Worship, February 7, 2021
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 5 B
“Make us agents of your healing and wholeness,” we pray to the Triune God we worship today.
Download worship folder for February 7, 2021.
Presiding and preaching: Pr. Joseph Crippen
Readings and prayers: Sue Browender, lector; Leif Johnson, Assisting Minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Download next Sunday’s readings for the Tuesday noon Bible study.
Wholeness Agents
God sends us into the darkness as agents of God’s wholeness and healing, having experienced it ourselves, to reach all God’s children.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 5 B
Texts: Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; Mark 1:29-39
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
That was a really long night for Jesus.
After a long day, as we heard last week, ending with an exorcism in the synagogue, today we hear that as soon as Jesus and the others left the synagogue and went to Peter and Andrew’s house, he had another person to heal, Peter’s mother-in-law.
And then the sun went down, Mark says, and people started lining up. Word was out. “The whole city” gathered outside the door, Mark says. So Jesus healed “many” who were sick, and cast out demons. You have to wonder how late into the night he went, and if he slept.
Then, in the morning when it was “still very dark,” Jesus got up to go to a quiet place to pray and re-center. But the disciples thoughtlessly searched him out in the dark and told him the crowds were back.
It was still very dark. Jesus had been working most of the night. And they still wanted more.
And what of all those waiting in the darkness with sick loved ones?
It was a long night for them, too, ending in deep disappointment. Because Jesus didn’t go back to heal the others. He went to the next town, leaving behind a huge, sad crowd, still in the dark, waiting for God’s healing.
Isaiah asks, “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? God is the great one who made all things. Don’t you trust that?”
And a lot of people today say, “No, I haven’t heard. I haven’t seen God. I don’t know where God is in the mess of this world. I’m in the dark, wondering if light will come. I’m at the back of the crowd hoping for healing and no one’s there to help me,” many would say to Isaiah.
Isaiah asks, “Why do you say ‘my way is hidden from God, and my right is disregarded by God?” “Because,” many, many people today would answer, “it sure feels that way to me.”
It might even feel that way to you. That it’s still awfully dark out there. And you know what it is to wonder where God is and what God is doing.
That’s why today’s readings are important.
They do what the Bible does so often: re-focus us on what God cares about and whom God wants to help. God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless, Isaiah says. God’s not impressed by success, the psalmist sings but rebuilds broken cities, gathers exiles, heals the brokenhearted and binds their wounds. And Jesus embodied this care, bringing healing when he saw suffering, proclaiming God’s desire for a new creation of love and justice.
Today’s Scripture reminds us that the reason we care about ending racism, or eliminating poverty, or cleaning up and restoring the environment, the reason we want to rebuild and heal our broken society until all are treated justly and given the chance to thrive, is because God cares deeply about these things. And God – as we know well from Jesus – will deal with them through you and me. We are God’s answer to those who cry in the darkness for God’s wholeness and healing, who don’t see or hear where God is.
So the most important person in today’s Gospel might be Peter’s mother-in-law.
Jesus healed her of a fever, and she got up and served them. That might feel awfully sexist, but this was her gift to give.
I only remember a handful of times in over 50 years of going to my Grandma’s house where anyone used the front door. You went into that house – family or friend – through the kitchen door. And Grandma always had food ready. You’d be invited in, and she’d put things in front of you. If she’d been lying in bed with a fever, and Jesus came to the house and healed her, I guarantee she’d have gotten up and said, “You need something to eat.”
You see? If you’re waiting all night in the dark for healing, hoping for God to act, and you experience in any way God’s healing grace in mind, body, or spirit, this woman says, “well, get up from your healing and see what you can do for others.”
That means for the second week in a row, our Prayer of the Day reveals our path.
Last week we prayed “God, bring wholeness to all that is broken, and speak truth into our confusion.” This week we prayed what’s next: “Make us agents of your healing and wholeness, that your good news may be known to the ends of your creation.”
Today we hear God’s priorities, and are re-focused. And, as ones who’ve been given wholeness and healing from God, we’re asked to work on those priorities. God’s care for the faint and powerless, the brokenhearted and wounded, comes through those whose faintness and powerlessness and woundedness have found God’s healing.
And you’re only asked to do what you can do. Peter’s mother-in-law knew how to do hospitality. As our vicar preached a couple weeks ago, the four Galilean fishermen somehow had skills as fishermen that Jesus needed for God’s work.
You, too, have what you need to be an agent of God’s wholeness and healing, if you’ve ever experienced it yourself. No matter how isolated you feel right now, or how incompetent you think you are to serve Christ, in every interaction you have with someone you could be a sign of God’s wholeness and healing. You can be grace. And love. You can help those who feel exiled by being God’s home for them, bind up the brokenhearted and wounded by being God’s healing presence for them, maybe only for a moment. But that’s enough.
Because it’s still awfully dark out there, isn’t it?
There are so many daunting things, we can’t even count them, so many people hurting, sometimes even we ourselves, so many systems that need to be dismantled, we can’t imagine how to help or start.
But God counts the number of the stars, sings the psalmist, and calls them by their names. God knows all the faint and powerless, all the people of the world by name, Isaiah says. All the broken cities and exiles, all the brokenhearted and wounded, all of these God sees. Even in the dark.
And what God needs to reach them all is you, and me, and many more, as agents of God’s wholeness and healing to whomever we are with.
Don’t worry you’re not enough. You’ve got what God needs to bring wholeness in your place, and so do all God’s children, so that God’s good news can, as we prayed, finally reach the ends of God’s creation.
In the name of Jesus. Amen
The Olive Branch, 2/3/21
Songs of Praise
We join our songs of praise with all of creation as we praise God active in our world.
Vicar Andrea Bonneville
Presentation of the Lord, Year B
Text: Psalm 84 and Luke 2:22-40
Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Everyone has a song to sing.
Mary sings, “my soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… (NRSV, 1:46).”
Simeon sings, “my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all people.”
Anna sings praises to God and praises about the child to all who were looking for redemption.
Our Psalmist sings, “how lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.”
I suspect even the birds were singing as they found their home and built their nests at the altar, a place to lay their young.
When reading the psalm, I wondered why the psalmist would write about birds. I learned that it is likely the psalmist was referring to real birds making nest in the walls of the temple.
During that time, the absence of birds was often seen as a sign of divine absence or disaster. Birds building nests were a sign of assurance of divine presence to the people. Not only do they build their nests, but it is also where they lay their eggs. A sign of hope for the future.
Birds continue to be a sign of hope for people. We look for birds as a sign that spring is coming. We learn about creation from migration patterns of the birds. Birds build their nests all over the world, a sign that God’s presence is everywhere.
There is a row of houses near a patch of woods in my neighborhood that has bird feeders at every step. It’s a temple, if you will, for many birds and of course many squirrels. They gather there and sing all day long.
My whole body stands in awe and wonder as I listen to their songs. It takes me back to my childhood when birds were my musicians and teachers. My grandparents taught me how to identify birds by their song. I remember sitting for hours on my grandparents’ deck or running around their yard listening and looking for birds.
The sweet songs of birds warm my heart during these cold winter months. I love listening to their songs.
Birds sing for a variety of reasons. Some reasons are more practical, like to claim and protect their territory for their young. Some more relational, like to be able to attract a mate or communicate. Yet some birds sing for joy, simply because they enjoy their song and like to sing along with other birds.
But what I find so interesting about birds is that it takes a lot of courage and energy to sing. It seems like they sing so naturally and freely, but when I bird sings it burns a lot of calories to produce a loud and clear song. Also, when birds sing they make themselves known in the predator/prey world and they make themselves vulnerable.
It takes courage, energy, and vulnerability for us to sing our songs. I imagine it took a lot for Simeon and Anna to sing praises when Jesus was presented in the temple.
Simeon, who was anointed by the Holy Spirit, sings praises as he proclaims Jesus as God incarnate, the one who has come to redeem the nations.
His song confirms what Mary has already sung, that this baby will transform the world. Yet, Simeon sees that the baby’s life is not going to be all songs of praise. He tells of how people will reject Jesus and reject the message of mercy, justice, and steadfast love that he proclaims. Simeon even tells of the terrible pain that Mary will experience.
His song echoes throughout the temple and Anna joins with her song. She had been in the temple every day. I suspect she had built close relationships with people in power, yet she sings about a baby who will challenge all power systems.
We remember that we to have been anointed by the spirit to sing our songs of praise. It is going to take energy, courage, and vulnerability. Yet, we still sing knowing there will be days when we have a hard time mustering up the strength. On those days, we look to Mary, Simeon, Anna, and the birds as they take the lead and we hum along.
Because despite trepidation, Simeon sings and praises for he knows the joy of his song. For the joy of the hope to come and redemption of nations rests in his arms as he holds the baby and sings praises.
And despite the risk, birds sing because the joy of the song and to be in community with others outweighs the risk of singing. Besides, when a bird is hatched it only learns its song by listening to its flock.
The songs that we hear today intertwine with songs that have been and continue to be sung, proclamations and praise to the living God. When we hear these songs, we tune in with our voices and praise God who transforms our world.
Amen.
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