| "Stretching Is The Challenge" Sermon Preached By Rev. Richard E. Stetler - February 9, 2003 Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39
What made this invitation so
appealing and intriguing to accept was that Jesus had the power to
heal people. No one before had seen a person with this ability.
This spectacle attracted the curious from far and wide, catapulting
Jesus into being quite an attraction. Of course, those who followed
him would share in his instant popularity. Word of what was taking
place spread so dramatically that there was quite a gathering
outside the home where he was staying. Jesus faced a moment of
decision regarding his gift. There is nothing more
seductive than our desire to develop qualities that cause other
people to notice us. We like to turn heads. The multi-billion
dollar cosmetic industry is counting on it. Everyone from hair
stylists to plastic surgeons is banking on people coming to them to
improve their appearance. People attend Toastmasters' meetings so
they can improve their public speaking ability. A good number of
us enjoy improving our marketability. For Jesus, this instant
notoriety was causing him grief. Try to imagine what would
happen if a physician today had the ability to heal everyone who
came to her practice. The best kind of publicity is word-of-mouth.
Terminal patients would be carried by friends to the doctor's
private residence. There would be no respect for the physician's
personal life. Even her closest friends would prevail upon her
generosity of spirit to heal one of their acquaintances or family
members. Anyone who has developed
a unique attractiveness comes to realize that it is a two-edged
sword. For example, it is wonderful to be a box office smash as
an aspiring actor, but such people never have the freedom of
movement that most of us take for granted. Outside our social
circles no one knows us. Whether or not we admit this to ourselves,
we cherish our anonymity and privacy. We can eat in any restaurant
without having someone wanting us to sign their menu or to have
their picture taken with us or to give us their impression of our
last movie. We do not have to wear disguises when we go into the
pubic domain. We want to attract but we also want to remain in
control of when and where that happens. Jesus immediately
recognized that he had a problem. Our lesson implies that Jesus was
clearly in trouble. He arose early in the morning before daybreak, left
the house and escaped to a lonely place where he could be alone and
pray. We can only imagine the kind of soul searching that took place
during those moments. If we could have been there and somehow gained
access to his mind, no doubt he would have been thinking thoughts like
these:
Father, who am I supposed to be and what am I
supposed to do with this gift of healing? I could spend my entire life
doing nothing but healing others! Yet healing may send many of them
back to the kind of life they were living. I want to teach them how to
live creatively. I want to tell them about your Kingdom. And yet if I
do not include healing with the message I give them, I will be
withholding my love for them. Father, help me learn what it is you want
me to do. When we learn how to interpret
emotional and spiritual pain, it helps us to recognize that something is
not working for us. People can be bored with their marriages. People
can feel frustrated with the routine and rituals that dominate their
work environment. Teenagers can feel depressed and irritable for
reasons they cannot articulate. A person who does not understand the
significance of their pain may consider suicide as an option.
In our society we have so many
unproductive possibilities available to us. People can take the edge
off their pain through the consumption of alcohol. Some people escape
into recreational drugs. Children quickly become masters of increasingly
violent video games. People can hibernate in front of their television
sets armed with an extensive menu of available movies. They can find a
partner with whom to have "a fling." Others head into prescription mood
elevators in order to boost their serotonin levels. Did we hear prayer
mentioned in this litany of options? Jesus had enough spiritual
insight to recognize what he must do. He prayed knowing that he had to
change something about his life. Our lesson goes on to say that Simon
and others began to search for him. When they found him, they said,
"Ah, here you are. Come on back to the house. Everyone has been
looking for you." Of course, they were. They
wanted another day of healing and no doubt the crowd had grown to twice
the size of the day before. Jesus said to them, "I’m not going back
there. We must go on to other villages. I have to deliver God's
message to others because it is for this purpose that I have come."
Notice how tightly focused his life's purpose suddenly became. As is well documented in the
Gospels, Jesus' power to heal was a burden that would chip away at his
identity during most of his ministry. Often he would heal people and
then give them strict instructions not to tell anyone. (Mark 1:44-45;
7:36) No one listened to that. They had something to celebrate, and they
did. There were times when he wondered if the people came to hear his
message or to see him perform miracles. (Matthew 16:1-4) He wanted
people to change their thinking and attitudes, not come to "Oooh" and
"Ahhhh" over "a show." Most of us have moments when
life presents us with a choice to stretch to a new level of
understanding. Exit surveys from graduating college seniors, for
example, tell a story of students who have stretched. Eighty-five
percent of them are employed outside the field for which they have
studied. Was the cost of their college education money lost? Not at
all. Sometimes we need to go in a particular direction until we
learn where it is we would rather be. In so many areas of life,
pain can be a friend that points us toward a more wholesome goal. While a couple is dating, if one
of them reveals a personality that is too demanding, controlling, or
emotionally unpredictable, the other might say, "Right now I need a lot
of space." Meanwhile, they search elsewhere for someone who has
developed a more kind, considerate and less needy disposition. When the
chemistry between two people is not working, pain is a warning that can
be received as a very welcomed guide. One of the most interesting
phenomenon in recent years is the number of people attending a
theological seminary who have left excellent, interesting, lucrative
vocations to become ministers. In the Baltimore-Washington Conference,
for example, we have medical doctors, attorneys, electrical engineers,
computer specialists, pilots, to name a few, who have chosen the
ministry as a second-career. What they had been doing was no longer
fulfilling, and they were mature enough to stretch. In fact, we have a member of St.
Matthew's who was once the Head of the Sociology Department at the
University of Maryland. She has just applied to Wesley Theological
Seminary and Duke University School of Divinity. She is excited to get
started with the next chapter of her adventurous life. In addition to dating and
vocational changes, pain often guides us when we retire. We rear our
families, get what is left in our retirement accounts in order and
retire. Suddenly we find ourselves in a world of uncertainty very
similar to when we began the process of making our life-charting
decisions many years ago. The question comes: "What should I do with
the rest of my life?" Retirement can be among the most exciting years.
In retirement we are presented with an entirely different set of
"rules." For example, Galileo was still
publishing his writings at the age of 74. Michelangelo was 71 when he
was appointed as the Supervising architect of St. Peter's church in
Rome. Grandma Moses did not start painting until she was 76.
Twenty-five percent of her 1,500 paintings were created after she was
100. Susan B. Anthony was head of the Suffragettes at the age of 80.
The German poet, Goethe, wrote Faust when he was 80. Duke
Ellington was passed over by the Pulitzer Prize Advisory Committee at
the age of 66. When he heard what they had done, he said, "God does not
want me to become too famous too early." All during our lives,
opportunities come inviting us to change, to grow, to stretch, to do
things we never thought possible. Jesus went to a place where he could
be alone. With an open, sincere spirit, he placed before God what he
perceived to be the source of his pain. Then he waited and listened.
God's word came to him, "Keep
moving from village to village. In time the crowds will not follow.
You may not have any place to lay your head but people will always
provide for you. You will have to trust me." How do we know this was
God's answer? The last verse in our lesson says, "So he traveled all
over Galilee, preaching in the synagogues and driving out demons."
The mantra we are hearing right
now from NASA, following the destruction of the orbiter Columbia, is
this: "We are going to find the problem, fix it and move forward." This
statement drives right to the heart of our lesson today. First there
was the pain, then Jesus laid his problem before God, worked on the
problem in order to fix it, and finally, he moved forward to fulfill his
destiny. We must attempt to understand
the meaning of pain when it is experienced. When we interpret it
creatively, pain becomes our guide and friend. It is a warning that
something troubling is happening within us, not in the world and not in
those around us. The citizens of our world will always be whomever they
choose to be. We have been called upon to be a light to that world.
That is all. We are not here to be its judge, jury and
executioner. People need leadership, not punishment.
As was mentioned in last week's
message, there will never be a shortage of life issues that we can
debate with passion. In most cases, someone must be right and some else
must be wrong. What debate can do to some people of faith is destroy
their credibility. For all the "right reasons," a number of Jesus'
followers can display hate on their faces and in their words. They can
withdraw from those with whom they differ. Is this who we have been
called to be? Jesus did not go there when it
came to the issues that disturbed his people. He traveled, preached
love and healed with his touch. That is a language that a growing number
of people understands. Just as Jesus received clarity for his identity,
so can we. This is who we are. It is our kind that is needed in a
world that is so on edge right now. The dust will settle in our
world only when individuals are settled. Take your pain to God and
leave it there. Wait with a quiet, expectant spirit and listen.
THE CONGREGATIONAL PRAYER
Merciful God, we thank you for giving us
life. We thank you for the challenges, which enable us to discover and
refine our abilities. Yet how many times have we prayed for you to give
us skills we believe we do not have? We want patience without the
discomfort of our having to be patient. We want to forgive without
letting go of our need for apologies and justice. We want success
without the pain of detours, missteps and failures. We want character
while finding compromise easy to justify. Inspire us, O God, to
remember that the values of discipleship are not automatic. Help us
learn that they come by making the same choices again and again until
our commitment becomes crystal clear. Amen. THE PASTORAL PRAYER
Loving God, as we sit in our
sanctuary this morning, it remains a challenge for us to keep our minds
focused on why we are here. With the current state of our nation's
economy, the terrorist alerts, families being separated because of
military obligations and all the issues surrounding our personal lives,
remind us again that life is more than these.
There are so many crisis points over which we
have no control. Gently remind us that there are still places where we
can have an enormous impact. Perhaps there is a friend who is facing
further medical treatments where a call or a card would be like a ray of
sunshine. Perhaps we could take a friend to lunch as a healthy break
from our routines. Give us moments, of God, where we can gain
perspective about the community where we live, the people with whom we
work and the spirit we display while there. Sometimes something we may
consider insignificant -- a smile, a compliment, a nod of appreciation
-- is all that is necessary to bring a touch of healing to someone whose
needs are hidden. Comfort those who are on the mend from recent surgeries, from the loss of loved ones and from reversals at work. Bring peace to those who are facing the uncertainty of a medical procedure. Give us enough freedom from the noise that tries to awaken our fears so that we may remain sensitive to the needs of others who live beside us. We pray these thoughts through the spirit of Jesus, who taught us to say when we pray . . . |