Trust Your Power

Trust Your Power

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

February 8, 2015; 5 Epiphany, Year B

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Mark 1:29-39 – Jesus left the synagogue at Capernaum, and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. 

That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, "Everyone is searching for you." He answered, "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." And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

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If you were here last week, you may have taken advantage of the scripture prophecy about the Super Bowl. As the psalmist foretold, yes, the Patriots won. I was not pleased; but the Lord's will be done. I do hope those of you who acted on that divine foreknowledge will share your blessings with the church.

I also know all of you took note as you listened to the scriptures today, that had the game been this week instead of last week, it would have had a different result. For the prophet Isaiah announces today, "Those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles." And as we all know, in Isaiah's day, seahawks were called eagles. Alas. Bad timing.

But I don't want to talk about the game. I want to talk about the commercials. I heard the Bud puppy won. I was distracted during that one, reading a book to Laura. I liked some of the throw-back commercials. The Brady Bunch with the ax murderer playing the role of Marcia, until she has a Snicker. Great! But the best one was a flashback to 1994 with Bryant Gumbel and Katic Couric being totally clueless about the Internet and email. "Allison, can you explain what Internet is?" says Katie. Shift to the present, and they are equally baffled by the 2015 electric car they are driving. Great stuff.

But none of those were as good as the Derrick Coleman commercial from last year's Super Bowl. Do you remember it? We see his name "Coleman" on Derrick's jersey as his team is in the tunnel leading to the stadium. Then we hear his voice, "They told me …I was a lost cause. I was picked on." [image of another black child taunting little Derrick on the way to school]; "and picked last. Coaches didn't know how to talk to me; they gave up on me; told me I should just quit." [the screen cuts to a TV screen announcing the last pick of the NFL draft, and Derrick's voice speaks] "They didn't call my name; told me it was over. But I've been deaf since I was three. So I didn't listen." [camera shifts to Derrick Coleman putting on his Seattle Seahawks helmet entering the Super Bowl] "And now I’m here, with a lot of fans in the NFL cheering me on, and I can hear them all." [ad closes with the tagline for the battery in Derrick's hearing aids: Duracell: Trust Your Power." Or you might say, Derrick was freed from the limitations others imposed on him because of his deafness; he was freed from that in order to be freed for using his gifts at the highest level.[i]

In our gospel story today, Jesus enters the home of Simon Peter's mother-in-law, and she is sick, unable to function in her role of hospitality. In the Middle East, giving hospitality is critically important, a function of honor and crucial to establishing one's place in the community. Jesus goes to her. He takes her by the hand—he grasps her; lifts her up. Trust Your Power. And she is restored to her honorable calling to serve. She is freed from her fever in order to be free for honorable service.

That night, the whole city comes to her home, and Jesus heals. He carries out his calling—his work; his mission to heal. He casts out demons. I've seen that sort of thing happen. When people or groups are incoherent, unmoored and chaotic—the presence of someone who is grounded can often bring coherence and order. It frees them from their oppressive incoherence in order to free them for being who they really are.

When his evening's work was done, Jesus was tired. He needed rest; he needed prayer. So early in the morning he left to go to a deserted place to pray. When his friends finally found him, they pressured him to come back, saying, "Everyone is searching for you," Jesus set a boundary. I need to go to the neighboring towns to spread the Good News. That's what I came out to do. He knows himself and his calling. And he acts on that. Trust Your Power. Freed from their expectations in order to be free for his mission and calling.

I found a sermon this week published on my friend Mike Kinman's blog. Mike will be our McMichael speaker March 14-15. Don't miss him. Mike posted a sermon by one of our mutual good friends, Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows. Jennifer and I have served the church on a couple of national boards, and she's a leader at the General Convention. Jennifer is African American, and she was preaching in Advent in the dark days after the deaths of Mike Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island. She said, when she's asked, "What can we do?" in the wake of all of that, she first recognizes how complicated it is to address "the structural and systemic forces that make institutional and hence, individual racism and privilege so difficult to dismantle," but she said that what she is doing is a small thing called "going home."

Jennifer says "by way of confession" that she's recently "been slowly coming out as a kid from the projects." It's hard for her. She's been getting in touch with her own "internalized racial oppression, identity, feelings of abandonment" as well as what she calls "my own acts of abandoning my community in the in the name of survival."

When Jennifer was ten, her family moved to a housing project in Staten Island, not too far from where Eric Garner died. There, her innocence was shattered. She learned to walk through the white adults spitting on her and calling her the N-word as she returned home from school, and to walk past the black school kids wanting to fight her because she spoke funny and used words they didn't understand. She heard gun shots ring out from the basketball court below her window as she did her homework. The library and classroom were her sanctuary for her dreams to get out. Success meant getting out and never looking back. But now, she thinks, "going back just may be my salvation."

Now as a "multiple degreed, Ivy educated black professional" Jennifer wants to use her privilege to make a difference. Trust Your Power. She wants to confront all of the pain, violence and hopelessness from that old place in order to be freed for her mission of racial reconciliation and social justice through the experience of true compassion, empathy, and solidarity. She believes that putting herself back together and finding wholeness will be a key for her to help effect that wholeness.[ii]

After his exhausting day in Capernaum, Jesus went back home. Early in the morning he went to a deserted place to pray. He needed healing for himself.

I know that when I ignore that call to rest and healing, when I let the demands in my little world crowd out my time in the deserted place—the time of sitting in silence, doing nothing—I become less coherent; I become ill or disabled. I have to seek freedom from the demands in order to have freedom for the small bit of service I want to offer, like Peter's mother-in-law. For me to have energy to be, I need to rest and wait.

Isaiah promises that "those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint." In Hebrew poetry, triplets like that grow in importance. Flying, running, walking—it's the walking that is most important. Yes, occasionally we feel the wind beneath our wings and we do mount up like eagles, but that's no big deal. Sometimes we run and have to run, and sometimes we do not get weary. Wonderful. But the really important thing is the day-by-day work of putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes you don't even know if there will be solid ground as you extend your foot for the next step. But "those who wait for the LORD… shall walk and not faint." That's what is crucially important. Trust Your Power, the power of God's Spirit given to us in Jesus.

So, like Derrick Coleman, just don't hear the demoralizing words, the words from others or the words in your own head. Each day as you put one foot in front of the other, your fans, the universe of angels and archangels cheer you on. Hear them. Trust Your Power. Let yourself be freed from whatever oppresses in order to be freed for the humble, honorable work that is your particular calling of service. You are the only person in the universe who can be who you are. You are the only person in the universe who can do what you can do.

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[i] Thanks to David Lose, davidlose.net, Dear Partner, Feb. 3, 2015

[ii] Mike Kinman's blog Come Together, http://cccdean.blogspot.com/, Sunday, December 14, 2015.

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