Text: Mark 1:29-38, Isaiah 40:21-31
Today, as we follow the star, we hear an invitation from God to serve.
Why do we serve?
Is it because we are trying to earn our salvation?
Is it to gain brownie points with God or with others?
Do we serve from a sense of duty or obligation?
Or is our service simply the fruit of a life spent focused on God?
The way we demonstrate our gratitude for the gifts that have blessed our lives?
Today we have two passages to consider and before we dive into these powerful words from Isaiah, I think we need to situate them a bit in history.
Isaiah was a prophet of Judah, or the southern half of what was Israel.
After King David died, his kingdom was split into two. The blue part of this map was known as Israel and the yellow portion is the southern kingdom of Judah.
God wanted the people to serve.
To trust.
To let God be the king of their lives.
Not because God needed anything from them, but because it reflected God’s desires for the human family.
But both kingdoms had basically said, “No thank you, Lord! We want to try to do this ourselves.”
This is the God of all creation!
This is the one who sets the stars in the sky and raises up nations and kings!
This is the one who had rescued them from Egypt and had given them the land in the first place!
Instead of having hearts full of gratitude…
Instead of allowing their lives to be shaped by the one who had given them life…
They turned their backs on their Redeemer.
And God let them fall.
As Isaiah is called to prophesy to the to the kingdom of Judah, Israel, the blue portion of this map had just been conquered by the Assyrians.
They were wiped off the map and out of history, never to be heard from again.
And the word that comes to Isaiah is this:
I am the God of all creation.
I am everything that you need.
Tell the people of Judah that if they don’t start to follow me, if they try to trust in their own might, they will only find ruin.
My way is the way of life… yours is the way of death.
For 39 chapters, this is what Isaiah preaches to the people of Judah.
He warns them.
He pleads with them.
All he has to do is point to the north and remind them of what happened to their neighbors.
But his words fall on deaf ears.
And the consequence of their failure to trust and obey and live faithful and fruitful lives is that the Babylonians come in and Judah is conquered.
But here is the really important part.
God does not forget the people in exile.
God calls Isaiah once again, this time with a message of comfort and hope.
This chapter you see, chapter 40, is a turning point.
The people realize they can’t do it on their own.
They realize how futile it is to try.
And now, when they have hit rock bottom, God is right there offering strength and hope and life.
Isaiah tells them that even young people will faith and grow weary if they try to do it on their own. They will fall exhausted by the side of the road.
Youth is not a prescription for strength.
Military might will not save you.
Protein shakes and weights will not build the kind of muscles you need.
If you want to be spiritually strong and whole and full of life the only place to turn is the Lord.
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.
Those who wait for the Lord…
Does it mean that we sit quietly and patiently?
That we stop everything else we are doing and just see what happens?
Not at all.
In fact, the Hebrew word for “waiting” is the same as the word used for twisting – like making a rope.
Far from being passive, this kind of waiting invokes the idea that you are being worked on, formed, and bound together.
Waiting on the Lord is being open and available to what God wants to do with your life.
There is the old joke about the man who prayed to God that he might win the lottery… but he never went out and bought a ticket.
This kind of waiting isn’t just sitting back and seeing if God will act.
It is active.
It is expectant.
It is full of hope and tension and we put our lives in the right place by waiting upon the Lord in service and worship.
I have been thinking about the process of bringing new life into the world through pregnancy. Any mother can tell you that this kind of waiting is not passive.
It is painful and full of uncomfortable moments.
You can’t just sit back and wait for something to happen.
What you eat matters. What you drink matters. How you move matters.
And in the process, two lives are entwined and bound together.
That’s what it is like to wait upon the Lord.
Our live becomes entwined with Gods as we serve and worship.
In the process, God’s strength becomes our strength.
And then God takes the single cord that is our life and twists it together with others in the church so that we are made even stronger.
Which brings me to Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.
In our gospel reading for today, Jesus enters this home and discovers that she is ill.
This isn’t just a cold, she is confined to bed with a fever.
Jesus enters the room and gently takes her by the hand and the fever is gone.
He helps her to her feet.
The very next thing she does… is to wait on them.
Now, there have been many times in the past when I have read this verse with a little bit of indignation.
I mean, what kind of a sexist message is being taught here, that the instant a woman is well, she jumps out of bed to serve the men?
But if we examine the text a little bit closely, we discover something interesting.
She waits upon them… like we are called to wait upon the Lord.
Her labor is not a menial household task, but the word we find here in greek is diakanos.
Diakanos is ministry.
It is the same word used to describe how the angels wait upon Jesus in the wilderness.
The same word Jesus uses when he washes the feet of his disciples and calls them to serve.
The same word used by the church to send out the first deacons.
Those who wait upon the Lord renew their strength.
Those who serve the Lord find abundant life.
Here was a woman who was trapped in her bed by her illness, much like the Judeans were in exile.
And yet, she waited in expectant hope.
She actively lived a life ready for God to work through her.
And just as God reached out to bring the people of Judah out of captivity, Jesus stretched out his hand to lift her up.
Her act of service in this moment is not just out of gratitude for what God has done and is doing in her life.
It is the fruit of a lifetime spent attentive to God’s will in her life.
And before even her own son-in-law figures out what he is doing as a disciple, she is already at work saying yes to God.
As Megan McKenna notes: “the first four followers of Jesus become five…”
Throughout this season of Epiphany, we have been following the star.
We’ve explored how God is revealed in our lives and reclaimed our identity.
Together we have received the invitation to follow… along with the call to repent.
Last week we talked about what it means to allow the authority of God to shape our realities.
Each of these star-words have been a step in a journey.
A journey that helps us to let go of the idea that we can do it ourselves.
A journey that reminds us that it is only in God that we find the strength and the power to keep going.
Only when we place our lives in God’s hands, in worship and service, will we truly discover life.
In her weekly reflection, Debie Thomas shares a quote from Annie Dillard’s book, The Writing Life: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”
Even as I say those words, I think about how many hours in the last year I have spent on the couch watching shows on Netflix.
So often, we have grand plans for how we will live out our faith in the future.
I’ll be a disciple someday when I have time, or more energy, or the kids are grown.
As Thomas notes, they are “days filled with intention, purpose, and meaning. Days meticulously scheduled and beautifully executed. Days marked by attentiveness, order, devotion, and beauty. When I get around to living those days – maybe tomorrow? Maybe next month? – then I will begin to sculpt my life.”
What if instead, we simply allowed Jesus to take us by the hand and we got up and began to serve?
What if we stopped trying to do it our way and instead allowed God’s strength to lift our weary spirits and to twist and shape and transform our moments.
What if we stopped passively waiting for a mountain top moment, but claimed this day, right now, as when our life in God can begin.
How will you spend this day?
No Comments