The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of the 5th Sunday after the Epiphany
4 February 2018
Readings:
Isaiah 40:21-31
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
Identity seems to keep coming up for us this Epiphany season! And with yesterday’s discussions of gender identity, we add another layer to the complexity and importance of both knowing and honoring who we are as a people known, called, and sent out by our God to love and serve one another.
The core of Isaiah’s message today is one of transforming the despair of his people into a resolve to persevere in their time of exile. What is happening in the time and space language of today’s first reading is a calling out of claims to power by the Babylonians, who have conquered Jerusalem, taken Israel into exile, and whose gods—the stars and planets—are seen as triumphing over YHVH. Isaiah takes each of these in turn, reminding Israel that God’s transcendence is one that views all that God has made—from the stars and planets, to the earth itself and all that is in it. God has named and numbered each of them, and has power over all of it.
This is a call back to identity. Yes, we’re in exile, he admits, yes it seems like God is far away and utterly transcendent, yes we are weak and alone and dispirited and feel abandoned, but God’s imminence is such that we are all named and known by the one who created us, who sustains us, who created all—even the strong and powerful, whom God will wipe out as the grass, just like us. We are God’s people whether we are in the promised land or far from home—God is with us and hears us; God will strengthen us; God will endure and those who persecute us will eventually be wiped away so that our descendants will again enjoy the prosperity of God’s promise. In the process of waiting, in the process of persevering in our faith, we are also in the process of being strengthened, of being raised up on eagles wings, of being those who run or walk without tiring or growing faint through our faith in the one who is with us and whose glory, favor, and care we “await.” This awaiting, for Isaiah is in the ongoing sense of relationships of perpetually “becoming”—of perpetual growth, renewal, and revelation. While Isaiah seems to lament with his people, this is a lament with an incredible and transformative hope that challenges God’s people to reclaim their identity as God’s children no matter where they are.
All of the elements of Isaiah are summarized in today’s Psalm as well. The response to the hope of Isaiah is a song of hallelujah to the one who is in the process of completing this same hope—the Lord rebuilds Jerusalem (in the present future tense), and gathers the exiles, heals the brokenhearted, binds up their wounds. The one who is above the powers who have broken Israel counts the number of the stars and calls them by their names—they who worship the stars as gods are worshiping the creation of our God who has power over their coming and their going. Sing praises to this One! our God! Hallelujah!
Identity is significant. Who we are shapes our thinking, shapes our experience of our world, and necessarily impacts how we perceive God and our relationship to faith. Identifying with the people in Isaiah’s reading means sharing in the lament of exile and yet being God’s children in the midst of exile. For Paul it means identifying with those in each of the communities he is encountering in his service to the gospel and meeting them where they are—finding the common ground on which they all stand together and lifting up the whole community, much in the Greek sense of the same word that is used in today’s gospel from Mark in reference to Jesus raising up Peter’s mother-in-law (and which is the same sense used in Jesus own resurrection as he was raised up from the dead).
As this all ties into Mark’s gospel, there is something gloriously subversive in Mark’s choice of words for today’s otherwise innocuous healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. That Mark chooses to use the same words for Christ’s resurrection as he uses for today’s raising up of Peter’s Mother-in-Law connects these two events as a foreshadowing of Christ’s resurrection present from the very beginning of Christ’s ministry, and also makes that resurrection into a community event. In fact, as we discussed this reading in our text study this past week, one of my colleagues commented that in the Eastern Church, resurrection is seen as a communal event—as an uprising! So here, Jesus takes this sick woman’s hand and there is an uprising against sickness, against death, against fever, against the powers that dominate the body, and spirit.
In this same context of community uprising, Jesus’ casting out of the demons of the local population also takes on a communal element—the casting out of doubt, fear, sickness of mind, body, and spirit; a casting out of the demon-spirit of domination itself, and a raising up of the people together as a community reassured, empowered, and filled with God’s grace—again with the renewal of their identity as God’s children and as God’s instruments of serving one another, which Peter’s Mother-in-law models in her own discipleship of immediately reaching out to those gathered to serve them. And then Jesus raises up—again the same word—early in the morning to take this uprising to the other adjacent towns. This movement and uprising of the people and casting out of these and other demons that plague the people down to the level of their own identities must be carried out, that the movement may continue and gain enough traction to eventually reach a point of self-sustaining hope.
And here is where we are left today. No matter where we are or in what condition we find ourselves, God is with us, meeting us where we are, seeking for our health and wholeness, strengthening us, bearing us up on eagles wings, and calling us to the identity of a community raised up from whatever demons of our own lives and world are keeping us down, and sent out to love and serve one another as an uprising that has continued for over two-thousand years.
Yesterday, in the spirit of St. Paul, we became gender-aware that we might find common ground with God’s children across the gender spectrum. We learned more about the false binary that has been imposed on what God created as a diverse and multifaceted spectrum that reflects more completely God’s own image and likeness. We engaged in conversation, heard stories, sought common ground not just as Calvary Episcopalians, but as a broad sampling of Santa Cruzians including multiple faith traditions, to cast out some of those contemporary demons of fear, exclusion, ignorance, and mistrust that have kept us from rising up, empowered as a local community to serve one another.
I’m proud of Calvary for hosting this event. It was an amazing way to meet an incredible diversity of our neighbors, engage in civil, educated, and perspective-broadening conversation, and be sent out as a united community, renewed in our identity as humans blessed in our diversity to make a difference in the multitude of spheres of influence represented in the gathering. Again, if the movement continues and the uprising we participated in together continues to gain enough traction, perhaps we too will see a reawakening of identity that reaches a point of self-sustaining hope for all those oppressed, outcast, and feared simply for not fitting into gender categories enforced by the powers of our own world.
May we continue to find the common ground as a parish family that reminds us of our Identity as God’s children, that we may continue to find ourselves strengthened, renewed, inspired, and transformed; and may we find ourselves continuously called to rise up, that we may join Christ’s global uprising to dispel the demons of our own time and join together in serving ALL of God’s children as Christ’s hands and heart in this sacred and fragile world.
Amen.