SERMON, February 8, 2009

Isaiah 41:21-31; I Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

I live in a co-housing community. We are a group of people, adults, children, and teens in 29 households who live in condominiums built around a central courtyard. We make all our decisions as a community by consensus—which sometimes takes a very long time. And we’re committed to trying to live together in ways that support one another and that offer us opportunities to work together, share stuff (like tools and chores) and in general build healthy relationships with one another. We share some meals together every week and usually once a year we have a weekend long workshop with a focus that is designed to improve our skills for living together. Just a few weeks ago I participated in one of those trainings—this one was a version of a program run by the Alternatives to Violence Project in prisons around the country. It consisted of all kinds of experiences that helped us think about how we communicate with one another. In one of the exercises we met in twosomes, and one partner talked about something in their own life that represented a cutting edge—something that was challenging my usual ways of living, something that had me wondering or even uncomfortable—something new that was stirring in my life—something I wouldn’t ordinarily talk about with others. The other person’s main job was simple: listen. Just listen. Just be present, pay attention, focus on the person talking and listen. You could ask questions to clarify, you could seek deeper understanding, but there was to be no advice given, no solutions offered. The job was to listen. To give our time to one another—our devoted attention you might say.

It was a challenge to talk with someone I didn’t know very well at all about something unsettled in my own life. To share that honestly required vulnerability that is not typically offered to folks we don’t know. To be listened to though was an enormous gift—as I struggled even to find the words to describe my cutting edge—I was listened to. I was honored with the gift of another’s attention.

In another exercise we were paired face to face with another person and while the leader read a meditation about the infinite worth of the person in front of me (and all people)—the infinite worth of each of us as human persons, we were asked just to look at the face of the other person who sat in front of us. We gave our full attention to the other person simply with our eyes. Minutes passed.

These experiences which ran so counter to our multi-tasking culture—to our hurried everyday living—to our inattention—our tendencies to interrupt one another, to solve everything, to give advice—were reminders to me about relationship, and what it means to be in relationship.

I thought about them as I pondered today’s gospel story and the snippet of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Jesus has exorcised the demons from the man in the synagogue, reached out to lift Simon’s mother-in-law up from her fever, and healed the many who came to the door as evening fell on the first full day of his ministry. He gets up before dawn the next morning to have some time to pray, but Simon and his friends hunt him down and urge him to come back and get on with the work—“Everyone is searching for you!” they say. Everyone in Capernaum that is. The word is out about this man who astounds the crowds with his integrity and authority, who challenges the powers that be by restoring the sick to community. The people want to find him. The word translated as hunt here is a strong rather aggressive word—It implies that Simon is out to get Jesus back on track.

But in effect, Jesus says, ”No.” Let’s go out to the other towns so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do. I haven’t come to establish a healing center here in your home town. We’re not meant to be staying put—I’m called out to others beyond home, beyond synagogue, beyond the boundaries of comfort—I’m meant to proclaim the good news of God’s gracious reign to others.

This little text and the one we heard last week are filled with hints of the grace and the struggle to come. Jesus lifts Simon’s mother-in-law up, just as he himself will be lifted up on the cross, and lifted up to new life in the resurrection. The demons who recognize him are silenced, but we sense they will return. Jesus goes out in the dark to a deserted place—reminiscent of the wilderness to which he was driven just after his baptism. Simon and his friends think they know what’s right, but clearly Jesus has other ideas—this will be a continuing theme in their lives—as it so often is in ours. Just when we think we get it, we find out we haven’t quite. Just when we think we can put a boundary—a zone of comfort around the gospel—we learn that the good news is boundaryless—we are always being called out to a new horizon or perhaps to a deeper place or to people with whom we differ.

And Paul in his Letter to the Corinthians talks about how he is constrained to preach the gospel. Like Jesus, he can’t seem to help himself—the joy of the good news is just too much—it demands a sharing. And maybe you have known this joy yourself and felt a compulsion to share it. The joy of knowing that you are loved, that God’s grace is at work in your life, a healing, longed for but unexpected has come, someone isolated and rejected has been restored to the family, forgiveness has transformed your life. . . any of these can be joys that demand sharing. And, in fact, joy is one of those gifts that just seems to demand sharing. Even joys like winning the lottery, getting an A on the exam, finding a new job, paying off your car loan… it’s hard to keep good news to yourself. Sharing it just seems to be a part of it.

Paul says that he has to share the news about God’s gracious reign, God’s love, God’s creative energy at work in life, God’s invitation in Jesus to the fullness of life. He has to share it with all kinds of people—not just those in the circle of faith. Although he has been set free by the gospel, he exercises restraint. He chooses to meet people where they are—he chooses to honor them and their truth. The Good News itself forms him into a person who does this.

He becomes as a Jew to Jews, as one under the law to those who let the law be their guide, to the weak, he is weak. . . he has become all things to all people for the sake of the gospel, so that he may share its blessings. So, those who don’t even know about the law he meets in their ignorance of the law, those who live their lives subject to the letter of the law, he meets in their lawfulness. He meets them where they are.

Now, perhaps because Paul uses the word win more than once in this passage, I’ve heard people say that the whole thing reminds them of certain politicians and how they act when they are running for office. They talk with a Texas accent in Texas, like Harvard grads in the East, and they promise no taxes to the rich and wealth to the poor. It’s about pretending to be something you aren’t. “All things to all people,” a devious plot just to get elected.

But there is another way to understand what Paul is saying. Because in the deepest sense Paul is not tricking people, not just pretending he is something he isn’t to make people comfortable. He listens to them and shares with them in ways they can understand. To do this he must get to know their reality first. Their truth. And, only then does he share the good news. But, of course, the fact is that merely by entering their truth, listening deeply, honoring their reality he has already proclaimed the good news of God’s love for each person. The good news of God come among us in solidarity with us. He has already shared the good news, indeed. He has shared the most precious truth of his life by turning to his neighbors in love and respect before he ever opens his mouth.

The little exercises I did with my co-housing community were a taste of this kind of kingdom living really. They weren’t couched as such, but they were. To listen deeply to another person as they struggle to share their story. To honor one another with our full attention. To look in love at another human being for more than a few seconds—these are gospel gifts. This is proclaiming the good news of God’s gracious reign come among us. This is a share in the ministry of Jesus himself. For our deepest understanding of Jesus is as the One who has come among us as one of us—to share our flesh—to listen—to attend—to stand with—to touch—to lift up—to heal—to restore where there is brokenness. All of this begins with meeting us where we are. All of us—those here this evening, those outside, in neighboring towns, those who are under the law, those who’ve never heard of the law, the strong, the weak—all.

To remember who Jesus is, is to know God, and to know who we are. And, it is joy -- a joy that simply has to be shared. The sharing of our joy begins not with words, but with being fully present to each other, and, as Jesus reminded his friends, to those outside this place. That is the Good News for all people.