Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany

Here is a link to the texts for the day at Sundays and Seasons: http://members.sundaysandseasons.com/planner_rcl_view.php?event_date_id=951

pax Christi,

Pr. J

2-8-2009, Epiphany 5B
Salem-Luther Memorial Parish - Parrottsville, Tennessee
Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39
Have you not known? Have you not heard?

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?”

The reading from Isaiah opens with words filled with expectation and excitement. They remind me of the old style news boy on the street corner waving the latest edition of the newspaper and shouting, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” The opening words of the reading convey the sense that the bearer of the news knows something no one else knows and is bursting at the seams to tell everyone what is happening, but also they suggest a little bit of surprise on the part of the news bearer that other people do not know what the headlines are about.

This part of Isaiah was written during the Babylonian Captivity, when the people of Jerusalem had been taken captive into Babylon. Here Isaiah wants to let people know that God is about to do something powerful, grand, and compassionate: God is going to return the exiles to their lost home. In that way the people of God will know God’s grace at work in their lives. So the Book of Isaiah tells people that change is about to happen! Things new and different will happen soon for the nation of Israel.But the things that are new and different, the things that will change, the acts that God is about to do could very well have to do with one’s own personal life. That was the case of Simon’s mother-in-law in the Gospel reading.Last week the Gospel of Mark presented the story of Jesus healing the man with the unclean spirit. Basically Jesus made this man clean again and so made him acceptable to his community and gave him the assurance that he was acceptable to God. He also set the man straight about what the Holy One of God was there to do: that he came to heal people and not to destroy people.

After the scene at the synagogue we are told that Jesus went with his disciples to the home of Simon and Andrew. Their house, or what is thought by some to be their house, usually called the house of Peter, has been unearthed in the archeological dig at Capernaum only a few huundred feet from the synagogue. The house was used as a church from the first century of Christianity; in one room that appears to have served as a worship area parts of what we would call a liturgy were hand-written on the wall: Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Who knows? Maybe it was the same house mentioned in the Gospel reading.

There, we are told, Simon’s mother-in-law was in the bed with a fever. The story plays out in a very simple way: she did not ask for Jesus, they told Jesus about her; she did not reach for Jesus, he took her hand; she did not rise herself, he lifted her from her sick bed, and the fever left her. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see that house turned into a shrine a few years later and made into a place where early Christians remembered that Christ had mercy on a sick woman, and so the handwriting on the wall takes on extra meaning: Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Perhaps in those ancient hand-scrawled words on the wall of that house there is a hint as to just how Simon’s mother-in-law began to serve Jesus after her fever left her. Could she have been the leader, the pastor, of the very first house church, dedicated to serve the Messiah who healed her? I like to think she was.

Historically, we don’t know what really happened in that house or how it happened. But whatever it was, there was power behind it. And people sensed this. In the very next verse what do they say except that they brought to Jesus all who were sick. A large crowd was gathered at the door of the house. This was a big deal. This was news worthy. Not just anyone could command this attention. Everybody in Capernaum turned out for this: the wealthy and the poor, beggars and merchants, the sick and the doctors, slaves with their burdens, soldiers with their duty, children, women young and old, poets, thieves, pious people, people shunned as sinners, and fishermen. The Gospel of Mark gives us the impression that the whole city was crowding the narrow streets before the front doorstep of Simon's house to find this man who spoke and acted with authority.

And Jesus did not waste the opportunity.

He looked people in the eye.

He spoke directly to each person present.

He healed many at the door of the house, cast out their demons, that was the best way that they could make sense out of it.

I think people came to him with their problems. I think they came with the burdens that had been laid on them by Law and Tradition. They came to him branded as unclean, not well, broken, lame, sinner - many, if not most, just seeking forgiveness from God and acceptance because no one else would forgive them and accept them and he was their last hope for any compassion and humanity.

More than anything else I think he heard confessions as people told him what brought them to him, this Holy One of God who healed the man in the synagogue and healed Simon’s mother-in-law. He heard all the stories about people being rejected and shunned and cast out, and in turn he cast out the shame and guilt and mental pain that crippled so many in that time and place. He told them they were made clean again, they were forgiven, they were acceptable to God.

Surely God has come to them in this man Jesus. And as the people heard Jesus pronounce the blessing over them they were healed and their lives were made new again.

Word got around, you know, it’s the power of common gossip used for once for good and constructive means: Jesus heals us, and he is changing the way we live; he is changing the way we relate to others; he is changing the way we even think and feel about ourselves. No longer are we scum-of-the-earth-sinners because of illness, errors in judgment, mistakes, human imperfection, circumstances beyond our control, and just plain birth. Now we are sinners made into saints!; sinners who are the children of God, sinners who are the true heirs of the Kingdom that has been kept from us for so long by Law and Tradition. We are sinners who are taken by the hand and lifted up out of our sin and brought into the Kingdom by Jesus.

He makes us acceptable to God when no one else cared, or was willing or was able to do that. And in everything he did the words of the prophet Isaiah began to be fulfilled, not in the sense that Jesus was blindly acting out some so-called psychic’s predictions made long ago; let’s not be so silly as to confuse the prophet of God Isaiah with the likes of Nostradamus. Old Testament prophets were not prophets in the pagan sense that they foretold the future. That’s what the lady with the crystal ball does at the county fair. Isaiah did not use a crystal ball. His job as a prophet of God was to speak forth for God. And he did. There’s a difference between that and forecasting the future. Jesus fulfilled the words of Isaiah by making the word of God a real, living presence and benevolent power for the people who needed it the most: the sick, the lost, the suffering. He brought the kingdom of God near to them and opened its gates for them. And they were absolutely amazed to find that when they least expected it, because of Jesus they had all been made children of the God of compassion who had come down to them in the midst of all their pain and trouble.And the ancient words of Isaiah may well have whispered to people on the breeze as the wind swept over the crowded Capernaum streets while Jesus healed people at the door of the house:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

Has it not been told you from the beginning?

Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?...Yahweh is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth…He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless…They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not fall.

Throughout this section of Mark Jesus has been speaking with authority so that when Jesus speaks, it has an effect on people. Lives are transformed. People are changed for the better.In the language of the New Testament, people are healed.

They are forgiven.

Their sins are forgotten; the personal demons which haunt them are dispelled.

They become children of God with new inner strength, and with their lives lifted up as if they had risen on eagles' wings.

That is something we remember in communion, where we hear God's promise of new life given to us through Jesus who was crucified and died to bring that promise to us. We remember it today as we share the bread and cup.We remember it anywhere and every time the people of Jesus gather around him to be healed and lifted up, and in that gathering we find that Jesus still speaks to us, giving us a new teaching with authority.

Have your not known? Have you not heard?

Has the Gospel not been preached here before?

We can listen to Jesus when he speaks to us in the midst of our busy, noisy, crowded lives.

We can open our ears to him as we shoulder our burdens and do our duties.We can meet him on the front door step of our house, let him heal us, dispel our fever, and cast out our personal demons.

He will speak with authority, which many people do not like these days.

But if we let him speak to us and let him reach into our lives to heal us then he will remake our lives for the better, and everyday we will become more and more the children of God.

Thanks be to God