February 4, 2018
Isaiah 40:21-31, Mark 1:29-39
Rev. Jennifer Garrison Brownell
Think of the 40th chapter of Isaiah as a state of the union address for the people of Israel, whose city has been destroyed, who have been carried into slavery and exile into Babylon.
Chapter 40, which began back in verse one with the with the song we sing at Christmas time:
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid.
The chapter ends with these “stunning words of comfort to exiles who’ve given up ever returning to Zion.” (James Howell)
Havent you known? Haven’t you heard? Hasn’t it been spoken since the beginning? God is with you. God will bring you and your people out of exile. Grass will wither, people will die, nation states will crumble, but God is forever.
Have you not heard? Yes, I guess we have heard these promises before. Hearing is not easy, though – not even physically. Just this week, on the phone with a rep from the insurance agency (preparing a 15 year old for driving requires a lot of calls to the insurance agencay, apparently), I said, “what?” I said “excuse me?” “I’m hard of hearing, can you repeat that?” I said these things more than once. I said it so many times that both the young woman on the other end of the phone and I were a little irritated by the end of the call.
Even if you’re not hard of hearing, listening – that is, making sense of what you are hearing – can be hard work. We may be able to pass a hearing test, and still be moved to ask “what?” and “excuse me?” and “can you repeat that?” I wonder if it’s hard to hear, because the words we hear so often bear little resemblance to the reality we experience.
We heard another state of the union address this week, as we do every year, the state of the union of our own nation. These are strange days indeed, when no matter our political affiliation it seems to us that the norms and standards by which we live have been upended. And then, we hear words that totally contradict our lived experience – words proclaim unity, when we are so aware of division; words proclaim respect, when all we experience is contempt; words proclaim accountability, when each day the news brings to light new shenanigans. So much of what we hear is grandstanding at best, outright lying at worst.
What? Excuse me? Can you repeat that?
According to James Howell, “Walter Brueggemann says “Exile is not primarily geographical, but it is social, moral and cultural.” We’ve lost a sense of a reliable world. Symbols of meaning are hollowed out; hopes are dried up, and we feel helpless.” We are in exile – socially, morally, culturally cut off, confused and wandering. And the state of the union this week seemed only to add to the cacophony, the cultural, social and moral confusion.
Listen again to God’s state of the union address, spoken through the prophet Isaiah to a people oppressed, beaten, hopeless – exiled in a foreign land:
Have you heard? Do you not know?
It is the Holy One…
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 God blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off – stubble
God’s state of the union reminds us of this. To first, remember who is at the center. Not the princes, powers, principalities or presidents – but God.
Ursula Leguin, Portland’s favorite science fiction writer – maybe our favorite writer, period, died late in January. Famously cranky and ferociously smart, in her long career, she upended what we thought we knew about fantasy, the future, culture and gender. A few years ago, accepting the national book award, she said: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in…the art of words.”
Human power always seems inexorable, but it is not. God’s promise, made 3500 years ago to a people in exile and ringing clear and true today in 2018, is this: I am stronger than any system of evil humans can devise. And I will empower you, my people, to continue to stand against evil in whatever form it presents itself.
So, how do we hear God’s word in the cacophony that surrounds us? First, this: Remember who is at the center. Then, this: pay attention to who is at the margins. God tells us this, and then shows us this, through the actions of Jesus. We don’t know what words he spoke, but we do know that Jesus’s actions healed Simon’s mother-in-law, who lived with him.
Here is a sick person, a woman
an elder, (at least, one old enough to be the mother of an adult)
Someone with no home of her own, who has to rely on the generosity of her family in order to have a roof over her head – we might call this couch surfing.
In her time, and in ours, all these categories shove Simon’s mother-in-law to the margins, the edges of things. She is a person of no worth at all – at least in the eyes of the princes. But remember what happens to the princes? They wither like the grass.
But what happens to this person on the edge, this non-person? She rises from her bed, and our translation says that she begins to serve those in the house, including Jesus.
Now, in case on a first reading of this raises your feminist hackles, as it does mine (“the woman is SICK for the love of Pete – couldn’t someone else do the dishes for once?”) – consider this alternative translation from Richard W Swanson. He says the word translated serve is “is “diikoine.” This is a word, Eliz Moltmann-Wendel notes, that this word, when the subject is a woman, is usually translated as “served,” or “cooked,” or “waited tables.” But when this verb has a male subject, everything changes. With a male subject, “diikoine” is generally translated as “acted as a deacon for the community.” In ancient communities of faith, the diakonos (deacon) was the person responsible for connecting need with resource. If someone was hungry, the diakonos was the person who would connect them with someone whose field had produced extra that year. If someone needed a place to sleep, the diakonos was the person who connected them with the one who had an extra bed.
Listen to what happens next: “That evening, at sundown [that is to say, when sabbath had ended and the world went back to normal] they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.” How did ALL who were sick or possessed know to come?
Simon Peter’s mother-in-law “deaconed” them – she connected need with resource… Picture Peter’s mother-in-law, going house-to-house and telling everyone that there was a resource available, and the resource was God’s messiah, sent to turn the world right-side-up. (Previous two paragraphs adapted from: https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/category/provoking-the-gospel/)
Today we will receive holy communion. The deacons – men and women who are named for those who were healed by Christ and then were moved to serve long ago – will connect us with this life giving resource. This is the meal that Christ set for us, but to which all are welcome – ALL – even those on the margins, even princes, even presidents.
What is the state of our union, people of First Congregational UCC – Vancouver? Have you not heard? Do you not know? Pay attention to the edges. God is at the center. This is the bread of life. This is the cup of salvation.
Amen.