FIRST READING Isaiah 40:21–31
21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”? 28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
PSALM Psalm 147:1–11, 20c
1 Hallelujah! How good it is to sing praises to our God! How pleasant it is to honor God with praise! 2 The LORD rebuilds Jerusalem, and gathers the exiles of Israel. 3 The LORD heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. 4 The LORD counts the number of the stars and calls them all by their names. 5 Great is our LORD and mighty in power; there is no limit to God’s wisdom. 6 The LORD lifts up the lowly, but casts the wicked to the ground. 7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving; make music upon the harp to our God, 8 who covers the heavens with clouds and prepares rain for the earth, making grass to grow upon the mountains. 9 God provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they cry. 10 God is not impressed by the might of a horse, and has no pleasure in the speed of a runner, 11 but finds pleasure in those who fear the LORD, in those who await God’s steadfast love. 20c Hallelujah!
SECOND READING 1 Corinthians 9:16–23
16 If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! 17 For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel. 19 For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
GOSPEL Mark 1:29–39
29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31 He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. 32 That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33 And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34 And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 35 In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37 When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 38 He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” 39 And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
The need for speed?
In the early 1960’s Roald Dahl wrote a children’s book entitled Charlie and the Chocolate factory. It’s a book I grew up with and in 1971 this work was turned into a musical movie starring Gene Wilder. Since then the book has been re filmed using different actors, but the main characters of the book remain the same. One of these primary characters is a spoiled little girl name Veruca Salt.
For Veruca, nothing can be obtained fast enough. Anytime she wanted something, she turned to her father and demands immediate action. Both in the book and in the movie, her most common line is “I want it now”. I’m sure most of us have either read the book or seen one of the movies and remember this little girl. There was always an urgency about her and, like it or not, this approach to life speaks to the same sort of attitude we have today.
Anytime we watch TV, listen to the radio or even take notice of the billboards along the highway, we can’t help but see the advertisements telling how fast we can have things. Everything is geared for speed, from Urgent care clinics, to banking with extended hours, fast food in a flash and even drive through convenience stores. We live in an age of ever increasing upload and download speeds with a constant barrage of ads telling you that AT&T, Charter or Time Warner cable has the fastest internet speeds. And if that isn’t fast enough, 3G speeds on our phones no longer cut it, now we need 4G speed. We want things to happen now, so we can be the first to know or see an event. And if we don’t want to go shopping for an item, we can go online and have something delivered without ever leaving our living rooms.
I find that I’m as guilty as the next person in feeling a sense of urgency. I have an Amazon Prime account that allows me to receive an order in just two business days. And if that isn’t fast enough, for an extra $3.99 per item, I can have it overnight. We live in a world of rapid information and instant results. We want what we want and we want it now. I’m not so sure we even know how to slow down anymore. With fast cars, fast internet and fast dining, we go from one need to the next with lightning speeds. It makes for a fast paced life leaving little time to even “smell the roses”. And this type of attitude can be seen as both good and bad.
It’s bad in that it has a tendency to never allow time for rest and relaxation. If we move “like we’re killing snakes” as my grandfather used to say, we wear ourselves out and find that our actual production is limited. It can also have a negative effect on how we relate to others. If we’re always in a hurry, than we don’t take the time to connect with those around us. We simply say what we need to say in the most efficient way and then move on. We must recognize that relationships take time and effort to build and maintain. It’s not something you can rush through. In our New Testament reading for today, Jesus understood this and even before it was light, He goes out and finds a quiet place to pray. He breaks the urgency of the night before and takes the time to spend with God. It’s an example that you and I need to follow. We need to slow down from the high octane life that we live and spend time in prayer and in Bible study. We need to develop and maintain our relationship with our Heavenly Father, just as Jesus did. But Jesus also saw the other side of the coin as well; Jesus saw the urgency of the need that was before Him and He responded.
Jesus was aware that He had come to a people in need; to a people searching for the promised Messiah; people who were desperately in need of God’s help in their lives. Have you ever noticed how often Jesus appears on the cover of Time and Newsweek? Someone once asked the religion reporter for the Washington Post why that was. His answer was that every time Jesus is on the cover of these magazines, they see a spike in their sales. Jesus is commercially attractive. And He’s still popular with lots of folks, people like you and me. But we’re just the newest of His followers. Jesus was also popular when He first began His ministry more than twenty one decades ago.
The scene we have in our lesson from the gospel of Mark takes place at the house of Simon Peter where Jesus heals his mother-in-law. I don’t know if you’ve thought about the disciples having families or not, but they did. As impetuous and outspoken as Simon Peter was, some might wonder even what kind of son-in-law he was. Nevertheless, after reporting the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, the evangelist Mark says this: “That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door . . .”
Think of that for a moment; as fast as the word could spread “The whole town was gathered at the door . . .” One could say that this was the first-century equivalent of the flash mob. They didn’t communicate by cell phones, Facebook or Twitter. They did it the old-fashioned way, person to person. Even without 4G coverage, word spread and the whole town gathered at the door. Everyone urgently wanted to see Jesus. You can almost hear some in the crowd saying, I need to see Jesus and I need to see Him now! And Jesus responds buy healing many and casting out the demons of those possessed. But then Mark records something interesting.
A little further on we read, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: ‘Everyone is looking for you!’” In the vernacular of today, one could say that Jesus was a rock star. Everyone was looking for him. And I believe that attitude is still prevalent today; even now, people everywhere are still looking for Christ. They may not know His name, and they might use religious symbols and terminology that’s different from what you and I would ever use, but they’re still searching for Christ all the same. After all, He is the way, the truth, and the life. And people everywhere, need what only Christ can offer them.
Jesus understood this need so He tells Peter, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for it is what I came to do.” Jesus saw the people as lost sheep; sheep needing a shepherd and one’s that needed a sense of direction in their lives. And when we stop and consider it, in a sense everyone is, to one degree or another, lost. Where do we to go to find direction for our lives except in Jesus? It’s like an event that Dr. Lee Tuttle once told about, that almost affected the course of the Second World War.
In December 1944 the U.S. Army and its Allies were on the offensive. For six months they had rolled with relentless precision across Western Europe. But suddenly, one December day, a major portion of the mighty Allied juggernaut ground to a halt. A counter offensive had been launched by the Germans. If that counter offensive had succeeded, the end of the war might have been indefinitely delayed. As it was, the German drive almost succeeded, and a part of that was due to some brilliant strategy devised by the defenders of the Third Reich.
A few days before the Allied operation, German soldiers dressed in American uniforms, together with American jeeps, were parachuted behind American lines. These “soldiers from the sky” carried no weapons. Their single mission was to discover the roads over which reinforcing Allied armies might travel and change all the signs which pointed to strategic towns and villages. And this simple task of turning the signposts to give wrong directions had deadly consequences. When the defenders in the “Battle of the Bulge” called for help as the Germans attacked, many of the reinforcements never arrived. Whole battalions were lost while trying to find their way across a countryside where the signposts were either down or wrong. Dr. Tuttle’s point in relating these events was to say to us that we live in a time when many of the signposts have been torn down: moral signposts, ethical signposts, theological signposts. Because of this, many of us lose our way in life.
How many have ever been lost while traveling? It’s not a pleasant experience. Maps don’t seem to make sense. When other people try to help, it often makes matters worse. It’s the same thing that can happen on the road of life. When we’re lost, life no longer makes sense to us. In Great Britain, there’s an epitaph on a tombstone of a three-week-old child that says it for all of us, regardless of our age. The epitaph reads like this: It is so soon that I am done for, I wonder what I was begun for.
The years seem to fly by. And many have no idea what we’re here for. They feel lost. Many find themselves asking, where can we turn for direction in our lives? For the Christian we know that there’s only one place that’s reliable. We turn to Jesus and find in Him that for which we are so desperately searching. We see in Him that we were created to be the sons and daughters of the Divine. We are precious people who have been bought with Christ’s blood. When we turn to Jesus, we rediscover our purpose, our sense of direction. The second thing we find in Jesus is that we have someone we can follow. Christ not only points the way, but He goes with us and leads the way for us. Indeed, He is the way.
There’s another true story that comes out of World War II. A platoon of American soldiers was stranded on one side of a mine field they had to cross. Desperate to move forward, the commander came up with a plan: one man would walk across the mine field, leaving clear footprints for the others to follow. If this first man hit a mine, then another man would take his place and would also walk across the field in his footsteps . . . until he fell as well, and so on . . . until finally someone had cleared a path for all the soldiers. It was a bold plan, but it seemed guaranteed to leave some casualties.
The young soldiers, with their hearts in their throats, agreed to the plan. However, they wondered, which one of them would be chosen to walk the field first? To their surprise, it was their commander who began walking first across that field. As their leader, he insisted on risking his life for the sake of his men. The commander crossed the field safely. Following closely in his footsteps, all the soldiers made it across the field as well. It took leadership, courage and a willingness to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And, of course, that’s what Christ did for us on Golgotha. Not only does Christ point us in the direction we’re to go, He goes before us, giving His life that ours might be saved.
According to the New International Version, the writer of Hebrews calls Christ “the pioneer and perfecter” of our faith. Other translations of that verse call Him the “author and finisher,” but I like the NIV. The Greek word archegos, translated as “author” is a word that means “one [who] takes the lead in anything and thus affords an example, a predecessor in a matter, a pioneer”. Jesus is a pioneer in the same way that the company commander in WW II was a pioneer. He took the dangerous path and cleared the way for us. Jesus doesn’t ask us to go anywhere or do anything that He hasn’t done or gone before Himself. The writer of Hebrews tells us that we’re to fix our eyes on Him, in the same way that those soldiers looked to the company commander in order to make it through the mine field of life and death. Christ gives us a sense of purpose and direction for our lives. Christ leads the way and beckons us to follow.
And there’s one more reason the world longs to see Jesus. When we follow Him, He leads us to a specific destination; life everlasting with the Father. When we follow Jesus we discover abundant life . . . not because we deserve it, but because of what Christ did on Calvary. Sometime back, The Christian Century magazine carried a story by Lillian Daniel. Ms. Daniel told of a large collection of Southeast Asian pottery that her parents owned. Daniel says her parents had collected this pottery on several trips to that part of the world over the years, and carefully kept it in their home.
However, there was always one piece in this beautiful collection that always seemed out of place. This piece had once been a fine antique vase with a cream glaze and blue Japanese design, but now it was damaged. Yet, despite the damage, her parents kept it amid their finer pieces, even though it was a mass of cracks, crudely glued together with what was obviously the wrong type of adhesive. Ms. Daniel notes that everywhere the 20 or so pieces of that vase met one another, glue had bubbled out yellow as it dried, leaving the vase grotesquely scarred. She says that she once suggested to her mother that she get rid of that one ugly piece of pottery. And so her mother told her the story behind the vase and why they couldn’t part with it.
Her father bought the vase when he was a journalist covering the Vietnam War. Returning home, he had wrapped and hand carried the vase as he traveled the long journey back in taxis, on several airlines, and several buses. He protected it throughout the entire journey without incident; that is, until he walked up the driveway. As the father walked up the driveway, his two year old daughter rushed toward him with her arms outstretched for an embrace. Surprised and elated, her father tried to hold on to the vase and also open his arms to his beloved daughter. When he did that, the vase fell and broke into pieces. Ms. Daniel, of course, was that two-year-old. She ends her story with this: “Thus it was that night, my mother pulled out the glue, she repaired the vase, and she pronounced it precious.”
That cracked vase was almost as precious to her mother as we cracked and imperfect vessels are to God. Those who trust in Jesus and seek to walk in His steps are the recipients of abounding and overflowing love and grace. And even though we’re imperfect in our service to Christ and humanity, God’s love for us and acceptance of us never ceases.
Tony Campolo tells a story that’s set in Heaven. St. Peter handles admissions at the pearly gates according to the story and the Apostle Paul acts as the administrator of the celestial kingdom, taking a monthly census of Heaven’s inhabitants. But something doesn’t add up. Each time Paul counts the number of people in Heaven, his number far exceeds the number of admittances that Peter has registered. This discrepancy mystifies them both for quite a while. Then, one day, Paul runs up to Peter and excitedly shouts, “Peter! Peter! I’ve finally figured out why our numbers don’t match. I’ve discovered why there are so many more people in Heaven than you’re letting in at the pearly gates. It’s Jesus! He keeps sneaking people over the wall.”
Jesus offers unlimited grace to all who would trust their lives to Him. None of us of course deserve God’s grace and that’s OK; because you and I are among those whom Christ will sneak over somehow. That’s what grace is all about. Everyone deep down wants what only Jesus can provide. “Everyone is looking for you. . .” said the disciples to Jesus. It was true than and it’s still true today.
Jesus is the answer to every man, woman and child’s deepest need. He gives us direction and purpose for our lives. We need never fear what lies ahead for He goes with us. He never takes us anywhere He hasn’t been himself. He is the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith. And our destination is abundant life with the Father. There is a time to slow down. We need to slow down and take time in prayer, in study and to listen to what God has planned for our lives. But there’s also a need for immediacy.
People are hurting, people are searching and the need is urgent. Jesus is what people need now. Jesus saw the need and He went to where the people were. We need to do the same. As Jesus told His disciples, the harvest is plenty and the workers few. Now is the time to show people the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Amen
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