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Posted Monday, January 30, 2012:
We turn now to the lessons for Sunday,
February 5, 2012, which is the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany. Two more
Sundays, after this one, before Lent begins on February 22. If
you're looking for a Lenten resource for your congregation consider
the collection "Give It Up for Lent," written by the God Is Still
speaking Writer's Group.
Here's a link for information or to order.
Isaiah 40: 21 - 31
Beautiful and inspiring poetry, but really much more than that. The
prophet confronts the question of our time, and perhaps of every
time, "In the face of life's complexities and contradictions, in the
face of all the defies or denies faith in the God of Abraham and
Jesus, how do we keep faith, hope and love vibrant, real and alive?"
Isaiah frames the people's lament/ question, "My way is hidden from
the Lord, my God ignores my predicament." Isaiah's response is both
artful and powerful, "Don't you know? Haven't you heard? The Lord is
the everlasting God . . . he doesn't grow weary. His understanding
is beyond human reach, giving power to the tired and reviving the
exhausted." God never gives up. And those who "hope in the Lord will
renew their strength; they will fly up on wings like eagles, they
will run and not be tired; they will walk and not be weary."
Pastorally, this suggests that the renewal point for a congregation
experiencing diminished energy or loss of hope is not to be found in
more spirituality or more time off or more quiet or learning to say
'no,' (though all of these probably have some value and a place).
Renewal is found in placing the living God at the center of the
church's life and proclamation. "Don't you know? Haven't you heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God."
I Corinthians 9: 16 - 23
The first verse of this passage is really the last verse of a long
discussion from Paul about whether preachers should be paid or not.
He says they should, but then goes on here in verse 16 to say that
he doesn't preach the gospel because he is paid to do so or because
its a job he happens to have. It's something more. It is a calling
and he is "under obligation" to God to carry it out. "I'm in trouble
if I don't preach the gospel." Honestly, I wish more ministers
seemed to feel this way, to feel some sense of compulsion about the
faith, about the gospel. We preachers took a wrong turn, and the
church did too, when we began to think that ministers are another of
the helping professions and that we work for the congregation. We
work, in the beginning and the end, for God. Good preachers tend to
love God even more than they love their congregations. This, like
all such things, can be taken to unhelpful extremes, of course,
giving rise to arrogance and a lack of accountability. But that
doesn't seem to be the prevailing problem at least in the mainlines!
Rather it is timidity. Paul goes on to indicate that this sense of
being accountable to God and under obligation to preach the gospel
allows him, paradoxically, an enormous freedom to (in a currently
popular word) "contextualize" the gospel to those who hear. So its
not that Paul is indifferent to who people are and what they need.
He notices. He cares. He adjusts. But in service to God and the
proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. One recalls Will
Campbell hanging out with KKK people during the Civil Rights
struggle. He was free to do that because his loyalty was to the
gospel, which he once summed up as "We're all S.O.B.'s, but God
loves us anyhow."
Mark 1: 29 - 39
Sometimes this text is billed as "a day in the life of Jesus and his
ministry," which is one way to think about it, but a bit too
prosaic. Jesus has launched God's assault on the demonic powers of
Sin and Death that hold the world in its thrall and which lead lives
to be disfigured, distorted and discarded. He's not a really nice
person. He's in a battle with Sin and Death. The power of God in him
heals Simon's mother-in-law. Perhaps we can get along for once
without jokes about this being sexist ("A woman is healed; what is
she expected to do? Serve men!") Having the strength and capacity to
serve others and care for them can be a great blessing. Then the
whole town gathered at his door. Note that the demons recognized
him, but he didn't allow them to speak. Well, its easy to go off
into modernist debates about whether demons exist or whether we
believe in them. Whatever you call it, there is a power at work in
many locations that distorts and disfigures human life and turns
society into a place of fear and not trust. Jesus wages battle
against these powers. This work, apparently, requires a deep
spiritual connection, a God connection. So Jesus goes off early to
pray alone. The disciples become irritated that he's given them the
slip. They can't understand, now that he's got people's attention,
what he's doing out here in the desert saying his prayers. "C'mon
Jesus, there's a big crowd." But Jesus didn't come to attract a
crowd. He came to herald and embody the incursion of God's Kingdom
and God's new creation here and there. And so its time to move on.
No permanent location or camp, but like the tabernacle of the moving
God in Exodus, he is on the move, preaching, healing and teaching.
When does the church exhibit this sense of urgency, this sense of
something at stake, this sense of engaging head-on all that
oppresses, depresses and destroys life as God intends it? Jesus is
on the move--are we keeping up?
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