Epiphany +5B - Unbinding hope

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Isaiah 40:21-31
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?
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;
who brings princes to naught,
  and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
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.
To whom then will you compare me,
  or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
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.
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”?
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.
He gives power to the faint,
  and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
  and the young will fall exhausted;
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.


Mark 1:29-39
As soon as [Jesus and the disciples] left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. 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. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 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.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

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So I have to admit to you, Dave, that I’m a little jealous of you this morning, because you got to be the one to read from Isaiah today. I even half-considered offering you a trade, giving you the gospel reading so that I could read Isaiah instead. Because today’s passage from Isaiah 40 is my most favorite Bible passage of them all. It’s been a friend and a comfort to me for many years, and there are lots of reasons that it has come to be particularly important to me, though there’s not time here to get into them all.

But what I love best about this passage is that it starts with questions. Rhetorical questions, at that. The prophet asks, “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?” And then he goes on to remind the people of the big-ness of God, and the desire of the Creator of the Ends of the Earth to establish goodness and justice and to stand with those whose strength has been taken from them.

The reason that the prophet begins with rhetorical questions is not to accuse the people, but to remind them of what they already know. All of the things that he says about God and about God’s relationship with the people are not new news to them. But in the middle of fear and despair, they have lost touch with the heart of their relationship with the covenant God. All the things that are oppressing them have also imprisoned their hope.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann, who has done a lot of work in this area, says “The task of prophetic imagination and ministry is to bring to public expression those very hopes and yearnings that have been denied so long and suppressed so deeply that we no longer know they are there.”

The task of the prophet, here in Isaiah and across the Bible, is to do this work of unbinding hope. Whether speaking words of lament or promise, hard truths or gracious words of restoration, prophets are always in the business of setting free the people’s bound and captive hopes of the future, by reminding them who they are, and who they always have been, in God’s sight. And in the restoration of hope comes a restoration of life and a restoration of purpose for the community of faith.

Today’s gospel shows us the power of Jesus to do this same prophetic work of liberating our hope and restoring us to the heart of our identity and purpose as beloved of God.

Jesus today enters the house of Simon and Andrew, just a few steps away from the synagogue, just a few minutes after the story we heard last week about his casting out a demon from a man, right there in the middle of the synagogue.

There in Simon and Andrew’s house, we meet Simon’s mother-in-law, who is ill with a fever.

When we say “fever” here, we aren’t about temperature of 100.4 degrees, right on the borderline of the clinical definition of fever; a mild temperature where you are a little achy but you still get dressed and go to work, promising yourself that you won’t breathe on anybody all day and that you will Lysol your entire desk before you go home.

This is not that. This is a fever that has incapacitated this woman. A fever that she might not recover from. A fever that has taken Simon’s mother-in-law completely out of commission, and has cut her off completely from the community.

Professor Sarah Henrich says, “[In Jesus’s time] illness bore a heavy social cost: not only would a person be unable to earn a living or contribute to the well-being of a household, but their ability to take their proper role in the community, to be honored as a valuable member of a household, town, or village, would be taken from them. [Simon’s] mother-in-law is an excellent case in point. It was her calling and her honor to show hospitality to guests in her home. Cut off from that role by an illness cut her off from doing that which integrated her into her world. Who was she when no longer able to engage in her calling? [In healing her illness,] Jesus restored her to her social world and brought her back to a life of value by freeing her from that fever. It is very important to see that healing is about restoration to community and restoration of a calling, a role as well as restoration to life.”

Jesus reaches into the great beyond of this woman’s illness, takes her hand, and brings her back. He heals her body. He restores her to life. He sets her free.

And her immediate response is to serve. The verb for serving that Mark uses here is the same verb that he uses to describe the work of the angels who serve Jesus when he is being tempted in the wilderness, and the same verb he uses to describe the life’s work of the women at the foot of the cross who had followed Jesus and served him as disciples and companions. This particular word for serving is the same root as our words deacon and deaconess and diaconal ministry. The verb means both serving at table and serving in ministry.

For Simon’s mother-in-law, this immediate movement from illness to service indicates to us the completeness of hear healing. It signals to us that she has been completely set free from her illness, and that her freedom of body has set free her sense of calling and purpose. She does not just recover in body, but she recovers her very sense of self. She is a living sign that Jesus is able to liberate us in full from the things that bind us, and in liberating us, restores us to God, to ourselves, to our community, to our own calling and purpose in the world.

Professor David Lose says, “[This is the message of] the whole of Scripture: God wants to set free all of us so that we might live into our God-given identity and potential, claiming our calling as children of God, and join God in the mission to love and bless the world....[Christ frees us] from the many things that harass us. [But] Jesus frees us...also for a life of purpose, meaning, and good works.”

Simon’s mother in law and Paul in our 1 Corinthians reading today both remind us that the freedom Christ gives us is not for our own benefit or pride, but that this gift of freedom always shows up in acts of service and love. The liberating good news of the gospel is not just balm for our hearts, but it opens us up and drives us into ministry for the sake of one another and the world God made.

As you look deep in your heart and as you look around the world, what is binding your hopes right now? What is keeping you from remembering the goodness of our Creator, and of your relationship with a God who promises to be everlasting, to the ends of the earth?

As we think about our life together in this covenant community of faith, what is holding our faith and ministry captive? What is keeping us from remembering the hope and strength that Jesus gives to us? What is binding our sense of purpose, our sense of calling?

What reminders do we need about our place in God’s story, and what needs to be set free within us for the sake of hope, service, love, praise?

Hear the good news: Jesus frees us from what holds us captive. Jesus frees our voices for praise and frees our bodies for service and frees our hearts for love. He sets free within us our God-given identities. He lets loose our God-given purpose. He unbinds our hope. He reminds us of who we are: Chosen. Beloved. Children of God. Bearers of the Kingdom.

This is what faith is all about. Faith is about receiving the hand that reaches across the boundaries to find us and to destroy the forces that oppress our hearts and minds. Faith is about recovering the holy knowledge that we are beloved and we are whole and well and God’s sight. Faith is about receiving the version of ourselves that Jesus gives back to us, about remembering the image of God that Christ sees in us, even when we feel too ill, to bound, too possessed to see it.

Faith means recognizing what Jesus has set free in us, seeing again for the first time the divine goodness and mercy and love that are waiting there inside of us, ready to burst forth when Christ tears down all the walls that wall us in and divide us from ourselves, from one another, and from God.

Have you ever considered that Jesus offers you forgiveness not simply to bring peace to your soul, or to bring you reconciliation with God, but also because Jesus believes your life has a purpose and he wants you to be free to pursue it? Have you ever thought that Jesus might embrace you with unconditional love not just to make you feel good, but because he knows the heart of your God-given hopes and dreams and he wants you to be free to live them out? Have you ever thought that Jesus might give you back your heath or your voice or your sense of self-worth, not just to prove that he can heal, but instead because he is entrusting the ongoing work of the kingdom of God to you?

You have been set free, my siblings in Christ. You have been raised to new life, you have been restored. Your heart is free to hope again. Your spirit is free to serve. Christ is letting loose in your the power of the Holy Spirit to do justice. To love mercy. To walk with the everlasting God to the ends of the earth and back, making way for the kingdom.

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?

You are free and you are beloved and you have a sense of purpose.

Go forth to love and praise and serve, in new and liberated life, this day and always.

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