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"Salem.....Where a Warm Welcome Awaits You"
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SEARCHING
(The following sermon was preached by Pastor Barbara Melosh on February 5th, 2006.) By any measure, Jesus’ first day of ministry is extraordinary. We heard last week about his teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, where the congregation was impressed by his authority and then amazed when he confronts and drives out a demon. This reading continues Mark’s account of that same day. After church, he and the four disciples go to Simon and Andrew’s house, where Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law (and she gets up and fixes dinner for them). That evening, the house is mobbed—Jesus’ fame has spread like wildfire and many come to him for healing. Galvanized by his teaching, healing, and exorcisms, crowds of people are pursuing him—in Capernaum, Mark tells us, “the whole city is gathered at the door” where Jesus is staying. After just one day of ministry, crowds are pressing in on him, and Jesus flees for refuge—he gets up before first light to pray in a dark and deserted place. The disciples come right after him—“hunt him,” Mark says. And when they find him, they announce breathlessly, “Everyone is searching for you.” It’s enough to make a 21st century Christian a little wistful—if not downright envious. Ah, where are those crowds now? The urgency and eagerness of these seekers in Mark—where do we feel that urgency today, or see that eagerness in others? These days, many of our churches are dark and deserted places, and every mainline denomination in the United States is losing numbers. And yet, we are also a nation of seekers—“believers, not belongers,” as one observer has put it. That is, even as religious commitment declines, Americans continue to identify themselves as believers, and many are actively engaged in spiritual quests even as they avoid religious affiliation. “Everyone is searching for you.” This is a story about seekers outside the church. It’s a story about the seekers in our pews right now—the seeker in you. And it’s a story about the God who comes looking for us. “What are you looking for?” It’s the question Jesus asks in the gospel of John, when curious seekers are following him. It’s the question some churches ask seekers or inquirers who are coming to be baptized or to join. Well, I can’t speak for all seekers, but I can speak from my own experience as a seeker, and if I may say so, I have credentials. I was raised in the Lutheran church, but not a member of any church for some twenty years. And yet when I look back at that time, I realize that I was in and out of many churches in those years—searching for something I couldn’t quite name. I attended a lot of churches in my “unchurched” years, some only once and others for a time, usually alone but sometimes with a friend. Sometimes I didn’t make it through the service; halfway through I’d flee in confusion. Sometimes, I’d sit there feeling bored, alienated, or angry. Other times, a familiar hymn would flood me with longing and I’d find myself in tears. Years went by. I got established in my first career, teaching and writing. I got married, and Gary and I adopted our son Mike. And finally, in the late 1980s, I went back to church again, and this time I stayed. Since, many people have asked me why I came back. It’s hard for me to answer that. Sometimes, I say, “mid-life crisis.” It’s a formulaic answer, but maybe there’s something to it. I had a life full of blessing, and I knew it—I had a job that let me teach and write, a life rich in love and friendship—and yet, I felt something missing. A “God-shaped hole,” some people call it. Or as St. Augustine put it, in words written many centuries ago: “You have made us for yourself, God, and so our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Sometimes I say, “the English department drove me to it.” I was having a hard time on the job, poisoned with stress and anger. It was making me sick and I knew it. I stumbled back to church, hoping to find healing there—gospel medicine. Becoming a parent was part of it. I knew that God loved Mike whether or not we went to church. But I took Mike to church so he could get to know people who loved God back—so that he could see for himself what it meant to hope and trust in God. Losing my father led me back, too. His memorial service was in our home church, the place where I had grown up and been confirmed, the place I had loved and the place I had left. Sitting there in the pew, I felt held up by the power of ritual, the strong language about life and death. And then there were the former organist and his wife, long retired, who had driven for hours to mourn with us. With their words of comfort and warm embraces, I felt the healing power of a church community— a new sense of what it meant to be part of the body of Christ. “Everyone is searching for you.” I came back to church searching for God. I brought a lot of baggage with me—years of restless questions, worries about doctrine and whether I could believe what I thought I had to believe, anxiety about faith and whether I had it, or had enough of it; where I could get it, or get more of it. I was searching for God. But what happened was not what I expected—God found me. Week after week, I listened to the word read and the word preached, shared communion at the table, talked and listened to other people in adult study, tried to pray in words and then started listening for God instead. And gradually I found myself letting go of some of that anxious searching, trusting that God would come to me. Much later, I found the words for this experience in the Lutheran confessions—which remind us that faith is not our work, but a gift from God, the word that comes to us. God finds us. These days, I come here every week to lead worship and to worship with you. And every week, I bring with me my own story of presence and absence in church. I remember all the deep feeling and need I brought with me—that I bring with me still. And I look at you and wonder what you are looking for, this Sunday. For some, maybe it is the peace of this place—the silence that is becoming a rare luxury in our lives, so full of canned music, electronic beeps, cell phone ringers, squeal of brakes and roar of traffic. The beauty of sacred space-- the light falling through stained glass windows, the loving detail of carved wood and embroidered linens, glowing cup. Maybe it’s the music—a place where people make music together, raising our voices in song; a place where music breaks us open, and the spirit rushes in. We come looking for healing, like the people of Galilee who were searching for Jesus. Healing from disease, strength and patience in suffering. Relief from the crushing weight of depression. Freedom from addiction. Healing of broken relationships. Comfort in mourning, a place to cry together and to wait in hope for God to bind up our broken hearts. Healing from guilt and shame, as we receive forgiveness and take hold of the life that really is life. “Everyone is searching for you.” When Jesus hears this from the disciples, he hits the road—leaves Capernaum to spread the good news in neighboring towns—in the marketplaces, the fields and vineyards, in the houses and at the dinner tables of Galilee. He leaves Capernaum to go out and find us, here in South Baltimore. Follow him, the one who has searched you and found you. We leave church every Sunday with an assignment. The assisting minister gives it out at the door—Go in peace, serve the Lord. Go in peace, share the good news. Go out to your neighbors, tell your story, and share the good news.
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