Sharing the Good News
a sermon offered by the Rev. Eleanor Stanton
based on theMark 1:29-39
I grew up in an intergenerational house. When I was little, my grandpa lived with us. Grandpa died when I was a teenager and then my Great-Aunt Marie moved in. My mother learned to take people in from her own mother who did the same thing during the Great Depression. So Mom had an open mind about moving into one of her own children's houses when she got older.
I know she thought about it because she used to tell me what her requirements were. Mom didn't need her own living room or even her own kitchen, but she did want her own refrigerator. She was very clear about that. "I want people to feel free to come in and stick their head in there if they're hungry and help themselves," she'd say. "I couldn't do that with someone else's refrigerator."
Feeding people was a big deal to Mom. She believed in the power of food to make people feel at home. Nobody spread a table like my mother. It had a little bit of everything, just in case you were in the mood for something a little bit different than everybody else. Food was Mom's way of saying "you're welcome here, I'm glad to see you."
Mom's legs failed her the last year of her life. She couldn't move through her house with the light grace she always had. So when I read about Simon's mother-in-law laid low with a fever, I thought of Mom. Because I know if Jesus had come and renewed her strength, the first thing Mom would have done was hop up and make him a sandwich.
I think Simon's mother-in-law was a lot like my mother. Taking care of people, making them feel welcome, was her specialty. In a controlled society, this was her area of influence and an exercise of her authority. When Simon's mother-in-law (who like so many other women in the Bible, isn't given a name) was sick with a fever, she was "ritually unclean" and isolated from everyone else. She had no role to play… no place of authority or influence… she might as well have been invisible.
But she wasn't invisible to God. She wasn't too unclean for Jesus. The story doesn't say that Jesus said anything special or did anything more dramatic than simply take her hand. Yet that one gesture brought her back from isolation. And her response, not his request, was to get up and spread that sense of "connection" around.
I'll admit, the first time I heard this story, I thought, Poor woman. Can't even get a sick day if there are hungry people in the house. But when I looked again… when I read farther… it became clear to me that her response was used to show how, once again, the disciples failed to understand who Jesus was and what He was all about. Following Jesus wasn't about "who was in control" or "who was going to be first in the kingdom of heaven." It was about bridging gaps, creating wholeness, and offering what they had to others. The disciples never seemed to get that. But Simon's mother-in-law did. She wasn't commanded to serve, she decided to serve… and on the Sabbath day, too. She didn't wait for the "proper time," when the Sabbath had ended, to work. Instead, she imitated Jesus by offering herself to others when they needed it.
And then we see Simon. Simon, the former fisherman, the nobody, who suddenly had a whole town standing outside his door, wanting to catch of glimpse of Simon's guest. He must have felt kinda proud and who can blame him? He loved Jesus. Left his whole life behind to follow Him. It must have been gratifying to have his friends and neighbors realize that he hadn't made a huge mistake, but had made the right choice to turn his life over to this wonder-worker, this man of power. It must have been pretty wonderful watching Jesus heal people right there on his doorstep, person after person, healed and set free, brought back to life… right there on his doorstep. And then, when it was over, what did the crowd see but Jesus turn and enter the home of his good friend Simon. Simon was having a good day. Who could blame him if he wanted that affirmation, that celebrity, to last a little longer?
But when Simon woke up the next day, his celebrity guest was gone. Mark tells us that Jesus, after a night of healing people, had slipped away in the dark to a desolate place to pray. Prayer was an integral part of who Jesus was and yet another thing about him that Simon didn't understand. When Simon found him, his first words were a scold: "Everybody's looking for you." More than a scolding, it was a summons to come back and heal more people.
Simon wanted Jesus to follow him, to do more of what Simon considered important work. But Jesus wasn't interested in fame as a miracle-worker. He had a message to share and that message wasn't that God intended people to live a trouble-free, pain-free life. His message was more radical than that. In a world that believed illness and suffering were proof of God's disfavor, Jesus proclaimed that God's arms were open to everyone – all they had to do was turn toward God and reach. As simple and as complicated as that.
That was the good news Jesus was spreading through his preaching and his healing. His healing miracles weren't separate from that message – they were part of it. In those days, people with disabilities, with mental illness, or who were simply bleeding, were shunned by the people around them. Through his healing presence, Jesus showed that God did not shun them. He empowered those who'd been disenfranchised. He sought out those who'd given up believing that God wanted anything to do with them. He removed the barriers that separated people from the fullness of life together with God. Jesus wasn't healing individuals only. He was healing the rifts between people and God. He was healing the rifts within communities.
And that is what He calls us to do as well. Even though we might like to stay home, like Simon, if we want to follow Jesus, we must go where people are hurting and do what we can to heal the rifts that exist in our families, in our country and in the world. We should also prepare to have our words disbelieved and our actions rejected.
Jay dared to stand up on a street corner and speak out about the great rift in Israel. He dared to say that the Palestinian people are also God's children and that justice for them is as important as security for Israel. And because he spoke up, Jay received a lot of criticism in the press and in his mailbox.
There are many rifts right here in American society. For me, the most egregious is the systematic oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people. Our government will allow convicted criminals in prison to marry, but not law-abiding tax-paying same-sex couples. Homophobia is something that we are becoming too used to; too complacent about. It's not enough to say, "Other people do that, not me." If we let it continue unchallenged, we are absolutely participating in the dehumanizing of our friends and neighbors. Our silence convicts us.
There is a homophobic hate group from Kansas that is coming to Albany – to Albany High School and the SUNY campus – on Friday, March 6. They plan to gather with their signs in the morning when the students are coming to school. They plan to march and declare that God's homosexual children are "unclean," that they are beyond God's love and deserving of death. They are coming here to our region make sure that our young people KNOW who God hates.
Well, I won't have it. I can't stop them but I'm sure going to challenge their authority to speak for God. I plan to go to Albany High with my own sign on March 6 and say that no human being has the right to declare unclean what God has created (a quote by the way that comes from Acts 10:28).
Interestingly, that quote from Acts is spoken by Simon Peter. He says that God showed him that he cannot call any man impure or unclean… that he cannot declare unclean that which God has created. Jesus told Simon Peter that he had come out to preach the good news that God's arms were open to all people: they only had to turn and reach. I like thinking that Simon Peter, who failed to understand so many times, finally understood Jesus' message of unstinting, unremitting, grace.
Who could earn God's love? Who among us is so free of flaws that we can claim with any confidence that we deserve God's love? But that's grace: we don't get the love we EARN, we get the love that God freely OFFERS. The scandalous message of Jesus – a message that offended so many religious people of his day – is that God loves us because of who GOD is… not because who we are. That message still offends people today… and not just the ones who are driving here from Kansas with their hate signs.
Simon wanted to stay at home for another day of Jesus wowing the crowds. But Jesus called him out of his comfort zone. He calls us, too, to go out from where we are comfortable and share the good news that God doesn't shun anyone and God doesn't ignore injustice. It won't be easy. There are people who have given up on the church being a place of healing because it has been, for too long, a place of judgment. And there are people who will be offended by the idea that God loves everyone regardless. We aren't Jesus, with the power to heal long-standing wounds in an instant. But we are the body of Christ in the world today. We are the ones who can show, through our words and actions, that God's love and justice is meant for everyone.
We all got brochures today. Take them and let them help you remember what the good news is for you. Perhaps they will help you start a conversation with someone who needs to find a welcome and you can invite them to join us here. Or perhaps they will give you some ideas about how we can reach out farther into the world – the world that could really use some good news.