Festival of Homiletics (a.k.a., a week of good preaching!)

Last week I earned 25 contact hours of continuing ed, from 7:00 p.m. Monday to noon on Friday, by attending the Festival of Homiletics in Atlanta.  (For more info, see www.goodpreacher.com)  In a word, it was awesome.  It was also renewing, refreshing, and just plain great.

A friend and colleague invited me to go with her.  Before going, I didn’t know quite what to expect.  I had heard of some of the speakers: Walter Brueggemann, Michael Curry, Lillian Daniel, Adam Hamilton, James Howell, Thomas Long, and Will Willimon.  But I didn’t know what to expect.  Was I going to have to defend being a woman pastor, like I occasionally do in North Carolina?  Was I going to find myself amidst a sea of extreme conservative or extreme liberal theology?  Was I going to be bored or wish I hadn’t come, after spending my whole year’s allotment of continuing ed money on this one event?  Gracias a Dios, the answer to all those was no.  All but two of the denominations present (Catholic and Baptist) ordain women.  The speakers were engaging.  The theology was neither overly conservative nor liberal, but in the middle, indeed “mainline,” as most speakers and attendees belonged to mainline Protestantism.   I felt affirmed in where I stand rather than having to be defensive about it or quiet about it (so as to not get drawn in to arguments with people who will not concede any ground). 

On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday the Festival ran two simultaneous venues and you had to choose which speaker you wanted to hear.  For the second session on Tuesday, my friend and I chose the secondary and smaller venue because of the topic, “Who Am I to Preach to You? Authority and Preaching to Postmoderns.”  We were so glad we did, and spent most of the next two days also at the alternative site.  What we discovered from other friends was that we heard more hope from these speakers than from the speakers at the main site, many of whom apparently talked about the decline of the Church. 

During the talk on preaching to postmoderns, I decided to embrace my postmodernity and post on Facebook during the session from my phone.  This was radical for me, but this speaker said something I thought was worth sharing.  There’s a lot of junk on Facebook (which I’m guilty of posting, too), but I felt like this was something worth sharing beyond “at Ebenezer Baptist Church – so much history!” or “really enjoying this awesome music.”  These were also new ideas or ones I’d not heard quite so eloquently phrased before.    

The first one I was just amused by: “If you'd become better sinners, you'd have better sermon illustrations.” Nadia Bolz-Weber was the speaker on preaching to postmoderns.  My husband’s response?  He’s been telling me that for years. 

Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church preached on Mary Magdalene: “We need some crazy Christians. The sane ones are killing us.”  Mary Magdalene went while it was still dark to go look at the tomb, she didn’t wait for daylight.  Bishop Curry did specify that we’re talking culturally crazy, not clinically.  A connection that I made was a shift from “well-behaved women rarely make history,” a saying that’s always bothered  me, to Bishop Curry’s statement that “only the crazy ones do something of significance in this world.”  Only crazy men and women do something of significance, and that is more than simply “make history.” 

This next one is a paraphrase of a couple paragraphs of a lecture: Worship space is a foreign land and we are all immigrants without green cards, only here because God invited us. None of us have ownership of it.  The preacher is also a foreigner.  Claudio Carvalhaes was the only Latino speaker.  He led the worship before his session and led us in a Pentecostal prayer, which I would term Latino-style, where we all prayed out loud our own prayers at the same time, just like so often happens at Hispanic churches.  I can’t wait to try to this with a small group at Orange because I’ve often wondered how to make it happen among non-Latinos. 

“Worship isn't directed to you. The only person we want to get something out of it is God.” Lillian Daniel preached.  The point isn’t for you to get something out of it.

Another paraphrase from a lecture: It's hard to end a sermon because we serve a living God and nobody can exhaust the Gospel, there is always something else to be said.  It amused me that this came from Bishop Will Willimon, because it has been said about him that he’s never had an unpublished thought.  However, he ended both his lecture and his sermon early. 

Finally, the closing song at the very end of the conference was “As a Fire is Meant for Burning,” words by Ruth Duck.  This is not a new idea, but the poetry is beautiful:

“Preaching Christ and not our customs,

let us build a bridge of care,

joining hands across the nations,

finding neighbours everywhere.”

This Message Will Self-Destruct in 5 Seconds

Psalm 4; Luke 24:36-48

            How is Missions Sunday like being an international government spy?  Well, before we can get to the punch line and the “Mission: Impossible” analogy I know you’re all waiting for, we need to set some background first. 

            First, this is the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke that we just read from.  It’s not the end of Luke’s story, because he also wrote the book of Acts, but it is the end of his Gospel.  This chapter begins with Jesus’ resurrection, when the women went to the tomb and found it empty and an angel told them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”  And the women go and tell the disciples.  Then, what Luke relates next isn’t about Thomas like we read last week, but about the road to Emmaus.  To refresh your memory, this is about the two followers of Jesus who are so discouraged by his crucifixion and the empty tomb and the report that he’s risen but no one’s seen him, that they leave town and go walking from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus.  Along the road, Jesus joins them, only, kinda like a spy, they don’t recognize him.  Jesus asks why they’re so mopey and dejected.  They ask him if he lives under a rock because how on earth could he not have heard about what’s been going on in Jerusalem?!  They explain they were followers of this guy Jesus, who they thought was going to save Israel, and then their authorities crucified him.  And then three days later, his tomb is empty.  So, they’ve skipped town.  Jesus responds by interpreting the Scriptures to them, how Moses and all the prophets show that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and then to enter into his glory.  They get to Emmaus and Jesus makes like he’s going to go on, but they invite him to come eat with them.  Of course, Jesus breaks the bread and while he’s breaking the bread these two guys realize it’s Jesus!  And as they realize it’s him, he vanishes, again, kinda like a good spy, there one second and gone the next.  These two guys are so awestruck that they’ve just seen Jesus that they go back the way they’ve just come, all the way back to Jerusalem, to tell the others. 

And it’s as they are telling the others that our Gospel story today picks up with Jesus entering the room while they’re all gathered and talking about who’s seen him and who hasn’t.  Now, these others include the eleven remaining disciples, including Peter who has seen him, plus some other followers, or in today’s parlance, groupies.  Jesus has kinda concentric circles of people who hang out with him.  There’s the crowds who see him when he comes to their town, there’s the folks who have followed him all over everywhere, the groupies, there’s the twelve disciples who he handpicked, and even within the twelve, he often chooses Peter, James, and John to do special things with him, like witness his transfiguration or pray in the garden of Gethsemane with him.  So, the eleven disciples plus some followers are in this room that Jesus enters and says “Peace be with you.”  Now, of all the people in the room, three of them have already seen Jesus post-resurrection.  Everyone else has heard their firsthand reports, but apparently no one believes them because they all react to Jesus as though he’s a ghost.  Now, even though they just lived through Jesus’ passion and heard reliable firsthand witnesses of his resurrection, they still didn’t believe it.  Pastor Ken talked about doubt in his sermon last week and his final point was that “doubt disappears when we meet the risen Lord for ourselves.”  When we meet the risen Lord for ourselves, like Thomas in last week’s Gospel lesson and like others of Jesus’ followers in this week’s lesson, when we meet the risen Lord for ourselves, doubt disappears.  Jesus had to prove he wasn’t a ghost but was there in the flesh.  Just like with Thomas, he invited folks to touch him and see that it was really him.  He also ate some fish, because ghosts don’t eat.  They’ve heard Jesus was risen from the dead, now for the first time they see for themselves. 

Jesus had to get past their fear first.  If you remember, these folks have locked themselves in the upper room out of fear.  Jesus addresses their fear and disbelief first.  It really is him.  Then, just like on the road to Emmaus, he explains the Scriptures to them.  Minds cannot be opened when they are trapped by fear.  Jesus calms their fears and then he opens their minds to understand the Scriptures.  What has stuck with me all week with this passage is that even though they know the Scriptures, they still need them explained to them.  Even though they’ve studied the Scriptures, and we’re talking about the law of Moses, or the Torah, the first five books of the bible, plus all the prophets plus the psalms, so most of what we know as the Old Testament; even though like all good Jews they have read them and studied them, Jesus still has to interpret them to them.  It’s a repeat of what he did on the road to Emmaus, explaining how the Messiah has to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, that’s it’s all there in the Scriptures.  The Old Testament is all about Jesus!  What it also shows, though, is a difference between knowing and understanding.  We are living in the Information Age.  We have knowledge at our fingertips, literally.  We don’t have to go to the library or ask an expert.  We can whip out our smart phone or i-pad or anywhere with the internet, which is almost everywhere, and look up what we want to know.  However, how much of that knowledge do we actually understand?  How much of that knowledge can we actually attribute meaning to?  Knowing is not the same as understanding.  Knowing what the Bible says is not the same as understanding it.  Being able to quote the bible is not the same as living out the Word of God.  We are not Christians who each live on their own separate island but part of the Christian community.  We test our own interpretations against Christian tradition, reason, the Scriptures, and experience.  We don’t do this on our own and we don’t gain understanding on our own.  Just as Jesus had to interpret the Scriptures to his own disciples and followers, even after they’d lived through his passion and resurrection, so we need them interpreted to us.  That’s what we do when we come to church, when we study the bible, when we pray and listen for the Spirit’s moving.  Knowing and understanding are two different things.  It reminds me of a science teacher I had in high school.  Her tests were pretty standard multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank, and short answer.  However, her make-up tests, which I had to take one time, were not.  Those tests were strictly essay.  Write everything you know about protein synthesis.  Essays are harder because if you just string facts together and throw in vocabulary words like ribosomes and uracil and thymine, your writing isn’t very coherent.  To write a good essay, you have to show understanding of the facts and the terms.  It’s the difference between knowing and understanding.  You can know that grace is the unconditional love of God, but until you’ve experienced it, you can’t understand it. 

            Finally, getting back to Jesus and his followers, even though they’ve been his followers for three years, day in and day out for most of them, Jesus still has to commission them to be his witnesses to all the nations.  Jesus still has to call them.  Jesus still has to give them a mission.   “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” is to be witnesses and proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations.  We don’t do anything without a call.  Agents don’t act without a mission.  There’s no story, no plot, no TV show or movie, without a call, a mission.  We don’t just do good things because we’re Christians.  We do the specific tasks that God calls us to do.  Before seminary, when God called me to serve him overseas and I was researching different mission agencies, I found that some of them have very vague mission statements.  In effect, they say, “we do mission work because we’re Christians and we’re supposed to do good things like that.”  The one that I served with said we do this because we’re called to do this, we have a specific goal with a specific end in mind and specific means of how we go about it and why we go about it how we go about it and we know when we’ve accomplished our goal because we have specific ways to measure it.  God doesn’t call us to do vague good things; he calls us to specific ways of serving him.  When I was preparing to serve in Nicaragua, my mom asked about the needs here in North Carolina and just why I had to go to Nicaragua to serve God when I could do it here.  My answer was that God had called me to serve him in Nicaragua; at that time in my life God wasn’t calling me to serve him in North Carolina, like he is now.  At that time, God was asking me to walk with his people in Nicaragua.  At this time God wants me here, walking with y’all.  We are not called to all ministries in all places and all times but to specific ministry.  That’s part of why we don’t all have the same gifts.  Of course, sometimes the ministry corresponds to your God-given gifts, and sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes God calls the equipped and sometimes he equips the called.  Pastor Ken has a natural gift for speaking and preaching; I don’t, yet I’m also called to preach.  So the question is: what are you called to do?  What stirs your heart?  What has God put on your heart?  Is it something you’re ready to do or something you need some training in? 

            In your bulletin is a missions survey.  There are lots of specific ways we offer for you to serve God.  If the one you feel God calling you to isn’t listed on here, there’s a space where you can write it in.  What is your mission?  How is God asking you to serve him today, this month, this year?  Take a second to pray about it, reflect on it, and follow the Spirit’s leading.  And [air quotes] “as always, should any of you be caught or killed…” so what?  We know who we serve and we know where we’re going when we leave this earth. We also know that when we’re following the Lord’s will for our lives, we’re in the safest place we can be because we’re serving him.  What better place is there to be?

Hungry for God or Hungry for Brains?

This is my sermon from yesterday. The Scripture readings were Ephesians 2:1-10 and John 3:14-21.

There’s a popular TV show in its second season on AMC called “The Walking Dead.” Anyone here watch it? I have never watched it, but it is on every Sunday night at my house. My husband discovered that he can’t DVR it because his coworkers will be talking about it at work on Monday morning. Before I met my husband my knowledge of zombies was limited to “Scooby-Doo.” [Hold arms out.] Arrrgh! What I have since learned is that zombies are not people dressed up to scare away pesky kids, but are the living dead, usually infected with some sort of virus or bacteria that makes them a zombie. And to be a zombie is to always be hungry, traditionally for human brains; they are never full. And the only way to kill them is to cause major trauma to the head, and then that body is finally dead. There’s no going back from being a zombie to a human; the direction is human to zombie. Yet that opposite direction, from zombie to human, is what Paul wrote about in the Ephesians passage we read. Leaving out the prepositional phrases, he wrote that, “You were once the walking dead, walking in sin, doing whatever felt good and whatever you wanted, but God made us alive with Christ, if we choose to accept that gift.” So what we’ve got here is, dead in sin to alive in Christ. Zombie to human. Before we accepted Christ, we were zombies, always searching, always hungry. But God made us alive with Christ, we became alive when we chose to live with Christ. One of the early Church fathers from the 2^nd century, Irenaeus wrote that “the glory of God is man fully alive.” The glory of God is humanity fully alive. We were zombies but God is offering us the gift of life.

For just how that process works and an explanation of that gift, we turn to the scripture reading from John. Jennings just read the most well-known bible verse of all time. I think I saw a few of you mouthing it along with him: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.” Accepting this gift of eternal life, of being alive with Christ, means believing in Christ. And I want to distinguish between two kinds of believing, because there’s a difference between believing something with your head and believing something with your heart. You can give intellectual assent to something, and it doesn’t change anything. For example, a friend tells you her car gets 30 miles to the gallon, and you look at her Civic and say, “yeah, I can believe that.” You believe your friend, you agree with what she says. Or you can say you believe that the earth is round. It is, whether you believe it or not, and it’s simply a cognitive affirmation. You’re only using your brain(!) for these kinds of beliefs. Friends, believing in Jesus is not like believing the earth is round. It is not the same as believing that that Civic can get 30 miles to the gallon. If you are only giving lip service to Jesus and it’s an intellectual faith, that’s not faith in Jesus. Jesus calls for us to believe in him with our hearts, to know here [touch heart] that what he says is true and that he has come so that we might have eternal life. This is ‘believe’ as an action verb, a verb that you live out, that changes your life, not simply something you believe in your head that then doesn’t affect anything. The opposite of this kind of belief isn’t disbelief or unbelief, but disobedience. One of the prepositions I left out when condensing the Ephesians passage is that “once you were the walking dead, walking in sin, following the rule of a destructive spiritual power and this is the spirit of disobedience to God’s will.” When you were a zombie, you didn’t obey God. Believing God, believing in Christ Jesus and living with him, means being obedient to him. Being obedient means that your behavior changes, your life changes. Before you didn’t read God’s Word, now you do. Before you weren’t active in a community of faith, now you are. It means you believe it with your heart.

So if we believe with our hearts and obey Jesus, then we will stop living in zombieland and start living the eternal life God is offering us in Jesus. Jesus calls us to believe with our hearts and to repent, to turn away from sin and turn back towards God, who is already there waiting for us to turn back to him and offer us eternal life in Jesus. If we are listening closely and believing with our hearts and are obeying Jesus, it doesn’t mean that we never sin again. What it does mean is that when we are tempted to go back to zombieland, maybe even snack on a brain or two, God is still waiting there for us to turn back to him and that is the whole focus of this season of Lent. It’s recognizing we still mess up. It’s recognizing that even while God is offering us eternal life, sometimes we still want brains and we need to repent of that desire and turn back to God. A word about eternal life: it starts now. This isn’t something to look forward to in the future or that begins when we die (normally, not turn into zombies). Eternal life isn’t a thing that we receive but a way that we live. Eternal life isn’t a quantity of life but quality of life; it’s life lived in the presence of God. The eternal abundant life that Jesus wants to give us begins now, here on earth. It’s not a pie in the sky; it’s here and now. When we believe with our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he died for our sins and rose from the dead, then our lives change now. God’s waiting for us to quit being zombies, quit walking in sin and acting like most people of our world do, and for us to turn to him, to repent of our brain-eating ways, and to claim the eternal life that God wants us to live instead.

So, we were once the walking dead, walking in sin, but God made us alive with Christ, if we choose to accept that way of life. Did you notice what the most important two words were in the sentence? We were the walking dead, BUT GOD. God changed things. God made us alive with Christ. Why? God had mercy on us. This is all God’s action, God’s initiative. This is the opposite of zombie-ology where you can’t turn back to a human again. This is turning from a zombie to a human. God made us alive! Why were we dead? We were walking in sin, being disobedient, doing what we wanted when we wanted where we wanted. But God. God has other plans for us. Plans for a life lived with him. Therefore… what? Therefore: repent, turn to God, apologize for eating brains and whatever other things you’ve done wrong, believe with your heart and live what you believe, don’t just simply mentally agree that Christ died for your sins and rose from the dead, but live like it. Turn away from eternal hunger and death and start living eternal life now. God made us alive. Would you rather stay among the walking dead, mindless, shambling about, and always hungry for something that can never fulfill you? Augustine of Hippo was a bishop in the 4^th century church. You want to read about some serious sins before becoming a Christian and believing with his heart, read his Confessions some time. He did everything, got into everything, and yet found himself always restless, always hungry. Nothing satisfied him. The most famous line from his Confessions, directed toward God, says, “our hearts our restless until they find rest in you.” If you’re looking in zombieland for fulfillment and satisfaction, you’re going to always be hungry. You’re going to stay restless. But if you look for it in God, if you’re hungry for God, then he has promised to fill you with good things. And that promise is always there. You will find rest in him whenever you look for it. There’s no time limit. “Come to me, all you who are heavy-burdened and struggling hard, and I will give you rest.” It’s a promise. You don’t have to live in zombieland. You can come live in the presence of God, made alive with Christ, thanks to God’s love and mercy.

Let us take a moment to surrender to God whatever part of zombieland we’re holding on to, whatever bad habits we’re still doing. Let’s take a moment to confess them to God, ask forgiveness, and receive forgiveness and eternal life.

Dear God…

My First Ash Wednesday as a Pastora

This past Ash Wednesday (just over two weeks ago now) held a new series of firsts for me as a pastor. First time planning, leading, and preaching at an Ash Wednesday service. I had never been involved in one before from the non-congregation side. Nor did Unidos por Cristo have one last year; Ash Wednesday seems to be about where most Hispanic Protestants draw the line as one service that is still too Catholic. (I blogged about the Protestant/Catholic divide in Hispanic Christianity before: http://pastoraheather.blogspot.com/2011/01/great-divide-in-church.html ). In Nicaragua, my co-worker (who is Anglican) and I went to Mass in order to attend an Ash Wednesday service; there were no Protestant services.

At Orange for the past couple years, the responsibility of the Ash Wednesday service has fallen to the Associate Pastor. Since it was all brand-new to me, I began by looking up recent Ash Wednesday bulletins to see which Scripture lessons and hymns had been chosen in the past couple services. Between the bulletins and the suggestions in the United Methodist Book of Worship and the United Methodist Music and Worship Planner, I figured out which readings, hymns, and prayers I wanted to use. Starting about two weeks before Ash Wednesday I began spending time in the sanctuary and sacristy area seeing what items were available to put on the altar and what looked best. I found ashes from at least three different years plus last year’s palms (which I did not burn since there were plenty of ashes already)! And I found a beautiful three-piece candle set which I arranged around the bowl of ashes on the altar.

Another component was the schedule. I knew that before I became a pastor, both as a grad student and as a teacher, I had rarely been able to make my home church’s 7 p.m. Ash Wednesday service. There was often a conflict of some sort such that I had to find a church with an early morning service. So I suggested that we hold two services, one at 7 a.m. and one at 7 p.m. Folks liked my idea and the senior pastor just wanted to make sure I could do the 7 a.m. one by myself!

The last piece was the sermon. Last year’s bulletin had it listed simply as a “meditation” with no title and I repeated that for this year. However, I was stuck on what to say, whether to focus on sin or mortality or spiritual disciplines or repentance, etc. Inspiration (a.k.a, the Holy Spirit) struck when I taught Confirmation class the Sunday before. The topic was Epiphany and baptism and one student asked, “What about people who are baptized as babies or kids but who aren’t Christians as adults?” That excellent question became the starting point for my meditation about how John Wesley believed we can backslide and fall away from God. He did not believe “once saved, always saved.” Lent is a time when we’re intentional about turning back towards God and away from whatever is drawing us away from God. While the Gospel reading (Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21) talked about doing your pious works in secret, I explained that while we don’t boast about whatever we’re giving up or adding for Lent, we do live in community and sometimes we need that community to hold us accountable. So please ask someone next to you or one of your pastors if you’d like them to follow up with you during Lent to see how your spiritual discipline is going. We’re not in this alone.

Both services seemed to go well. I was at the church by 6:35 a.m. unlocking doors and turning on lights. 20 people came to the 7 a.m. service, including 7 under the age of 18. I promised we’d be done by 7:30 so folks could get on their to way to work or school and I was invited by a couple folks over to the coffee shop across the street because they knew I didn’t have anything I had to do at the church at 7:30 in the morning! I took a nap in the youth suite in the afternoon. 90 people came to the 7 p.m. service. Many people said that the meditation and the services were meaningful and holy. Two folks asked for accountability for their Lenten disciplines. I arrived home about 8:45 p.m. ready for bed!

Imperfections

I find it really interesting that in both churches I've served, which are very, very different, February has been the month to finally give me negative feedback. Perhaps it takes eight months to feel comfortable with a pastor, or with me, to give negative feedback? On the one hand, it hurts. Negative feedback, when not phrased as constructive criticism, always hurts. On the other hand, I've been waiting to hear some. I know I haven't been perfect the past eight months, but no one beyond the office staff has pointed out or talked with me about my imperfections. All I've heard is "good job," "we're glad you're here," "good sermon." Perhaps because I learned at Unidos por Cristo, I've been waiting for the criticism and it's finally come - I'm not a good preacher, I'm not a good worship leader, I'm not a strong leader, I'm not a good presenter/speaker. Well, now I know what to work on!

It's funny because a few days before this came out the senior pastor and I had talked about my going to continuing ed about preaching and the very next day a colleague of ours invited me to go with her to the Festival of Homiletics in Atlanta in May! The other side of this preaching conversation is that the preaching style I learned at Unidos por Cristo is very different from Orange and at Orange I've only preached 5 times (at a total of 13 services).

In terms of leading worship, I've been advised to to figure out how to be comfortable when in front of 200 people. It's true, I'm an introvert. I'm not a fan of big crowds or being in front of them. However, that's something I'm going to have to get over.

So not everyone loves how I do things? It's about time they told me.

How Do You Respond?

This is the manuscript for my sermon two days ago. I wish I could edit in some of the tweaks I made in the act of preaching it, but I don't remember what they all were and they were different for each of the three services.

5^th Sunday after the Epiphany

Communion Sunday

February 5, 2012

Psalm 147:1-11; Mark 1:29-39

How Do You Respond?

In reading through the lectionary texts for today, I initially dismissed this passage from Mark that we just read. It bugs me that Simon Peter’s mother-in-law’s first action after being healed is to serve the men. At a glance, it just rubs me the wrong way and I want to categorize it as part of the patriarchic culture of the time. However, my response to my initial response was, [sigh] ‘well, I guess that’s the passage I need to struggle with for this week.’ So, you don’t need to worry, you’re not going to get a sermon on feminism, because that’s not what this passage is about on a deeper level.

Let’s start with the story. It says “they left the synagogue”; that’s Jesus and the disciples, or some of the disciples, we don’t know which ones and we don’t know how many. But Jesus and some disciples go from the synagogue to the home of Simon Peter and his brother Andrew. Andrew you may not remember too well, the only action we’re ever told that he did after Jesus called him was to go get his brother Simon and tell him about Jesus. So, at minimum, Jesus, Simon, Andrew, James and John are all at Simon’s and Andrew’s house. There are probably a few more folks around, too. And Simon’s mother-in-law is sick in bed. And “they”, whichever group that refers to, tell Jesus about Simon’s mother-in-law being sick. So Jesus goes to her bedside, takes her hand, and lifts her up out of bed. The fever leaves her and she begins to serve them.

Before we get in to what just happened there and whether or not it’s sexist, let’s finish the story.

Now, it is evening, dusk, and the mysterious “they” bring to Jesus everyone who was sick or possessed with demons. And it says “the whole city was gathered around their door.” Can you picture that? So many people crowded around the door to Simon’s and Andrew’s house that you figure the whole town must be there! And Jesus cures many of them and casts out many demons.

Then, shift to the next morning, after all that healing, and before sunrise Jesus gets up and goes to a deserted place. Jesus does pretty good balancing his time between crowds and alone time. So after he heals practically the whole city, he goes to a quiet place where no one else is, and he prays. Except, of course, the disciples go looking for him. Jesus does good finding alone time, but just like little kids pestering their parents, those disciples don’t like to leave him alone and let him have his alone time! So when they finally find him, they say, “Everyone’s looking for you.” It’s kind of like a kid saying, “I found you!” and the parent groans and thinks, “Great, I got 2 minutes of alone time,” but says, “You’re right! You did!” Jesus doesn’t say, “Yup, you found me. Interrupted my prayer time again,” but says, “Let’s go on to nearby towns to proclaim the message there, too, because that’s what I came to do.” And so Jesus continues throughout the region of Galilee, proclaiming the message in the synagogues and casting out more demons. The question that begs of me is: what message did Jesus proclaim? What’s he saying? It couldn’t have been that he died for your sins, because Good Friday hasn’t happened yet. It couldn’t have been that Jesus defeated death, because Easter’s resurrection hasn’t happened yet. Does he continue the message of John the Baptist? Repent and be baptized? Except Jesus doesn’t go around baptizing, he goes around healing, casting out demons, and preaching. Earlier in this chapter, Mark says that Jesus went around Galilee “proclaiming the good news of God and saying ‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’”[1] But what is the good news? What is the gospel that Jesus proclaimed?

I’ll let you chew on that, because we’re going to go back to all those healings and what happens afterward.

There are three specific responses to healings that I want to focus on this morning. But first let’s pause and acknowledge that Jesus has healed all of us from something. Whether it was a cold or a major disease or a mental issue, we all have struggles Jesus has freed us from. Right? Can we all agree on that? Probably the biggest one that Jesus has healed me of, has freed me from, was to disabuse me of this skewed idea I used to have of marriage. Without going into detail, let me just say that I entered my 20s with an unhealthy understanding of marriage. It was a good thing I didn’t get married in my early 20s. And it took about five years, from when I first realized that something was wrong until I gradually came to understand God’s design and purpose for marriage. And wouldn’t you know, the last piece God used in healing me was my husband. So, let’s start by acknowledging that there has been something in all of our lives that was unhealthy that God made whole. And we’re not getting into how he did it, just that he did. Are we good?

All right, now the next question is how did you response to it? When Jesus heals the ten men with leprosy, only one comes back to thank Jesus.[2] Were you one of the nine who “forgot” to thank Jesus or were you that one who remembered the source of your healing and thanked God for it? Did you respond with gratitude? All of life is a gift from God. All that we have is a gift from God. Even if you earned something by the sweat of your brow, God gave you that brow and that sweat. And the proper response to a gift is thank you. Take a moment and tell God ‘thank you.’

One way to thank God is to put that gratitude into action, and that’s what Simon Peter’s mother-in-law does. She responds to her healing by serving. Yes, she’s a woman serving men, but she’s also a healed child of God serving the Son of God out of thanksgiving for her healing. That paints a different picture, doesn’t it? She responded to her healing with service. She put her feelings of gratitude into action. Have you done that? Have you thanked God for what he’s done for you by doing something for someone else? If you’re looking for an opportunity to serve, we have lots here at the church, whether you like to be around people or behind the scenes, whether you’re skilled with music or with computers, whether you like to be around kids or the young at heart. If what’s missing from your life is service, just contact the church office, Pastor Ken, or myself and let’s chat about what service projects might be right up your alley. But that’s what Simon’s mother-in-law is doing. She’s not serving because that’s her place in life or her duty; she’s serving out of love and gratitude for the one who has the power to heal us all.

One final way is what we do here at the table. We’re sharing a meal. The action of dispersing the bread and the wine we call serving. We celebrate communion in response to God’s action in our lives. We serve in response, we say thank you in response, and we participate at the Lord’s table in response. You don’t have to come up here. Communion is one of two sacraments we celebrate in The United Methodist Church. The other one is baptism. And in both what we recognize and celebrate are outward and visible signs, the water, the bread, and the wine, of God’s invisible grace. This is grace. God healing you is grace. Undeserved love. How will you respond?

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[1] Mark 1:14-15

[2] Luke 17:11-19

Roots

It took me most of my life to realize I had roots. And only after that did I come to appreciate the importance of roots. I moved an average of every 3 years growing up. Yep, that’s 6 times in 18 years. Roots? What are they? My family didn’t seem to have roots, either. My dad’s parents had retired from NY and moved to GA the year after I was born. In fact, no one lives any more in the town my dad and his siblings grew up in. And that town isn’t the town where my grandparents grew up, either. No roots. My mom’s parents were always living in parsonages around southern NJ, the result of Grandpa being a Methodist pastor. I think their roots were around where my Great-Grandma lived in northern NJ, but still. Those grandparents were always changing houses. What are roots?

As a young adult, I kept moving around. Four years in college included a semester abroad. Two years in grad school in a different town. Two years of teaching in another state. Then to another country. Then back. Roots? Who needs ‘em?

But you know what? My grandparents are or will be buried in the same cemeteries as their parents and a few other relatives. And you know what else? I have a root tendril in that college town, and in that grad school state, and where I taught, and in that other country. I have a tendril in those cemeteries, even though I’ve only visited them maybe twice each in my life.

I remember a conversation in the movie “Sweet Home Alabama” about having both roots and wings. The wings came naturally to me; they’re obvious. The roots I had to search for, learn how to look for, learn to appreciate. However, both are important. Wings need roots for the nutrients they can provide. But roots without wings stagnate, and eventually are forgotten and die.

The roots at Orange UMC go deep. The earliest birth year on a headstone in the cemetery is from 1806 (that I found, anyway). There is history here at Orange. This church has been around a while and seen a lot. One new family came to visit the church precisely because of that cemetery. They said it meant the church had roots and that idea really appealed to them. They wanted a church with roots. But this church has wings, too, as it sends off foreign missionaries and welcomes others, as it sends off youth to college and families who move away and welcomes new members. This church is growing, because of those roots feeding in the nutrients to the wings. We’re going through some growing pains right now, which is normal and painful. We need the roots and the wings and everything in between to get through these growing pains. We need the nutrients and we need the far-reaching vision of the wings. As Paul wrote, the body needs all its members and no one body part is more or less important than any other (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Please pray for our church as we go through these growing pains.