Searching for the Sacred

“Searching for the Sacred” was preached at Sunnyside Presbyterian Church on Sunday, February 4, 2018. Inspirations for this sermon include Scripture, commentaries, the Super Bowl (ha!), engaging young adults, and an intergenerational storytelling event immediately following worship. You can listen to an audio recording of this sermon here.

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Isaiah 40:21-31

21 Have you not known? Have you not heard?

    Has it not been told you from the beginning?

    Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

    and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;

who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

    and spreads them like a tent to live in;

23 who brings princes to naught,

    and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,

    scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,

when he blows upon them, and they wither,

    and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

25 To whom then will you compare me,

    or who is my equal? says the Holy One.

26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:

    Who created these?

He who brings out their host and numbers them,

    calling them all by name;

because he is great in strength,

    mighty in power,

    not one is missing.

27 Why do you say, O Jacob,

    and speak, O Israel,

“My way is hidden from the Lord,

    and my right is disregarded by my God”?

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

    the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary;

    his understanding is unsearchable.

29 He gives power to the faint,

    and strengthens the powerless.

30 Even youths will faint and be weary,

    and the young will fall exhausted;

31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

    they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

    they shall walk and not faint.

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Mark 1:29-39

29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

32 That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33 And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 38 He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” 39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

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Throughout the four Gospels, Jesus performed many healing miracles.

He made the blind see; he gave voice and sound to a deaf mute.

He cured lepers, those afflicted by skin deformities and disfigurements.

He healed paralytics and caused the lame to walk.

He healed women; he stopped the bleeding of a woman who bled for 12 years and he called a woman to stand up straight after being crippled by a spirit.

He removed intense suffering from a man experiencing chronic pain; he blessed a withered hand; he healed the son of a royal official from a distance.

And Jesus didn’t stop there.

He restored the ear of guard after it was cut off by a sword. He exorcised demons out of many afflicted.

And he raised people from the dead; a daughter, a young man, Lazarus. From the dead he raised them!

We think of all these great miracles; these great and divine healings, and think to ourselves, “What power our savior must have! He can heal anything!”

And Jesus can heal anything… including a fever.

I need to be honest with you all. I’m speaking for myself here. When I first read our gospel passage, my immediate reaction was, “Okay so nothing happened. Good story, Mark.”

What’s funny is we have a person in our life who tells stories like this. A person who hypes up the story they are about to tell. You know the one, the one who gets you on the edge of your seat with excitement as you await for something revolutionary to happen. And then nothing seems to actually happen.

Like, “Hey, I need to tell you something! It’s really good! I went to the store today!”

And so you would naturally respond, “Okay and then what?!”

And then they say, “Oh. Nothing. I just wanted to tell you I went to the store.”

So I admit when I first read this passage from the Gospel of Mark, I had this natural reaction to say, “And then what?”

“Jesus healed a woman with a fever.”                                                “And then what?”

“Well then he went to go pray.”                                                         “And then what?”

“Then he said he wanted to go out to neighboring towns.”               “And then what?”

“And then he did. The end.”                                                               “The end..? What!”

And I also must admit that this feeling of a lack of a revolutionary moment comes from the fact that this story starts with the healing of a fever. A fever! Something I have had; something you have had. Something some of us have had in the last month or even last week.

And I also admit because of my age demographic and the use of modern medicine, a fever doesn’t sound like that big of deal. Jesus who brought people back from the dead also took the time to heal a woman from a fever. I’ve been wrestling with this dichotomy all week.

So I read this story again. And I read it again. And again and again and again.

And each time I read it felt like a door was opening little by little till eventually I was invited into this sacred space.

Because it made me realize that God works great things not only in the grand scheme of things but also in the small. In the almost seemingly trivial matters. Because this story just like the stories of Jesus raising people from the dead matters.

Because we know this story like all stories is the Word of God written with intent and purpose. With divine, sacred meaning.

And these words—these exact words and phrases found in our passage today—hold those same divine meanings. Let us turn back to the first few verses to explore certain words and phrases together.

“Mother-in-law.”

 “Fever.”

“Lifted her up.”

“She began to serve them.”

First, we see that we are still in the first chapter of Mark. Mark as a Gospel moves quickly. In the first chapter alone, Jesus has already been baptized, tempted in the wilderness, called his first disciples, and cast out an unclean spirit from a man. Among his first disciples Jesus called were Simon and Andrew, the fishermen who were called to be fishers of men. And when they were called, they dropped their nets, left their father—their family behind, and followed Jesus without question.

Which is significant because when we hear that story we marvel at the courage Simon and Andrew had because they left their families behind; some of us even understand it as that broke their family’s bonds to follow Jesus. I mean, scholars even admit that the Gospel of Mark can appear to be quite anti-family.

But here, just a few short verses after Simon and Andrew left their families to be disciples of Jesus, they call on him to heal Simon’s mother-in-law. One of Jesus’s closest followers is hurting because a family member is sick, and so Jesus responds. Not by some grand or marvelous act, but by holding her hand.

Which brings me to her fever. Again, I admit; her illness seemed trivial to me; minor in comparison to the many other healings done by Jesus. But a fever can be no small thing. I mean, even fifty years ago, a fever was no small thing. Even today, with certain circumstances, a fever can lead to death. So 2000 years ago in biblical times, a fever was definitely no small thing; no insignificant illness. For Jesus to heal her fever is just as miraculous as making a blind man see.

And when he healed this woman of her fever, Mark tells us that Jesus lifted her up. In fact, in nearly every healing story throughout the Gospel of Mark, the person healed is “lifted up” by Jesus. Lifted up as in raised up. Raised up as in the resurrection. The healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is the first resurrection story in the Gospel and a forecast of Jesus’ own resurrection that will come.

This healing narrative then ends with Simon’s mother-in-law serving Jesus and his disciples. Staying true to customs of that time, “She began to serve them.” The woman who was just sick in bed moments ago is now up and ready to serve the men. But her service to the men doesn’t make her secondary to them in this story; rather, Simon’s mother-in-law is restored by Jesus to be herself once again; to do what she felt called to do—to serve, to feed, to repair, to fulfill responsibilities, and to provide for Jesus. This service and provision to Christ is important in this story because at the end of the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus has been hanging on the cross and just taken his last breath, when all of his male disciples have abandoned him, Mark 15:4-41 says, “There were also women looking on from a distance; […]. These [women] used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.”

In the original Greek text, the same verb is being used to talked about Simon’s mother-in-law serving the men in the first chapter and for the women who provided for Christ in the second to last chapter. And because of that, biblical scholars say it’s okay to presume that Simon’s mother-in-law was there with the other women; that she never abandoned Christ even when Jesus’s official disciples including Simon and Andrew did. To be with Christ from beginning to end makes this woman a follower of Christ. To be a follower of Christ who is willing to serve Christ makes this woman a disciple of Christ. To be a disciple of Christ, “then to her has been given the secret of the kingdom of God.” 

So yeah, and I might just be telling myself this but maybe I’m telling you too, this story is so much more than what we get from a quick, initial listening. When we take the time to listen to a story, to just listen, we are brought into that story. And when we are brought into a story, we see its significance and purpose. We feel the emotions and we make sense of the details. The story begins to come alive before us. We are invited into an intimate place of narrative. And in that intimate place, something more happens; something sacred. The words are transformed and the bonds between the listener and teller become stronger. And in that, Christian fellowship happens. A glimpse of the heavenly kingdom can be seen through the relationships growing between God’s people.

It should also be noted what an initial listening to our Isaiah passage would be. Did you hear the animal reference in the last verse? This Isaiah passage, Isaiah 40, one of the four assigned lectionary readings for this exact Sunday ends with, “but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles…” A quick, initial listening would also make it sound like God is rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles today in the Super Bowl.

I admit I laughed at that reference when I read the Isaiah passage knowing today was going to be the Super Bowl. But this passage in Isaiah is similar to the story told in the Gospel of Mark because it is asking us to accept the invitation to enter into an intimate place of sacredness with God.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard?” It invites us to listen; it invites us to learn. And all through this passage are words of transformation: faint to power, legs to wings, weariness to stamina, questions to understanding. We hear and see the same transformations as when we took the time to listen to what Mark chapter 1 was really saying. Once again, we are invited into a more intimate place, and by entering, we are surrounded by a certain level of sacredness.

Now I want us to consider our own setting; our own story. Sunnyside is a place of blessing. It seems we always have one thing after another. Another event. Another project. Another ministry. Another mission. In fact, when Jessica Young Brust, our regional representative for our Engaging Young Adults grant, came to visit Sunnyside a few weeks ago said one of the things that her impressed us most about our church is that even though we already have so much going for us, we still actively listen to where God is calling us as a church to go. We are letting God’s story live through us and our stories.

So we continue to do this. We don’t just sit back and rest. No, we get up and serve. And we know this takes work. It especially takes work as we continue to build relationships as Sunnyside continues to be a new community of faith for people of all ages. Families with kids, grandparents with youth, young adults looking for a place of belonging, seniors looking for a church home. They are all searching for something. And so our ministry grows. And we get excited. We see the faithfulness of God through the members of our community. But in this, God challenges us.

We are an intergenerational church. We are an intergenerational family. We believe that every person here is a child of God and therefore each of your presences here is valued. We believe that if you were not here today, our church wouldn’t be the same without you. First time visitors and longtime members. Our church wouldn’t be as special without you. And then today is intergenerational worship. We have heard and will hear the voices of children and youth and adults of all ages here in this hour alone. And we know each of those voices matter because they are sharing their gifts for the glorification of God.

And then following worship we have our all church lunch downstairs in the fellowship hall. And I’m so thankful for the young adults of Sunnyside who have agreed to host it. Our bible study on Tuesday evenings has become a safe, secure place of community for our young adults here at Sunnyside. And they want to share that community with you. They want to share their stories, and they want to hear yours. They want the relationships they build with all to transform into something sacred. And to do this, all we all need to do is to just listen, to be invited into an intimate place, to respond with gratitude, and to accept the invitation of a new, sacred relationship.

I love that this passage from Mark ends with Jesus going out into a deserted place to pray. When the disciples find him in this place, they say “Everyone is searching for you.” And Jesus responds by saying that he will go to them. Is that not also true for us? We search for Christ. We spend our days searching for Christ. And we know with holy confidence that in our searching for Christ, Christ comes to us, here in worship, here at the table, here in our stories, here in the relationships we build with one another.

Perhaps searching for Christ means we must search for the sacred. And to search for the sacred means we must search for the stories. It’s a beautiful thing to hear God work through people; all we have to do is listen.

Amen.

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