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Feb. 5, 2012, Memorial UCC
Psalm 147: 1-11, 20c; Mark 1: 29-39

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, who sent your word to live among us. Amen.

Jesus had had a pretty busy day. You know how those go.

It was a Sabbath day, a day of rest, a day that was supposed to be devoted to God, not to human action.  But Jesus always seems to have trouble holding still on the Sabbath.

You probably know how that goes, too. On the days when you are supposed to slow down, or want to slow down, life gets in the way.

Jesus’ day seems to start out OK. He goes to the synagogue. In Capernaum, the small fishing village where he was staying, the synagogue is only a short walk – a block or two – from the houses. But once he gets to the synagogue, the work begins.

He teaches those who are gathered there and they are impressed with his authority. Well, not all of them are so impressed. One guy starts shouting at him, a guy Mark describes as “with an unclean spirit.” So Jesus casts out the spirit, suggesting that he is closer to God than to the unclean spirit that had this man under the spirit’s power.

So that was how Jesus’ day began. And then we get to today’s story.

“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew.” This about two blocks from the synagogue, another short walk. But there’s a problem here as well. Simon’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever.  You know how that goes, too.

You are feeling not so good. And all of a sudden, there is company at the door. Whose bright idea was this, anyway, inviting Simon’s new-found friend over on the Sabbath?

This is the kind of moment just right for a run of mother-in-law jokes. But Jesus has no interest in that diversion. Instead, he walks over to Simon’s ailing mother-in-law, takes her hand and helps her to her feet. The fever is gone.

What happens next can seem pretty stereotypical. “She began to serve them,” Mark writes.

Sure, heal the woman so she can make dinner for the guys. Send her out to the kitchen. The guys can settle in to watch the Super Bowl. Wait – this is only the 46th Super Bowl - Super Bowl XLVI. I guess even with the Roman numerals, it’s not a tradition that goes back to the First Century. But I think you get my drift.

There’s another way to read this, though. Simon’s mother-in-law, in that moment of bodily renewal, seems to grasp what Jesus’ mission is all about in a way that her stubborn son-in-law and his friends will not figure out for a few more years. Simon keeps wanting to tell Jesus how to do things better. James and John will be arguing right up to the end about who gets the better place of honor.

Simon’s mother-in-law – don't you wish we knew her actual name? – gets it. Jesus touches her. He serves her. And then she goes on to serve others. It's about service. It's not about power and honor and glory.

As luck would have it, though, word gets out that there is a healer in town. He banished an evil spirit in the synagogue and, Mark wrote, “his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. You can bet that Simon and some of his friends let slip the news that Jesus had banished the fever in Simon’s mother-in-law.

By sunset, the end of the Sabbath observance, the crowd was gathered outside Simon’s house. Friends brought people who were sick or who were struggling with their own demons. Jesus did what he could to help. What else can you do when a crowd is at the door looking for help?

How do you think Jesus slept that night? This was his first encounter with a crowd of people demanding things from him. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had gone to meet his cousin, John, to seek baptism. He had gone to the wilderness for 40 days to clarify his mission. He had called a few followers – fishermen from Capernaum working along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. And now he had pretty much blown through the whole idea of spending a quiet Sabbath honoring God.

How do you sleep on those nights when your world is in turmoil? When people have been making demands of you all day, when they don’t seem to understand who you really are or what you are really about?

Maybe it’s your boss or your co-workers or your kids or your spouse. Maybe it’s even your in-laws. Whoever it is, the pressure is on, you're exhausted and you can’t sleep.

Jesus sounds like he had a restless night. So before dawn, while it was still very dark, he slips out of the house and goes to a deserted place. Down toward the seashore from Simon’s house, there’s a huge tree whose branches arch out and create a kind of sanctuary. I can imagine Jesus taking refuge there for a while to pray.

That’s a comforting scene, the sort of thing we might hope for in those times when our spirits are stirred up, when we are exhausted or anxious. Maybe we hope we will find that balm, that healing oil, from Gilead that we hear about in the song.

But maybe Jesus went the other direction out of Capernaum, a bit up a hill where the land is barren, where there is a sense of being deserted by everything. It’s not as soothing as the place under the tree, where you can hear the water from the lake rippling against the shore. It’s a scarier place, a place where there is more a sense of wrestling with this struggle between the demands of the crowd, the call of God and our need for renewing a battered spirit.

When you are feeling overwhelmed, when that good day you had planned has gone awry, where do you seek renewal?

I suspect each of us have different paths we follow. A run in the silent morning, a song we might sing alone and music we might listen to that envelopes our beings. A poem, a yoga position, a place of absolute quiet, a place surrounded by the beauty of God’s creation. Or maybe throwing ourselves into the vibrancy of a crowd, a sporting event, a city street, a shopping mall.

Oh yeah. God. Does God fit into this somewhere?

When Mark says Jesus went in the dark to a deserted place, Mark says that Jesus went there to pray. Jesus seems to do this a lot along the way. And of course there are many ways to pray.

I don’t think Jesus’ prayer was simply, “Make it all better,” although he probably thought that now and then. My understanding of prayer is that we consciously seek a way to connect our being with God. We let ourselves sink into the love of God, the energy of God, the challenge of God.

With any luck at all, that sometimes happens when we are here at worship. A piece of music, the time of communal prayer, the sharing of a meal all can be connecting points.

What today’s story suggests, though, is that it is important for each of us to pay attention to those solitary ways that we can pray as well. There is no right way to do that.

Maybe it’s a book of prayers where other’s words give voice to your feelings.

Maybe it’s a mantra that you say over and over as you let your spirit reach out beyond your body.

Maybe it’s a mindfulness exercise that includes a sense of God in the midst of your search for compassion.

Maybe it’s noticing God’s face in the faces of those we pass on the street. 

The point is not a magic formula. It is a willingness to include prayer – connecting with God – as part of daily life. It’s finding the best ways to connect so that on those days when you are overwhelmed by life, you have a path to walk down in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of feeling deserted and on that path you can find a glimmer of hope. You might think of that glimmer as God.

The hymn “In Solitude” that we’ll sing in a moment suggests that sense of being alone and finding God. It’s one way to think about what Jesus might have experienced on that pre-dawn morning after a horrendously busy and demanding Sabbath. So let’s join in the first three verses. It’s hymn # 521 in your hymnals.