February 04, 2024 | Rev. Loren McGrail
Rise and Serve and Never Separate the Inseparables
Mark 1:29-39
Rev. Loren McGrail
Holmdel Community United Church of Christ
February 4, 2024
“In your brokenness you rise,
graced, your gifts set free,
and serve.”
graced, your gifts set free,
and serve.”
Steve Garnass Holmes
Here is the punchline, the message of Mark’s Gospel. The Good News is not Jesus’ healing magic, but the nearness of God’s kin-dom made known by those who teach with authority, heal, eat with friends, family, and outcasts, and seeks alone time with God to pray. Teach. Eat. Pray.
It’s only been one day, and Jesus has already taught with authority and cast out demons in the synagogue and then went to a disciple’s home and with a touch of his calloused hand raised up a woman sick with fever. Our model for discipleship is right here in this very first day and night of Jesus’ public ministry.
Let’s unpack this short healing story. Mark tells us that the fever left her, “and she served them.” The heart of the story is here. ‘Raising up’ is not only a description of physical movement but an act that restores her rightful position in her household and I don’t mean as the cook or server. Her response is sometimes translated that she “waited on them” or “served them.” However, the Greek term for her action is the word from which we derive the word deacon. She begins to ‘diekonei’ or to go about the ministry of serving.
She wasn’t healed so she could get up and make lunch for her son-in-law and his friends. She was raised up so she could join Jesus in his ministry of loving service to others. From the get-go, Jesus reminds us that he did not come to be served but to serve and teach us that service is the highest calling.
In fact, it is the ultimate mark of discipleship. This was true also for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.
You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve…
You only need a heart full of grace, and a soul generated by love.
Dear Ones, have you experienced healing or restoration in your life? If so, how did you respond? How did you express your gratitude? Did it include giving back? Serving others? Methodist minister Steve Garnaas Holmes reminds us that we are all called to heal:
You needn’t save the world.
It might just be a fever
someone has, of flesh or heart,
a little thing.
The world around you
cries out for healing.
Possibly someone near you.
Take their hand.
Lift them up.
Receive their gifts.
This torn world is mended
one stitch
at a time.
It might just be a fever
someone has, of flesh or heart,
a little thing.
The world around you
cries out for healing.
Possibly someone near you.
Take their hand.
Lift them up.
Receive their gifts.
This torn world is mended
one stitch
at a time.
In my role as your interim pastor, I have noted that our church needs more people stepping forward to fill positions on our many committees. The committees and teams do most of the work of the church under the watchful eye of your Council and Pastor. All are needed. There are other ways to serve God too like visiting members who are sick or making meals. And of course, as a church active in our local community, we also serve others with food and financial support.
Dear Ones, we also serve God by becoming a welcome and healing presence to all. On this note then, let me tell you about Brigid of Kildare of Ireland who expressed her faith through the service of hospitality and healing.
Brigid was an Irish slave and Druid until she converted to Christianity in the 5th century. She became a nun then abbess and a founder of many monasteries. She is considered one of the patron saints of Ireland for the many legends about her miracle healings.
But highest amongst her many deeds, was her insistence on being a welcoming presence to others as an expression of God’s hospitality to us. St. Brigid is, thus, also associated with being a keeper of the hearth, the flame like the Goddess she is named after. Servant Brigid kindled with the flame of her conversion and Christ’s love, became a shining light in the early Celtic church.
Let me share one of my favorite prayers attributed to her:
"I should like a great lake of finest ale for all the people I should like a table of the choicest foods for the family of heaven.
Let the ale be made from the fruits of falth, and the food be for giving love.
I should welcome the poor to my feast, for they are God's children. I should welcome the sick to my feast, for they are God's joy.
Let the poor sit with Sophla at the highest place
and the sick dance with the angels.
Bless the poor, bless the sick, bless our human race.
Like Simon’s mother-in-law, Brigid’s service was making sure all were fed not only food but God’s mercy and healing. How appropriate then today, this Communion Sunday, for us to recognize two women who demonstrated the importance of feasting and service. I suggest we might recast our cake and cookie making ministries as a service of edible hospitality.
Before ending, let us return to the end of our Gospel story for it does not end after the act of restoration. It ends with many people coming to Jesus for healing from disease and demons.
The healing happens beneath the radar without fanfare. Then Jesus removes himself to go and pray.
Listen to how Rev. Mary Luti understands the way Jesus heals, prays, and rests.
“Jesus put his body on the line all day. In the wee hours he prays. He never separates the inseparables. For him, the kingdom comes by wonder and strategy, protest and ecstasy, imagination and politics, beauty and programs, service and solitude, rallies and gratitude, resolutions and prayer…It’s about yielding our whole selves---every gift and skill, picketing or praying to the Living One, in the sure and certain hope that, with us and without us, the kingdom comes, pure gift beyond dreams. In prayer and action, O God, we hope in you. In you alone.”
In prayer and action, let us go forward ready to offer up our broken and beautiful selves in service to each other and the One that loves and serves all. Let us also remember that first we must rise or allow ourselves to be risen up. On this first Sunday in Black History Month,
I invite you now to hear Maya Angelou read her iconic poem, “And Still I Rise.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0
Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.