Sermon
9-9-18
Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our
Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
I’m sad to say it: Vacation is officially over. It’s time
to come home from the beach, to come down from the mountains, get OFF the boat,
or to leave the city. It’s time to get back to our regularly scheduled lives,
with school and work and dance lessons and football practice. … on a day like
today, it’s easy to feel that way, with it feeling more like late October than
early September! In fact, every year at my college, we sang “Earth and All Stars”
at our opening convocation, so that song to me REALLY feels like summer is over
and its time to get back to business!
Anyway, summer vacation, rest, and time away IS a good
thing, and even Jesus tried to take
a vacation once. Up until now the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has been healing,
feeding, and teaching almost non-stop. Plenty of people are impressed by his
deeds, but there are also plenty of other people, mostly in
those power and authority – like Herod and the Pharisees - who have interrogated,
criticized, and rejected Jesus at nearly every turn. I don’t blame him for
wanting to get away to clear his head, to a quiet place where no one would find
him. So, he went to the beach-side city of Tyre - perhaps he wanted to spend
some time alone “down the shore.”
But despite his best efforts, someone found him anyway. A
local woman, who wasn’t Jewish, desperately needed Jesus’ help. Her poor
little daughter was ill, overcome by an unclean spirit. Perhaps this woman had
heard that Jesus has cast out demons. Or perhaps someone had told her that
Jesus was a healer. Whatever she heard about Jesus, she went to that house that
day, determined to seek her daughter’s relief. She got on her knees and begged
him to help her daughter. And even when Jesus gave her a hard time, she did not
give up. She clung to her hope that Jesus could do something about her daughter’s suffering.
She could have stayed home and continued to pray for
healing. But instead she jumped at the chance to lay her prayers directly at
the feet of someone who could do something about it. And she
was not about to leave until her prayers were answered, even if that meant just
getting crumbs from the Bread of Life.
Jesus is not often impressed, but he sure was here. He
was moved by her persistence. Up until now, Jesus had been ministering to his
own people, followers of his own religion, in his own native country. But it
was this woman from modern-day Syria who signaled to Jesus that it was time to
think outside the box, time to break down all the barriers, to
take this message on the road to serve a wider audience.
And now Jesus is on the move. Vacation time is over, and
now it’s really time to get to work. He left the area, but he didn’t go back
home, at least not yet. Along the way he met some people with a friend in need.
They banded together to get Jesus to help their friend who was deaf and could
not speak. Jesus listened to their plea, and just like in Isaiah, the ears of
the deaf were unstopped, and the tongue of a once-silenced person was now able
to sing for joy. Because his friends cared enough about him to bring him to
Jesus, this man’s life was changed.
Both stories may seem very different – a woman with a
daughter verses a man who was deaf. But both stories show us living examples of
embodied intercessory prayer. Every Sunday during our service we pause to pray
for the church, the world, and for everybody who needs help. We call them the
“prayers of the people,” or “the prayers of intercession.” It’s the part where
when we hear words like “Lord, in your mercy,” we say, “hear our prayer.” Every
week, we come to Jesus, and ask Jesus to provide for our friends and family,
placing their needs at Jesus’ feet – like the stories we heard today… though
perhaps not quite so literally.
While I was searching through my usual resources for
inspiration for today’s children’s sermon, I stumbled across something for us
“big people” too. One resource hit the nail on the head: “People seem to be
coming to Jesus for several different reasons, but they all have one thing in
common – they have faith that Jesus can do something
about it… People come who are sick, or
who need guidance, or food, or just need to be loved. This story is interesting
because the two people that Jesus heals didn’t even bring themselves to Jesus –
in fact, one person doesn’t even show up! Family and friends are showing up at
Jesus’ feet to get help for the people that they love.”
This mom and these friends showed up for the people that
they loved. And Jesus listened and acted. But what happens when we don’t always
have a “physical” Jesus to track down and persistently bother about the people
we love?
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| Jeff is so kind to model the shirts for us! |
Our worship does not end with our Prayer of Intercession.
Before we leave, we pass the peace, collect our offerings, and share in the
Lord’s Supper, then get sent out. When our worship is over, and we disperse
into the world, we do not just say, “Go in peace and act like if nothing
happened here today, Thanks be to God!” … even though all too often that is
often how we live. No, when we leave here today and every Sunday before and
hereafter, we “go in peace to SERVE the Lord, thanks be to God!”
And how do we serve the Lord? By showing up for others just
as Jesus did – showing up for the grieving, the hopeless, the voiceless, the
poor, the weak, and the dying. We fill the ears of Jesus with our cries against
injustice, and to lay the burdens of ourselves and others at Jesus’ feet. We do
it because we believe that Jesus is going to do something about it.
Now, our prayers may not be answered in in the way that
we expect them to be. I’m sure the man who had been deaf was not expecting a
wet willy, nor did the Syrophoenician woman expect her daughter’s healer to be
crabby. And neither of them expected Jesus to ORDER them to keep quiet about
what he had done. But you can’t keep good news like that under wraps for long –
it’s like saying “Here is your check for winning the lottery, but don’t tell
anyone that you’ve won." That's not going to happen!The woman from the first story had a great point – there are so many crumbs left over from the meal that they get all over and start to fall off the table. There is enough Jesus to go around. So much so that this abundant love is going to spill over at some point.
Because when Jesus shows up in your life, and you experience this abundant love for yourself, you’re
not going to be able to stop talking about it. In order for
us, gathered here today, to hear about what Jesus did for the Syrophoenician
woman so long ago, she must have told somebody about it.
When Jesus shows up in your life, you’re not going to be
able to stop yourself from doing something about it. Because
sometimes, God uses YOU to answer someone else’s prayer. No heroics are
required, just doing the little things with great love, as Mother Teresa once
said. A thank you note, a smile, talking to someone who is lonely, sharing your
lunch with a fellow student, and starting your year off with kindness.
As you are getting back into the swing of things, whether
it’s back to work or school or getting your kids to soccer practice on time,
know that God never takes a vacation. No matter what you ask, no matter when or
how often you ask it, or for whom, our God never stops listening. We just have
to make sure WE never take a vacation from bringing the needs of others to Jesus, and then showing up for others as answers to prayers too. Amen.
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