5 Feb 2012
Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39
In a few days' time we will have the 3rd anniversary of the "Black Saturday" disaster when many lives were lost, and much property destroyed, thanks to horrific bushfires. Natural disasters like that serve to remind us very pointedly that we human beings are not in control of all that happens to us. There are forces larger than those which we can muster from our intelligence. If we believe the "global warming" people then we would say-- yes, wouldn't we -- that we humans have contributed to these extreme climatic conditions -- but even if those prophets of doom are not correct in their diagnosis the fact remains that many things do happen in the universe, many things happen on this globe we call "earth", which we have no power over. We human beings are but minor players on a huge stage.
If we believe in God then we would go on to say that this is not surprising, because we would say that God has created the universe, and that God is bigger than anything we can make, anything we can imagine. And if that is the case, then, of course, we are not in control of everything. That seems to be the message from this morning's first bible reading ... the majesty of God ... the might of His Providence....as Isaiah says, that, to God, the "inhabitants (of the earth) look like grasshoppers" (Is. 40:22). Isaiah gives us a majestic vision of God, a God who dwarfs both the stars of the heavens and the princes of the earth. And yet the comforting thing is that that God is still able to hear the cry of the distressed and is still able to strengthen the weak..."those who hope in the Lord renew their strength, they put out wings like eagles, they run and do not grow weary, they walk and never tire" (verse 31).
Yes, it is right for us to believe that God is bigger than anything we can imagine, and that God's purposes are greater than anything we can perceive -- & yet, in spite of that, there is always a temptation which we face & that is to try to "domesticate" God, to keep God within our ambit (so to speak), to channel God's actions into ways that suit us.
In our gospel reading today we are continuing our reading through the early chapters of St Mark's gospel. St Mark tells us that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, has burst on to the scene, and people are immediately impressed with His authority. "Who is He?", they ask. They see this Jesus performing great deeds within their own, domestic, lives. People, whom they know are sick, but Jesus is coming along and healing those people of their sicknesses. People whom they know, who have been sick, are now well; people in their town, people in their families, people in their "domestic" situations have been healed. And this Jesus from Nazareth is also delivering people from being possessed by demons. Whether or not you literally believe in evil spirits, it is quite clear that Jesus seems to have delivered people from oppressive behaviour patterns, from terrible anti-social behaviours -- and, indeed, the reports in Mark's gospel say that it was particularly in the confronting of those non-rational forces that Our Lord's true personality, His true "character", was revealed.
What we learn from these early chapters of St Mark's gospel is that Our Lord's first impact on people's lives was on issues in their domestic situations: sicknesses, immediate needs, oppressive behaviours. And surely this is still the case, and is perfectly natural. Think of your own life in the past week: if you have prayed to God at all I would bet that most of your prayers have been to do with what I might call "domestic" situations: prayers for strength and guidance for yourself .... prayers for people you know who are sick, or who are in hospital, or who are going through painful times, or who are in need of special guidance ... prayers for people whose behaviour you are finding difficult, oppressive.
This is all well and good. It is where prayer starts from ... from my own needs and the needs of the people of my family, my town, my community. But it is not where prayer should end.
It is instructive for us to look at the sequence of events in today's gospel passage: the set gospel story for today commences in a very domestic situation, in the town synagogue of Capernaum, a town on the side of the Sea of Galilee. The action then quickly moves to the household of Simon Peter. You can't get anything more domestic than a household with a family in it -- and in this house is a sick woman, Simon Peter's mother-in-law. Jesus heals her of her fever. She gets up, and she continues her normal domestic life, of serving the other people in that family.
The story then moves back into the town square, in the evening, where, again, the healing of the local sick people, and the deliverances of them from evil spirits, continues. This is Jesus, this is God, acting at the local level, in the limited, domestic lives of the people of a particular town.
But then, early next morning, the scene shifts: something new happens. The Lord, before dawn, leaves the house and goes out to a wild, lonely, deserted place, well away from the town, well away from the domestic scene. He goes there to pray. But when Simon Peter and the others notice that Jesus has gone missing they send out a search party to bring Him back to their town, back to their local situation, back to their domestic lives. And Jesus says "No, I am not going back. I must move on ... to the wider world". And so He does. And this seems to be a pattern that is there in the accounts of Our Lord's ministry. An impact is made in a local, domestic community, but then He moves on .. to the wider world, to the wider universe.
I would say that Simon Peter's view of things at that stage would have been to say to Jesus "Come back to my house and stay there indefinitely, and people will come to you." But that was not to be. Jesus was not to be confined to one place. And later in Peter's life Peter himself came to know that he had to leave Galilee and take the good news to the wider world.
Our epistle reading this morning from I Corinthians 9 throws a little more light on this same theme. In a fairly complicated excerpt from Paul's letter to the early church at Corinth here we have Paul saying how, in the service of the gospel, he has to ensure that he doesn't restrict his ministry to one community, to one locality, to one set of customs and thought-forms. He does not, for example, want to tie himself down to receiving financial support just from one community -- because that might then obligate him to be spending too much time with them, and might tempt him to pander only to their local needs. No, Paul realises that he must always move on. He will voluntarily submit to local customs, where necessary, but not because his salvation depends on it, but because it might be a means whereby salvation will come to that community. He is prepared to be a "fool for Christ", if necessary -- to be "all things to all men in order to save some".
So I believe that the message for today is that God is bigger than anything we can imagine, and God's activities are never to be confined to one local, domestic situation. We need to remember that, and to allow our prayers and our concerns to start with ourselves and our own needs, yes, and those of the people immediately around us, yes -- but then to move on to the rest of the world, the rest of the universe. And as with our prayers, so with our ministry.