Freedom and Responsibility

In our Epistle lesson today, Paul talks about his freedom to do as he wishes.  Paul also talks about his response-ability to lift up the gospel in different ways.  Paul proclaims that different people in different contexts need to hear the message Paul is proclaiming differently, so Paul “speaks their language.”  Likewise, in our Gospel reading, Simon tries to get Jesus to go back out doing miracles in the crowds, while Jesus responds that he wants to move on to the next place and continue to spread the message of the Gospel.  In both cases here, our storytellers talk about responsibly living their lives of freedom.  Both Jesus and Paul had the freedom to do as they wished.  But both Jesus and Paul were compelled to spread the good news of God’s unconditional love. 

Will you pray with me?  “Dear God of freedom, you alone grant us life and liberty, and we thank you.  Help us understand that our freedom given by you is not about the power to do as we wish, but that our freedom enables us to serve you as we bring your Realm on earth.  Amen.”

Let’s look again at our passage in Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth.  Paul says I am not proclaiming the Gospel to make a living, I am doing it because I am compelled to preach the Good News of God’s unconditional love.  Paul says I am free to do as I wish, but instead of unfocused freedom, I am a slave to the message of God’s never-ending love.  I speak to a wide range of people, living among them and talking to them in ways they understand, becoming like them so that they hear my message.  I do not matter—only my message of the Gospel matters!  And that message is this: God loves every one of us unconditionally!  Paul goes on to say the message of God’s love applies to all of us: the religious, the non-religious, moral, immoral, the defeated, demoralized and downcast.  The Good News applies to all of humanity, unconditionally.  This is the good news.  And this is also the reason Christianity spread like wildfire around the Mediterranean and throughout the world-- its Gospel message applies to everyone, so Paul told everyone he could find.

In our Gospel passage today, Jesus also is focused on the message of God’s unconditional love.  Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law on the Sabbath.  I love it where Mark says Jesus “lifted her up.”  He acknowledged her, Jesus physically reached out to her, and raised her up into health.  Isn’t this a wonderful message for Woman’s Heart Health Week?  And she immediately began fulfilling her duties as host and began serving the gathered there—in other words, she was restored to her wholeness in God’s love.  And then, at sundown, which meant the Sabbath was now over, large crowds appeared from everywhere at Simon’s front door, pressing Jesus to be healed.

Notice what just happened.  The crowds are no longer focused on Jesus’ message of God’s love.  Now all they want is Jesus the miracle-worker to heal them, fix them and make them whole.  The crowds now clamored for miracles, not even hearing Jesus’ message of the unconditional love of God.  And early the next morning, before dawn, Jesus gets up and steals away to be in prayer.  Imagine the anguish that must have been in Jesus’ prayer.  “Dear God, I want to lift your name and tell the whole world about your unconditional love, but all the crowds want is miracles and spectacles.  I want to talk about you, God, and all they want to is to be healed.  Help me, Abba, to be present to their needs and your message of holy unconditional love.”  You have seen when crowds get frenzied like this.  Nothing matters but the spectacle.  You have seen people on the freeway almost stop in their lane gawking at an accident—completely oblivious to their safely and the traffic around them.  This is what it was like as the crowds pressed against Jesus for healing—shoving, pushing, trying to get to the head of the line so that they would be the next to be healed and fixed.  Jesus must have been exhausted and frustrated, even as he was also compassionate.  So the next morning, early, Jesus withdraws in prayer, and there discerns he must move on so that people will continue to listen to his teaching about God’s love and not just clamor for healing miracles.

Put yourself in Jesus’ shoes for a moment.   If, by God’s love, you could work the miracle of healing, wouldn’t you want the message of God’s love to be the first priority in your healing?  But can you see how the crowds could care less about your first priority, and they would hunt you down to get what they wanted?  I imagine Jesus cried during these prayers, asking that the crowds would listen to God’s message of love and be healed on their inside as well as on their outside.  So Jesus always had to move on, balancing these two things.  He declared the Good News of God’s love, and he worked miracles.  And, when the miracles became more important to the crowd than God’s unconditional love, Jesus would move on again to start the cycle all over.

Both Jesus and Paul lived in the freedom of the Gospel.  Both Jesus and Paul also lived in their responsibility to the Gospel.  But how did the people closest to Jesus react?   Let’s look closely at what Simon does and says in response to Jesus’ actions.  First, remember Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law just the day before.  Simon must have been deeply moved by that.  And certainly Simon would have seen the huge crowd that gathered outside of his door after sundown.  Simon’s new friend Jesus was making a huge impression on the town.  There was so much suffering, and Simon was watching many people that he knew personally be healed.  Then, when Jesus took some time before dawn to retreat to tend to his relationship with God, Simon and his companions searched everywhere for Jesus to urge him to get back and continue the miracles—everyone is searching for you, Simon pleads.  But Jesus says, let’s move on, Simon.  Jesus knew the message of God’s love is now lost in the frenzy of the crowd clamoring to be healed.  Let’s move on where God’s love is primary, not the miracles, Jesus says.  And they kept moving throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message, and healing.

Simon interpreted the mission of Jesus as being primarily healing the crowds.  Jesus, on the other hand, knew the good news of God’s love was the first priority, and healing people in compassion was the secondary goal.  Mark makes it clear that the disciples continued to see Jesus’ mission up-side-down, paying more attention to Jesus’ miracles than to Jesus’ message about God’s unconditional love.  The disciples and the crowds wanted the miracle of healing without bothering to understand or listen to the underlying message of God’s love. This conflict between the message and the miracle just gets stronger throughout the Gospel of Mark.  This conflict continued into the new churches, as we can see from our passage in First Corinthians.  So my question for you is do we focus on the miracles instead of focusing as Jesus did on the Gospel message of God’s unconditional love?

Do modern Christians have a conflict between proclaiming God’s message of unconditional love and their actions in the world?  Do we sometimes say one thing and act another way?

Sometimes I see Christians do good works of the Realm of God, like feeding, clothing and helping the needy, but then fail to proclaim the message that God loves everyone unconditionally as the very reason they are doing the work.  Yes, it is important to serve the least of these, but the gospel message that motivates us is that God loves the people we are serving unconditionally.  Often the people we are serving are at the bottom of our society, and they do not feel loved by anyone, especially God.  We are free to serve, as was Paul, but we also have the responsibility, as did Paul, to proclaim the Good News by always simply proclaiming to everyone, “God loves you unconditionally!”  The Good news is not you must believe this or do that or join our church or limit your behaviors.  The good news is that God loves us—all of us—unconditionally [pause].  God wants to walk with us in our lives.  I see Christians misuse their freedom when they place limits on God’s gospel of love, when they say some types of folks are excluded from God’s kindom of love.  Any and all human limitations of the Gospel go against everything in our passages today, and indeed, limiting God goes against everything in scripture.  God’s love is not limited by our human issues, memberships, doctrines, creeds, politics, philosophies, agendas or dogma.  God loves all of humanity without limit.  Let me say that again.  God loves all of humanity without limit—even the people we don’t like.  That is the good news.  And it is our responsibility, just as it was Paul’s and Jesus’ responsibility, to spread this good news everywhere in our life.  God loves all of us without restriction or limitation or reserve.  God loves all of us unconditionally.  So when modern-day Christians either forget to proclaim the good news when they serve the needy, or, when they attempt to limit the Gospel in any way, our passages today says that Christian freedom is not having the power just to do what we want.  Christian freedom is about the responsibility of doing what Jesus did—first proclaiming the unlimited, unrestricted, unconditional love of God, and then, working daily miracles by living God’s love back into the world.  Giving God’s love away makes  everyday miracles.

And this is exactly what many of us did with Abraham’s Tent last week.  We fed and clothed and housed 12 men, and each night at dinner we simply reminded them that God loved them.  We trust God that the right words were spoken, the right actions were taken on behalf of God’s love for the world.  I know many of you wonder if you have seen a modern-day miracle, but there were miracles right here in our Great Hall last week.  I also saw many miracles this last Christmas come from this family of faith.  Eleven hundred items of food.  Over a hundred angel gifts.  And with each gift, we passed the Gospel on by saying to every recipient, “God loves you.”

We continue to spread the Gospel through our budget passed last Sunday.  Even in these hard times, 15% of every single one of our pledge dollars continues to be dedicated to serve the needy in our city, region, nation and globe.  We live in freedom not to protect our power, but to serve God’s Realm with grace and humility.  Let us continue to live the Gospel every time we serve others by saying, “God loves you, unconditionally.”   This way, we can say, like Paul,“We do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that we may share in its blessings.”  Amen.