LAST SUNDAY’S SERMON: JESUS HEALED

(Mark 1:21-28)

The man shouted. There was a disruption during worship. This poor guy was crying out, shouting.

Jesus was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, a village on the lakeshore in Galilee. Suddenly the service was interrupted -- perhaps his actual teaching, perhaps Jesus’ sermon itself was interrupted by someone crying out, shouting out.

The person is described as someone with an “unclean spirit” and I suspect from the story that this person was mentally ill. In the first century world of this story, medical knowledge was pretty basic and human nature tended to see some kinds of sickness as uncleanness or the result of sinfulness. I note that Jesus was not describing the person as unclean, the society was.

Now you may say, if Jesus was Son of God – as this Gospel says – how come he didn’t know what was wrong with this guy? Why couldn’t he make an accurate diagnosis?

Jesus accepted the limitations of knowledge of his historic time. He didn’t tell people how to fly a plane or do surgery. There were critically incredibly important ways Jesus didn’t accept limitations at all – ways he broke through social and religious limitations and barriers and walls. 

What he went out of the box with, what he knocked open the box with, where the power of God acted in him in new and surprising ways was to meet sickness – physical and mental – with the compassion and self-giving love which were the primary characteristics of his nature, as Son of the living God: “You are my beloved Son.”

That compassion and love would change everything – would change the life of this poor guy crying out in the synagogue and over two thousand years would change all sorts of things.

The institution of slavery which seemed a completely unchangeable part of society, rooted in the Bible (where one can find lots of stories accepting the practice), would be ended on the basis of concepts found in the teachings of Jesus, themselves rooted in Scripture. That God has created all human beings in God’s image and likeness, and therefore endowed them with certain rights – therefore given each one an inestimable value, male or female, slave or free.  

Today’s story is a healing, the first miracle story in Mark, an astonishing story – but based on the teachings of Jesus people would seek to use their God given minds and imagination to develop ways of helping the sick, to develop modern medical science, hospitals, hospices, new understandings.

The writer tells us that the congregation in the synagogue – who were hearing Jesus for the first time, we are just in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel – were impressed and surprised with the authority with which Jesus spoke. Jesus had very great clarity from the beginning of his ministry about who he was and what he was going to say and do and be. He had a deep sense, put into words often, put into action, of obeying the will of the one he called abba, Father – which was and is always to face what came, to see people and encounter them and reach out to them in compassion and self-giving love.

And suddenly Jesus was interrupted with this cry, shout, scream. The men and women looked around to see where it came from, what was going on.

“What have you got to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”

Jesus saw the man. He saw who he was – a human being of infinite value, created by God, loved by God who was very very sick. Jesus the Light of the world saw him clearly.

Jesus had compassion on him. Jesus healed him. Jesus spoke with authority driving out the sickness, telling the sickness to go.

What do I make of this? Do I believe healing happens? Yes, I do. Sometimes it is with the help of medical science. Sometimes there is no explanation – a miracle.

Sometimes the creative work of medical science is I believe a miracle, a wonder.

Sometimes healing does not come. Paul asked three times to have God take away whatever his sickness was – we do not know – he called it a thorn in the flesh. And the answer seemed to be “My grace is sufficient ... my strength is made perfect in weakness” (Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 12:9) And that can be its own healing, an interior peace and healing even though a sickness or limitation still exists.

The deepest healing comes from trusting God loves you and is with you. Jesus came to tell each person that.

Jesus gives us his story and this feast to tell us this good news, that a piece of bread placed in our hand is a sign God is with you and loves you. 

And when we die, God welcomes us home to be held in God’s love. One day death comes to everyone. The greatest and most authoritative teaching Jesus ever gave was how he faced death. We are at the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel today, this season, but at the end of the Gospel comes the story – the longest story in the Gospel, in all four Gospels, of how he faced death, and that he died and was buried and on the third day rose. Giving us each – each person -- hope in the ultimate healing which is the resurrection, Easter, heaven. The simple strong faith and hope that at our end we are welcomed home.

But today was not the day this guy in our story died. Not at all. It was a day of new life. He was healed. Whatever sickness he had was gone. He had life, he had physical capabilities, he had his mind, he had the gift of a new day (every day is a gift).

And he had great gifts for prayer and service. How do I know that? Because I believe each person is made by God with rich gifts for prayer and service. A great task of the church today, a great adventure, is to help people find and explore and develop – and set free, break out of the box – to use those God given gifts. 

But we are told nothing at all about what happened to this healed man next. He disappears from view. The writers of the Gospels had limited space, wanted to keep Jesus right in view all the time, so only a few of the supporting characters like Simon Peter get much development.

This healed man disappears at least from the bright light of the Gospel writers. So does the beggar born blind and healed in John nine.

I hope they actually stayed around. There are many references in the Gospels and the Book of Acts to a bigger group of disciples than the twelve. I hope the healed people were part of it. What immense rich gifts they would have brought – I hope they brought. Not least the knowledge of what it was like – for today’s man to have been so sick and the blind beggar to have been blind an outcast, put out to beg. Their compassion would have been rooted in such deep personal understanding.

At the heart of God is Jesus the beloved Son, risen from the dead – and so at the heart of God is a knowledge of what it is like to be human and to have suffered and died.  

Well, I hope the healed people were part of the community of disciples – the fellowship of Jesus, the koinonia, the church. I hope you are part of it, will be part of it. Part of the community of disciples of Jesus.

In this Epiphany season the church has us read stories from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. We started on January 8^th with the baptism of Jesus – where it began. And then on January 15^th and 22^nd we had stories of the calling of the first disciples.

I believe God gives us these stories to read, so we can hear in the story of the calling of the fishermen by the lakeshore in Galilee, God call us to follow Jesus as disciples, day by day.  

I believe the church is to speak with authority in saying that God loves you, and God calls you to be a disciple of Jesus. And God gives you rich gifts for discipleship, for prayer and ministry.   

We are told the people watching today’s story said Wow! Jesus tells even the unclean spirits what to do, and they obey.

Ah. The great question is whether we -- who are so loved by God -- trust that love and hear God’s call to follow Jesus (God, by your Holy Spirit open us to hear your call) – and whether we say yes and follow on his way of self-giving love, loving God and showing his compassion and love and mercy to others.

So loved by God. God loves you. 

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, January 29, 2012 the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany)