“Called As Partners Despite and Because”

Mark 1:14-20

Rev. Dr. Marisa Laviola

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

Morrisville, VT

 

My family and I do not have words to express our gratitude for the many and grace-filled ministries of greeting this week.  Expressions of welcome have been so warm and so inviting.  My daughter Kristyn and I arrived at the parsonage around 10 am last Saturday, to the gracious welcoming of David and Ray.  As we entered the door of the parsonage and began our tour, our eyes widened and our mouths began to hang open.  We were told, and it was so obvious, that through the gracious welcoming hands of Dot, Wally, and many others, the parsonage had been given an incredible face lift.  Both Kristyn and I could only sputter inadequate words of gratitude, as our hearts were too full to find sufficient utterance.  When Carol and Kathryn arrived, a few hours later, they were also filled with gratitude.  The girls chose and took to their rooms immediately.  Carol and I began relishing in the kitchen space and the spacious living room. 

Then one by one, gracious and welcoming faces appeared at our door, bearing scrumptious sustenance:  first Claudia, then Sukay, then Mary, then Leah; and then Allison with keys to the parsonage.  And throughout the week we have received offers of help from Ray and Wally, Allison going out of her way to help me to feel at home at the church—including setting up a computer—twice—the one now in the study is from the generous donation of Mary West and Daphne Reed Sanchez.  And during the week, other offers of invitation and welcome.  My family and I do not have words to express our gratitude for the many ministers of welcome this week.  With all these faces, with all these offers, with all these expressions, has come a gracious message from you whom God has called to partner together; to me whom God has called to partner together with you, all for the sake of Christ’s service.  And so our partnership begins.

             I remember back in September when I first read your church profile.  I was drawn to the many gifts and ministries of this body of Christ.  But what drew me closest to sending my profile to you was your statement of intention to call a pastor who is willing to be a partner in ministry with you.  Not an autonomous leader, not a CEO, not someone who will run the church.  But a partner in mutual ministry, in mutual discernment, on a mutual faith journey of discovery of gifts and graces, vision and direction.  And as I have begun to meet with you, that intention first read on paper, has begun to take on the real presence of a people who truly are looking to join with one another and with their pastor in service for the sake of the realm of God; to spread the good news of Jesus Christ; to bring the message of love, healing, and hope to a hurting world.

             And such a time of need for love, healing, and hope this is.  With the economy and the world order in such a precarious balance, with violence and terrorism looming at home and abroad, with the hope of new leadership in our country, but the reminder that change does not come at all easily or quickly.  This time is indeed a time of need, and it is a time of opportunity; opportunity in the midst of crisis.  It is a time when people need God deeply, but it is also a time when people of faith may be questioning God more than in recent memory.  This is a time when people may be questioning if God really cares, if God is even interested, if God is even present in the intimacies and intricacies of their lives.  And that’s where the church comes in, especially bodies of Christ like ours, in the local church, as we can keep alive the hope that often fades, the faith that sometimes falters.  We can keep the hope alive for ourselves as we worship, pray, study, and fellowship together.  We can offer hope to others through the ministry that God has for us to offer.

             Maybe that’s what Jesus had in mind when he called that crew of fishermen to bring the good news in their time of crisis.  The Gospel of Mark tells us that these folks were already partnered.  They were partners in fishing, a very strong fellowship in those days.  They knew each other and they knew their trade.  They more than likely fellowshipped together, ate together, maybe even worshipped together at the local synagogue.  And Jesus called them, called them to an opportunity, to focus not only on physical sustenance that their trade provided, certainly one of God’s ministries.  But he called them to a more urgent service, for there were many in crisis.  First Jesus says to them “The time is fulfilled and the realm of God has come near.”  This is your moment, your opportunity to receive me, Jesus, as the One whom God has sent.  We may remember that at that time the Jews were waiting for Messiah to come to redeem them from their bondage.  The Jews had been occupied by other nations since the time of the Exile five centuries before, and Israel was presently occupied by the Roman government.  They had no home to call their own.  They were awaiting a Messiah to deliver them from the hands of a foreign government through political means or even war.  But Jesus had other crises in mind. For Jesus, the crises were the plight of the poor, the state of those who were marginalized and not welcomed into the fold of their community, and those who felt far away from God because of their own struggles or because others shunned them.  Jesus is saying to these fishermen, I give you a great opportunity in this time of crisis.  The crisis is the state of people’s lives.  The opportunity is Jesus, the good news, the One who brings the hope of healing and redemption in this life and next.

And he tells them that before they can follow him and do God’s work, they must repent of their sins.  Because, you see, repenting means turning away from that which is not of God and turning toward that which is of God.  Jesus knows that in order for them to receive Jesus, to fully embrace Jesus’ message, and the ministry that Jesus has for them, they must turn toward God and embrace joyful forgiveness that is theirs for the asking.  With repentance, they find the assurance of grace.  They can turn to God, realizing that they are deeply and unconditionally loved, enveloped in loving arms of grace, called to extend that extravagant welcome to others. 

He then says to them, these partners in fishing, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of people."  Partner together with me to be fishers for God’s service.  And most surprisingly, according to Mark’s Gospel, they do just that. They drop everything and follow him immediately--because they are ready.   They are called to go beyond their present partnership with one another and to extend that partnership beyond themselves, in a new way, and they are ready:  to listen, to receive, to turn toward, to become ministers in Christ’s service, and to venture into new relationships with new partners about whom they know nothing about yet.

They choose to follow Jesus BECAUSE:  BECAUSE they hear God’s call, BECAUSE the time and opportunity are immediate, BECAUSE they are willing to turned toward God for forgiveness and grace for God’s ministry, BECAUSE they are partners already, and BECAUSE they are ready to trust God and to venture into the unknown with unknown partners.

And they choose to follow Jesus DESPITE:  DESPITE the incredible challenge of following the One who requires their all for discipleship; DESPITE the need to expand beyond what they have known; whom they have known, and with whom they have partnered before, DESPITE being stretched beyond their comfort zone.

             You have partnered together for a long time.  By history, this church has partnered together for over 200 years.  This body of Christ has partnered together for any number of years, depending upon how many generations of families are represented here.  Sometimes the partnership has been smooth; sometimes it has been rocky.  Sometimes trust has come easy, sometimes it has been betrayed.  Sometimes ministry has been vibrant; sometimes it has been strained.  You have agreed and disagreed, graciously and not so graciously.  Sometimes your numbers have been robust, sometimes they have dwindled.  People have come and gone, stayed and left.  Some leavings have come about because of good and appropriate endings.  And yet the grief of Rona’s absence is fresh and present.  Some leavings have been fraught with painful derision.  And the grief of Mary, Steve, Blake, and Audrey’s absences runs deep and is fresh and present.  And I am sure there are other leavings that you could name that bring twinges of the sweet, the bitter, and the bitter sweet.  And God is with you.  God continues to call you, as family for one another, as ministers for one another, and partnered as Christ’s disciples for service to this community of Morrisville and beyond.

             And now you have called a settled pastor after 4 long years of being without a settled pastor.  Perhaps some of you have a faded memory of what it’s like to partner with a settled pastoral leader.  But God has called and you have answered.  You are ready.  God has called me to this Body of Christ and I have answered.  I am ready. God has called and we have answered.  We are ready because God has called us and God is with us intimately.

Perhaps some of you are a bit tentative and not sure about trusting this new pastor.  That is so understandable.  I would often tell my psychotherapy clients that just because I am a therapist does not mean they will or should automatically trust me.  I say the same to you.  Just because I am an ordained minister does not mean that you will or should automatically trust me.  Trust must be earned.  And I pray with the help of God that I will earn your trust.

And we are venturing into this new chapter of our lives together.  Together we have left our individual boats of comfort and are boarding the boat that God has for us, to the ministry to which God has called us, as we are ready to answer God’s call.  We will not always feel ready, but we are ready because God says we are.  Because God is right here upholding us, providing us with unconditional love, guidance, and empowerment, as we discern our mutual paths.  And together we will repent, over and over again, asking God and each other for forgiveness, turning our minds and hearts away from what is not of God and turning our entire lives toward that which is of God, for God, as ministers together to bring the good news of the realm of Christ to a hurting world.

We now tentatively put up sails—together

We will learn how to say hello many times—together

We will learn how to share the rudder—together

We will learn how to make maps of the voyage—together

We will learn to build trust, to build relationships, in our imperfect ways, imperfect beings as we are--together.

             And together we will sail along the way with God as our loving source and our guide, looking to God as a sailor looks to the stars and the night sky.  Helping each other with vision, with purpose, with faith, with hope; during times of grief and sadness; during times of joy and celebration.  Giving thanks and praise always to the One who has called us, who has said to us and will continue to say to us, “Follow me.  I will make you fishers of people.”

             And so my friends, our journey begins, our partnership is forged.  Let us remember in the coming weeks and months,

We are here BECAUSE God has called us. 

We are here DESPITE the incredible challenge of discipleship.

We are here BECAUSE we are ready, because God says we are ready. 

We are here DESPITE the unknown road ahead, giving up the more familiar and more comfortable road behind.  

We are here BECAUSE the need of the world is great for ministers of grace in Christ’s service.

We are here DESPITE grieving for those whom we have lost and for that which has been and for that which may have been. 

We are here BECAUSE we rest on God’s grace and empowerment.

We are here DESPITE a partnership that may take us beyond our comfort zone.

             And being here, being now, on the beginning sail of partnership, we venture forth with the loving arms of God around each one of us and all of us, with the healing grace of Christ’s arms around each one of us and all of us, with the empowering and nurturing arms of the Spirit around each one of us and all of us.  AMEN.

“Authority to Heal”

Mark 1:21-28

Rev. Dr. Marisa Laviola

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ

Morrisville, VT

 

Authority.  We all have it in some way.  Some as parents or grandparents, some as employers or owners of businesses, some as managers or in other roles in our jobs, some as leaders or past leaders of this church, me as preacher on this Sunday morning.  And such authority, for the most part, as crucial as it is to our daily living, is ascribed to us from without.  We are appointed, elected, hired, give birth, adopt, foster; have education, training, skills, and credentials.  And we are viewed by ourselves and others as having authority.

Enter Jesus.  A dusty guy from the dusty roads between Nazareth and Capernaum, with his four dusty fisherman disciples he had just called to follow him.  They probably still had the aroma of the hard work of their fishy labors about them.  Hardly a picture of authority.  And yet, there was something about Jesus and what he said, how he taught, that caused those in attendance to respond in amazement.  There were no sleeping heads that Sabbath morning, no drooping lids, during Jesus’ sermon.  He got their attention.  With an authority that did not come from without; that was not ascribed from rabbinical training.  The authority was amazing, incredible, and disturbing—emanating from somewhere they were not sure. 

It's much easier for us to picture Jesus there, in the midst of an excellent bible study, than it is to imagine what happened next. A man tortured by an "unclean spirit" emerged in the crowd, in the midst of the commotion over Jesus' power-filled teaching. While others were full of questions about Jesus, this evil spirit was the only one who recognized who he actually was. Going back to the very first verse of this Gospel, we remember that Jesus is "the Son of God," and the unclean spirit claimed to know that he was "the Holy One of God." William J. Abraham says, "It is as if radical evil has a way of immediately discerning the presence of good" (The Lectionary Commentary). Jesus commanded the spirit to be quiet (perhaps to protect his identity so early in his ministry?) and then expelled it from the man, freeing him from a terrible bondage. We don't hear any more about this man, but the whole region heard about what happened to him. Jesus had backed up his words, and his powerful preaching, with an action that illustrated what he was about.

We in the 21^st century, in our age of technological and scientific advancement, don’t give much heed to talk of evil in the world.  Back in Jesus’ day, our ancient brothers and sisters truly believed that evil indeed had power over human beings, and only God could overcome evil with perfect good.  That’s one of the reasons the people were so amazed and disturbed by Jesus’ response to the evil in the possessed man.  Only The Holy One of God could say to such evil power, “shut up and get out.”  We of the 21^st century have diluted evil by rendering it impotent under the understanding of scientific explanation and the fantasies of novelists and Hollywood producers.  So we see ourselves as godlike over such superstition and not in need of God to help us.  After all, such evil of the ancients isn’t evil at all.  Wasn’t that just a man who had epilepsy that Jesus was curing?  Perhaps.  Fred Craddock says that "not believing in demons has hardly eradicated evil in our world" (Preaching through the Christian Year B).

             In C.S. Lewis’s hallmark book “The Screwtape Letters”, the protagonist Screwtape, who represents the Devil, makes a profound statement about the state of human relationship to evil today.  He states that sometimes humans either respond to evil with such fear and dread that they become pre-occupied with it, obsessed with it, giving it embodiment in fact.  Evil is then personified as being around every corner, in every bush, needing to be hunted down, beaten out, and killed.  Unfortunately, this is often the stance of our brothers and sisters on the right wing of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.  Or, humans respond to evil as though it is not there, ignoring it, denying its existence, relegating it to flukes of scientific explanation not yet understood or disease or dysfunction not yet cured through upcoming medical advancement.  Unfortunately, this is often the stance of those of the world who lean more to the left.  I would imagine that Screwtape is thrilled that neither side gets it correct, and so evil can continue to flourish.

             Enter Jesus.  Jesus neither is obsessed nor in denial when it comes to evil.  He confronts evil head on.  And he continues to confront evil head on throughout his entire ministry.  Such authority is first felt, according to the Gospel of Mark, by these people present for the worship service at the Synagogue.  Jesus had no externally endowed authority, as far as they could tell.  But there was something about his teaching that emanated an authority different from what they were accustomed.  An internal authority, an authority that moves people, that makes people take notice, that can comfort people, that can disturb people, that can send the presence of evil shuddering in its occupied human.  Only evil knew that Jesus could say with a few words “shut up and go away.” 

             And what about us in our 21^st century understandings of authority and evil?  Of the presence of evil in our midst and God’s authority and ability and desire to confront it, and yes, heal it?  Our understanding of the world is certainly different than the time of the writing of the Gospel of Mark during the first century.  We certainly have more power over our lives than the ancients ever dreamed they could have.  So we have come to understand some of the unknowns of the world in a different way than what were known at the time of Jesus.

Dianne Bergant, in Preaching the New Lectionary, provides a challenging reflection on the demons that hold us bondage in the 21^st century.  She writes: "We are caught in dysfunction and sin, and try as we may, we do not seem able to rid ourselves of their shackles. We live in the midst of the battle between good and evil, the struggle of human finitude and failure. We may begin with good intentions, but we are so often sidetracked or derailed along the way. We are plunged into the throes of human suffering and pain, and there seems to be no escape from it….The demonic seduces us in more ways than we can count, and we are often caught in its web before we recognize what has happened." The world, including the church-going, faithfully believing world, stands in need of God's healing touch, and longs for what can "really satisfy the desires of the human heart." 

But the story does not end there.  There is where the story just begins.  The story begins with the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.  The story begins with a preacher from the dusty road accompanied by four fisherman disciples from Nazareth.  The story begins with this One with amazing authority--authority that is not ascribed from without.  This story begins with this One of amazing authority that emanates from within.  This story begins with an authority that spreads to the people; an authority that speaks the truth, an authority that confronts evil, an authority that heals those in need, that frees the captive, that welcomes the sinner, welcomes the lost, welcomes those who are shunned. 

Such authority is a gift to all of us.  Not only the authority, but Jesus himself, the Holy One of God with the authority, is a gift to us.  And we're probably no better able to recognize the gift of Jesus when we encounter him than the people in the synagogue were all those years ago.

Perhaps our difficulty with comprehending Jesus as this gift stems from mistaken expectations about who this Jesus is in our lives. Like our ancestors in faith, we may find ourselves asking more and more questions about this Jesus, who he is, and what following Jesus really means.  We may be able to admit that we want and need such a gift for hearing the truth, for hearing about redemption for this life and the next, for healing from the pain of being hurt from others, for healing from the pain of hurting others.  For Jesus has the authority to heal—our woundedness.  Our wounded intentions for right living that have gone awry, when we try so hard to live as we should, and sometimes just fall short with our words and our actions.  Our wounded intentions for being in relationships, when we try so hard to love as we should, and sometimes just fall short with words that hurt, actions that just fall short, and inactions that may have helped.  Our wounded intentions for ministry, when we try so hard to do the ministry of the church, and sometimes just fall short because we get tired and discouraged because of falling numbers and financial constraints.  Jesus has the authority to heal us.  Jesus has the desire to heal us.  Jesus heals us—so that we can rest, so that we can rejoice, so that we can reconcile with others, so that we can be renewed in our love for God, each other, and God’s ministry.

As we approach the communion table this morning, let us seek this Holy One of God, this gift.  As we come to the communion table this morning, let us ask.  Who are you, Jesus?  Who are you for my life?  What does knowing you mean to my life, Jesus?  Let us come seeking Jesus.  Let us come, asking Jesus to reveal more and more who he really is and what his Life and Ministry mean for our lives and ministry.  Let us come, asking for Jesus to heal us in the deepest recesses of our lives, to heal us so we can have the blessed assurance of love, so that we can extend that blessed assurance of love to others.  And Jesus will meet us, Jesus will heal us, as we learn of him, as we receive him as the Holy One of God, just as we are, as the beloved children of God whom he created to love.

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