As Mrs. Osuga shared with us at the beginning of worship this morning, we have been asked by our Regional Minister and President, Dr. William Edwards to enter, as a congregation, a time of spiritual discernment. We are a church in covenant, Bill is our Regional Minister and President, he is my friend of more than twenty-five years, he is not our bishop, and it is true that he cannot order us into discernment. But as your spiritual and pastoral leader, I want you to know that any decisions we make will be stronger and more faithful if they are bathed in prayer and study, and in every other spiritual discipline we have at our disposal. So I am going to do more than recommend we enter this process, I believe that we must do this because a time of spiritual discernment can, if we let it, change our attitudes, invoke God as we plan, and strengthen our life together. It is discernment time. It is time to be still and know that God is God (Psalm 46.10).

What is spiritual discernment? It is the process by which we see with new eyes, and broaden our perspective to see more clearly and more widely than ever what God is calling us to do. Will we do more talking? Yes we will. But that is not all that we will do. To discern is to plan prayerfully, it is a discipline of decision making, it opens us to value what each other says because what we say has been arrived at through a process of prayer and through listening to the Holy Spirit.

Why do this now? This is the best time. We are all frustrated by our lack of numerical growth here. This is a great church, filled with marvelous people. Our mission statement welcomes all to the table Christ has set for us. Our core values of building relationships, doing justice, and knowing God are signs of our compassion and our commitment. Our task is to spread the good news that Jesus lives, we are here, and that we have room enough for hundreds more looking for a church like ours. We need to discern how to get the word out in a way that touches people’s hearts.

We are all anxious about our too limited financial resources here. But I want you to know that my frustration and my anxiety do not overwhelm my faith that God is here in the struggles and joys of our lives, and of our life together. My eagerness and my excitement about what we are doing, and what we can do is far greater than my anxiety and frustration.

What is God calling us to do? It is a discernment question for all of us. As we answer that question, God will give each of us an answer. Some will hear you can do more, others will hear that you are already doing all that we can do. So stay on track. And still others will hear, I know you would if you could, but you can’t right now. Thank you for what you have done, do what you can do, pray for us, and listen to the new thing God may be asking you to do.

Today, the readings from Mark and Isaiah help us know what it is to lift all of our voices in this process and to sing songs of hope and expectation. They let us know that things spiritual discernment will do for us.

First, spiritual discernment will help us to experience in mind, strength, and soul, the nearer presence of Jesus Christ. Mark tells us that after teaching in the synagogue, Jesus goes to the home of Simon and Andrew. They and others go into the house and discover that Simon’s mother in law is ill with a fever. Maybe she had a cold, perhaps she had the flu, or maybe she was exhausted. We do not know. We do know that she was sick and that Jesus broke all those rules that forbade a man from touching a woman he is not related to; Jesus took her by the hand and raised her up.

Don’t get too distracted by the fact that she rises from her sick bed and makes dinner for them. There is more to this episode than a woman, recently made well not being able to get some needed rest. Mark is telling us that this woman is performing an act of hospitality and discipleship. Jesus has been welcomed into her home, and has healed her and in gratitude, she serves him; it is a gift she can give and in so doing, she becomes a model of discipleship. One writer puts it this way:

“Here the mother-in-law’s response to her healing by Jesus is the discipleship of lowly service, a model to which Jesus will repeatedly call his followers throughout this Gospel and which he supremely embodies in his own service…this is the first of a series of incidents in which a woman represents a right response to Jesus, including the poor widow (12.41-44), the woman who pours ointment on him (14.3-9), the women at the cross (15.40-41), and the women at the tomb” (16.1). (Interpretation series. Mark. Lamar Williamson, Jr. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983, p.55).

Jesus is present to Simon’s mother-in-law, as he lifts her up. Jesus is present to us now, and if we think about it and pray about it, and trust in him, I know we will feel him lifting us up to faithful decision making, renewed hope, greater service, and deeper faith. This Jesus who by the power of God at work in him raised up this woman reaches out a hand to us and offers to raise us up to health and discipleship – to following him and learning from him and imitating him. Spiritual discernment calls us to be present for God and Jesus Christ, even when we are influenced by negative, Mark calls them demonic, forces.

“Jesus heals them and casts out their demons. In this gospel, healing takes place when his authority is acknowledged, either by the spirits, who know who he is…, or by the sick, who come to him in the faith that he has the power to heal them. Where there is no faith, no acknowledgement of his authority – there are no healings. In Mark’s presentation, miracles are thus essentially about Jesus, they present us with his authority and demand a response from us” (www.lectionary.org/English.mark/03-02-09 p.4). I am intrigued by the verse, “he wouldn’t let demons talk because they knew him”. If the powers of death and destruction know Jesus, what about us?

After curing those who came to the front door for healing, Jesus did what he often did, he found a place to pray. We have available to us the discipline of prayer. The second thing we can learn about spiritual discernment is that it will call us to a discipline of prayer. I know many of you have a rich prayer life, but a discipline of prayer is about all of us agreeing to pray together, during church, after church, every day for the health and life of this congregation. Again Jesus is our model for prayer.

“In Mark, Jesus prays alone and often, revealing not only his Jewish ness, as he goes to pray in the morning, but also his full humanity; in times of stress, temptation, and decision he turns to God for strength and guidance” (Williamson, p.56). It is no less true for us that prayer will help us not only talk the talk of faith, but it will give us boldness to walk the walk of faith as well. Spiritual discernment is about prayer.

The healing Jesus did is important, I doubt there is any one in this room who has not longed for healing from broken bodies, broken dreams, broken hearts, sleepless nights, the power of all kinds of addictions, frustrated hopes, the fear of the unknown, and distaste for too much of what we do know. We all need healing. And we know the power of prayer to comfort and stir us, to listen and talk to God, to know that whatever happens, God through Jesus Christ is with us.

Jesus was a healer, prayer was part of his spiritual discipline, and all the healing he did, and the praying he did helped to clarify his purpose. His purpose was to have his home base in Galilee, and to go from town to town sharing the great good news that we humanity can turn around, change our minds, and change direction because, in him, the kingdom of God was fulfilled. As our purpose is made clear to us, we can take our part in the realm of God Jesus completes. He can give us new direction, new hope, renewed dreams, recovered courage, greater vision, and the means to serve him as he served God. Spiritual discernment helps us know the presence of God. It leads us to prayer and it will help us refine our purpose. We have been brought to this place, to get ourselves together so that we can better hear from God and in the name of Jesus, share the good news and continue to silence those spirits of doubt, despair and avoidance, and live not like god-less, savior-less, spirit-less people, but like people loved by God, redeemed by Christ, and inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Yes, we have challenges; no, these next months will not be easy, but I claim the witness of Paul in his letter to the Philippians, and I want to reflect at the beginning of another Black History Month, the spirit of Coretta Scott King. I was reminded this week that in the days immediately after she was widowed, before her husband’s funeral, she led the march he had intended to lead for worker’s rights in Memphis, Tennessee. That took courage, strength, and conviction. And it took courage, strength of character, and faith in God to build a center dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr. and non-violence. It just may be that as she had remembered her beloved husband, she was also remembering those words Paul wrote, “I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed, and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need; I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4.12-13).

We are on the edge of something here, and getting to the next steps will call on all of the faith, strength, and conviction each of us has. Bill Edwards said the other night that we are at a crossroads. We are feeling the impact of being at a crossroad, but we are not the first community of faith to be at this place on the journey. Israel was there as they prepared to end their time in exile. They had been captured, mocked, made to sing their songs of faith by people who did not respect them.

Now, their time of liberation has come, but not quite yet. They are being told to wait, the God who was with them in exile is about to do something for them. It is not about waiting and doing nothing, but about working and dreaming and doing and singing as we go. We have sung our songs, “Holy, Holy, Holy”, “Sister, Let Me Be Your Servant, Brother, Let Me Walk With You”, “How Great Thou Art”, “Christ, the Lord is Risen Today”, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. Do we believe the songs we sing?

These songs help remind us that if we will wait on God, we will feel Christ’s healing presence, pray with power, and define our purpose as we live out our core values. They remind us that our God, the who created the earth will not tire, will never cease to understand us, will never give up on us, and will give us the energy and strength we need.

As we find new life in God through Jesus Christ, as Jesus leaves us the gift of the Holy Spirit, we begin to move more confidently, more assertively, more faithfully. Let God speak to our spirits as we wait. We wait, not so long, and not so passively that we are doing nothing, but we wait to see what God would have us do. “Those who wait and hope in God will be strengthened and renewed. Those who wait, then, live in the faith that the God who created and sustains, who is incomparable, who overturns the plans of the most powerful princes of this world, that this God will do/is doing/has done the restorative and renewing work for child, woman and man.

“Wherever the young are exhausted, wherever the old are unsure, those who know how to hope offer relief from pain and numbness with their songs of praise and joy” (www.christiancentury.org “Living by the Word, No Comparison” by Paul Keim, p.2).

Presence, prayer, purpose. Join me in a time of spiritual discernment, of planning and listening. Sing with me a song or two of lamentation, but even more songs of hope. Pray with me that God’s will for our church will enter our wills, and that through us, God’s will, and our purpose will be done, and let’s praise God as we do. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Dr. LaTaunya M. Bynum
Senior Pastor