Healing Hands

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Mark 1:21-34

February 24, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

Twenty-four miles. (VIDEO) That’s the distance from Nazareth to Capernaum. Roughly the distance from here to Valpo First UMC and back again, according to Google Maps. It’s not that far, though on foot it would be about a twelve hour trip in that environment. Many people take two days to walk it (Hamilton, The Way, pg. 50). Not that far geographically, but in the first century (and even still today), Nazareth and Capernaum were worlds apart. One was on the sea, the other on a hill. One was a fishing village, the other a bedroom community. What they had in common, however, is Jesus. Both of them can (and do) claim that “Jesus lived here.”

Mark doesn’t tell us exactly why Jesus moved from his boyhood home of Nazareth to Capernaum; to get that information, we have to look at Luke’s Gospel, where we’re told that shortly after his baptism and temptation, which Pastor Deb helped us explore last week, Jesus goes to preach in the synagogue at Nazareth. His home synagogue, preaching to people who have watched him grow up, who know his family. Now, I can tell you, that’s a hard job to do. I’ve preached at my home church twice in the last twenty years, and it’s difficult to stand up in front of those who used to get after you in Sunday School and who know you used to time the pastor’s prayers during worship. They know your family, and they know what you were like when you were growing up. It’s hard, and Jesus in some ways makes it even harder as he uses this time in his home synagogue to announce that he is the Messiah, the savior of the world. He doesn’t say it outright, but the passage he quotes from Isaiah everyone knew was tied to the Messiah. And at first, they all speak well of him. He’s the local boy who has made something of himself. Good for him, and good for his parents! But then he tells them that no prophet, no preacher, is accepted in his hometown. And that makes them mad—so mad that, in fact, they try to throw him off the cliff outside Nazareth (Luke 4:14-30). Talk about an extreme reaction! And so Jesus realizes his time at home is done. He’s going to have to find somewhere else to base his ministry. Twenty-four miles away is a little fishing town called Capernaum. It’s there he will base his work and begin his ministry, and he apparently never returned to Nazareth (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 36).

It’s that ministry we are focusing on during this Lenten season, as we seek to understand Jesus better and, as we head toward Easter, to put his death and resurrection in a broader context. Last Sunday, we began by looking at those events that prepared Jesus for ministry, and how he was baptized by John in the Jordan River and then tempted by the devil in the wilderness. From there, he went back to Nazareth, then to Capernaum. Last summer, when we were in Israel, we walked along the Valley of the Doves which is the ancient highway from Nazareth to Capernaum. Where we walked was near the town of Magdala, where the Valley comes out and you can see the Sea of Galilee. That point is where many would stop for the night on this two-day journey. From that vantage point today, you can see many of the places Jesus taught and lived and healed. In fact, it is in that area where the healing ministry of Jesus becomes so prominent. According to the Gospels, from the very first moments in Capernaum, Jesus was engaged in healing people.

Capernaum sits on the sea of Galilee, and was a small fishing village in Jesus’ day—maybe having 1,000 to 1,500 inhabitants (Hamilton 49). It is the second-most important town in the Gospels, second only to Jerusalem, because Jesus performed more miracles here than in any other place—twelve recorded miracles took place in this small town. Today, (VIDEO) when you visit, you can walk down by the Sea, where fishermen like Peter and some of the other disciples once launched their boats to earn their keep, and you can find remnants of other industries, like presses that made olive oil. But by far, the two most important structures that dominate the town of Capernaum are the synagogue and Peter’s house, both of which figure into the story we read this morning.

The ruins of the synagogue that stand in Capernaum today dates to the 300s; it’s obviously not the place Jesus taught and worshipped. It is, however, built on top of the first-century foundation, and pretty much follows the same outline as the earlier house of worship (Knight, The Holy Land, pg. 251). So when you step into the ruins of this synagogue, you are in a place that looks much like it would have when Jesus was there. And the synagogue was important to him.

On the Sabbath, we’re told, Jesus went to the synagogue. It was his custom. Even though on a very recent Sabbath, he had nearly been killed, he still went. Jesus was committed to being part of the worshipping community, even when he had differences with some who were also a part of that community. Jesus didn’t abandon the people of God just because something happened the week before. Regular worship was important to the Son of God, and so, shouldn’t it be important to us as well? That’s why we’ve made the commitment to be in worship every week unless we’re sick or out of town. It should be that important to us, because it was important to Jesus. While he’s there that day in Capernaum, teaching the people, a man with an “impure spirit” cries out, breaks into the order of worship. Other translations say he has an “evil” or “unclean” spirit. In the midst of Jesus’ teaching, this man yells out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (1:24). Jesus, seemingly without being upset at all, turns to the man and says, “Be quiet!...Come out of him!” (1:25). Literally, he says to the spirit inside the man, “Be muzzled!” It’s the same language he’ll use later to calm the storm in that story we looked at on Ash Wednesday (cf. Card 36). It’s a command that the unclean spirit has no choice but to obey. And it does. The man is healed. The spirit is gone.

After worship, Jesus walks the short distance—two blocks, about ninety feet—from the synagogue to a small house that, today, is covered by a huge Catholic church. It’s Peter’s house and like most houses of that day, it’s probably only 500-600 square feet, very modest. The ruins are actually protected by the church, which is built in sort of a spaceship design up over where the house once was. We know it’s very likely to be the actual site because, from as far back as the first century, there is evidence that Christians worshipped here and as early as the 300s we have written accounts of going to worship at this location, calling it Peter’s house. It’s an ancient site, and it’s likely that whenever Jesus was in town, he stayed there (Hamilton 53-54; Knight 251). He certainly went there this day, and when they arrived at home, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a fever. Luke the doctor, when he tells this story, says it was a “high fever” (Luke 4:39; cf. Card 38), which would not have been immediately life-threatening, but in the first century could be very serious. And so, Mark says, Jesus took her hand and helped her up. That’s an important detail. There was no magic incantation. There were no special herbs or potions. There was no waving of the hands or using a magic wand. Jesus simply took her by the hand and helped her up. He simply touched her and the fever went away (Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 628). And, Mark says, she immediately got up and made dinner for them.

The third movement, then, in this account takes place after sundown. Normally, no work was done on the Sabbath, and so it’s interesting that Jesus casting out the unclean spirit and healing Peter’s mother-in-law, gets no response this time. In fact, it’s the only time in the Gospels when Jesus performs a miracle on the Sabbath and there is no conflict (Card 36). In the Gospels, Jesus heals seven times on the Sabbath (Harper, The Healings of Jesus, pg. 92) and this is the only time he doesn’t upset someone. But, still, most of the people wait until after sundown, when the Sabbath is over, to bring people to Jesus. Assuming the synagogue service took place in the morning, it really didn’t take long for word to spread. Without internet, without cell phones, without Facebook or Twitter or texting, people learn very quickly there is a miracle worker in Capernaum, and by evening, there is a crowd gathered at Peter’s home. Mark says “the whole town” gathered at the house, and they brought all sorts of sick and demon-possessed people. And Jesus healed many, and drove out many demons.

This is not an atypical story in the Gospels; there are many stories of healing throughout Jesus’ life and ministry. I’ve chosen these three as representative of all those times when Jesus encountered sickness and unclean spirits and he had the power to do something about it. But why was healing such an important part of Jesus’ ministry? He didn’t come to heal; that is, it wasn’t his primary ministry. His mission, his goal was to proclaim the kingdom of God, and in fact to bring the kingdom of God to earth, to begin the process of putting creation back together the way God the creator intended it to be from the start. So why healing? If it wasn’t the main point of his ministry, why did he do it? Well, I think part of the reason is because we’re constantly told Jesus had compassion on those who were broken, hurting, wounded by the world. He loved them. It broke his heart to see them broken. But perhaps bigger than that is the reality that “sickness disturbs the work of the creator. Healing restores it” (Harper 92). In other words, sickness (of any kind) is a sign of the brokenness of the world, of the fallenness of creation. Jesus came to push back the darkness, and healing was part of that. Healing removed an obstacle, very often, for the sick person (or formerly sick person) to be able to hear the good news. It ended their identity simply as a “sick person” and enabled them to begin to define themselves in new ways, even as a child of God. Healing was a vital part of Jesus’ ministry in pushing back the darkness.

But what about demons, or unclean spirits, like Mark says Jesus encountered in the synagogue? Do we really still believe in them today? Well, when we read the Gospels, we recognize that there are times Jesus encounters diseases which were unexplainable in the first century but which we know the cause of today. In the first century, for instance, they didn’t know what caused epilepsy, but we know now that it’s a neurological disorder that causes seizures in the brain. Did Jesus not know that? I believe he did, but in the medical field of that time he couldn’t explain to them what was happening. He just healed it. And so there are stories that, today, we know were attributed to demons or unclean spirits that may have been a medical issue. But there are other stories, like the one we read this morning, and like the story of the man in chains in the Decapolis in Mark 5 where there seems to be something more happening. Is it a demon? Is it mental illness? Is it something else? I don’t know, but I do know this: there are still places in our world today where demons seem to be active, where there is a greater sense of spiritual forces. We live in a culture that has largely shrugged off belief in the supernatural as “silly” and “unsophisticated.” But, as C. S. Lewis reminds us, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight” (The Screwtape Letters, pg. 9). Is there such a thing as demon possession? It does seem so, but it does not happen without a person opening themselves to that darkness.

Do you notice that not once in this passage is there anyone who stops to listen to Jesus? There is no teaching or preaching that happens there at the door of Peter’s house in Capernaum—just an endless line of people who do not recognize or acknowledge Jesus for who he is. The demons do. The demons know who he is, so why does he tell them to be muzzled? They’re speaking the truth, especially the one in the synagogue. He says Jesus is “the Holy One of God” (1:24). And at the end of this passage, it seems that other demons were trying to say similar things, because Mark tells us Jesus “would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was” (1:34). So why not let them speak? Wouldn’t Jesus want people to know who he is? Some scholars think it’s because Jesus’ ministry has just started, and he doesn’t want to give away too much too quickly. That’s possible, but it’s also possible that Jesus simply doesn’t want the first confession of who he is to come from a demon (cf. Card 36; Wessel 628). He wants people to witness to him, not demons. Later, he will ask the disciples who they think he is, and when Peter says he believes Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus doesn’t silence him. He does tell them not to tell anyone else (cf. Mark 8:27-30), because he knows the people will misunderstand. Isn’t it fascinating, though, that here in Capernaum, the people fail to recognize who he is while the demons confess it outright?

So here’s the big question for us: does Jesus still heal today? We get a little nervous about that question, don’t we? Because when we think of “healers,” this is probably the sort of image that comes to mind.

VIDEO: “Leap of Faith”

I hope you can see by now that’s not the way Jesus healed. Rather, he pushed back the darkness of sickness and demon possession by a word, a touch, a gesture. Not through magic words or some incantation. Not by powerful gestures or slapping a person on the head. He simply spoke and touched and healing took place. Part of our struggle is that we’ve confused healing with receiving a cure. A cure fixes a disease, and sometimes God does that supernaturally and other times he does it through doctors, medicines, healthy eating or natural cures. But, in reality, a cure only puts off the inevitable. Healing is when a person is made whole, made right, and that only fully happens at the end of time, when we receive our new bodies in the new heaven and the new earth. So let’s not confuse a cure, which he sometimes gives, with healing, which he always gives. When we do that, when we demand a cure rather than healing, we’re a lot like these people in Capernaum who want Jesus for what he can do for them (or us) rather than for who he is. When the people gather at Peter’s house, all they want is for Jesus to provide a cure. Cast out the demon. Get rid of the sickness. Make us better, Jesus. Use your gifts and make us well. But he hasn’t come to give his gifts. He has come to give himself (cf. Card 38; Harper 39).

So let’s not get focused on whether or not God answers our prayers for healing the way we want him to. God answers every prayer, but these bodies were not made for forever, and yes, there are times we believe death comes far too soon, and I don’t understand that. I don’t believe that in the Scriptures we read of a God who causes people to die early, or one who sends a shooter in the inner city or to a school to kill a child, or who causes cancer or heart attacks or any number of other diseases that attack and destroy. In fact, Jesus said it was the enemy’s job to “steal, kill and destroy” (cf. John 10:10). But we do read of a God who brings healing—ultimate healing—in the midst of this world’s desperate brokenness. As I said a few weeks ago, when we pray for someone in the hospital or at home with an illness, we will always, always, always pray for healing. We’ll ask God for a cure, to do marvelous and miraculous work. I’ve known that to happen in my own life, as I also shared a couple of weeks ago. There are many in this church whom we have prayed for and many, right now, for whom we are praying, folks who are struggling against huge odds. And I pray for you, for them, and I know you pray for them as well. We ask God for a cure, for healing this side of eternity. But, even deeper than that, we will trust God to be working in the midst of whatever happens. God’s work is to restore the creation, to push back the darkness, and to bring hope to the hopeless. Jesus did that in many ways, but first and foremost he came to give us himself. And, as he gives us himself, we remember what the writer of Hebrews said: that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (cf. Hebrews 13:8), and so if he healed then, he can still heal today. Just as on that day in Capernaum, so still today his healing hands fight to rebuild lives that the enemy has torn down. He is the same savior who healed in Capernaum and who invited those whom he healed to join him on The Way.

If we’re going to be followers of Jesus on The Way, if we’re going to fully walk in the footsteps of our savior, then healing should be a part of our ministry as well. And I’m not talking particularly about laying hands on people or acting like the preacher in that video clip. We offer healing in untold numbers of ways. At this church, we push back the darkness in a wide variety of ways. When you lend a listening ear to that person whose loved one killed themselves and they wonder if it was their fault, you’re pushing back the darkness. When you visit with a shut-in who is desperately lonely and just needs someone to be present, you’re pushing back the darkness. For you who work in the medical field, when you administer care beyond just the drugs and the procedures, when you take the time to listen to what’s really going on, you’re pushing back the darkness. I know of very few who did it better than my friend Jim Bailey. Many of you knew Jim who was a funeral director. That was his second career, but I believe, and I said at his funeral, it was what he was meant to do, because I watched Jim care so well for people who were going through deep, deep grief. I’ve worked with a lot of funeral directors in nearly twenty years of ministry, and there’s a wide range of personalities in that occupation, from those who see it purely as a business to those who, like Jim, see it as a ministry. He knew when to make people laugh and when to help them face the reality of death. Jim, for so many people, pushed back the darkness. Healing comes when we reach out to others in the love of Christ and seek to bring relief, joy, encouragement, and faith. That’s when we push back the darkness.

And that’s one of the reasons I’m excited, and I hope you are, too, to see us move ahead with our Crossroads project. After literally years of red tape and hoops we’ve had to jump through, we’re ready to do the first stage of putting in the road between the properties. Now that may not seem all that exciting, but to me, it is because it literally opens up possibilities. We bought that land not primarily for ourselves. Maybe we’ve forgotten that. We bought that land so that ministry could happen there, so that healing could take place, so that lives could be touched in the name of Jesus Christ. That’s why I get excited even about a road, because I know it brings us closer to realization of that ministry, that dream, that vision. It brings us closer to seeing more people experience healing in this place. That’s why I can get behind it and support it, regardless of how long it has taken us to get to this point.

To do healing ministry also motivates us to revamp and relaunch our Congregational Care ministry this year, what we’ve called Stephen Ministry. We want to make it bigger, to be able to provide healing in different settings and different ways than the structure of Stephen Ministry allows us to. So, in April, four of us are going to be trained in Congregational Care and then we look to train and deploy lots of you as caregivers. Dare I dream and say that my hope is by the end of this year we’ll have fifty caregivers providing healing and hope to people throughout this congregation and throughout this city? Friends, we’re called to be ministers of hope, agents of healing, Jesus’ healing hands, as we follow him on The Way.

And so we start here, in this place of healing. James, the half-brother of Jesus, once wrote these words: “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord” (5:14). And so we’re going to do that this morning. In obedience to the Scriptures, I’m going to invite you to come if you want prayers for healing this morning—emotional, physical, spiritual healing. You don’t have to tell us the details, but we will pray for you and anoint you with oil in the sign of the cross. Now, there’s no magic in the oil or in our prayers. In ancient times, oil (maybe because it was so prevalent in Israel) was often used as medicine on sores, or as a liniment for sore joints. In Jesus’ day, it was put in the bindings of wrapped wounds and also placed on the forehead of a sick person as a reminder of God’s love and presence (NIDOTB, Vol. 4, pg. 322). It’s in that same spirit and tradition that we anoint with oil today. It’s not magic; it’s meant to remind us that God is present and working even when we can’t see it. We ask God for healing—body, mind and soul—and we trust God to work. So this morning, if you’d like prayers for healing, you’re invited to come, or if you have trouble walking, let the ushers know and we’ll come to you. If the prayers are for you directly, we’ll anoint your forehead. But you can also come and ask for prayers for healing for someone else, and if that’s why you come, I ask that you hold out your hands, palms up, and we’ll anoint your hands to remind you that God is calling you to be an agent of healing for someone else. So, as a step along The Way, I invite you to come this morning and receive prayers for healing.

Who Is This Man?

Who Is This Man?

Mark 4:35-41

February 13, 2013 (Ash Wednesday) • Portage First UMC

Have you ever been caught in a storm, a storm so bad that you literally couldn’t see anything around you? Several years ago, I was part of a group taking our church’s youth to a theme park near Louisville, Kentucky, and we were headed south on I-65 when, seemingly out of nowhere, a storm cut loose. It was raining so bad we had to slow down to where we were inching along. Finally, we came to a rest area and I pulled in, with the other cars following. We just needed to get off the road because we were afraid it was not going to go well if we stayed out there on the interstate. And so, at the rest area, we waited out the storm until it was safe to go on. Now, even though it got really dark, that was during the day. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to try to make that trip through the big storm at night, in the darkness. It gives me just a glimpse of what it might have felt like to be on the Sea of Galilee in our Gospel story this evening.

Jesus is at a point in his ministry where he’s becoming popular, well-known at least in Galilee. He’s a teller of stories, and people love to hear good stories. And he teaches the people how to live. There’s something about him that makes people want to listen to him, to respond to him. So the crowds were gathering, and on this day, Jesus has been teaching along the shore of the Sea of Galilee (4:1). The crowd had gotten so large that he had stepped into a boat and was teaching from the boat while the people sat on the shore. He told them several stories, and then after he finished, he told his disciples to sail to “the other side” (4:35), and so they did. They didn’t stop to get supplies or change clothes. They didn’t go back to the shore. They went, just as they were, toward the other side. And Jesus, exhausted from a day of teaching, finds the only cushion in the boat and puts it under his head as he falls asleep. Now, this would have been a small fishing boat, designed to hold maybe a dozen people, the kind of boat Jesus and the disciples used all along the shore of the Sea of Galilee (Hamilton, The Way, pg. 101). We know what those boats looked like because in 1986, during a drought, a first-century fishing boat was found in the mud of the lake when the water level was low. It’s been preserved and is on display today, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see how cramped this boat would have been with Jesus and the disciples all together in it. And it takes even less imagination to realize how a storm could threaten all of them.

I’ve been on the Sea of Galilee three times, sailed across and around it, and we’ve never had bad weather. But it’s a small lake, much smaller than Lake Michigan. It’s about thirteen miles long and eight miles wide, 150 feet deep, and it’s positioned in a basin. It’s seven hundred feet below sea level, and there are mountains that surround it. So it’s well known that, on this lake, storms can come up quickly as high winds from the southwest enter the lake’s basin and quickly change the weather pattern from calm to violent (Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 70; Lane, NICNT: The Gospel of Mark, pg. 175). And when it comes at night, as it does in Mark’s story, it can be particularly frightening.

But this storm is different and actually has little to do with meteorology. To understand what’s really happening here, we have to look ahead a bit and see where Jesus is heading. At the beginning of Mark 5, Jesus arrives in the region of the Gerasenes, the opposite side of the lake from Capernaum and the good Jewish towns. It’s a pagan region, a Gentile region, a place “good Jews” didn’t go, a place where demons were said to live (Card 74). Jesus goes there to heal a man who is possessed by a legion of demons. Jesus is going there to invade Satan’s territory. Keep that in mind as we talk about the storm. Mark says the storm was a “furious squall.” Matthew describes it as a seismos. You can hear, can’t you, the root of our word “seismic”? This is a shaking, an earthquake-type storm. It’s the sort of storm that, as the Gospel writers describe it, has demonic origins. It’s not entirely natural. Jesus is on his way to invade Satan’s territory, and so the evil one pushes back hard. As Michael Card writes, “It is a demonic attempt on their lives” (70; cf. Hamilton 101). Even the disciples, some of them seasoned fishermen, men who knew this lake like the back of their hands, who had seen storms before, know something is different this time. The water is pounding against the sides and over the sides into the boat. Mark says the boat was “nearly swamped” (4:37). And it’s dark. It’s night. There are no lights anywhere. The disciples were likely unsure even where they were on the lake.

And as the storm rages, someone looks to the back of the boat, to the stern, to the place where the one who was supposed to steer the boat would sit, and there is Jesus, sound asleep, head laying on the only pillow in the boat, perhaps gently snoring though they probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the noise of the storm. But catch this: the one who should be steering their boat is asleep in the stern (Card 71). Maybe that’s why they’re so rude to him when they wake him up (cf. Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 655).

“Teacher,” they say, “don’t you care if we drown?” (4:38). Eugene Peterson catches a bit more of the bite of their words in his paraphrase: “Teacher, is it nothing to you that we’re going down?” (Message). Don’t you care, Jesus? Is your sleep more important than our lives? And so Jesus wakes up and he doesn’t even speak to the disciples first. Instead, he speaks to the storm—or, rather, he speaks to the power behind the storm. Literally, he says, “Be muzzled!” It’s the same word he uses to tell demons to be quiet. In Mark 1, there’s a demon who cries out, “Have you come to destroy us, Jesus of Nazareth?” And Jesus says the same thing to him: “Be muzzled!” (1:21-26). A muzzle, of course, is not something we put on ourselves. It’s something that is put on a pet and they have no choice over the matter. That’s the same thing that happening here. Jesus has authority over this storm just as he has authority over the powers of evil (cf. Card 71). With a simple command, he puts a muzzle on it and the storm is quiet. “Be muzzled!” Jesus says, and the winds and the waves and the powers that stirred them have to obey. Mark doesn’t say it just let up gradually. No, after Jesus’ command, Mark says it was “completely calm” (4:39).

So there’s a great storm, and then there is a great calm. And you’d think that’d be the end of story, wouldn’t you? I mean, the storm is over; what else is there to deal with? Well, now Jesus turns toward the disciples. “Why are you so afraid?” he asks them. “Do you still have no faith?” (4:40). During the storm, we only get the sense that they’re irritated with Jesus. But in verse 41, Mark indicates things have changed. He tells us the disciples “were terrified,” but that’s after the calm. It’s not the storm that terrifies them. The storm is over. The sea is completely calm. What terrifies them, what causes them to “fear a great fear,” is not the threat of drowning. What makes them most fearful is Jesus—the one who has power over the storm. That’s the question that comes out of their fear: “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” (4:41).

But the reason they’re afraid, according to Jesus, is their lack of faith. So what is that? What is it they’re missing? We usually think of “faith” as belief, giving verbal or at least mental assent to a set of propositions. We agree with a group’s list of ideas or thoughts and so we say we “believe” in that group. And “faith” does contain an element of that. Faith involves belief, but it’s more than that. The disciples knew Jesus was someone extraordinary, someone worth following, or they never would have been in that boat with him in the first place. In that sense, they “believed” in him, but he still asks whether or not they have faith, because faith is more than mere belief. Faith involves action. Faith involves response. Faith includes trust. The New Testament constantly talks about putting our faith “into” Jesus, and I sort of picture it as placing all that we are into his hands, utterly trusting him for whatever comes. It’s letting go, giving up, allowing God to direct our lives and steer our boat. Faith is not a passive belief; faith is an active trust. I wonder what the disciples expected when they woke Jesus up. Maybe they thought he’d be an extra set of hands against the storm. Maybe they just wanted him to share in their suffering. But it seems they did not expect him to calm the storm. They weren’t ready to place their trust in him, to have faith that he could take care of them, could protect them. They believed, but they weren’t ready to act on that belief by placing their trust in him. They lacked faith.

There’s a reason we are called “children of God,” because children have that utter trust that is essential to faith. When my kids were little, they had absolutely no fear, like most kids. Christopher and Rachel would both jump off things into my arms, or trust me to toss them in air and catch them. No fear. Just trust. They had faith that their father would come through for them. It’s only as we grow that we learn that our earthly parents and others aren’t infallible. We have flaws. We make mistakes. We hurt each other. It becomes harder to trust. But there is one who is perfect, who will never let us down. There is one who can always be counted on. There is one who is Lord over all, including the wind and the wave. He is the one we’re called to trust, to place our faith “into.” Why do you think Jesus said that if we’re going to come to him we have to come as a child (Mark 10:14-15)? Because a child knows what it is to have faith, to not just believe but also to trust. That’s what the disciples are missing there in the boat, and that’s why Jesus, calming the storm, causes such great fear.  They thought they had it (and him) all figured out. But he’s more than they thought he was. He’s so much more. Even the wind and the waves obey him.

Jesus is Lord of the storms, even those that aren’t made up of wind and water but have dark origins nonetheless. Maybe your storm is called “Cancer,” and the waves of chemotherapy and uncertainty are crashing against your boat. Maybe your storm is called “Death,” and the ones you love are no longer here; there are times when the world seems very dark. Maybe your storm is called “Stress,” and the wind of details are swirling around you. Maybe your storm is called “Job Loss,” and you’re trapped between financial stress and the need for more training. Maybe your storm is called “Divorce,” and the winds of angry words and hurtful actions continue to batter against you and those you love. Maybe your storm is called “Doubt,” and you wonder if there really even is a God out there who knows you, who cares about you. Maybe your storm is called “Empty Nest,” and the loneliness threatens to overwhelm you. Maybe your storm is called “Betrayal,” and you’re wondering if you can ever trust anyone again. Storms come into our lives, and they often come suddenly and with such ferocity that we wonder if we can possibly survive. And more than that, we wonder if Jesus even cares. Is he asleep somewhere? Shouldn’t he be steering the boat? Where is he, anyway? Lord, don’t you care if I drown? Over the sound of the wind and the crash of the waves, hear his voice tonight: “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

You see, the good news is that Jesus is there in the boat, in the storm with us. Even if we don’t think he’s not paying attention, even if we think he’s forgotten us, he has not. He is there in the storm with us. It’s a crazy question the disciples ask, really, because of course he cares if they drown. If their boat goes down, so does he, because he’s in the boat with them. Mark’s little community that he was writing this Gospel to knew the storm of persecution (cf. Lane 12-17), and they needed this story so they could remember that Jesus, the one they had put their trust in, is Lord of the storms. Even the winds and the waves obey him. And so, in early Christian art, one of the symbols for the church was a boat, tossed on the waves, because that reminded the people that Jesus was in the boat with them (Lane 178). In fact, the word for the place where you sit each week in this sanctuary is the “nave,” which is a word that comes from the Latin, navis, meaning “ship.” We hear that in our word “Navy.” So we’re in the boat, even when we’re here in worship. And Jesus, Lord of the storms, is present with us. And when he is here, there is ultimately no reason to fear.

Sometimes, though, the storms in our lives make it difficult to see him, and so for the next few weeks, as we journey through this Lenten season, we’re going to look again at Jesus. The early believers in him were said to be people of “The Way;” it wasn’t until later, at Antioch, that they were called “Christians” (Acts 11:26). Originally, this faith was known as the way—the way to live, the way to find hope and salvation. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodism, said he wanted to know one thing: “the way to heaven.” And so, for the next six weeks, we’re going to look at “The Way,” and focus on the life and ministry of Jesus. We want to understand his message better. We want to see him more clearly. We want to learn how better to follow him, to trust him, to place our lives in his hands. We want to answer for our own lives the question the disciples asked: “Who is this man?” 

Even as we’re seeking to know more who he is, we’ll also learn more who we are, and our first step on this journey tonight is to realize that he is Lord and we are not. One way we symbolize that, each year as we begin the Lenten season, is to place ashes on our forehead. Ashes are a symbol of mortality, of suffering—tonight, we might say they are a symbol of the storms in our lives. And when we place them on our foreheads in the shape of a cross, we’re declaring who is Lord over our mortality, our suffering, our storms. We’re proclaiming who it is we want to trust. That’s why we begin this season with ashes, because this season, which begins in death, is ultimately headed toward the celebration of Easter and resurrection, the time when the ultimate answer to the question, “Who is this man?”, is given. He is the one whom the wind and the waves, and even death itself, obey.

Tonight, as you come forward to receive the ashes, there is a small card that I invite you to pick up. On it is a prayer you can use tonight and throughout the Lenten season, and on the back side are some reminders of why we use ashes on this night. As we prepare our hearts for this time of reflection, we’re going to sing an affirmation of faith, for the heart of who we are and what we are about is Jesus. It’s only in Christ alone that we can really do anything. That’s what the disciples learned on a stormy sea in the middle of the night, and that’s what we also will discover along the way. Let’s sing, shall we?

Isms

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Romans 3:19-26; John 4:4-15

February 3, 2013 • Portage First UMC

VIDEO INTRO

Two weeks ago, on the morning of January 21, the day of the inauguration ceremonies, a popular and well-known conservative pastor from the west coast posted the following on Twitter: “Praying for our president, who today will place his hand on a Bible he does not believe to take an oath to a God he likely does not know.” The responses, as you might guess, came strongly and swiftly, but as far as I know, to this date, that pastor has not yet apologized or responded to the criticisms. More than that, at my last check, 3,456 people had “re-tweeted” that comment. In some ways, you can say his tweet was maybe rather mild (some of the responses were not!), and that it just represented a strong disagreement he has with President Obama. But that tweet is part of a larger issue, and that’s the perception many people have, especially young people, of the church, that the Christian faith and the church are hate-filled. The Barna Group, a Christian research firm, did a study in 2007 about attitudes toward the church, and that study became the basis of the book unChristian. It was a study aimed at unchurched young people, and Barna found that the two top perceptions of modern-day Christianity are both hate-filled. 91% of those surveyed believe that Christianity is anti-homosexual, and 87% of those same folks believe the church is judgmental. “Only a small percentage of outsiders,” the report found, “strongly believe that the labels ‘respect, love, hope and trust’ describe Christianity…Christians are primarily perceived for what they stand against. We have become famous for what we oppose, rather than who we are for” (Kinnaman & Lyons, chapter 2).

The church has an image problem, and that’s part of what we’re trying to address in this series of sermons as we seek to bust a few of the myths that exist about the church and the Christian faith. Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about how the church is perceived to be antiscientific, or all about rules, or insensitive to those of other faiths, but today we come to what is, perhaps, the most troubling, for there are many in the younger generations who believe the church is hate-filled—specifically that we are, by nature, racist, sexist, and homophobic, among other things. They believe that we are more against certain types of people than we are for anyone, that we subscribe to many different “isms.” But is that a true picture of the Christian faith? Are those folks right? Are Christians called to be hate-filled?

It isn’t hard to look around and find a basis for such charges. I’m only using these three as examples of this larger perception of Christians being hateful, and there are certainly others we could include. But let’s just think about these three for a few moments. Sexism, for instance—the belief that one sex is superior to the other, and usually that’s seen as men lording it over women. Certainly, it’s not hard to find Bible passages that could be read that way, even in the New Testament. We recognize that much of the Bible was written in largely patriarchal cultures, and most of us cringe when Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church” (1 Corinthians 14:34-35). If you followed that to the letter today, it’d be awfully quiet in our Sunday School rooms, and many churches would be empty altogether. It also doesn’t help that Paul wrote, “Wives, submit to your own husbands as you do to the Lord” (Galatians 5:22). That’s also a passage many men favor having read at their wedding! And, more seriously and sadly, there are traditions within the Christian faith where passages like that are used to justify oppression of and even violence against women. As I’ve said before, I knew a church in Muncie where a class was held to teach men how to make their wives submit. Passages like this have also been used in the past to keep women from full-time, professional ministry. Did you know that the first woman to be ordained to the ministry in the United States was in 1853, in a Congregational church? Pentecostals really led the charge and the change in allowing women to serve as pastors (Russell, Exposing Myths About Christianity, pg. 89); the Methodists didn’t get on that bandwagon until 1956. So is Christianity sexist?

Or what about racism? It’s a sad part of our history that, even though the New Testament never mentions the color of someone’s skin (cf. Russell 101), the Bible has been used to justify slavery and inequality between the races. Using twisted interpretations of various Bible verses, churches were used to proclaim that one race was inferior to the other. Slaveholders would beat their slaves during the week and show up in church on Sunday. The Methodist church split in 1844 over this issue (17 years before the civil war began) because the southern churches were in favor of slavery and the northern churches were helping slaves escape. Even after emancipation and the end of the war, the division remained. The northern and southern Methodists didn’t come back together until 1939, almost a century later. And though there were more Christians involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960‘s than purely secular folks, the struggle remained. And remains. Sunday mornings are still the most segregated time in American culture. Is Christianity racist?

And what about the struggle over homosexuality? The church is split, broken over this issue. Our own denomination, despite taking a clear stance many years ago, continues to struggle with what it means to live in a world with changing attitudes. A phobia is “an intense, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specified thing” (Russell 91). It tends to be demonstrated by “demonizing” the other person, especially someone or something we don’t understand. And when we demonize we tend to generate more heat than light on the matter. The truth is that Christians have widely divergent views on this topic. As Jeffrey Burton Russell puts it, “Some believe that charity outweighs the biblical texts. Some believe the biblical texts should be ignored altogether. Some note that the evidence pointing to physical causes of homosexuality was obviously unknown to ‘culture-bound’ biblical writers. Some continue to believe that the traditional views of the Bible need to be reaffirmed” (93). Some are willing to act on their beliefs violently, or at least verbally and attack those they don’t agree with. Our own General Conference, the decision-making body for the whole United Methodist Church, continues to debate this topic when they meet every four years. And it’s just another, maybe more current example of the way the world perceives us as hate-filled (cf. Russell 87-94, 101-103).

Sexism, racism, homophobic, hate-filled. As we’ve said all through this series, despite the fact that there are people who do act the way the world perceives all of us to act, the standard by which we judge the Christian faith is not how others act, or even how you and I act, or how we feel. The standard is always Jesus, and how the Bible calls us to live out our faith. So, for a moment this morning, I want to take a step back from the heat of these topics and look at how Jesus treated people, then look at what Paul says about who can be saved and how, and then see if we can respond in any way to this myth.

Our Gospel reading this morning contains the beginning of a story about Jesus and an unlikely conversation companion. John begins the story in a startling way—not, maybe, startling to us, because we’ve probably read it before. But he says here that Jesus “had” to go through Samaria. Well, that’s simply not true. Jesus didn’t HAVE to go through Samaria. Granted, Samaria was the shortest, quickest route. But it wasn’t the only route to take if you were going from Judea in the south back to Galilee in the north. Samaria lay right between the two areas, but because the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other, most good Jews would go across the Jordan River, through the valley and around Samaria, avoiding it completely. They would go the long way so as to avoid contact with those dirty, rotten Samaritans. It was thought that contact with them would make you “unclean,” or unsuitable for worship. Basically, it was a sin to have contact with the Samaritans. But it was also true that sometimes the Samaritans attacked Jews who were traveling through their territory. It was a mutual hatred, and in fact, Jesus and his disciples had gone “the long way” before (Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, pg. 40; Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, pg. 201). But this day, John says, Jesus “had” to go the short way—not because he was on any pressing schedule. I believe he “had” to go this way so that he could talk to this woman.

She wasn’t someone people talked to normally. She came to the well at noon, most likely because she wasn’t welcome there in the morning when the rest of the women came to get water. Either she is a social outcast (perhaps because of her many marriages and divorces or the lifestyle she is living currently) or she knows that travelers will be at the well at noon and she wants to contact them (Bailey 202). Either way, she is a woman of ill repute. Now, good Jewish men didn’t talk to decent women if they weren’t married to them, and they certainly wouldn’t be caught alone with a woman like this. The risk was too great. They could be accused of immorality, or even drawn into immorality, and at the very least, they could be the subject of gossip (Wright, John, 41). In fact, the standard protocol here, when the woman sees Jesus literally sitting on the capstone of the well, would be for her to stop and wait for him to withdraw at least twenty feet. Only then should she approach the well (Bailey 202). But it quickly becomes obvious Jesus isn’t going anywhere, so John tells us she came up to the well. The well Jesus is sitting on. She’s going to have to get past him to put her bucket through the hole in the top.

True to custom, she doesn’t speak to him. But Jesus, who was known to break all sorts of rules, does talk to her. In fact, he asks her for a drink. Again, we don’t think anything of that, though as this is cold and flu season, we might be reluctant to share a drink with someone. But this whole thing of hatred betweens Jews and Samaritans centered around the belief by the one that the other was impure, unholy, they were a sinner, and that by touching them, interacting with them, you would become impure as well. You would be sinning. This was a deep-seated tradition, reaching back five hundred years (Bailey 203). Five hundred years of arguing over who were the true people of God. Five hundred years of dogged determination not to share a drink or a plate of food with the other. Five hundred years of treating the other person, distant relatives, as nonhuman. And with six words, Jesus tears down the barrier: “Will you give me a drink?” (4:7).

There’s much more that could be said about this story, but I want us to notice this today: Jesus reached out to and interacted with and treated as human someone no one else wanted anything to do with, someone who was considered to be a sinner, someone whom everyone thought they had labeled. Jesus broke social convention and five hundred years of tradition because he saw a soul in desperate need of hope, salvation, rescue. Now, let me point out that Jesus didn’t stand there and approve of this woman’s life. He calls her on the carpet. He points out her failed marriages and her current sinful and broken life. He doesn’t hide from that. In the conversation that follows, he is very blunt with her. But he doesn’t avoid her. He doesn’t shun her. He doesn’t hate her. He loves her and offers her hope.

Well, we say, maybe that was just one instance. Was it? Did Jesus act this way toward anyone else? Well, tax collectors were considered traitors and sinners and were despised by most people in that day. (Some things never change!) And yet, Jesus called a tax collector to be one of his disciples (Mark 2:14). In Jericho he called a short little tax collector down out of a tree and had dinner with him (Luke 19:1-10). (You’ll hear more about that next week.) Jesus went to dinner with most everyone. He allowed a “sinful woman” to wash his feet with her tears (Luke 7:39), and he was known by those who thought they were important as a “friend of sinners” (Matthew 11:19). Jesus hung out with people no one else wanted. He argued with the so-called “religious” people, and he loved the so-called “sinners.” There was one time when he was confronted with a woman caught in the act of adultery. The religious leaders threw her at Jesus’ feet and asked what they should do. After telling them they could stone her if the person who had no sin in his life threw the first stone, he then turns to the woman, tells her he doesn’t condemn her, and tells her to leave her life of sin behind her (John 8:1-11). To those whom others hated, Jesus showed love, and he demonstrated why loving God and loving others is the greatest commandment of all (Matthew 22:35-40).

But what about Paul? We know Paul wrote most of the early New Testament, and we also know Paul has a reputation for strong words. Paul is often characterized as a sexist, excluding women from worship. But, on that issue, Paul seems to be writing particular commands to particular churches who are having time-bound difficulties, because we also know Paul worked alongside many women in his ministry. At the end of his letter to the Romans, he calls Phoebe a “deacon,” a leader in the early church (16:1), and says she has been helpful to him. He greets Priscilla and Aquila, wife and husband, and isn’t it interesting that he names her first, when usually in that culture (as in ours, for that matter) people were listed the other way around? He names Mary, Junia, Tryphena and Tryphosa, and Julia as women who have worked alongside him in the cause of the Gospel. And that’s just in Romans! Paul also appreciated the work and companionship of at least two slaves we know of—Luke, who traveled with Paul in various places in the book of Acts (cf. Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pgs. 15-21) and Onesimus, who was converted under Paul’s ministry (cf. Philemon). Now, it is true that Paul has strong words on the topic of homosexuality, and his writing in Romans 1 is very much at the center of today’s debates over the topic. Paul is writing about that much like we would use a current example in the news or in the culture to describe or illustrate a larger point. He’s talking about rebellion against God, and in his culture there were many examples of that kind of brokenness. The emperor, Nero, was known to engage in all sorts of bizarre sexual behavior, with women and men, and Paul is not simply saying, “We don’t approve of this.” Rather, he’s showing what happens when one part of our life becomes our defining characteristic. That’s idolatry, which is Paul’s larger concern in this chapter. He also goes on to talk about envy, greed, murder, gossip and other sins in the same chapter. What happens when we rebel against God? Not “we” as in individuals, but “we” as in the human race. Well, Paul says, God gives us over to pursue the glorification of ourselves rather than God’s plan (cf. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans, Part One, pgs. 20-27).

Paul’s overarching concern in the larger letter, which he gets to in the part of chapter 3 that we read this morning, is what makes us right with God, in essence what gets us out of the mess we’re in. For Paul’s people, the Jews, it was all about the law—doing what the law commanded, and not doing what the law commanded them not to do. Pastor Deb talked about this a couple of weeks ago. The problem, as they discovered, is that no one can keep the law completely. The other problem is that when we try, it becomes all about our performance, doing the “right” things, or it becomes all about who we are. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul makes this point. He says that if anyone has anything to boast about when it comes to their pedigree or their lineage, he has more. “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless” (Philippians 3:5-6). Paul says, I had it all together. I did everything right. And yet, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter who I was. It didn’t matter what I had done. I could keep the law until the end of my days, he says, and all the law would do is tell me what my sin is. “Through the law,” he writes, “we become conscious of our sin” (3:20). And that’s all the law, the strict hard rules, could do for me.

What the law does not do and cannot do, Paul says, is define what salvation is, what righteousness is. That’s why Jesus came, he says, to provide the hope of living in a righteous way. “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (3:22). “All,” he says. In other words, Paul is not so much concerned about who we are. He’s concerned about whose we are, and the labels don’t matter. “There is no difference,” he says, “between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:22-23). In other words, we’re far too quick to judge, to call others “sinners,” when, in fact, we are sinners as well. There is no ranking of big sins and little sins. The law tells us what sin is, but Christ tells us who we are and who we can be in him. We are people who have all sinned, who are all in need of grace, and who have no business pointing the finger at others. We can, like Jesus did, lovingly point out the sin in someone’s life, but if we can’t do it with love, we shouldn’t do it at all. If we can’t do it with love, we’re not really doing it in Jesus’ name. Remember how he treated the Samaritan woman? Remember what he said in the Sermon on the Mount? “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?…You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3, 5). For Paul, and for Jesus, what justifies us is not who we are but whose we are. And when he makes us his own, he calls us to leave our life of sin, as he did with the woman by the well and many others.

I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t have firm convictions. Our church does. The United Methodist Church says, “Racism plagues and cripples our growth in Christ, inasmuch as it is antithetical to the gospel itself…we recognize racism as a sin and affirm the ultimate and temporal worth of all persons” (2012 Discipline, para. 162.A). Our Social Principles go on to say, “We affirm with Scripture the common humanity of male and female, both having equal worth in the eyes of God. We reject the erroneous notion that one gender is superior to another…” (para. 161.E). And our Church goes on to say, “We support efforts to stop violence and other forms of coercion against all persons, regardless of sexual orientation…We affirm that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God…The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching. We affirm that God’s grace is available to all” (paras. 162.J and 161.F). So the church has a viewpoint, a stance, a conviction, but that last statement I read is very important. God’s grace is available to all. There should be a difference between holding a strong conviction about a belief or practice and hating the person who believes or acts differently—because we are always in ministry to all. We worship one who came not as a person of power but as a baby in a manger (cf. Bailey 204), the very epitome of powerlessness, and then he grew up and told us that the greatest commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourself (Mark 12:28-31). In the final analysis, that is what shapes our faith. No matter what the myth is, or what people accuse us of, at its heart, our faith is one that calls us to love God, love others and offer Jesus.

As we bring this series to a close, we’re going to share in the sacrament of Holy Communion. More than anything else, this table—this bread and this cup—ought to bring us together, because it reminds us of what Paul said. We are all sinners, in need of grace and mercy. The bread and the cup remind us of what Jesus did to give us grace, to bring us mercy. And so we’re going to do communion a little differently this morning. You’ve noticed by now that the table is in the center of the congregation, or as I prefer to think about, it’s in the midst of the community. And after I bless the elements, we’re going to invite you to come as you are ready and take the bread, dip it in the cup and receive the communion there, in the midst of your brothers and sisters in Christ. But here’s the challenge: if there is someone here you have a grudge against, if there is a broken relationship here, if there’s someone here that’s just so different you don’t understand them—I want to challenge you to come to the table with that person. Bring them with you. Or take communion to them; we have extra chalices on the table this morning for just that purpose. Share the table today with someone you might have an “ism” against, and find the love of Christ poured out on both of you.