Sunday, February 8: Shout it from the Rooftops!

Isaiah 40:21-31

Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23 
Mark 1:29-39

Theologian and Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon wrote:  The church is the Real presence of the living Christ in the world today. The church is the incarnation of the Word of God---God with skin on.  The church is not an enclave of “refugees from the world; it is the sacrament of God’s presence in the world.” (114, The Astonished Heart).  Our catholicity isn’t found simply in ritual—it is found in the belief that the church has a truth for all people. 

St. Paul urges us today to proclaim the Gospel---the Good news—in ways that people can hear, receive, and understand it.  Paul tells us that we are to proclaim the Gospel “free of charge.”  This doesn’t simply mean we don’t charge people to get into church on Sunday, (although this would be one unethical way to fill a budget gap).  What Paul means by “free of charge” is that we proclaim the Good News at our own expense, at our own cost---liturgy—the work of the people.

 Robert Capon goes so far as to say that the Good News, theTruth we know in Jesus, is something we are to shout from the rooftops.  So what is the Good News?  How do we proclaim it in ways that people can receive and understand it?  How do we ourselves receive it?  How do we as a church proclaim it in such a way that we are God with skin on---the real and living presence of Christ here in Stevens Point, Wisconsin at the corner of Church and Ellis?

The Evangelist Mark tells us that Jesus came to Simon Peter’s mother-in-law’s house and she was sick with a fever.  Of course, we think: “No big deal.  A fever.  Take a Tylenol.”  Well, in Hebrew times, a fever was far more serious than it is for us today—no Tylenol at the ready—and many times, it was life-threatening.  So, Jesus coming in and taking her hand and helping her to rise is a big deal.

In fact, it’s a big deal in many ways.  Jesus takes her by the hand and lifts her up.  The Greek verb Mark uses for “ he lifted her up” is the same Greek verb, egeirw, Mark uses to describe God raising Jesus from the dead.  By taking her hand and lifting her up, Jesus brings this woman back to life.

And here is the truth we are to shout from the rooftops. In our struggles: our dark places, our places of pain, disease, loss, fear, dissatisfaction, depression, and death---Jesus comes into our struggle, takes our hand, and lifts us up---brings us back into life.  Not by magic or nebulous spirits.  Not by wish, luck, or happenstance.  But through Incarnation---God with skin on.

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For months he went without a cane because he didn’t have the means to follow the doctor’s orders to get one.  For months he went around with only one lens in his eyeglasses because he couldn’t afford to replace his broken pair.  Now, thanks to the Shalom Center at Intercession, he was put into contact with the Lincoln Center which loans out medical supplies like canes and he was able to purchase his new eyeglasses with two lenses.  Restoring sight and helping the lame to walk.  The living presence of Christ in the world.  Taking a hand and lifting a person back to life.

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Scared and beaten down, she knew she had to find a better way for her family. Her home was filled with violence because her husband physically, mentally, and verbally abused her.  She found the courage to leave the house with her children, taking whatever clothes they could carry, each child bringing some personal items to comfort them, and they found shelter at the Family Crisis Center.  They also found a community of people—those in the shelter and all those in the community supporting  the shelter---who reached out to her family.  Assisting them and encouraging them in this fresh start to a new possible way of living.  This is what resurrection looks like.  Taking a hand and lifting a family back to new life.

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Money was tight.  He often simply went with the cheapest product out there---the best bang for his buck.  But then he attended a forum that talked about Free Trade items---coffee and chocolate and food products that are intentionally produced, marketed, and sold in a manner that gives more profit back to the farmer, the worker.  He learned that the cheap products he was buying often benefited the large corporation that sold the product, but they came cheap on the backs---and at the cost---of the laborer—often made in conditions that many consider to be slave labor.  While he had to sacrifice some of his personal benefits (cheap products, which meant he could buy more or keep more money in his pocket), he decided to be a different kind of consumer and to begin by buying some of his items in fair trade form only.  It meant he would probably have to buy less or less often, but someone else wouldn’t have to pay the price for his convenience or his desire to buy cheap.  Across the world and without even having seen the face of the ones he was helping, this man took the hands of the laborers and raised them up by choosing to consume differently.

Paul says: “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel.”  This sentiment is why I became a priest---the burning within me to proclaim the Good News of Jesus that I have known throughout my life.  For it has been in my lean times, my dark times, my times of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty; it has been in my losses and the many shadows that seep into our lives that this Good News today, this Gospel, has been proclaimed to me.  Proclaimed to me by the hands, the voices, the visits, the notes, the help, the assistance, the presence of Christ in the people who reached out, took my hand, and lifted me back into the light—the new life promised in Jesus.  Like Robert Capon, I believe that the abiding and irremovable presence of Jesus is in “all people, at all times, and in all places---whether they know it or not, believe it or not, like it or not” (111, The Astonished Heart).

Beloved, let us continue to be the real presence of Christ in the World today.  Let us dream how to further be the Church, the Body of Christ, in Stevens Point. God provides us with significant resources –the gifts and talents of the people who participate at Intercession, the collective resources of our time, our enthusiasm, our treasure, and our spaces.  Let us shout our Truth---that Jesus enters our struggles, takes up by our hands and lifts us up---let us shout this Good News from the rooftop into the neighborhoods, the families, the shelters, and the hearts of Central Wisconsin and beyond.  

Let us live as the incarnation of the Word of God---God with skin on---right here and right now---supporting one another and those around us in a web of grace.  May we open our eyes, our hearts and minds—to recognize the Good News and then point to it, giving of ourselves and diving headlong into the waters of resurrection. Transformed, renewed and strengthened as we, our neighbors, our communities and peoples are brought back to life. Is there anything more relevant or more worthwhile than this?

One last story, maybe you’ve heard it before, but it is worth repeating: An anthropologist proposed a game to kids in an African tribe. He put a basket of fruit near a tree and told the kids that whoever got there first won the fruit. When he told them to run, they took each other’s hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying the treats. When he asked them why they had run like that since one of them could have had all the fruits for himself, they said: UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad? UBUNTU in Xhosa culture means: "I am because we are." 

Amen. Amen. Amen.