So, the South is known for its awesome church signs. Once on a back road in Alabama I saw a church sign that said:
God's Will: Accept Jesus Today.
Satan's Will: Wait Till Tomorrow.
I often think about that sign when this particular reading from Mark's Gospel comes up.
This is a very busy reading we have here. And that's no surprise. I mean this is Mark's Jesus, and Mark's Jesus gets a real workout more often than not.
Mark's Jesus doesn't even get a childhood. He's just plunked down in the middle of ministry. He scurries off to one town, then off to another.
He pops up, says “Follow me,” and people drop what there are doing and dash up to him, demanding healing.
Even demons scurry around him. Disciples trot along behind him. He's a man driving in the fast lane. He's riding the whirlwind. He's every cliché about living in a flurry of activity that you can imagine.
Everything in Mark is done “Immediately!”
Even in this passage, ten short Mark-like verses, look how much gets done. Jesus leaves synagogue, goes to the House of Simon and Andrew, lifts Simon's mother-in-law up, and cures her fever without even saying a word.
She jumps up, and having no time for rehab, she serves them.
That evening the sick and possessed are brought to him; he cures a few of the sick, drives out a few of the demons, opens the door, and – BAM – there's absolutely everybody in the town, standing there, wanting a cure or a glimpse or an autograph.
Jesus slams the door, tries to get a little shut-eye, then deciding that the next day won't be much better, sneaks out early in the morning just to get somewhere by himself so that he doesn't have to do everything IMMEDIATELY! He has got to be exhausted.
When Brooks and I were in Israel, we went to Capernaum and visited the church built on the site of Simon's mother-in-law's house. You could still feel the flurry of activity of our Gospel passage
Tour buses roaring up the road, honking at each other as they try to move in more and more people. Tour guides barking in so many different languages, clapping their hands, waving signs to attract their charges.
Old guys hawking their wares; kids yelling and laughing and doing what kids do. Pilgrims, roaming through the church, murmuring and muttering to each other.
Everybody pressing and pushing and getting closer and closer to the altar, close to Jesus.
But Brooks and I had a habit of breaking away from the pack and trying to sneak off to the side and see if there was anything else that the tour guides didn't show us. And sure enough, there was a little gate behind the church that led down some steps to the Sea of Galilee.
By the shore there was an arbor with grape vines twisted in it, and as the sun beat down on the arbor, we noticed movement, the movement of dozens of cats sunning themselves on the top, stretching, and grooming, and purring. And just taking life as it came. Being part of God's creation, no more and no less.
And Brooks said, “You know, maybe when Jesus snuck off to pray it was like this. We only see those paintings of him hunched over a rock, all worried when he prayed. But maybe he would sit by the shore, praying, just taking in the scenery, waiting for the sun to come up and shine down on him.”
We stood there for a while, watching the cats as the sun bounced off the Sea of Galilee. Then a guard of some sort shouted down at us, and assuming he was telling us we shouldn't be there, we did our best impression of Mark and IMMEDIATELY hurried back up the stairs to blend into the hustling crowds of Capernaum.
And I think we learned then a little about what Jesus is showing us today. Look at who all is in this story. Disciples, Simon's mother-in-law, people needing healing, people who crowd around, even demons. And I think that, as Christians, we can see a little of ourselves in each of these.
We can see ourselves as disciples, and we LIKE that, trotting along behind Jesus, being part of the group, doing the things that Jesus wants us to do.
And we can see ourselves as Simon's mother-in-law, after the healing grace of our baptism, after the affirmation that this is indeed someone we want to follow, jumping up and immediately rushing out to service. And that sounds wonderful.
But, if we're honest with ourselves, we can also so easily be part of the crowd, pounding on Jesus' door. “We aren't done with you,” we say. “We need more.”
“Jesus if you could only stick around a little more, do a few more miracles, so we don't have to.”
And maybe when Jesus sneaks away in the dark, leaving us for just a few moments, we let our inner demons out and turn them on those, like the Simon's mother-in-law, who stay behind to serve in the name of Christ.
“You know that's not going to work,” we might say to them.
Or, “I would love to follow Christ and serve with you, but I've got all these Zoom meetings, and then I need to catch up on all these emails, and the dog needs walking, and the laundry is piling up, and so something has just got to go. Maybe next time. I'll focus on you next time, Jesus.”
We are, all of us, just a little bit of each of these people, kinda like our own version of that church sign I saw – wanting to do so much, but sometimes letting our demons talk us out of it and sometimes demanding that God does it for us.
But that's NOT how Jesus works.
Jesus lifts us servants up out of our fevered lives and moves on...and it's the task of us servant to convince others to follow along, too, and serve alongside, to pick up the slack, to bring others into the fold to send them out again to serve side-by-side.
We aren't supposed to fall back on always hunting Jesus down like he's escaped our grasp. He's entrusted this work to US.
But Jesus shows us one thing more. He shows us that to be any use to anyone, we have stop. We have to pray. Over and above anything else...pray.
We cannot do this kind of work; we cannot serve in the world; we cannot serve God, if we don't pray.
Without prayer, that work will grind us down, and our own doubts and inner demons will fill us with hopelessness and despair. We'll wear ourselves out. We can't do it all.
So, as we get near Lent, like I have done every year, I challenge each of us, take just a minute, maybe two, every day to just sit with God, to put everything else aside, and just listen for God's will. A minute doesn't sound like much, but trust me, your prayer muscles will feel the workout.
I'm not talking about a list of needs, tasks you want God to accomplish, not that. Just BE with God. That's what Jesus does when he goes off to pray. Heck that's what those cats were doing when they were sunning themselves.
Just praying, and worshiping, and giving thanks, and listening – each in their own way.
Pray how you choose – sit in silence and listen, sing a song, sew or organize your garage, go for a drive, or go sit on the shore of Galilee, back against a rock, waiting for the sun to warm your face.
If I were Mark, I would tell you do this IMMEDIATELY! Oh what the heck. Let's do it. Let's do it now:
Let us pray.
O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty:
Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works;
Open our ears that we may hear you speaking to our lives;
that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve
you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all
things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.