Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Everyone Is Searching (2/4/18)

Christ Healing Peter's Mother-in-Law from the Hitda Codex
On Sunday, February 4th we examined the story of Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law in the Gospel of Mark. We considered this story in light of some positive changes here at Rehoboth Presbyterian Church and how we are living into Christ's call to be the Church. 
Everyone Is Searching (2/4/18)

Sermon
          Good morning. As many of you already know, I bought a new car this week. Now I’m really happy with the car and I’ll be glad to show it to you after lunch. But I have to tell you, shopping for and buying the car really threw off my week. I felt like I was playing catchup every day. Normally, I send Kathy the information for the bulletin by Wednesday afternoon. Sometimes it takes me longer to figure out my sermon title, so I’ll send her the hymns and the rest of the liturgy while I wait for some kind of inspiration. Even then, I usually have a sense of where my sermon is going, and I’m looking for something clever to tie it all together.
My new car is the Chevy Impala (left), the Malibu (right) was my old car.
          Not this week. It was Wednesday afternoon and I had nothing!
          Well, almost nothing.
          Before I was ordained, I spent about a year and a half doing pulpit supply. During that time, I served an internship at a church in the South Hills, so I’ve been preaching almost every Sunday for the last three or four years. I realized that I preached on this Gospel story three years ago. The light bulb went off—I could recycle! So, I copied the old sermon title and I sent it off to Kathy.
          Then I reread my old sermon. It had some good stuff in it, but it’s got a lot of stuff that I’ve been saying to you for the last year or so. It was the first sermon in which I told a congregation to be the Church, and it was as new and surprising to them as it was to you, when I first preached it to the congregation in Pittsburgh. But you’re in a very different place than they were, literally and figuratively.
          Still, we’re starting with the same Gospel story, and it’s pretty straightforward: after teaching at the synagogue, Jesus and the disciples go to the home of Simon and Andrew. Simon’s mother-in-law is sick with a fever and she is healed by Jesus. Then at sunset, the disciples brought people to Jesus so that Jesus might heal them and cast out demons. The next morning, Jesus goes off to a deserted place for prayer. Eventually his disciples find him and say to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” So, Jesus goes forth, back into the towns and the synagogues and proclaims the message of the Kingdom of God.
          That’s it! Jesus preaches, Jesus heals, Jesus goes off to pray, and then Jesus goes back out there to do it again. Some passages require a lot of explanation. Not here. Jesus interacts with people by teaching and healing, then he goes off to pray, and then he goes back out and does it again. Lather, rinse, repeat. The disciples are always there, watching and learning. Eventually, it will be their job to preach, teach, and heal. But for the time being the disciples are in the presence of the living Word of God. And everyone is searching for Jesus; people are congregating around Jesus because they know something is up. Something’s going on. We call this the inbreaking of God’s kingdom.
          And that’s where I was, about three years ago, when I had a small crisis. I mean a really small crisis. While I was working on my sermon, I lost my cell phone. I’m not the guy who loses stuff. I can usually tell you where I left my phone or my keys. I can usually tell you how much money’s in my wallet without looking. But that day, when I reached for my phone, it was gone.
          I looked on my desk, my coffee table, and the divider between the dining room and the kitchen—that’s where I usually leave my wallet, my keys, and my phone. It wasn’t there. I checked the pockets of all my jackets. Not there. I went down to my car; not there. Then I went back in and looked at my desk. Still not there. Then I searched the same four places, again and again, and I couldn’t find the phone.
          A light bulb went off! I emailed several friends; I asked them to call my cell. No one called. So, I went back to work on my sermon.
          My desk was messy. To one side of my computer there was a big commentary. On the other side were some photocopies of different articles and commentaries. I grabbed the top copy and set it to the side. Guess what? There was my phone. Just a few inches to the left of where I expected to find it, and under a few papers. That can happen when your desk is a mess.
          The church where I was serving this internship was kind of a mess, too. On a good Sunday they had 20-25 people in worship. The pastor had served there for about ten years. She was hired at three-quarter time, but they had cut her call to half time, and then to 19 hours a week so that they didn’t have to pay her benefits. And they could barely afford to keep the building maintained.
          No sermon from a guy who was fresh out of seminary was going to change their reality. When the church was founded, every member walked to church, but the congregation had been losing members for years. People moved out of the neighborhood to suburbs with bigger houses and garages. Some people drove from their new homes to their old church, but there was only street parking. It was hard to attract new members, and the folks who remained had been running their church the same way, month after month, year after year, in the same way that I kept looking for my phone in the same three or four places—and with the same results. There was a hunger for something different in that congregation, but there was no direction to the search.
          I got lucky; I found my phone. That church hasn’t fared so well. The pastor retired. They sold the building, but they don’t have enough money to pay another pastor, so they just get pulpit supply. But you are in a much better, healthier place.
          When I started here, you were running on auto-pilot. Like that church in Pittsburgh, there was a hunger for something different here, but there was no direction to your search. And like that church in Pittsburgh, you had the same small group of people doing all the work, and doing it in the same way that I searched for my phone, over and over. That’s where you were. Past tense.
          I feel something very different in this congregation now. We’ve seen new people step into leadership roles. At the same time, we’ve long-standing members—members who served in leadership, but grew tired of serving—we’ve seen a number of those folks return to service. We are returning to old tasks and we’re taking on new work, and that’s the way forward.
          In this morning’s Gospel lesson, we see several responses to Jesus; that is, responses to the inbreaking of God’s kingdom. The inbreaking is about the renewal of creation. That’s why so many people come to Jesus for healing and that’s why people want to hear him preach. The old ways weren’t working for them; they were searching for something new.
          In the last half of this morning’s gospel lesson, we see a pattern that Jesus repeats throughout the gospels. He engages with people, as individuals and in crowds. Then he retreats to a deserted place for prayer. After Jesus has centered himself, he goes back out into the crowds to teach and preach and heal. It’s like Jesus goes back and forth between being an extrovert and an introvert. He goes out into the crowds to teach and to preach and to heal. And then when he gets worn out from all the people, he goes on a short retreat for prayer and contemplation. Then Simon and the other disciples found him and said, “Everyone is searching for you,” and Jesus went back out to the crowds and the synagogues, and went back to work.
          The inbreaking of God’s kingdom is also about new growth. In this reality, we’re not called to remain the same; we’re called to grow. We’re called to take on the work that Jesus did—the preaching and the teaching and the healing. We’ve always been comfortable with certain parts of this, but we’re not called to stay the same, we’re called to share the Word with new people, and in places that can make us feel uncomfortable.
          This is scary, but we can’t be paralyzed by fear as we live into Christ’s call to preach and teach and heal. And as you go forth to do these things, you will make mistakes. You’ll goof something up. You’ll miss opportunities to reach people. And that’s okay! I had a seminary professor who said that if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing it poorly.[1] I love that!
          The responsibility for getting the job done is not entirely on us. Remember that the Holy Spirit is with us as we do this work. Remember, too that the inbreaking of God’s kingdom is not a past event; the inbreaking of the kingdom is a present reality, so we can’t stand still and we can’t keep looking for it in the same three or four places every time.
          Other people are searching for the inbreaking of God’s kingdom, even if they don’t know what they’re searching for. Find the other people who are searching, the ones who are not gathered inside these four walls. Go to them just as Christ did. Yes, that’s scary. Trust that God will watch over all of us as we discern how we’re called to teach and preach and heal, and then trust that God will continue to watch over us as we teach and preach and heal. It doesn’t matter if we don’t do everything perfectly, so long as we get out there and do the work. Thanks be to God. Amen!

Benediction
          Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that we are called to be the Church, the body of Christ in the world today. We are called to go forth and be instruments of God’s love and peace and love and reconciliation. We are called to do the difficult work of mending broken spirits. Do not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. Go forth and be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!

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