Rise and Serve: A Sermon for 4 February 2012

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

A few evenings ago, I spent a couple of hours visiting with a friend who recently returned from spending about six week over the holidays visiting her French cousin who lives in a village not too far from Paris.

While she was there, my friend got a bad case of stomach virus. Her host family decided that she needed medical attention. They called the family doctor, who came to the house to tend to my friend.

What a novel concept that is for us here in the U.S., where I strongly suspect no doctor has made a house call in some 25 years!

In today’s Gospel lesson (Mark 1:29-39, NRSV) Jesus makes a house call. That actually is not what he set out to do. If you can recall for a moment last Sunday’s Gospel, you’ll know that Jesus came to the home of Simon and Andrew straight from “teaching with authority” and casting out a demon in the local synagogue.

So he’s going to Simon and Andrew’s home to spend the remainder of the Sabbath eating and resting. But when he arrives and is immediately told of the mother-in-law’s illness, Jesus does what Jesus does: He heals her—without even asking about her medical insurance or ability to pay!

John Bridges, Christ Healing the Mother-in-Law of Simon Peter

Today’s lessons are rather perfect for a Deacon preacher! First, deacons are charged with being the prophetic voice of the church. That is, like the prophets of old, we contemporary deacons are called to remind the church of how it is to serve God in the world. Care for the sick is one of those ways, as modeled for us by Jesus the Christ, the only Son of God.

                                    
When a healing story is part of our Gospel lesson, I am reminded to look critically at our contemporary society and how we manage health care, and to ask people of faith to do the same. I stay out of the politics of saying exactly HOW we should do it. But Jesus offers us a model of healing for all that should be our ideal and goal.

Second, this story is ideal for deacon preachers because the healed woman immediately gets up to serve. Likewise, deacons model servant ministry by being servants themselves, and encourage and enable the servant ministry of everyone, not only lay people specifically but the church in general. We are to bring the real needs of the world to the church and facilitate the church’s response to those needs.

I’m a member of the Association for Episcopal Deacons, and one of the things we do at our triennial assemblies is share ideas and strategies for enabling the ministries of the congregations we serve. The association itself also engages in ministry. Most recently the AED began a national initiative to address poverty and the causes of poverty in this country.

But in another way, these texts are a challenge to deacons, and not only to deacons but to all Christians. They are a challenge because they make demands on us and they call us to examine critically some of our most cherished values.

Paul’s message to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 9:15-23, NRSV) really hits us over the head with that, and I'll return to that lesson in a minute. But first, we have more to learn from Jesus.

He goes to the home of friends to eat and rest, but upon arrival is immediately confronted with need. And he sets aside his own needs to respond to that need.

Moreover, no sooner does the sun go down, but that he is confronted by the world at his doorstep—a world of sick people. And he tends to their needs.

I don’t know about you but I think caller ID is the greatest invention since sliced bread! And once I have ended a day of work and gone home to eat and rest, I would much rather ignore those calls that are likely to demand more of me.

More than one Gospel story reminds us that Jesus responded to the needs of people, even when he himself was tired and needed rest.

But the remainder of this story is also a very important lesson for us. Early the next morning, Jesus got up and slipped away by himself to a place of prayer and meditation. Jesus needed to recharge his batteries, so to speak, and so.. do.. we.

Lent is fast approaching. We think of it as a time we “give up” something: chocolate, beer, whatever. And that is fine and good. Fasting is a Lenten discipline. But this year, think about also using Lent to recharge your spiritual batteries. If Jesus needed to get away to a place of prayer and meditation, so do we. Serving a hurting world is hard enough, and impossible to do unless we are connected to the source of all healing.

Indeed, the mother-in-law in this story is worthy of our attention as well. Healing is not only about the body, but about the spirit as well.

Note that this story offers not a single hint of “let’s make a deal.” Jesus doesn’t extract any promise from the woman that she will serve if he heals her, and she does not attempt to “earn” her healing with any promised service.

Simply put, Jesus heals because that’s what he does; she gets up and serves as a natural response to that healing. We express our connection with Divine love and forgiveness by sharing that Divine love and forgiveness in service to the world.

Now back to Paul. What in the world can we make of this notion that we can or should be “all things to all people”? What a strange idea!

We are way more inclined to believe things like, “to thine own self be true.” We are devotees of Individualism with a capital I—the notion that each of us is unique and different and entitled to live out our uniqueness and individuality in every possible way. And along with individualism comes “personal responsibility,” the idea that each of us is responsible for ourselves and our own well-being.

Personal responsibility and respect for individual differences are useful concepts. We need to learn those things and practice them in our relationships with others.

But all too often they spill over into much less flattering things, things like needing to always be right—at the expense of all who disagree with me, needing to feel safe—at the expense of the civil liberties of others, needing to exercise my right to choose or to do—without regard for how my choices or deeds might hurt others.

Paul offers us an alternative vision, an alternative devoid of damaging ego claims. Indeed, he sounds devoid of ego. But he offers this vision from a position of great emotional and spiritual maturity and strength. Only the truly strong can become weak in order to reach out to the weak. Only the free can give up freedom in order to become one with those who are not free.

And only those who know themselves to be beloved children of God can rise and serve, like Simon’s mother-in-law, and strive to be “all things to all people” for the sake of the gospel, like Paul.

 AMEN