February 4, 2018
Saint John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Isaiah 40:28-31; Mark 1:29-39[1]
What is the definition of discipleship? One meaning is to
think of it like an apprenticeship, learning from someone who is a master at a
trade or who has special skills and knowledge. That is how the ancient Greeks
understood discipleship. A person would work closely with a master in order to
acquire practical and theoretical knowledge. Some disciples were even expected
to pay the master for the privilege of learning the trade.
Around the time of Jesus’ ministry on earth, a Jewish
student of religion was expected to learn not only the Hebrew Bible Scriptures,
but also the oral traditions, the traditions of the fathers. A man, and yes,
back then they were all men, would attach himself to a Rabbi, who would serve
as a guide for the student as they studied the Scriptures.
Jesus, however, has a different definition of discipleship. Rather
than call the best students or the most thoughtful philosophers to
apprenticeship, Jesus calls some fishermen, a tax collector, and some other
rag-tag fellows who never seem to get what Jesus is really about. Rather than
call the strong, Jesus calls upon the weak, and in this story, someone lying in
bed with a fever. Simon’s mother-in-law may not be listed in the “official” set
of the twelve, but she becomes a disciple nonetheless.
Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law. “He came and took her by
the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her…”[2]
This is one of the first healing stories in Mark’s gospel, and already the
crowds begin to gather outside the door seeking to be rid of their diseases and
demons. But in that brief moment, in the way the woman responds to the healing,
we see the first indication of Jesus’ definition of discipleship. As the fever
left her, “she began to serve them.”
She was probably still weak from the fever. Yet it was her
weakness which allowed the strength of God to enter in and become her strength.
You and I may sometimes feel that we are too weak or tired to serve in ministry;
but in our weakness, God gives us strength for the work of the gospel. “Have
you not known? Have you not heard? God does not faint or grow weary; but gives
power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 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.”[3]
Later, in the tenth chapter of Mark, we hear Jesus say, “the
Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”[4]
The disciples, especially James and John, expected that they would become great
leaders. But Jesus told them the way that they must walk was the path of
service. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”[5]
As she began to serve them, Simon’s mother-in-law demonstrated the call of the
disciples to serve others.
One of the great servants of our age was the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. He was a disciple of Jesus. He served the cause of justice,
the cause of others who needed him. He is considered a great man, for what he
said and did in the Civil Rights Movement. But he said that the honors, the
awards, and the recognition that he received was not what was important to him.
He served God with his entire life, and the kind of greatness that comes from
that life is not out of reach for any of us. These are his words:
If
you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If
you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you
shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness.
And
this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of
greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.
You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your
subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and
Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to
serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to
serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you
can be that servant.[6]
It doesn’t sound all that easy. And it’s not. It is hard
work. But it is good work. It is the kind of work that will lift your spirits.
By serving others, by helping them to bear their burdens, we find our own
burdens much easier to bear. By listening to another person, we might hear what
God is doing in the world outside of our own heads. When we take the time to
help another, when we allow our plans and routines to be interrupted by the
needs of another, we just might be able to release our own anxieties and make
room for God to refocus our attention on what is really important.
I would like to share the stories of two people whose
burdens were lifted by the service of someone they didn’t even know. These stories
were published in the Huffington Post in 2018.[7]
Lou had recently moved to Boston from Florida. He took the
commuter rail into the city each day for work, and one stormy winter’s day the
train was delayed for hours. People were cold, wet, tired, and grumpy. When he
finally made it to his car, well after dark, he found it covered with snow and
blocked by a two-and-a-half-foot wall of snow from a plow. Without a shovel and
feeling frustrated and teary-eyed, he searched the car for a makeshift tool. He
had to resort to using his hands to clear the snow.
After making a couple of passes with his arms and hands to
clear the snow off the car, he looked up to see a fellow commuter not only
shoveling the car out, but offering a snow brush to clear off his windows. They
made fairly quick work of digging the car out and both went their separate
ways. On his way home, Lou cried from happiness and the unexpected kindness
bestowed upon him.
Sara was circling the block to find a parking space so she
could get a cup of coffee. A woman walking by flagged her down and said she
would go in and get the coffee for her. While she was inside, a spot opened up
and Sara was waiting by her car when the woman came out. She thanked her went
to hand her money, but she said the coffee was on her. The woman went on to
explain that she had metastatic cancer and with the time she had left, she
wanted to do as many good deeds as possible. Sara shared that she was a cancer
survivor and the two of them ― complete strangers ― shared a hug and some
tears. Ever since that day, Sara has made sure to do random acts of kindness
for others as often as she can.
To serve others as disciples of Christ means that sometimes we
will have to bear the burden of accepting another person just as they are. We suffer
and endure one another, not so we can fix or control the other, but so that we
can allow them to be free. It is a burden, it is difficult, to allow someone
else to be who they are, to not judge them, to not expect them to conform, to
allow them to be strange, peculiar, broken and scarred, imperfect. But, when we
allow the needs of another to supersede our own, we just might find ourselves
serving the one who knows us best.
In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus gave a
practical explanation of what discipleship is all about:
I
was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited
me… I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members
of my family, you did it to me.[8]
What does discipleship mean? It means to serve one another
with love. It also means that we can’t just serve one another here at Saint
John’s, or only in Union or Marengo. Jesus didn’t stay in Capernaum. He said, “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.”[9]
As disciples, we are called to serve the world, in the name and in the manner
of Jesus Christ, our Rabbi, the Messiah, the one who has called us to
follow. Amen.
[1] The
scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version
Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2]
Mark 1:31.
[3]
Isaiah 40:28-31, selected.
[4]
Mark 10:45.
[5]
Mark 9:35.
[6]
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct,” sermon
delivered February 4, 1968, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia.
[7] Lindsay
Holmes, “8 Feel-Good Stories of Strangers Helping Someone They Didn't Know” for
Huffington Post, May 2, 2018. Online at: https://www.huffpost.com/.
[8]
Matthew 25:35-36, 40.
[9]
Mark 1:38.
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