Epiphany V
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
Isaiah 40: 21-31 Psalm 147: 1-12; 20c 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 Mark 1:29-39
On Friday I met with my spiritual guide from the Pastoral Leadership Program. I'm not going to take the time here to tell you what a "spiritual guide" is, and how it's different from a spiritual director - partly because neither of us are clear on what a "spiritual guide" actually is! But that's another story.
We met - and this is the point - at Central Lutheran Church in Seattle. CLC is behind Broadway on Capitol Hill, and (among other things) it's a church with a significant feeding ministry.
When I arrived, therefore, I walked past a long line of homeless men and women waiting to get in.
Most of you have seen folk like that - certainly if you've spent any time in downtown Seattle. All the men had beards. Every one of them had the same, gaunt look that says "poor nutrition", and all of them were wearing several layers of clothes.
I found myself thinking about a song a 1970's English folk singer named Ralph McTell - here are two of the verses of that song
Have you seen the old man in the closed-down market
kicking up the paper with his worn-out shoes?
In his eyes you'll see no pride,
hands held loosely at his side
-yesterday's paper telling yesterdays' news.
Have you seen the old girl who walks the streets of London
dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She's no time for talking,
she just keeps right on walking
carrying her home in two carrier bags.
Speaking with any of these poor folk brings out strikingly similar stories of lost incomes, lost homes, lost purpose. A lot of them are vets.
We don't see a great number of homeless folk on south Whidbey, though they certainly exist. There are a lot who rely on friends - a month on someone's couch here, another on the floor of the garage there - you get the picture.
Helping Hand has seen requests for financial aid double. No heat in houses, no money for gas, starving children. Good Cheer has had to turn away people who come from as far as Oak Harbor.
"In (their) eyes you'll see no pride," they are very much like "yesterday's paper telling yesterdays' news."
In our disposable society these are disposable people, surplus to our needs, people who, in the eyes of many, are truly the expendable. And the numbers are growing.
If these people were to speak in biblical language to us then they'd probably say something this from Psalm 142:
"I cry to the Lord with my voice; to the Lord I make loud supplication.
I look to my right hand and find no one who knows me; I have no place to flee to, and no one cares for me."
As we listen to today's readings these people sit with us, because they are current reminders - just as the readings are ancient reminders -of the depth and the broadness of human need in the world. The psalmist, Peter's mother-in-law, and those "who were sick...with various diseases....or possessed with demons" all appear in these readings as people with great need.
Throughout the readings there is also a response, and that response comes from God. We hear of God healing, acting to restore the wholeness of creation through human beings, healing the pains that make up human existence through people of faith. This has profound implications for the work of God in the world. The response of God doesn't come through some startling and dramatic bolt of lightning, or from a voice in a cloud on the top of a mountain, it comes through human beings - through Jesus, and subsequently after their commissioning, through Jesus' disciples At our baptisms we were commissioned to carry on this ministry of God's presence - we are as much the hands -the ministers- of God as they were.
This truth about the way God works in the world makes past stories present realities. We might be far-removed across the seas of time from Jesus and the Twelve, but we are as much Jesus' disciples as Peter and James and John and Thomas and all the others because we share the bond of created-ness, we are creatures created in the image of God, we are Temples of the Holy Spirit. And if we are the image of God, if the Holy Spirit dwells within us then the way God acts in the world, the way God restores the wholeness of creation, is through us. And that means something particular about how we live as Christians - how we exercise our own ministries in this time, in this place.
After Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law, after he had restored her status as a creature of God, she got up and served Jesus and the disciples - she ministered to them. So restoring the wholeness of creation means that those who have been healed are then participate in that restoration themselves.
Paul is an example of the results of this restoration. Because of his experience on the Damascus Road he was healed of the anger and the hatred he had toward Jesus and Jesus' followers and instead became a minister of the Good News about Jesus and a fellow believer with those he had been persecuting. Today's reading shows him going to almost any length - Becoming all things to all people "so that some might be saved." He focused all his energy on performing the ministry given him by God "for the sake of the gospel" - I wonder, can we say that about our own lives? That we fulfil our callings for the sake of the Gospel? It's not an easy question to ask of ourselves, but its an important one none-the-less.
So today's readings are a challenge to us, a challenge to respond. Archbishop William Temple made plain in his definition of the Church's identity: "The Church", he said, "is the only institution that exists for the benefit of non-members." How do we respond in the face of human need here on South Whidbey? How do we express our individual and our common ministries as members of the Baptized? Because we are God's hands here. That's the journey of discovery that we enter when we listen to and respond to today's readings: to learn what it means to be a Church "that exists for the benefit of non-members." AMEN.
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