5 Epiphany B

"And she began to serve them."
We all have something about us that needs to be healed, that needs for Christ to reach down, take our hand and lift us up. How, then, can we respond to that healing?

5 Epiphany B

Transcribed from a sermon given

February 5, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Mark 1:29-39

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

I used to have a really difficult time with this story of the healing of Simon’s Mother-in-law. The feminist in me couldn’t stand the thought of this woman getting up from a fever and immediately serving everybody. What’s that about?

But this time, as I’ve been working with this particular passage, I have come to a different understanding. I have thought a lot about this woman, this mother-in-law of Simon, who would later be called Peter. This story takes place very early in Jesus’ ministry. People don’t know him very well. Now I’m a mother-in-law and I have a wonderful son-in-law. He is a loving, solid person who has a good job and cares about my daughter. I try to imagine how I would feel if some strange wandering spiritual leader came along and said, “Follow me” and my son-in-law left his job and started wandering around with a group of strange people. I wonder how this woman felt about Jesus, especially since she was sick, had a fever and was lying in a back room of the house when Simon invited Jesus and all the disciples and all these people who want to be healed into their home.

Remember, they didn’t have big houses. I was in Capernaum when I was in Israel and they have excavated the town from the first century and you can see the foundations of the houses. They are tiny, tiny by any standards. They are three or four ten by ten rooms, maybe a little courtyard no bigger than that. This was not a house where she was off at the other end could have quiet. This was a tiny place. And yet her son-in-law Simon brings this entire crowd with him. I wonder what she was thinking. I don’t have any idea, but I like to use my imagination and think about how people, how characters, might have been thinking.

But then what happens is very interesting. It is very short, just one little sentence, but Jesus comes to her in her bed and he takes her hand and lifts her up. There is something sweet and tender in that gesture. He doesn’t come into the room proclaiming healing, he doesn’t do any laying on of hands, and he doesn’t make any mud or touch her ears or any of that stuff. He doesn’t demand a demon leave. Instead it is very gentle and very tender. He reaches down and takes her hand and lifts her up. What a wonderful image for healing. Christ taking our hand and lifting us up.

In the readings today we hear from someone else who was healed, and that is from Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. Now, remember that Paul had his issues, he had his demons. When Christianity started he was furious; he was filled with anger. He wanted to destroy them and he supported stoning Christians. He was so obsessed with getting rid of this heretical group that he was traveling all around searching for them. He was on his way to Damascus when Christ came to him. Maybe in not so gentle a way. He got knocked off of his donkey. But Christ came to him and healed him. Not necessarily of a physical illness, but from whatever it was that caused him to be filled with so much rage and resentment and need to control. He was transformed. What he says in his letter today is,  “I am obliged to preach the Gospel.” He has to do it. Nobody is making him do it, but there is an inner compulsion and need for him to serve - to tell others.

I think that is something that happens when we are healed, when we experience the loving, healing touch of Christ. It was thirty years ago when I had brain surgery and I will never forget that after the surgery everything looked different. The sky was a brighter blue; the trees were a deeper green, having faced the potential of my own mortality and coming through it. Even though there would be struggles in the recovery, coming through it I felt this profound thankfulness for being alive. I discovered that I started praying, “How can I serve?” At the time I wasn’t even an active Christian yet for several years I asked,” How can I serve?" There was some way in which the thankfulness for my life and my health meant I needed to give back. It was not contract. There was no sense that God healed me in order for me to give back. There was no sense of debt. It was just what else could I do with the thanksgiving that I had but to serve.

It took a couple of years, and no one was more surprised than I was when the answer was to be ordained. But I like Paul, I have to give back, because when I don’t there is no joy and when I do it is full and complete. And so when I think about this woman whose hand was lifted up by Christ - when it says she served them this wasn’t some woman who was told she should get in the kitchen, this was a person who was healed and needed to serve in whatever way she could.

We all need Christ’s healing. We all have aspects of ourselves that are not whole and complete. We may have physical ailments, we may have psychological struggles, depression, anger, fear, and we all have demons, those things that control us, our addictions, our fears, our resentments, the old hurts that still are percolating around in there. We all have demons we need to be freed from. Each and every one of us needs to be healed.

I’d like to invite you to close your eyes and think about and open up to what needs to be healed in you. Give it a word or a phrase or an image. A physical ailment, a psychological problem, an inner demon, a spiritual questioning, a sense of hopelessness, whatever it is, what needs to be healed? And then invite Christ to take your hand and to lift you up.

(Pause)

And if you feel now or in the future a sense of the healing power of Christ’s love you might find, you just might find, you might find yourself asking, “How can I serve?”

St. Francis

I have no recorded or printed sermons copies I of sermons I have given for the upcoming Sunday, Proper 21 C, so I decided to publish a sermon I gave back in 1995 for the Sunday closest to October 4 when we celebrated the feast day of St. Francis. It not only remembers Francis but contains a good message of stewardship.

Sermon

St. Francis

Sermon given in 1995

By Rev. Valerie Hart at

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

Luke 17:5-10

When I was a senior in High School my friend Gail Robinson gave me this book, (hold up book) Saint Francis by Kazantazakis, for Christmas. I don’t know why she gave it to me, but she was a very intuitive type of person and I guess just thought I would like it. I read it eagerly, until I reached the part where Francis removes his clothes and hands them to his father. You see Francis, the son of a rich and wealthy merchant, had been feeling more and more drawn to Christ’s service. His experiences in prayer in front of a crucifix had profoundly affected him. He was no longer the happy go lucky son his father had known, and his father was angry. Francis father appealed to the bishop to intercede with Francis, but the bishop appears to have had more understanding of Francis then did his father. The father desired the return of the money that Francis had spent on the church. The bishop said to Francis, “If you desire to serve God, than give his mammon back to your father, which perhaps has been obtained by unjust methods, and therefore should not be used for the benefit of the Church.” At this Francis removed his clothes, and standing naked accept for a rough loin cloth, returned not only the money, but the clothes his father had given him.

            I remember reading that far in the book and being so struck by the total renunciation of Francis, so moved by his willingness to give up all trappings of his former life, that I could read no further. It was as if someone had held a mirror up to my heart and showed me what I was not. I knew that I was unable to give up my comfort to serve God. I knew that I could not make that kind of sacrifice. Francis was willing to give 100%, I gave so very little.

            It was many, many years before I was able to pick up that book again. During that time I had learned to have a little more compassion for myself, to accept that I was unlikely ever to be Sainted, and that was OK. I still continue to be moved every time I read of Francis’ total devotion to our Lord - his absolute and total giving of himself. When I think of Francis I often feel like the disciples who asked Jesus to increase their faith. Next to Francis I see the ways in which my own faith is lacking.

            I have asked myself how is it that Francis was able to do this. How could he give up all comfort, all physical security? The answer is his experience with praying at the crucifix. At one point, in response to fervent prayer for how God wanted him to serve, Francis experienced the crucified Christ speaking to him in his heart. Francis experienced the crucified savior. He would meditate on what the experience of Christ on the cross must have been like. He wept for our crucified Lord. He knew in his deepest being that Christ had, out of love, given 100% of himself. He knew that Christ had died, had given his body to be crucified, for us, - out of love for us. Francis felt such a response of love to this great gift that he wanted, he longed, to give 100% back to Christ. His love for our Lord was so great, his knowledge of our Lord’s suffering so direct, that for Francis there could be no response less than 100%.

            What was this call that Francis heard form the crucifix? What he heard was, “Now go hence, Francis, and build up my house, for it is nearly falling down!” Now Francis was a simple man, and he took things literally. He had been praying in a small church that had been neglected and was falling down, so he assumed that Christ meant he should build up that physical church. Of course we who know the whole story of Francis. We know that he transformed the entire Christian church of his day. We know that the Church in the 13th century was in many ways corrupt, and that the spiritual life had been neglected. Francis through his example transformed and rebuilt the greater Church, but that was much later in the story. When Francis heard Christ speak to him he started with a physical project. He took Christ’s words literally and began to rebuild the broken down little church of San Damiano, brick by brick.

            But where was he to get the materials for this rebuilding. He had given all of his money back to his father. He owned nothing, so he had to go out and beg for the bricks. He went from house to house saying, “He who gives me a brick will have his reward in heaven. He who gives two bricks will have twice the reward.”

            How difficult it must have been for this once proud young man to beg. I know that for me the hardest thing I ever have to do is ask people for money. To literally beg from door to door for the Lord is a moving testament of love and faith.

            But gradually others were drawn to his love and commitment. He found he was no longer building alone, but a group of individuals gathered around Francis who were also committed to service to God. Francis could not imagine how he would rebuild the church, yet his faith, faith as a mustard seed, could do anything.

            I think it is interesting that Francis began his work of rebuilding the church with a concrete project. Similarly, when asked to increase the faith of his disciples, Jesus answers by talking about a servant who rather than being thanked at the end of the day is asked to do more. How do we increase our faith? Jesus seems to be answering, “Serve”. Usually we think about it in just the opposite way, “if I had faith, then I would serve. Then I could do great things for God.” Jesus is telling us to begin to do things for God, and your faith will increase. Francis began with a project. He began by repairing a small church. He didn’t start with trying to change the world, but he did, brick by brick.

            We too are called by Christ. It is no accident that each one of us is here today. We each have followed a different path to be here, to be a part of the Episcopal Church in Brentwood, but here we are. And we are called to action, to build up Christ’s house, Christ’s church, right here. We are called to respond to the 100% love shown by Christ in his crucifixion. We are called to be servants, to do, to act, to serve. None of us are St. Francis. Few beings are able to respond as fully and completely as Francis. 100% is too much for most of us, that’s why the biblical ideal has been the tithe, ten percent, - because we are unable to truly give 100%, to give 100% of our money, to give 100% of our time, to give 100% of our talents. But we can give. We can work to build up Christ’s church. We can be a beacon of light and love. We can show others how much we are loved by God,

We can do what is so beautifully put in the prayer attributed to St. Francis, “Where there is hatred we can sow love, where there is injury Pardon, where there is discord, union, where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope, where there is darkness, light, where there is sadness, joy.”

            How do we increase our faith? Serve.

            Where do we start? Here.

            When do we start? Now

  

5 Epiphany B, Mark1:29-39

She is lying in the back room with a fever when her son-in-law invites a large group of people to the house. Someone walks in, takes her hand, lifts her up and she starts to serve everyone. What are we to make of this?

5 Epiphany B

Transcribed from a sermon given

February 5, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Mark 1:29-39

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

I used to have a really difficult time with this story of the healing of Simon’s Mother-in-law. The feminist in me couldn’t stand the thought of this woman getting up from a fever and immediately serving everybody. What’s that about?

But this time, as I’ve been working with this particular passage, I have come to a different understanding. I have thought a lot about this woman, this mother-in-law of Simon, who would later be called Peter. This story takes place very early in Jesus’ ministry. People don’t know him very well. Now I’m a mother-in-law and I have a wonderful son-in-law. He is a loving solid person who has a good job and cares about my daughter. I try to imagine how I would feel if some strange wandering spiritual leader came along and said, “Follow me” and my son-in-law left his job and started wandering around with a group of strange people. I wonder how this woman felt about Jesus, especially since she was sick, had a fever and was lying in back room of the house when Simon invited Jesus and all the disciples and all these people who want to be healed into their home.

Now they didn’t have big houses. I was in Capernaum when I was in Israel and they have excavated the town from the first century and you can see the foundations of the houses. They are tiny, tiny by any standards. They are three or four ten by ten rooms, maybe a little courtyard no bigger than that. This was not a house where she was off at the other end could have quiet. This was a tiny place. And yet her son-in-law Simon brings this entire crowd with him. I wonder what she was thinking. I don’t have any idea, but I like to use my imagination and think about how people, how characters, might have been thinking.

But then what happens is very interesting. It is very short, just one little sentence, but Jesus comes to her in her bed and he takes her hand and lifts her up. There is something sweet and tender in that gesture. He doesn’t come into the room proclaiming healing, he doesn’t do any laying on of hands, and he doesn’t make any mud or touch her ears or any of that stuff. He doesn’t demand a demon leave. Instead it is very gentle and very tender. He reaches down and takes her hand and lifts her up. What a wonderful image for healing. Christ taking our hand and lifting us up.

In the readings today we hear from someone else who was healed, and that is from Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. Now, remember that Paul had his issues, he had his demons. When Christianity started he was furious; he was filled with anger. He wanted to destroy them and he supported stoning Christians. He was so obsessed with getting rid of this heretical group that he was traveling all around searching for them. He was on his way to Damascus when Christ came to him. Maybe in not so gentle a way. He got knocked off of his donkey. But Christ came to him and healed him. Not necessarily of a physical illness, but from whatever it was that caused him to be filled with so much rage and resentment and need to control. He was transformed. What he says in his letter today is,  “I am obliged to preach the Gospel.” He has to do it. Nobody is making him do it, but there is an inner compulsion and need for him to serve - to tell others.

I think that is something that happens when we are healed, when we experience the loving, healing touch of Christ. It was thirty years ago when I had brain surgery and I will never forget that after the surgery everything looked different. The sky was a brighter blue; the trees were a deeper green, having faced the potential of my own mortality and coming through it. Even though there would be struggles in the recovery, coming through it I felt this profound thankfulness for being alive. I discovered that I started praying,“How can I serve?” At the time I wasn’t even an active Christian yet for several years I asked,” How can I serve?" There was some way in which the thankfulness for my life and my health meant I needed to give back. It was not contract. There was no sense that God healed me in order for me to give back. There was no sense of debt. It was just what else could I do with the thanksgiving that I had but to serve.

It took a couple of years, and no one was more surprised than I was when the answer was to be ordained. But I like Paul, I have to give back, because when I don’t there is no joy and when I do it is full and complete. And so when I think about this woman whose hand was lifted up by Christ - when it says she served them this wasn’t some woman who was told she should get in the kitchen, this was a person who was healed and needed to serve in whatever way she could.

We all need Christ’s healing. We all have aspects of ourselves that are not whole and complete. We may have physical ailments, we may have psychological struggles, depression, anger, fear, and we all have demons, those things that control us, our addictions, our fears, our resentments, the old hurts that still are percolating around in there. We all have demons we need to be freed from. Each and every one of us needs to be healed.

I’d like to invite you to close your eyes and think about and open up to what needs to be healed in you. Give it a word or a phrase or an image. A physical ailment, a psychological problem, an inner demon, a spiritual questioning, a sense of hopelessness, whatever it is, what needs to be healed? And then invite Christ to take your hand and to lift you up.

(Pause)

And if you feel now or in the future a sense of the healing power of Christ’s love you might find, you just might find, you might find yourself asking, “How can I serve?”