Year B
Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

Essential workers…  who are they…  there’s a little bit of blurriness in my timeline…  but early in the pandemic…  perhaps in March or April…  it seemed they were all of the doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers who took care of those sickened by COVID-19…  they were the supply clerks and ward clerks and custodial staff who kept cabinets stocked and medical records updated and hospital rooms clean and sanitized…  they were the nurses and staff in long term care retirement communities who cared for our loved ones…  who scheduled video visits when in-person visits were too dangerous…  who held their hands as they lay dying…

But on May 1st…  and in order to further protect the public health…  Governor Whitmer issued Executive Order No. 2020-70…  it temporarily banned those activities which didn’t directly sustain life…  and it specified those which did…  and so in addition to medical and public health…  and environmental health…  it included things like food and agriculture…  energy…  water and wastewater…  transportation and logistics…  public works…  communications and information technology and news media…  law enforcement…  critical manufacturing…  financial services…  and chemical supply chains…

Some of these activities don’t seem to impact our lives…  but we’ve got to eat…  and we need electricity and heat…  and many of us have been dependent on the internet for work…  for news and entertainment… for access to our bank accounts… things that if they’re not available…  can make sheltering in place much more difficult…

Most recently…  essential workers may be the men and women who manufacture vaccines…  and transport them…  and unpack them…  and who answer the phones and answer our questions about vaccinations…  and who schedule the vaccines and administer the vaccines and who keep an eye on us for fifteen minutes to make sure none of us has an allergic reaction…  essential workers…

Now I’d bet good money…  that all of us were all raised to say “Please.” and “Thank You.”…  but over the past eleven months…  I’ve become so much more aware of how many people serve me…  that I need these people…  that without them I couldn’t accomplish the dozens…  perhaps hundreds of things I need to do…  things named by the Governor to be really essential…

A few weeks ago…  I shared something that Martin Luther King, Jr…  wrote in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail…  he said…  in a real sense…  all life is inter-related…  all of us are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…  tied…  in a single garment of destiny…  that whatever affects one directly…  affects all indirectly…

It’s the same kind of insight Paul had when he wrote in 1Corinthians 12…  about how the foot cannot say…  because I am not a hand…  I do not belong to the body…  or how the ear cannot say…  because I am not an eye…  I do not belong to the body…

On the contrary…  the members of the body that seem to be weaker…  like grocery store clerks…  are indispensable…  and those members of the body that we think less honorable…  like migrant farm workers…  we clothe with greater honor…  and our less respectable members…  like sanitation workers…  are treated with greater respect… whereas our more respectable members…  like our elected officials…  do not need this…  but God has so arranged the body…  giving the greater honor to the inferior member…  that there may be no dissension within the body…  that the members may have the same care for one another…  so that if one member suffers…  all suffer with him…  and if one member is honored…  all rejoice with her…

Jesus went to Simon Peter’s home…  and Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed and sick with a fever…  we don’t know the name of this woman…  but the fact that she was living with Simon and Andrew likely meant she was a widow…  a person of no value…  but they told Jesus about her…  and immediately…  he went…  and because of her inherent value…  he healed and lifted her up…  and the Greek word from which the phrase…  lifted her up comes…  doesn’t just mean helped her to stand up…  it’s related to resurrection…  it means to arouse from the sleep of death…  now of course this woman wasn’t physically dead…  but Jesus raised her to a new life…  and not simply to fulfill a weaker and less honorable subservient role of making sandwiches…  but to the kind of life…  to which every single one of us are called…  a life of service…  it’s what Jesus meant when he said that he came not to be served…  but to serve…  and he raised her to this same kind of new life…

It saddens me that we have been unable…  to be together in this place…  and aside from missing each other…  seeing each other…  worshipping and singing together…  shaking each others’ hands or hugging each other at The Peace…  and chatting with each other over real coffee and cake…  many of us think of this place…  as the place…  perhaps the only place…  where we can encounter God…  but Jesus was in Simon Peter’s home…  and Jesus is in our homes too…  and while we’re all still sheltering in place as much as we’re able…  trying to keep the COVID demon at bay…  the love and invitation to wholeness that Jesus offers is in every home…  in every house…  even in the houses where our elected officials meet and work…

So to answer the question…  who is essential…  everyone is…  there’s no one who’s not…  we are all each of us God’s children…  different as the stars which God counts and names…  undeserving of hate speech…  of conspiracy theories like Jewish lasers in outer space starting wildfires in California…  underserving of overt threats of violence…  or even death…

After sunset…  when it was a new day…  and when the whole town gathered around the door…  Jesus healed many who were sick with various diseases… and cast out many demons…  and he would not permit the demons to speak…  because they knew just who he was…  and it makes me wonder…  which voices of division and violence in our time…  are silenced…  because they know the truth…  and which…  because they are afraid of being exposed by the truth…  double down to protect themselves…

Dealing with and healing spiritual demons can be exhausting…  and I imagine Jesus feeling pulled thin…  drained…  like when the hemorrhaging woman touched the fringe of his cloak in Luke 8:43-46…  and he noticed that power had gone out from him…  no wonder he got up…  and went off on his own to a deserted place for a while to recharge…  and pray…  

And in those quiet times…  God gives power to the faint…  both to Jesus…  and to us…  and strengthens the powerless…  because those who wait for God shall mount up with wings like eagles…  shall run and not be weary…  shall walk and not faint…

When we’re healed…  we move from unhealthy to healthy…  from dysfunctional to functional…  we cross over boundaries…  so I ask…  what does it feel like to be healed…  and do we know what to do with our healings…  do we know how to respond…  and not just to physical healings…  but to spiritual and psychological ones as well…  what does it look like…  and what would it look like for this country to be healed…

After he cured so many…   Jesus said…  let’s go on to the neighboring towns…  and throughout Galilee…  so that I may proclaim the message there also…  for that is what I came out to do…  and after being raised to new life…  I’m certain that this is what we…  as we are able…  are called out to do too… Holy God…  make it so…