By The Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector
Today’s reading from Isaiah is a wake-up call to the power
and vastness of God. Today’s Psalm underlines this, “Great is our Lord and
great is his power; yea, and his wisdom is infinite.” (PS 147:5) The Isaiah passage also makes us
aware that God is not impressed with any earthly power we may have, “He
bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.”
God knows we humans weary ourselves in such striving for these earthly things
of power and prestige…building our own empires.
But the LORD never
wearies; and the LORD
chooses to give strength and power, not so much to the earthly strivers and
achievers, but to the faint and powerless. God gives strength not to those who are self-sufficiently
climbing the “ladder of human success”, but to those who, with humility and
patience, wait upon the LORD to renew
their strength. Isaiah says those who do so, “Shall mount up with wings as
eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”
Isaiah is reminding us of our dependence on God, and that our God is the only
true source of strength and power.
So with that in mind, I’d like for us to look at something in
the Gospel. It’s how after spending some time in Capernaum and successfully
healing people and casting out evil spirits (and no doubt being spiritually and
physically spent), Jesus got up early and went to a solitary place to pray, to
wait upon the Lord. What an extraordinary thing! After Jesus’ “rock star”
experience of whirlwind healing and exorcising in Capernaum, he chose to get up
early and “Wait on the Lord” in solitude. He went away to pray.
Now we don’t know the exact content of his prayer, but I like
to think of prayer in general as “our love life with God”. Someone else (David
F. Ford, Cambridge) says, “The main purpose of prayer is engagement with the
reality of being loved by God.” I think we might assume that in his pre-dawn
prayer, Jesus was experiencing his belovedness. And look at what happened…He
didn’t get side-tracked by his
popularity or success, but he got very
clear about his mission and priorities. So when his disciples came to tell
him that the people were calling for him again, he realized the people were
coming for relief of their particular ailments. Now Jesus is all for relieving suffering and people being well and whole, but
in the process, they were missing the essence
of Jesus’ message. While receiving perhaps temporary relief from their personal
woes, they were missing the big
picture, which is about the community, the neighborhood, the other villages, and,
ultimately, it’s about the Reign, the Kingdom, the Dominion of God. The healings
were not just about the individuals being made whole, but about the Kingdom of
God breaking into the world! In his prayer, in his love life with the Powerful
Vast One that early morning, Jesus got some real perspective. He re-focused on his
mission.
There is much in that for us to learn as individuals and as a
congregation. Notice in this story, Jesus and his disciples have perhaps their
first dispute. The disciples and the people of Capernaum want Jesus to go back
to where he was, healing and making individuals comfortable. But through the
prayer time, Jesus’/God’s desire is to move ahead to new places. The Gospel was
not just for the people of Capernaum, but it needs to be spread throughout Galilee,
Judea, and the world.
I wonder how much of the conflict in churches and other
organizations is about similar things? Is our purpose to try to somehow become
what we used to be, looking in the rear-view mirror, or is it to step out in
faith to an unknown and different future? We can exhaust ourselves trying to figure this
out on our own. But if we go away and wait upon the LORD, if we pray and really experience our
belovedness, God will give us strength and help us clarify our priorities.
What will God call us to do? What will God give us the
strength to do? If God calls us to share the treasure of the gospel and its
healing power with those beyond our
congregation, instead of trying just to keep it for ourselves, what will that
look like? Who are the people in our community and world God is calling us to
join in mission? What unchurched, de-churched, unbelievers, disenfranchised,
marginalized, sick, possessed, lonely and poor will God send us to love?
It takes courage to even consider.
It is easier and safer
to “stay in Capernaum” where we’ve had success…Miracles, people cured, everyone
lined up at the door, and no apparent opposition. The good old days! It’s
attractive, isn’t it? But if we actually seek God out in prayer, there’s the
risk (high probability) that God will be reminding us of that bigger picture…the
Kingdom of God, which we, like Jesus, are called to preach to the world, not
just to ourselves.
There’s a Greek word (aphiemi)
that’s used for the word “left” when the Gospel says of Simon’s
mother-in-law, “The fever left her”.
From this we can think about
leaving the past behind in order to enter into a new future. She
left her illness behind and was restored to community. Now it’s pretty easy to
leave the past behind when it’s demonic, evil, sickly, and full of failure; but
leaving a successful past behind, in
order to move ahead to an uncertain future, can be really difficult. And I don’t think it matters much if that “successful past” is
real or just idealized. It’s still hard to let go, because we tend to want to “Keep
on doin’ what we’ve always been doin’” even if it’s no longer effective or
what’s appropriate.
But Jesus did leave behind his “success” in Capernaum, because
he prayed to the God of vastness and power, and God showed him the big picture.
His mission was clarified, and he knew he had to spread the Good News of the
Kingdom to those beyond his comfortable circle. This is what happens when we
quit trying to build our own empires, recharge our own batteries, and when we humbly
wait upon the Lord for strength and clarity of vision and mission.
Are we willing to do this? Can we actually go to our vast and
powerful God in prayer and risk having our own plans upset and re-ordered? Can
we do this for our community? Can we do this for our world? Can we do this for
the sake of the Kingdom of God?
Some of the ideas of this sermon were taken from Brian
Stoffregen’s CrossMarks.com
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