Invitation by Design Isaiah 40:27-31, Mark 1:29-39, 1 Corinthians 9:16, 19-23

Not long ago my wife Kathryn decided to refinish the headboard
to the twin-sized bed she slept in as a child.
You’ve probably tackled a similar project at some point.
I’m not saying that the headboard is OLD,
but over the years it had been painted a number of times,
one coat of paint on top of the last.
So stripping it down to the bare wood was quite a job.

There was blue paint on top of yellow paint on top of white paint on top of green paint.
With each coat, the carved design on the headboard
had become less and less visible
as the paint filled in and leveled out the pattern.
The layers of paint obscured the plain craftsmanship of the headboard.
They gummed up the simple elegance of the design.
It wasn’t easy to get through all those layers,
but it was time.
It was time to take it back to the original woodwork,
back to the intended design of the builder.

Our gospel lesson this morning has me thinking about that headboard project.
Jesus has entered the picture in Mark’s gospel
and from the beginning he’s created quite a stir.
The opening scene of his ministry is in Capernaum,
a small fishing village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.

On the Sabbath Jesus goes to the local synagogue there
and teaches about the Kingdom of God with a kind of direct, first hand authority
that the teachings of the local rabbis can’t touch.
He casts out a demon, he heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law,
and then spends all that evening healing those who are sick and demon possessed.

The next morning, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John wake with the sun.
They stretch and groan, scratching and snorting.
Simon Peter’s mother-in-law rises from her bed,
giving thanks that she has been restored to health
and she quickly stirs the previous night’s embers into a breakfast fire.
The coffee has hardly had time to perk before they get the sense they’re not alone.
Andrew pulls the door flap aside and calls for the others to look.
There, outside the door, surrounding the courtyard and backing up into the street
is a crowd, pressing in, some leaning on crutches,
some carrying stretchers, some wrapped in bandages.
They are silent for the most part, except for the occasional moan
but there is an urgency in their silence, an electric kind of expectancy.

It’s Simon Peter who firsts notices that Jesus is not with them.
He goes to the corner where Jesus had been sleeping,
but the blankets are neatly folded and there’s no Jesus.
Already the de facto leader of the growing band of disciples,
Simon Peter feels responsible somehow for Jesus’ absence,
feels cross that he can’t give the pitiful crowd what they want – what they NEED.
He tells the others to come on,
and they push through the packed courtyard to go find their absent leader.

There’s no way of knowing how long they looked for him,
but finally they find Jesus in what Mark calls a “deserted place.”
Maybe it’s one of the little rocky outcroppings outside of town,
but I’m guessing it’s more likely down by the shore of the big lake.
It says Jesus had been praying for sometime,
and I picture him standing there praying with his eyes open,
maybe absentmindedly tossing pebbles in the water,
looking up and down the shore,
and imagining all the tiny villages, and all the people, Jew and Gentile,
to whom he has been called.

I don’t know what he prayed.
Maybe he prayed what most of us pray early in the morning
when we know there’s a big day ahead.
“Lord, give me strength. Give me strength.”

The disciples rush up to Jesus and hit him full force with all their pent up anxiety;
all their insecurity and impatience.
“Where have you been?!?!? EVERYONE is searching for you!”
Tugging on his arm they say, “You thought the crowd was big last night!
It must be twice as big this morning!”
“Everyone is searching for you….”
“Everyone…is searching…for YOU!”

How easy it is to be distracted from our purpose;
to get swept up in trends,
carried away with novel ideas,
lose our heads in popularity polls.

The crisis of the moment was the press of the sick, needy crowd.
The disciples felt the peoples’ urgency, reacted to their intense need.
But Jesus said “No.”
They thought he would catch their anxiety,
be moved with irresistible compassion,
respond to sick crowd’s collective crisis and do what the moment dictated.
But Jesus looked them in the eyes and said, “No.”
He said, “Let us go to the neighboring towns,
so that I may proclaim the message there also,
for THAT is what I came out to do.”

“That I may proclaim the message there also….”
Jesus had already delivered his message to the residents of Capernaum.
And there were many more towns just like it
where they had no idea that the Kingdom of God had come near,
no idea that they no longer had to live in fear of the law;
no idea that God’s desire was not to punish them, but forgive them
and offer them the chance to be part of something bigger than themselves,
offer them a chance to begin again.
THAT was his mission, his purpose, his reason for being
and if he did not take his message of God’s redeeming love
to as many as he could, he would be unfaithful to his calling.

“Let us go to the neighboring towns,
so that I may proclaim the message there also,
for that is what I came out to do.”
That is the Creator’s purpose.
That is the original design.

But how easy it is to let other concerns get in the way,
to let the crisis of the moment lead get us off track,
to let insecurities and impulses and fears build up, layer upon layer,
until God’s design for us,
God’s image in loses its distinctiveness and becomes all but obscured.

It would be hard to find any group more easily distracted
than the members of the church in Corinth.
There were theological factions, there were class divisions,
There was some sort of sexual impropriety going on that everybody knew about,
and, in chapters 8 and 9 of Paul’s letter he’s trying to answer their question
of whether it is lawful to eat meat that has been offered to idols.
The Corinthians have apparently written to Paul asking him to sort it all out for them;
to tell them who wins and who loses, who’s right and who’s wrong.
Finally, it is as if Paul has had enough of their petty bickering.

I picture him pacing back an forth in his tiny study,
dictating his words to a scribe as was his habit,
and maybe he stops, looks to heaven and cries in frustration, “ENOUGH!”
“Enough with all these distractions, all this squabbling.”
“Here it is, bottom line….WOE TO ME IF I DO NOT PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL!’

Paul has his calling. It is his one purpose – to tell people about the gift of God’s love,
to spread the word about the new thing God has done through Jesus.
And to any in Corinth who may question his tactics
or get their noses in a knot over who he associates with in the process
he says, “Look. I am not going to let superficial differences get in my way.
My faith has set me free but I willingly become a slave
if that’s what it takes to get the word out.
Is it reasonable, do you think, to conclude that as Jesus’ church
and as heirs to Paul’s mission,
our calling might be so simple? So clear? So focused?
Beneath all the layers of church life and daily life that can build up and obscure,
is it possible that our one most important calling is to tell others of God’s love,
of God’s forgiveness that is available and waiting?
to invite others into the fold, into the care of our Good Shepherd?

Our men’s lunch group was eating together this past Thursday
and one of the group brought up a class he was taking at UVA,
the focus of which is the possibility of life in the universe beyond earth.
We had a good discussion, talking at length about the cosmos,
about the scientific and theological dimensions of life on other planets.
We were the only ones there and our waiter kind of hovered within earshot
taking in our conversation.

At one point our waiter joined in and told us that he had given his son a telescope,
that it was at the boy’s mother’s house but he hoped to get it back to his house
so he could explore the sky with his son.
Then he told us about someone who had confronted a Buddhist friend of his
accusing the friend of worshipping the wrong god.
It was kind of an out of the blue comment and I wasn’t sure why he said it,
but we all agreed that it was an unproductive and even abusive way
to engage someone in conversation about their faith.

It came time to leave and we paid our bill and as we were breaking up
we even congratulated ourselves on having had an intelligent, in-depth conversation.
We pushed back from the table, put on our jackets, left our waiter generous tips.
But it occurred to me only later.
Not one of us…not one of us asked our waiter to come to church.