Feb 7, 2020

 

It is tough to be human!  I don’t know about you, but I really struggle with it.  I struggle with the limitations of my body—that I can’t eat everything I want to, that I get sick, that I run out of energy, that my back hurts, that my brain takes so long to work sometimes.  Maybe you can relate. I struggle with perfectionism.  I know, surprising, right.  I want to get it right.  I despise making mistakes.  I hold myself to high standard and I really get into a spiral when I make a mistake, especially if it affects other people.  And sometimes I get really overwhelmed by the suffering in this world.  My contribution is so small and there is so much work to do.  It can be so frustrating.

            I take some comfort from this Gospel reading today, and I hope you do, too.  Jesus was fully divine, of God, and fully human, and today’s Gospel highlights how he used his human limitations to share the unlimited love, healing, and grace of God.

            The story starts with a healing—something mysterious and amazing in those times.  Doctors could not look inside the body to find out what wasn’t working properly.  They had very few tools to work with to alleviate pain or even to know if someone had a life-threatening illness or not.  Getting sick brought a lot of uncertainty and fear.  Jesus offers healing to Simon’s mother-in-law.  Maybe she has a sinus infection or the flu and maybe she has cancer or organ failure.  We don’t know.  Jesus lifts her up, and her fever is gone.  She is able to use her gifts for ministry.

            Word gets out and soon everyone is at Simon’s door with their sick and demon-possessed friends and family.  Everyone is seeking healing.  Everyone has something needing healing.  There is excitement.  There is anticipation.  There is a huge need to be met.  Jesus healed many who were sick and many who were possessed with demons.  The word for healing here is the word for therapy.  Does he give them exercises to do?  Does the healing happen over months or all at once?  How does he ensure the pain or ailment doesn’t come back, or does it?

Notice it doesn’t say that Jesus healed everyone.  Surely there were some who were disappointed.  What happened to the ones Jesus didn’t heal?  Even today, we know Jesus’ healing for humanity is incomplete.  It is unfinished. 

            Jesus goes off to rest.  He is tired.  Did Jesus get frustrated with the limits of his body?  Would he have preferred to stay and heal all day and all night?  At some point, he sent the crowd home and got some rest and early in the morning, snuck away and went off to pray.  Jesus needed to rest.  This is good to remember for us all.  We have our limitations.  Our bodies give us signals to tell us to slow down or stop.  We should listen to those signals and accept our limitations and take a break when necessary.  Even Jesus needed rest and renewal.  There is no shame in taking a break. He disappoints people, he needs to rest and take a break, and there are always more people in need of healing.  I don’ t know if he was frustrated by this or not.  But I do know that he went and prayed. 

Jesus moved away from those making demands on him.  He took some time alone.  His prayer connected him with the source of his strength.  As we read in Isaiah, “Even youths get tired, but the Lord will renew your strength.”  Jesus is connecting to the one who can fill his empty pitcher.  The stories from the ages remind Jesus of who he is, God’s beloved child.  They remind him of all the others who were tired and who God renewed.  The stories help him focus on God as the source and not his own abilities or glory that he might receive.  The stories allow him to lay the mixture of feelings that he felt in God’s hands—the sadness at the suffering, the anger at the way we hurt each other, the feeling of inadequacy when an ailment isn’t healed, the blame when someone dies.  These prayers and scriptures put God back in the center.  “Whether we live or we die, we are the LORD’s.”  Whatever hurts we have, we know who we belong to.  Whatever diseases we suffer from, we are the LORD’s.  We are God’s precious children and we look forward to the Kingdom of God when no one will suffer anymore.

            The expectation is that Jesus would return to town and finish what he started.  “Everyone is searching for you,” the disciples complain.  “Where the heck were you?”  Jesus says they are on their way to neighboring towns. Jesus leaves the healing work unfinished.  He goes elsewhere to share the message of his good news.  This is frustrating that Jesus doesn’t do it all for us, that all our pains and challenges aren’t taken away by Jesus.  Is he abandoning us?  Doesn’t Jesus love us?

            Jesus does love us, but not only us.  There are other people who need Jesus just as much as we do.  Jesus loves enough to show us how it’s done and entrusts us with many gifts to continue on with the ministry that he has started.  And doesn’t it heal us at a deep level when community comes together to work on a project?  There is healing of body, healing of minds, healing of spirits, and healing of community.  What Jesus has done is to place the ministry in their hands to work together and be knit together in the body of Christ to bring and maintain healing and therapy, wholeness, shalom.     

            Jesus could have stayed in Capurnaum for the rest of his ministry and healed there 24/7 and never completed all the work there was to do.  Jesus indicates here that he has other work to do.  He’s already planted a seed—that’s the work that Jesus has.  The farmer needs to spread out the seed, spread out the plants so that they can grow and develop in different areas.  Some people thought that Jesus should do the planting and tending and harvesting.  But Jesus trusts God to provide rain and sun and the proper conditions for these seeds to sprout and grow and bear fruit.  And Jesus knows the community needs to tend these seeds together.  The community needs to become part of the process and as long as Jesus is doing it for them, they will never take on the ministry.  Thankfully, Jesus has one person in this town who seems to get it.  Most of the people lined up at the house were not there, at least initially, to learn and be part of a community of growth and healing.  They were there to receive.  They could only see how they were lacking, not how they could contribute.  However, Simon’s mother in law really got it.  She received the healing and new life Jesus gave her and she used her life in service.  Some people think she served them lunch or dinner, but the word is the same one for deacon.  Simon’s mother-in-law ministered to them.  Maybe she read the scripture with them or prayed with them.  Maybe she listened to them with an open heart.  Truly she became a disciple, working on Jesus’ project with the whole community long after he left town.

            In prayer Jesus was reminded of God’s grace.  That’s what , our limitations and frustrations do.  They remind us that we aren’t God.  We fall short.  Our work is incomplete.  Our efforts are small.  We disappoint people.  Our limitations also remind us who is God—one who is forgiving, gracious, loving, and who wants to help us grow and learn and connect with others in the community and work together to tend the shoots that Jesus’ plants so they can grow to fruition.

            Paul, too, experienced his limitations, although this reading doesn’t make it sound like it.  Paul’s limitation was that relied so much on his own ability to keep the law that he had no need of God.  And Paul had persecuted many Christians and done so much damage that his life was at risk and he was at the mercy of those same Christians.  Some wanted him to be punished and others would have been glad to make him pay with his life for what he’d done, but instead they showed him mercy.  Jesus had planted the seed of forgiveness, even when someone takes your very life.  So when Paul came to them a sorry, blind man knocked off his horse with the revelation that he had been wrong, he got knocked off another horse, his expectation that he would be rejected or killed or both.  Instead he found forgiveness.  Paul knew the bottom line.  He knew the grace of God that was the very foundation of his faith, the only thing that mattered, and so everything else was up for grabs.  Whatever else it took, Paul was willing to do it for the sake of the Gospel, to communicate the message in a way people could understand.  He adapts the form of the message, the style of speaking, the rituals, the language, traveling the entire known world, getting locked in jail and proclaiming it there, experiencing several shipwrecks, the only thing that mattered was the world would know God’s love and grace and the gift of Jesus Christ, and we do. 

            Whatever your limitations, God loves you.  God gives us all community to practice making mistakes and falling short and remembering we aren’t God and that God is loving and gracious.  We are part of something bigger than ourselves, something healing and life-giving, hopeful and renewing.  Let’s embrace our limitations and put our gifts to work for the growth of the Kingdom of God.