Reaching Out for Healing – Mark 3:1-6, 31-35

Lectionary Readings for February 14, 2021          Transfiguration Sunday, Year B
2 Kings 2:1-12           Elijah Taken Up to Heaven
Psalm 50:1-6       v3 Our God comes and will not be silent...
2 Corinthians 4:3-6  v6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts
Mark 9:2-9      Jesus Transfigured on the Mountain Top

But we’ll focus on Mark 3:1-6, 31-35 this week.

Last week we heard the story of Jesus healing a man lowered to him from the roof of a house. And then Jesus joined some of the most hated people in the community for dinner: tax collectors and “other sinners.”

This week, we have two stories – one of healing and one of community.

In the first story, Jesus performs yet another controversial healing in what is a big setup to catch Jesus violating church rules. But to best appreciate a play, you must understand the players. The Pharisees devoted their entire lives to ensuring that they and other Jews follow the 613 specific laws in the Torah – the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. The Pharisees are like me – they are professional church leaders. The problem is that Jesus – a poor, homeless guy from a really small town – has quickly gained a large following by preaching peace, love, and happiness while also healing people; very impressive; very appealing. That means that Jesus is getting all the attention and respect that USED to go to the Pharisees. Consequently, the Pharisees see Him as a threat to their power, prestige, and job security. Remember that nearly everyone in their society was poor, really poor and powerless. The Pharisees used a poor, powerless crippled man as bait to catch Jesus’ attention and good intentions. The Pharisees think they’ve set the perfect trap, but Jesus flips the script on them which embarrasses and infuriates the Pharisees.

The second story is more straightforward. Jesus redefines the concept of family. Listen for how welcoming, how open, and how inclusive Jesus’ description is of who makes up what He calls the “Kingdom of God.”

Let’s open our ears, minds, and hearts as we read today’s verses.

Read Mark 3:1-6, 31-35.

Clearly, Jesus never read Dale Carnegie’s classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People. In today’s first story, Jesus invites the Pharisees into the trap they set and then turns the trap on them. Later on, Jesus embarrasses his biological family by devaluing that bond in favor of embracing the motley crew of his followers as his true family. No wonder his relatives are starting to question his sanity! He’s winning the wrong friends!

There are some subtle but amazing details in today’s healing story; details that should release us from any anxiety or reluctance to ask God for help with whatever burdens us – emotionally, physically, or spiritually.

One detail is that the crippled man is never named and never says a word. Jesus never asks the man to repent of anything ,or join his following, or make any promises along the lines of “If I heal you, I want you to do this for me in return.” The man’s healing comes with no conditions and no strings attached. God offers us love, acceptance and healing with no strings attached. All we have to do is respond to the Holy Spirit’s invitations.

But there was a cost for the man – the cost of being in the public spotlight, which I seriously doubt the man wanted. Both the Pharisees and Jesus used the poor, powerless man to make their respective points. That may sound callous, but hey, the man’s hand was healed. If it was your hand, would you complain? Here’s the challenge to us: When God draws us into a situation that has the potential to give God glory, will we run away from that opportunity? Would we rather hide in our safe places than step forward and be used by God?

That may sound dramatic or unrealistic, but I see it happen all the time. For ex: every month, city councils and county boards of supervisors across America have meetings which often include a time for public comments. That means each one of us has an opportunity to shine a very public light on praising what is going well OR bringing attention to a social justice issue that concerns us. But as you may know, most people fear public speaking more than death itself. Thus, many of us flee those opportunities.

Whether it’s at a government meeting, in a social group, at school, at work, or in private conversations, we have opportunities to be used by God so that the people we meet can hear all the wonderful ways we see God’s presence working through and around us. That’s a massive blessing.

To better equip and encourage all of you to step into these opportunities, this year I’m working with our Conference leaders in Sacramento to create a year-long leadership development program for our Church Council members. We had our first meeting earlier this month and will continue meeting monthly. With their feedback and refinements, I plan to rerun this program (as well as other programs) every year, so that as people are attracted to our faith community, all of us – of all ages and abilities – can more fully experience what it means to be actively engaged members of the Kingdom of God – joyfully and effectively participating in the life of our church and our community. I can only imagine how that healed man told the people in his community about his encounter with Jesus.

Another interesting detail in today’s healing story is that Jesus never touches the crippled man. Nor does Jesus say any classic lines like, “Your faith has made you well.” Jesus simply tells the man “Hold out your hand.” The man is obedient; he does as he is told to do. Each week we pray asking God to lead us. We need to actively listen for God to respond to our prayers. And when God asks us to do something, we need to have faith that God can act in mighty ways through the most routine actions.

As Methodists, we have a somewhat unique perspective on the multiple stories of Jesus healing people even when it violated church policies. The Methodist movement was started in the early 1700s because John Wesley, the son and grandson of English preachers, challenged the unchallengeable traditions of the Anglican church. Why? Because, as he saw it, some of their church traditions conflicted with 1,700 years of Christian faith traditions.

The Methodist movement was just that, a movement away from conventional practices and toward beliefs and behaviors that our ancestors felt were more reflective of Jesus’ life and teachings. Considering today’s Scripture reading and three centuries of Methodist history, the question for us today is, where do we need to accelerate existing movements towards peace, healing, and justice for all? And where are new opportunities for new movements? Where is God leading us?

Looking at the global Methodist church, we see these historical movements continue through global evangelism efforts as well as through the disaster relief work of UMCOR – the United Methodist Committee on Relief. You can also see the Methodist movement continue through Africa University in Zimbabwe; it was founded in 1985 by the UMC to help address the emerging socio-economic and political needs of an entire continent’s 1.3 billion people. By any measure, it has been incredibly successful.

Bringing this back home, our HOPE Food Pantry has been a new movement fueled by our existing concern for others. I am convinced our food pantry has been so successful for a variety of reasons; primarily because (from the day it was first discussed) we have continually sought God’s leading and stepped out in faith when we believed God was leading us. We have created a culture of saying YES to opportunities big and small. In just the last 9 days, two separate small, unanticipated conversation have quickly led to what appear to be major steps forward. As much as we believe that God is leading our pantry to more, new, and different, we also believe that God will provide for whatever God calls us into. We’ve seen it happen nearly every week for the past 9 months.

Where else is God calling us to step forward and hold out our hands?
Where else is God leading us – individually and as a faith community?
Are we listening? Are we looking? Are we ready and willing to say, “Yes Lord, if You lead us, we’ll follow. We may be a bit nervous, so be patient with us.”

As we follow God’s lead, we can take GREAT comfort in Jesus’ final words from today’s reading: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Savior, sibling, and friend... three aspects of our relationship with Jesus, God in the flesh. What a blessing to have such an intimate connection with the Creator of the universe! What greater privilege is there than to be able to joyfully share that love and that connection with others!

Amen? Amen!