The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
February 4 & 5, 2006
Sermon by Rev Timothy A Leitzke
I didn’t
like what I was hearing in seminary. I could handle every shocking theory about
the origins of the Bible. I could write a sermon and lead a liturgy. I was comfortable
learning the dynamics of a congregation. I reveled in doctrine and theology.
What I didn’t like was the fact that they only tool we were given to reassure
ourselves and our faith was to “remember our baptisms”. Aside from the fact
that this sounded like someone who had no time to talk to my faith, I had a
real problem with this. I do not remember my baptism. I was six weeks old! How
could I get any comfort from this idea? Why should I pretend to remember a day
I could not remember? There have been other times that I have felt unmistakably
that God was talking to me. I remember those, but I’m not getting one of those
now, either! What did it matter that I was baptized? I feel alone, now.
We each feel
that alienation from God. It’s different for each of us. Some of us feel a
god-shaped hole inside of us where the god of our youth or childhood used to
live. Some of us feel we can never live up to God. Some of us are angry at God.
Some of us feel an increasing distance between God and ourselves. On the other
hand, some of us feel drawn closer to God. Some of us are bursting with joy at
God’s presence in our lives. Be the experiences negative or positive they all
indicate some sort of gap needing to be closed. For me, God was always there,
always here, always with me, but God chose only to reveal little bits to me,
and those moments of revelation always receded quickly into the past.
God’s
manifestation in Jesus is obvious enough in the reading from St Mark. Jesus
went to work healing people straightaway after leaving the synagogue. His
healing drew people to him by dozens, even hundreds at a time. He came to
Simon’s mother-in-law and raised her. In a very real way Jesus gave her new
life. She lay ill but Jesus raised her in good health. We say something very
similar to this when we speak of baptism. We lay ill with sinfulness, but God
drowns that sinful person and raises us as saints, as a new creation. Jesus
reveals God’s power to love, forgive, and restore, and he reveals it to Simon’s
mother-in-law in one miraculous act. It is a baptismal event, even though
there’s no water. Jesus, Who Is Stronger than the fever, raises Simon’s
mother-in-law in health.
But then
Jesus vanishes. He gets up very early, probably around
When the
disciples finally find Jesus he has a curious thing to say to them: “Let us go
elsewhere, into the market-towns being nearby, in order that I might preach
there also, for into this I came out.” Jesus didn’t sneak away to get away from
his disciples; he went out so that they would follow him out into his ministry
in new places. In the same manner God does not abandon us. God has not slipped
away in the darkness to leave us, no, Friends of Christ. Jesus seemed to have
left, but it was because he wanted the disciples to follow him. God seems to have
left, but God is calling us out to follow.
In holy
baptism God marks each of us and calls us God’s own. We have been baptized and
we belong to God. The act of being baptized recedes into the past, but the
baptism goes on. We always belong to
God. God will always be faithful to
us. God is calling us out to follow. As Jesus raised Simon’s mother-in-law that
day in
New places
could be anywhere. If we feel a god-shaped hole inside God is calling us into a
new place, a place beyond our former conception of God and a faith that is
honest in dealing with our experiences. If we feel that we can never live up to
God then God is calling us into a new place, a place where we can accept the
forgiveness that God offers, the justification God gives to us freely, and the
understanding that God steps down from being above us and meets us face to
face. If we are angry at God then God is calling us into a new place—a place
where it is okay to be frustrated with God—and a new faith—a faith that
recognizes that God will not always give us what we want, even if we had very
good and just reason for wanting it. If we feel an increasing distance between
God and ourselves God is calling us into a place beyond ourselves, into the
world that God created, into the life of reckless, self-giving love that Jesus
lived. When God pulls us into these strange new places our faith is challenged
and our faith grows, and we learn that God has not abandoned us at all.
Friends of
Christ, I do not remember