Mark 1:29-39

People ask ministers all sorts of important theological questions.  Things like, “How can I understand the Trinity?”  But pastors also get asked some not so serious questions too.  For instance, “Why is it that seahorses are the only creatures where the males have the babies?”  Or “What kind of fruit do you think got Adam and Eve in trouble in the Garden of Eden?” 

Someone was seen with a bumper sticker that said, “What would Jesus drive?”  At first, it seems amusing.  And then, perhaps, offensive.  But then consider the fact that there is a Christian environmentalist group that actually maintains a website called whatwouldjesusdrive.org!  There is apparently a certain segment of the population that has given this question a great deal of thought.  It’s kind of scary actually.

As amusing as those questions can be, there are other serious questions that come up in churches.  One question that it is important for any church to answer is “What are we supposed to be doing?”  In other words, what is our purpose for existing?  Why are we here?  We have a mission:  according to the United Methodist Book of Discipline, our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  But that is kind of broad, general, and undefined.  It has to be; it is written for a worldwide denomination that includes churches in hundreds of countries and cultural contexts.  Sometimes individual churches write mission statements.  The most recent that was written for this church states, “Our mission is to know Christ, grow in Christ, and show the love of Christ within our church, our community, and the world, through the power of the Holy Spirit.”  Again, that is a little broad and general.  It needs some specific goals to be developed that would lead to its fulfillment.

We will be working with a Vision Team over the next year and a half to create and then implement a vision for this congregation.  The vision will take into account the needs of the community and the resources of the congregation, as well as the gifts and talents of individual members and of people in the community.  We will look to define more clearly what we are supposed to be doing.

For all of us, one place to start looking for answers is the life and example of Jesus.  And this passage from the Gospel of Mark, there is a blueprint for doing effective ministry in any context or community.  There are eight things that are mentioned that we can practice.

First, we have to leave the building and go out into the community.  After Jesus led the synagogue services, preaching and teaching, he then went out and began to meet the people where they were.  All of us are going to have to leave the relative comfort of our church and go out into the community to reach people in the name of Jesus.  As Oswald J. Smith wisely remarked, “The church that does not evangelize will fossilize.”  That doesn’t mean knocking on doors and handing out tracts that list the steps to salvation.  But it does mean coming face to face with other people.

There is a wonderful story about what can happen when church members get outside the building and carry Jesus into the community.  It seems that a church caught on fire, and a beautiful painting of Jesus was in danger of being burned up.  Two men ran inside the building and managed to save it, propping it against the side of a building where it was safely out of the way.  People who were standing there and watching the fire began to notice the painting and stopped to look at it.  Church leaders were a little surprised, because no one had seemed that interested in the painting before; it had been hanging in the church for years.  Later on someone explained it like this:  “When the church caught fire and moved Christ into the streets where people could see him, they were interested.”

Second, we are to heal the hurts that we see.  Jesus reached out and literally touched those who were around him, healing their diseases, restoring them to health and wholeness.  We are called to do the same thing, maybe not literally, but certainly with intention.  For example, if someone’s house were to burn down, we might offer to help provide them with clothing or a place to stay.  We also help with disaster relief in the United States and around the world through our gifts to UMCOR.  We aren’t responsible for healing all the hurts of the world, but we can heal some of them.

Third, we must realize that those who become aware of Christ through our efforts will then become active in serving Christ.  As soon as Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law, she got up and began to serve him and his disciples.  A good example of this is also Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter.  As soon as Andrew heard about Jesus, he went and got his brother and brought him to Jesus, too.  Before every Billy Graham crusade, the organization did something called “Operation Andrew.”  The basic idea was that people who knew Jesus encouraged their loved ones who didn’t know Jesus to attend the crusade.  A spokesman for Billy Graham Ministries said, “We don’t know how many other people Andrew brought to salvation.  But the record on that first one is crystal clear.  Simon Peter became, by God’s grace, one of the dynamos that powered the early church.”

Fourth, we must remember that we have an enemy who is real and who is evil.  Jesus had to face demons, evil spirits that possessed people and tormented them.  Evil is very much alive and well in our world.  But when we remember that there is a power of evil at work in the world, we must also remember that Jesus is more powerful than evil.  We can access the power of Jesus in order to defeat the evil around and within us.

Fifth, we must spend time alone in prayer.  There just is no substitute for connecting our spirits with the spirit of God on a regular basis.  In the Gospels, we find that Jesus often retreated by himself to spend time alone in prayer.  He needed to be in close contact with his Father in order to have the wisdom, the discernment, and the courage to do what God had sent him to do.  Prayer is powerful.  Things happen when God’s people pray.  Through prayer we find the will of God, and the faith and boldness to carry out that will.  Don’t ever doubt that prayer works.

There is a fictitious story about prayer that may not be factual, but it does make the point.  There was a pastor who went into his back yard one day and found a kitten that had climbed up into a tree and was too afraid to come down.  The pastor tried coaxing it down, offering it warm milk, but nothing worked.  The tree wasn’t strong enough for the pastor to climb up after the kitten.  But then the pastor came up with a plan.  He decided to tie a rope to his car bumper and then tie the other end to the tree, and then drive forward just far enough to bend the tree down and reach up and rescue the kitten.  He got his rope, tied it to the car bumper and the tree, and then pulled the car forward.  Just when he thought he almost had it, the rope broke, the tree went BOING! and the kitten went sailing into the air and out of sight.  The pastor felt terrible!  He walked around the neighborhood, asking people if they had seen a kitten, but no one had.  After a while, the pastor went home and prayed, “Lord, I just commit this kitten to your keeping.”

A few days later, the pastor was at the grocery store and noticed one of his church members pushing a cart loaded with cat food.  He knew that this person was not fond of cats, so he had to ask, “Why are you buying so much cat food when you dislike cats so much?”  The woman replied, “You won’t believe this,” and went on to tell the pastor how her little girl had been begging for a kitten, but she kept refusing to get her one.  As the girl’s pleading went on and on, finally the mother got tired of it and told her, “If God gives you a cat, I’ll let you keep it.”   Well, the woman went on to say, “I watched my little girl go out in the yard, get down on her knees, and ask God for a cat.  And, this is going to sound crazy, but a kitten came flying out of the clear blue sky, with its paws outstretched, and landed right in front of her!”  Prayer works.

Sixth, we must be aware that people are looking for Jesus.  Or at least they are looking for something or somebody that they know they need.  When the disciples went out to find Jesus while he was praying in the solitary place, they told him that everyone was looking for him.  Well, people around us are searching for something to give meaning and purpose to their lives, something to help them make sense of their existence, something to hold on to in these days of chaos and confusion, and we know what and who it is that they need.  The people are looking; all we have to do is share our knowledge with them.  It really is that simple.

Seventh, we have to be willing to go farther than where we are right now.  Jesus told the disciples that they had to go to other villages, other places, other people – that they had to move out of their comfort zone.  In fact, that was why he had come.  We also have to move beyond our walls, beyond our neighborhoods, to get to know people who are strangers to us.  That is how the early church spread the message about Jesus to every corner of the Roman Empire within a century.  And that was done through the ministry of volunteers, not paid professionals.  Philip Schaff wrote, “While there were no professional missionaries devoting their whole life to this specific work, every congregation was a missionary society, and every Christian believer [was] a missionary, inflamed by the love of Christ …”

Jerry Rice, who played for the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders, is considered by many to have been the best wide receiver to play in the NFL.  An interviewer for BET once asked him why he had chosen to attend a small, obscure university, Mississippi Valley State University.  Rice responded, “Out of all the big-time schools, such as UCLA, to recruit me, MVSU was the only school to come to my house and give me a personal visit.”  The big-time schools sent cards, letters, and advertisements, but only one showed Jerry Rice any personal attention.  If we want to share our faith, we have to get out there and do it in person.

Finally, we have to actually share the Gospel.  We have to talk about Jesus.  We have to tell about God’s grace.  That is our only message.  We get to share with people that God loves them so much that he sent Jesus, his only Son, into the world to live and to die for us, and whoever believes in him will have eternal life.  That life comes to us purely by grace; we don’t have to do anything to earn or deserve it.  In fact, there is nothing we could do to deserve it.  All we have to do is receive it.  The Gospel is not something we come to church to hear; it is something we go out from church to tell.

These eight things are signs of life in a congregation, and they can be part of our vision for the future.  They certainly should inform our process of developing a more concrete and specific vision for our church.  If we engage in these practices modeled by Jesus, we will see positive results.  And we will know that we are not alone.  We have each other.  And we have Jesus Christ.  And with Jesus, nothing is impossible.