when he preached his first sermon. This week, that Shabbat service has concluded, and, rather than going to Tim Horton’s or Cole Farms for dinner, Jesus heads to Simon Peter and Andrew’s home – only to discover upon arriving that Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is under the weather - ill with a fever.

How could this have happened? Surely Simon knew. But – what was he thinking? After all, who would make dinner if the woman of the house was ill disposed? Didn’t Simon ever think of that?

Perhaps this new disciple figured – what the hay? Jesus managed to heal the nutcase in the synagogue. Maybe he can do something for my mother-in-law – while at the same time getting me brownie points with my little woman – and her mom.

Of course, who really knows why Simon extended the dinner invitation and Jesus headed across town. However, we do know that as soon as Jesus arrived, he took the woman’s hand, summoned up all his healing energy yet again, and the fever subsided. In fact, she bounced right back and felt so good that she whipped up a meal better than any bowl of Tim Horton soup or Cole Farms meatloaf ever would have been.

However, the guests had not even started on dessert yet, when the front door knocks began. As Scott Hoezee imagines, “Opening the door, Simon noticed a line of people stretching around the block, most of them looking two sheets to the wind with various diseases.

You could have built a good-sized fishing boat with the wood you could have collected from all the crutches these people were using, and there were just enough twitchy folks out there to let Simon know that the man at the synagogue was not the only demon-plagued soul in Capernaum.

"It's for you, Lord" Peter said, calling into the dining room. It would be many hours later before Jesus was able to close the front door again, having ministered to so very many dear souls in distress.” Needless-to-say, the townspeople were still astounded by this man from Nazareth who had suddenly come into their backwater lives.

Yes, Jesus was a very busy man. Perhaps that is why early the next morning, before the sun threw its first rays across Capernaum, when it was that in-between hour between nighttime and dawn, Jesus snuck out the back door in search of a silent space and quiet time to rest in the moment and to feel the presence of God hovering about him, just beyond his senses. “Be still,” he could almost hear the sacred words whispered on the early morning breeze. “Be still, and know that I am God – and I am here – and you are my beloved.” Ah……

"Where have you been? Everyone has been looking for you!" Simon’s voice broke into the silent dawn with a certain harshness – not angry harsh but more like when run your fingernails down a chalkboard.

And the unspoken words were these: With so much work to do, we are on a roll now after all, what in the world are you doing out here praying – or meditating – or taking time for yourself? Is that selfish or what?

“Ah, yes,” Jesus murmured to himself. And shaking his head as if to shake off the loveliness of the past few moments, he got up, brushed the dust from his tunic, and announced matter-of-factly, “Time to get going. After all, there are people to see, places to go, sermons to preach, demons to exorcise.”

And he left Capernaum with the twelve before breakfast and headed to the next town – and the next – and the next. After all, it was not enough just to stay and bask in the praise of what he had done yesterday. There were countless more people in many other places who needed to hear what he had to say: that God loved them and wanted to help them have a more abundant life – that they too were God’s beloved.

And so we learn first of all in Mark’s little tale, which in its few verses crams together a second healing miracle along with a sudden departure from the people who were ready to give him a key to the city, that Jesus was not about seeking fame and fortune.

At least according to Mark, the very earliest Gospel writer, Jesus never intended to save the world or to organize an evangelical campaign. He never dreamed of starting a new religion.

All he wanted to do was preach the Good News – the Good News that God intended the world to be a different place than it was - whole and not broken, a deeply spiritual place founded not on Roman imperialism and the legalistic theology of the Pharisees but grounded in an ethos of compassion for one another and justice for all – even the untouchables.

How did Jesus ever keep all these conflicting demands in check – that is what I want to explore - Oh, Jesus, my eyes hurt, my feet ache, my back is killing me….Where have you been? Everyone has been looking for you!" - and not lose sight of his calling – to simply preach the good news?

I think the answer lies in those precious moments sandwiched – like bookends - in between the healings and the sudden departure from Capernaum. Remember the quiet time, the silent time, the “Be still, and know that I am God” time that Jesus soaked up in the wee hours of the morning?

As we become more acquainted with the Gospel stories of Jesus, we see time and time again that he carves out these moments of silent time, these quiet spaces for himself. Oh, it was not easy, and they never lasted for very long.

Someone was always breaking into them to announce that there were 5000 people on the hillside needing to be fed, or a storm was brewing, and everyone in the boat was afraid. But long or short, those moments appear to have been incredibly – miraculously – restorative times for Jesus.

You know, when you think about it, in many ways our lives are not dissimilar from Jesus’ life. Though we are not traveling from town to town, healing the blind and sick and demonized and lame, we too are very busy people.

We commute our average 45 minutes to work each morning – and home again at night. We fill our lives with meetings and soccer games and drama productions. We depend too much on Pizza Hut and MacDonald’s – and lose sight of the value of a real meal with the people we say we love.

And in the midst of it all our hearts tell us that something is missing – because we hardly ever really feel restored. In fact, most of the time, to a greater or lesser extent, we just feel burned out.

Maybe we too need to recognize as Jesus clearly did an eon ago that healing and wholeness and restoration come in those silent places, those quiet times when we make a point of keeping in touch with God in a very plan-full way, from stopping and being still and in the stillness finding that God is really there ready to breathe life into us once more – if only we would stop long enough to take a breath.

Maybe the only quiet place you can find right now is here on Sunday morning – and that is OK. However, if that is the case, make sure that you are here – and engaged – every Sunday.

Maybe your quiet place is in your garden or before your easel or in front of a pottery wheel. That is OK too – but make sure that you sneak out the back door regularly with your hoe, or your paintbrush, or your lump of clay.

The lesson here is not where your quiet place is, but that you carve one out – and, as Jesus did, make a conscious choice to go there.

Because, you see, it is in that quiet place that you will not only be restored, but you will find God, and maybe even be transformed enough to really live glimpses of the Gospel message.

After all, those who wait upon God, those who rest in Yahweh, those who carve out a quiet place will renew their strength. They will spread their wings and soar like eagles. They will run and not get tired; they will walk and never lag behind.

Those are Isaiah’s words, but surely they were in the back of Mark’s mind too as he fashioned his vignettes like bookends: busy times for Jesus on either end – a slew of healings and a quick departure - and cradled in between a silent space and a quiet time – and maybe the real point of his story.

Sermon - February 8, 2009

“Bookends”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Mark 1:26-39

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Mark 1:26-39