Sermon 5th Sunday after Epiphany

Sermon

Text: Mark 1:29-39

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who in our darkest moments heals us and lifts us up.

I love this text. It incorporates so much in such little bit. Jesus has just finished calling the disciples and casting the demon out of the man at the Synagogue and they return to Simon's house for the evening. There they find Simon's mother-in-law in bed with a fever. Jesus comes and lifts her up, and her fever left her and she serves them.

That last line of her beginning to serve them seems sort of strange to me. If I was a just healed person I would not start working, I would be jumping up and down, running around yelling about how awesome it is that I'm not sick anymore. I probably would be doing anything but just going back to work.

So why is it phrased that way? What is illness? For Simon's mother-in-law and for us, even though we don't think about much in this way, being ill is not just being sick, it is everything associated with being sick. When you are sick you are on the outside many times. You are cut off from what you normally do. I remember on one birthday, I can't remember which, I think 7 or 8, I was sick with the chicken pox and my parents did have a party, but those who had already had it sat on one end of the table with me, and those who didn't say on the other end.

Being sick means you stay home, you seclude yourself. And in many ways, the culture around you excludes you as well. In Jewish custom they were very strict about who was clean and unclean. And being sick definitely made you unclean, and being unclean meant that not only were you supposed to stay home, but you were actively removed from the community. In some cases you had to actually leave the town or village and stay outside for a number of days. Certain diseases required you to yell to people approaching from the distance, unclean, unclean.

We don't do that now do we? But, we do. Now, just as then, it is done for the care of the individual and also the surrounding community. I was able this week to go and visit Payton in the hospital. As I said in announcements she is currently in the Pediatric ICU or PICU. To get to the picu you need to go to the front desk, they check you in and give you a sticker badge with your name, face, and visitor marked on it, then you go up a set of elevators. After exiting the elevators you are in a enclosed room and need to pick up a phone to call the welcome desk on the floor, who will buzz the doors open and then call the room to see if you can come over. Most of the room doors just open onto the floor, Payton however is in a seclusion room to make sure she doesn't get any cross contamination. So you have to go through another door, and then you get to her room door. And the doors to her room have sensors on them, so that if they stay open for more than 15-20 seconds they buzz and a nurse has to come close the door and turn the alarm off. That sounds secluded.

And there's more. The nurses go in and out of other rooms, but for some, like Payton, they have to put on mouth and face shields, and gowns which they throw away each time they exit the room, and put new ones on when they enter. Apart from me, Amy her mom, and James her dad, the only people Payton saw in normal clothes while I was there were a few nurses and doctors through the outside door, everyone was gowned and masked while in the room.

That is seclusion.

This leads us back to Mark. When we look at all the different things you go through during illness it asks us what is healing? Is it the removal of disease or is it the restoration to community?

I say it's the restoration. Healing is a thing we often don't understand. If someone goes to the hospital and they do not recover and they die, we want to say they did not heal.

When I was in Arkansas I became friends with a 88 year old man who had served in the navy in World War 2. He ended up in the hospital a few times and died during my last weeks there. You could say that he was not healed. But, in the course of his life had become estranged from his eldest son. They had a fight 20-30 years before then and had not talked since, both sides saying that they had the right view. That is seclusion.

When the father ended up in the hospital for the second time in a month the youngest son called his brother and told him. And in a moment of grace he decided to come. And in that hospital in another moment of grace I was able to give them both communion together for the first time in 30 years. A week later I sat in the father's nursing home room as his eldest son sat with him and went through the dialogue of a sailor standing down upon the deck of a ship. I returned home, and the father died that evening peacefully in his sleep.

That is healing. A family restored.

Healing is being with those who are sick and not turning them away or turning away from them. Healing is the nurse from oncology who comes to visit Payton regularly even though she doesn't need to, but wants to. Healing is when Payton gets a letter from friends or family and lights up. It is when she gets a phone call, or a note on her caring bridge site. I pray and hope that restoration of health occurs, but I know for certain that healing is occurring in every note, call, or visit that tells Payton that she is loved and we have not forgotten her. Because healing is restoration, whether of health, or of community and inclusion. And healing is forgiveness. To Jesus they are one and the same. It is a Forgiveness which removes the bonds of sin and distance between human and savior.

That is what Jesus moves on to preach in our text. As Jesus is moving on to the surrounding community he is not running away from those seeking healing, but reaching out further to those who have not heard of his healing. That is what this kingdom of God we have talked about means, it is a restoration of the relationship between God and human, it is the forgiveness of all of our sins and the removal of the demons that turn us from God. And it is healing. Pure and perfect healing. Healing that restores us to who God made us to be, included and welcomed people. Healing that restores us, and which we respond to by beginning to serve. Healing that shows us we are loved by a God who comes to us in our darkest moments and lifts us up.

Let us pray,

God of healing, we pray for health, we pray for Payton and all others who are undergoing pain and life threatening situations, we pray for the restoration of health, and we pray for the restoration of community. We pray that you are with the doctors and nurses who you have given the gift of medicine, we ask you to guide their hands and minds to help all those who suffer, and be with all those who mourn.

Amen.