Don’t Grow Weary
Text: Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39 (Call to Worship from Psalm 147)
By: Rev. Terry Carty
Date: 02-05-12
Place: Kingston Springs United Methodist Church
Season: Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany.
Main Point: Discipleship – the presence of Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law for service to others. Effective discipleship – practicing the work of Jesus – prepares us not only for overcoming evil (last week) but also for the sometimes overwhelming task of evangelism and healing.
Again this week we have turned to the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark to see Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry. We have been considering the call of Jesus to the disciples to follow and become fishers of people – disciples who would carry on his ministry in the world.
This week Jesus and ‘the boys’ have left the temple gone to Simon and Andrew’s mom’s house for lunch. She has the ‘crud’ and is sick in bed.
Some of you know very well how that feels. We haven’t had much winter weather, but we have made up for it by having a terrible flu and respiratory disease season. How many of you have spent at least one day so sick that you just could not function in the past 3 or 4 months?
Head aches, body aches, chills, fever, dizzy, can’t breathe. That is how Simon and Andrew’s mom felt. I’ll bet the last thing she wanted that sabbath was to see those boys bring their friends over to the house for lunch! Imagine how she felt to get instantaneous relief. She felt so good that she got up and went to the kitchen to feed those boys!
Simon and Andrew and James and John really didn’t need any more convincing that Jesus was sent from God. But were they ready for what happened that night? Everyone in town showed up to get some of that healing.
Missy and Chris Bolt have taken turns the last couple of weeks serving in medical mission work in Haiti. When the doctors, nurses and helpers arrive in an impoverished area and the word gets around that there is a clinic, people turn out in droves to show the doctors their wounds or describe their symptoms. The word spreads fast and far. I have seen people who have walked for three days to get to a medical mission.
The volunteers get very weary. The lines grow long and the desperate people press close for fear that the doctors will leave without having seen to everyone’s ailments. The
workers, knowing that they will only be in the village for a short while, work long hours and at a pace that is exhausting.
Jesus and the disciples must have been worn out that night by the time they had seen everyone in the village. It is exhausting to be a disciple. There is no end to the misery in the world. The poor, the sick, the marginalized are always in need.
When the disciples found Jesus the next morning, they found him alone and praying. This is the first of 12 times in the Gospel of Mark when the disciples found Jesus plugged into the source of his energy.
Isaiah tells us that the everlasting God gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. God never tires and always understands human need.
We, who desire to follow the path that Christ blazed, can depend upon the same resource that those first disciples discovered that morning when they found Jesus praying. Lesson One for those who would reject evil and heal in the name of Jesus is to go to God in prayer. Plug in to the source of power often.
A disciple of Christ learns that prayer connects us to God, who never tires and always understands. It is a long journey and we will encounter many who need our physical and emotional assistance. It will be draining to us and we will experience weakness – sometimes not even feeling like getting out of bed.
Today’s lesson for disciples is simple – this is something we can do if we discipline ourselves to set the time aside. Get up early if you need to – like Jesus did – and spend time in prayer. God will provide us the strength to soar like eagles along our journey of faith.