February 16, 2003
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The past few weeks have focused on answering the question, what do Christians do? It is a question with a multi-part answer. Already the question has been answered, we pray, we worship, we study scripture, and we give with joy. Today we add
to the answer, what do Christians do by declaring that Christians serve others.
This is a good day to focus on service. At the end of the sermon we will
commission the leaders elected by the congregation last December. This afternoon
we will host Connie Long’s ordination service, and today begins our Week of
Compassion offering. Week of Compassion is one of the special day offerings of
the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which when combined with similar
offerings from nine other Christian denominations and organizations become One
Great Hour of Sharing. The money we begin contributing today and over the next
few Sundays will leave here and help people from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Some
of it will provide disaster relief in the United States and Canada. Each thing
we do today will be a symbol of our service to others. In one
sense, we tend not to think very highly of service. After all, the service
entrance to many businesses is almost always in the back as if we do not really
want to see how the merchandise we use actually gets to the store. Service people in our society, the ones who serve us food in
restaurants, clean our hotel rooms, clean our homes, tend our gardens, and
sometimes tend our children are not always among the most highly paid. Seldom do
we think of being a servant in a good way. It sounds too much like servitude and
slavery, like something forced on us. But there is
another, better way to think of service. We serve others when we meet a need.
Police officers, firefighters, military personnel, the road warriors who have
cleaned snowy streets serve us by putting themselves in harm’s way so that we
can be safe. We speak of attending a worship service because gathering together
with people we care about and want to get to know better meets a deep soul-felt
need to be in Christian community with each other. When Christians serve others, when we offer ourselves to each other and to the community around us, we do it not out of coercion. No one forces us to serve others. We serve each other because we can. We do it because if there is any compelling force that causes us to reach out to others, it is that we are grateful to God for every blessing God has given us and we show our gratitude for all that God does for us by being in service to each other. Mark tells
us that we can serve God and we can serve people inside these warm walls and
outside where today it is cold and snowy, when we understand that we do not live
only for ourselves. Jesus has
returned to Capernaum, the same town he left some time earlier because the
crowds around him got to be too large. Now again, when news got out that he was
in town, the crowds came, and they kept coming until there was no room in the
house for all of the people who wanted to see Jesus. It happened
that there was a man in the town who was paralyzed and four of his friends
decided to take him to see Jesus. These four put their friend on a stretcher,
and carried him through the streets to the house where Jesus was. But when they
got there, they could not get into the house, there were just too many people. But look at
what they did. They somehow got up on the roof, with the stretcher. They dug
through the thatch roof and lowered their friend down. They would have been hard
to miss. Surely people noticed the bits of straw floating in the air. They
certainly paid attention when Jesus says to the man, “your sins are forgiven.
A few minutes later, he heals him. We don’t
know what sin Jesus forgave. We do know that it was the faith of the man’s
friends that moved Jesus to act. There are times when we serve others by acting
out our faith on their behalf. When we sit with friends who are drained and
devastated and without the faith they normally have by loss and disappointment,
it is our faith that sustains them until their own faith can be recovered. When
we pray for people, when offer outreach and nurture in the name of the church to
people, when we offer a safe haven to people, it is our faith that is responded
to and I am glad that it is. What greater way to show our faith in God than to
put it to work for someone else? These were
some good friends. Barbara Grafton describes them this way. “They
had to work to get in to see Jesus: the door was blocked with onlookers, and
they had to come in through the roof. We think of ourselves, of our caution, of
our careful attitude toward our own longing for healing: we don’t get our
hopes up. What did they know that we don’t know? What did they know that made
them think this would work, that Jesus could do something new in this man’s
life? They must have been pretty sure, or they wouldn’t have stuck their necks
out like that. Or pretty desperate. “Maybe.
But I think it was this: they loved their friend a lot. They hated what his
illness and pain was doing to him. Love was the force that propelled them
forward into such extreme action. It made them brave – foolish, some of the
onlookers might have said, but brave” (Barbara
Grafton, “Living by the Word”, Christian Century. February 8, 2003,
p. 19). What made them brave enough to come through the roof? They knew what we know, that if we can get to where Jesus is, things will be alright. What is difficult in our lives can be dealt with, and might even be eliminated when we put our trust in Jesus and when we work hard to get to where he is. “I came to Jesus as I was, weary and worn, and sad. I found in him a resting place, and he has made me glad” (Edwin Hawkins, “I Heard The Voice of Jesus Say”). Two things are happening in this story. One is that
the crowd that saw Jesus proclaim forgiveness was doubtless impressed but not
surprised because “people in Jesus’ time thought that illness arose from
people’s sins. They thought this happened in a fairly immediate
cause-and-effect relationship. And they had thought so for a long time. Many of
the psalms, like Psalm 41, allude to the idea: ‘Heal me, for I have sinned
against you.’ “Today we
are more apt to think that illness afflicts us in a more random way. He
‘caught’ a cold, we says, or he ‘developed’ a tumor, and most reasonable
people are not so quick to a physical illness to a sinful condition (Grafton,
p. 19), though
there are people who still do, and we can serve them and those who are ill by
separating illness from character, and by offering compassion to any who needs
our care. The second
thing that is happening is that one of the hallmarks of the gospel of Mark is
the way Jesus seems to be able to know what is on people’s hearts. Jesus had
performed a miracle, but as nearly always happens, his gift of service to the
paralyzed man was met with cynicism. The cynics did not even have to speak out
loud. Jesus simply senses that the scribes are thinking. He knows the questions
running through their minds. “What is happening here? Did Jesus just forgive
his sins? Only God can forgive sins. Who does he think he is? This is blasphemy?
He knows what these leaders are thinking and says to them, “why do you ask
yourself these questions. Can’t you rejoice that a man already hurting has
been freed from his pain? There is no blasphemy here. God has sent me to the
world to be its servant. He has put forgiveness and healing in my very being.
Then he turns to the man and says, “Friend, get up, fold up your stretcher,
and walk home.” Jesus came
to serve and he did. He served the crowd by his teaching and speaking. He has
served a once paralyzed man by forgiveness and healing. He has served the
scribes by challenging their notions about who can pronounce forgiveness. Jesus serves
us by reminding us of those times we have felt stuck and unable to move. Stand
up, take your mat, your troubles, your anxiety. Take it, don’t let it take
you, and go on about your life. Use your restored power to live your life fully
to the glory of God and in the service of others. We are
invited to go about our work of service with the same assurance given to the
exiles God addresses in Isaiah. They were on their way home with the promise
that God will do a new thing in them. We will be freed to serve others with the understanding that God, day by day does a new thing in us if we can get unstuck from what used to be. “Let go”, God says, “of all that keeps you too anxious to move ahead. I am in charge. I will be with you, and I will do as I have done; I will make a way out of no way for you." When
we serve others, amazing things will happen. As was true with the returning
exiles, “judgment becomes promise, exile becomes homecoming,
anger becomes reconciliation, and death becomes life. The exilic Jews had been
preoccupied either with the old savings events of Moses or with [why God
punished them with exile]. Now all that is past is to be scuttled and forgotten,
as Israel is overwhelmed by God’s generous, gracious, decisive newness, which
opens the way for the future. “The
dry, parched land, which can hardly sustain life, will become a well-watered,
life-giving territory. This is for exiles who must make their way across the
desert en route home. There are all sorts of wild animals such as jackals and
ostriches. Now, in the newness, all will have ample water, and all will join the
doxology of this water-giving, life-sustaining God” (Texts
for Preaching. Westminster/John Knox Press. Louisville, 1993, p.153). Think about
the times God brought you through rough times, bleak times, times that left you
despairing and motionless. Think about the way the grace of God served you. Are
you grateful? Take that gratitude and serve someone else. Think of the
difference it makes that we are here, serving this community by making this
building available to Alcoholics Anonymous and sharing time with their children
on Thursday nights. Imagine what it means to know that once a month, bread can
be gotten here, that Vacation Bible school is open to whoever is led to be here,
that we provide a welcoming and affirming place for people to gather. Imagine the
difference it makes when we serve each other in the simplest ways, saying hello
and greeting one another by name. Several of you have remarked about how good it
feels when greeters are in the parking lot and outside our doors on Sunday
morning. The energy of the greeters lifts us up. Today, I
want to ask two or three men and women too to offer a service to some of our
members. Offer to escort any member who wants it down the outside steps and then
to their cars. We are glad you are hear and we want you to get to your cars
safely, by offering you this service. We can praise God that we are getting
ready to honor the new things God is doing in us by commissioning the men and
women who will serve this church by sharing their gifts of leadership with us. Finally,
when we offer ourselves in committed service, we will be stunned at what
ministries will break out in this place. We will say and others will say
“we’ve never seen anything like this”, and then we will say, thank you God
for every new thing you will do in us. May God give us passion and courage to
serve others as Jesus Christ serves the church which bears his name. For the
gift of service that leads God to new things, we say, thanks be to God. Amen. I invite you
now to turn in your bulletins to our service of commissioning. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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