What a joy it has been to be with you over this past rainy weekend. Thanks again to our host, St. Mary’s, Christ Church, St. Alban’s, and Holy Trinity. You have done us well. Thanks to Richard and Susan Price, our chairs and their steering committee. And for all that has gone into our liturgies this weekend, thanks to Rev. Canon Bryan Owen, Mr. David Osteen, Miss Deborah Atkinson and all of the Music and Liturgy Committee of this Diocese, and for Mike Flannes who has coordinated vergers, ballots and all kinds of other things for several years now. It takes so many people to pull us together and do wonderful things. Thank you to all of you.
And welcome to all of you who have joined us today who have not been with us all weekend.
We have come together this morning to gather up all that we have done, all that we have thought and said, all that we thought and haven’t said, gather up all the fullness of our common life together and present it to God. Present it to God as our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, praying that God might use what we offer this day and always for God’s purposes, and not our own, in God’s world.
Now over this weekend we have talked about those things that we do together that we cannot do alone. We have celebrated our common life together as One Church. We have talked about how the world has changed so much in the lifetime of many of us. How the culture and the church were no longer mutually supportive. And how the mission field, once far off, has now moved just outside our doorsteps. And so our journey this weekend has brought us into this moment where we hear the Gospel account of Jesus’ early days of ministry in a town called Capernaum, a fishing village on the northwest banks of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was there because, as several Gospels recount, Jesus had left Nazareth, his early home, and had moved into Capernaum. Capernaum was also the home of Peter and Andrew and James and John, the first of Jesus’ disciples. Throughout the Gospels, we read multiple accounts of Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum and his healing miracles in this place. And so Capernaum was a familiar place, a comfortable place, a natural and normal place from which to begin his ministry.
We pick up the story this morning with Simon Peter’s mother being ill with a fever in bed. Jesus goes to her and heals her, and she gets out of bed, and depending on the translation, “began to serve them” or “began to wait on them” or “began to prepare a meal for them.” Now there have been many contemporary jokes about Jesus’ motives for healing this woman. Incompetent men couldn’t take care of themselves, etc, etc.
But the larger point may be missed. She was healed and she began to care for the source of that healing. She was healed and she began to serve. And let’s contrast her response with the response of her son-in-law, Simon Peter. Simon Peter immediately began rounding up all who were sick so Jesus could begin to heal them, right then, that night, presumably at her house. And Simon Peter became so excited about the spectacle of such healings that the next morning he crashes Jesus’ prayer time early the next morning to say “Come on, Jesus, come on back. There are hundreds waiting for you!” Now this will not be the last time that the Gospel of Mark will contrast the simple response of a woman to the confused state of the disciples. Later in Mark’s Gospel, in the temple, Jesus must explain that while others had given tithes from their abundance, the poor widow had made the greater gift because she had given from her poverty. And to those who complained of such a waste of costly ointment when the woman poured it over his head, Jesus said, “Leave her alone, she has done what she could.”
When those first disciples were afraid and scattered, and in hiding, it was the women who stood quietly at the foot of the cross and got up early to anoint the body. It is a recurring theme in the Gospel that those who should know Jesus best seem so often to understand him least. And those who are treated as of lesser importance, have so much to teach: humility in a world of arrogance, gentleness in a world of anger, service in a world of demand, sacrifice in a world of entitlement and steadfastness in a world of fear.
But let’s return to the story. Peter, with great impatience, says “Everyone is searching for you. Come on back, Jesus, things are really beginning to click.” To which, Jesus says, to Peter’s absolute horror, “We are not going back.” Now I can imagine for good measure, Jesus turning to Peter, by now fully inflated by his own sense of self importance by being associated with such a popular man, “Peter, you go tell them, I’m not coming back. You answer their questions. When asked why, you may tell them, “We are leaving Capernaum to proclaim the message beyond this town.”
Beyond Capernaum. Beyond the familiar, the family, and the friends. Beyond the predictability. Beyond the early success and the growing crowds. Beyond what is known, what is safe. For eventually pushing beyond Capernaum would take Jesus to Jerusalem and to the crowds that first cheered, then turned against him, to Herod and to Pilate and finally to the cross. Going beyond Capernaum would take him to his death. Still he knew, in order to be faithful to his divinely chosen vocation, he must go beyond Capernaum.
Part of the question that I tried to raise last Friday night, can be asked using the language of this Gospel. Are we willing to go beyond Capernaum? So much is familiar. So much is life giving, So much is predictable. But is that all there is to the words of our baptismal covenant that we will repeat in a moment. What is the Capernaum of our lives? Where is the comfort, the assurance, the predictability. Is that all that God is asking of us if we are to be faithful to our vocation given in baptism.
Maybe. Maybe not.
And so, may I plant a seed in your heart and soul this day? Listen to the baptismal covenant. What is in those, oh so familiar words that, this day, may be pushing you deeper? In what way is God calling you and me to push out further, to go beyond Capernaum? To proclaim as those women in Mark’s Gospel, humility in the midst of arrogance, gentleness in the midst of anger, servanthood in the midst of demand, sacrifice in the midst of entitlement, and steadfastness in the midst of fear. In what way is God calling us to go beyond Capernaum in our personal lives? Reaching out to those we would prefer to avoid or ignore or condemn. To go beyond a model of the church that for many of us over fifty has served us so well. To go beyond what we know, to go beyond the safe sanctuary and into the boiling caldron of this world. To go beyond the peaceful and the serene into the deep pain and hunger of the world as bearers of God’s healing and God’s hope. To go beyond Capernaum to a place where we are unsure, even uncomfortable and not nearly as certain as we would like to be. And certainly not nearly as powerful as we wish to be. But a place, a place where we are there because in some way that is too mysterious or crazy to put into words, we believe it is somehow involved with the very divine given purpose of our lives.
Our Lord left Capernaum because, “That is what I came out to do.” We may be called to leave our safe Capernaum, because God may require it of us. May this sacred meal feed us for such an incredible journey.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
