Mission of weaving with all the threads, every single one of them

There’s so much in today’s readings about our call as Christians.  In the unfolding tapestry of God’s creation, we’re being reminded that every single thread is known and that we’re being called to participate in the continued repairing and weaving with these threads, leaving not one of them missing, without being overly concerned about un-crossable boundaries of any particular grouping in the weave (although respectful of the patterns) nor remaining too fixated in one place – we are to keep moving, incorporating all the threads, helping grow the new fabric.

Yes, the once great and proud Judeans are in exile at the hands of the Babylonians.  Yes, they are weary and downtrodden.  Yes, they seem to have given up hope in God’s love for them.

Isaiah calls them to lift their eyes up and see!  The supreme creator has not forgotten them, not a single one of them – God knows their names and is a source of power and strength.

Yes, we live in stressful times and are subjected to all sorts of principalities and pressures.  Yes, we and those are around us can grow weary, burdened by all sorts of things (doubt, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety) that can arrest and hold us in place. 

Amid the harsh realities of our circumstances, is there a God?  If so, could that all powerful creator of everything actually know and care about little ole me?

Yes!  Lift your eyes up and see.  Even in the darkness of night there are millions of points of light if we keep our eyes focused up there.  Isaiah reminds us that God has created all of the stars, numbering them, calling them each by name, and not missing a single one.  Created in God’s own image, are not each of us known and beloved by God.  Every single one of us, not one of us is missing from God’s handiwork.

In the words of Isaiah, God “gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless…. those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Fellow weavers, we are to mount up with wings like those of eagles.  With the strength of our Lord, we are to walk and run without weariness or faint.  We are to keep moving.

With Jesus as our exemplar and Paul as another faithful model, we are to go – to fearlessly travel  - to mission – to where people are, even where, particularly where, we might not want them to be.

In this first chapter of Mark that we’ve been reading since the beginning of this Epiphany season, we have Jesus exemplifying what God’s love is like manifested in the world.  It is: drawn toward repentance (a new mind about things); endures and overcomes temptation; calls/draws/compels people to follow; drives out evil; heals many; prays; and keeps moving - continually searching for and touching the presumed untouchable (as we shall hear next week).

Jesus launches into his adult ministry calling people to join him in weaving a new fabric of a new kingdom.  He demonstrates the power of God to shine light into dark places, driving out corrupting shadows and removing obstacles and ailments that have kept people separated and lonely.  He seeks out and finds people in need, no matter where they are.

He starts by teaching and healing in the places of worship (the synagogues); then takes his ministry into homes (healing and eating in intimate settings), and then on the roads and into the communities (to people on all shores – on all sides of the tracks).  As word of this healing ministry grows, more and more people seek this light.  Jesus is not content to fix the light on a lampstand and keep it shining in only once place – he says clearly that he has come to spread widely the good news of God’s kingdom so that all might receive the message.  Christ compels us to do the same – an essential part of our discipleship is to be missioners.

In today’s Gospel reading (Mark 1:29-39), we hear about our Lord entering a home, healing Simon’s mother-in-law, and continuing to heal others well into the evening – the whole town having gathered around this home seeking his light.  The next morning, rising before the sun, Jesus goes to a dark, deserted place to pray – he seems to do this a lot, to take time at critical junctures in his ministry to commune and discern with God through prayer.  His disciples hunt him down, presumably a little frustrated that he seems to be neglecting his duties.  “Everyone is searching for you” they say, pointing him back toward where they think he ought to be, where they want him to stay in order to meet with needs of the town’s folk who continue to gather.  Yet Jesus compels them to keep moving – “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” 

It time, it will become clear that he is commissioning people to carry on the work of his cause – equipping them with authority in this name and power through the Holy Spirit to continue in his restorative teaching and redemptive healing.  But it takes them awhile to live into this with faith and confidence.  We’re not so different.  It’s not so hard to see what we often want to keep Jesus domesticated here in our little house serving our needs.  Jesus, just stay here in our church, in our part of town where we want you.  Oh, how often we resist or ignore our call to follow Christ back out into new neighborhoods and places, sharing his message with people who are not quite where we’d like them to be.

This season of Epiphany we’ve also been hearing from one of best examples of an early missioner – Paul – as he writes correctively to an early community of believers in Corinth who are resisting and ignoring the fullness of their call.  In Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, he is lovingly reminded them to what it means to be a part of God’s mission through Christ.  Each and every single one of us is important and has a role to play in the new body – each thread is important to the new fabric.  We all have gifts that we are to use toward the service to which Jesus has commissioned us.  Through our baptism and unity in the Spirit we are both radically liberated and free (so many things that might have bound and restricted us have no hold any longer) and we are to be prudent and responsible in our actions, mindful of and compassionate towards those who are just coming into the fold and are still learning how to weave this new fabric of God’s kingdom.  In all cases, we need to keep moving.  Paul uses imagery of running a race and, in today’s reading for instance, the idea of winning – claiming people back as the prized creations they are in God’s unified family.  “Christ’s love compels us…” he says (2 Cor 5:14).

In today’s excerpt from his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes that he has “become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”  We might here ‘all things to all people’ as a negative, particularly in this political season when we’re reminded so readily how often people attempt to change their tunes and message depending on the audience, trying to be all things to all voters.  However, that’s not what Paul is intending.  Paul’s message will remain the same, but he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the good news across to people, no matter what situation they’re in.  Whether he needs to look and sound a little more like this group or that group… whether he needs to conform more strictly to one set of rules in one instance for some people, or bend them a bit in another instance with different people, Paul is fearless willing and able to be flexible, adaptable, and humble in meeting people ‘where they are’ in order to get his consistent point across about the gracious love of God and Christ’s desire to weave us all back into a unified and loving kingdom together.

Hear how the author of the The Message paraphrases Paul’s words (1 Cor 9: 19-23): “Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn't just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”

To re-cap… Isaiah reminds our ancestors and us that the amazingly ineffable creator of everything knows each created being by name and intends power to the weary and strength to the powerless.  The Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus Christ (God’s love manifest among us) comes to our places of worship, into our homes, and continues on out into the communities around us – constantly on the move, teaching and healing.  Paul is telling the early church in Corinth, and us today, that we are free to be creative and adaptable in relating to our all of our neighbors, no matter where they are (literally or figuratively), in order to form bonds with them so that we can share the good news of Christ’s redemptive power and God’s unifying plan.

ANECDOTE : I’m both a priest (administering our sacramental traditions in our church) and a missioner (a baptized Christian on the move, aiming to meet people where they are, outside these walls).  In my own journey with Jesus: I’ve been baptized and cultivated in a place of worship; nurtured as well as challenged to teach, learn, and heal in the intimacy of a home group; intentionally prepared to go forth and call new disciples – meeting people where they are physically, in coffee houses and bars as well as on-campuses and in churches… relating to people where they are figuratively, simple or advanced in their theology, not looking/sounding/believing like I do, perhaps questioning or skeptical about God, perhaps angry with the church or otherwise in the shadows of some darkness. 

DISCUSSION: So what?  What does this mean to us as a church in mission? To each of us in here?  Where are we on this journey?  How and where are you helping weave a new fabric? What threads are you called to find and include?  Have we been seduced into staying in our comfort zone?  Are we focused on the most important work?  Are we on the move with Christ Jesus? 

Following the examples of Jesus and Paul, we’re to be people (and a church) in mission.  Let’s not be tempted or lulled into repeating only the same patterns with the same community for perpetuity – God’s vision of the kingdom quilt is so bigger and much more colorful and varied than that.  And, as our Lord did after a full day of ministry, we to step-back now-n-then to reflect and discern in prayer… and then keep going to new places, finding and incorporating new threads, sharing the good news with ALL our neighbors.

We are called to mission, not just where we want people to be, but where people actually are…. to see beyond our own preferred patterns and recognize that every single thread in known by God.  No matter what its texture or color, it has a place in the divine fabric and we are compelling by Christ to weave with them all.

In God’s creation, there are no stray threads. Christ compels us to seek, find, heal and redeem all threads, together weaving them into a beautiful new creation in God’s loving image.

AMEN