Does anyone listen?
Date: February 12, 2012
Liturgical Sunday: Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
RCL Scripture: Psalm 30; 2 Kings 5:1-14; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45
Sermon Title: Does anyone listen?
Knox Presbyterian [audio:https://wordsfromthemiddle.ca/wp-content/uploads/120212_-_Knox.mp3|titles=Does anyone listen?]
St. Mark’s Presbyterian [audio:https://wordsfromthemiddle.ca/wp-content/uploads/120212_-_St_Marks.mp3|titles=Does anyone listen?]
I’m sorry for how long it has taken to get this up on the blog.
Sometimes life just gets in the way of plans.
Blessings,
Barry
While listening to this I was struck by how the requirement for miracle was so mundane on the part of the recipient. Dip in a dirty river, go and offer sacrifice. It got me thinking how practically all miracles involve us doing the normal with unexpectedly abnormal results. Moses raised his staff, something I’m guessing he’d done a time or two before, and the Red Sea parted. At the wedding, they brought out washing jars. The blind man had to wash his eyes. Peter had to walk to Jesus.
As Naaman’s servant points out, they weren’t asked to do some grand thing, just a mundane, maybe even embarrassingly mundane, thing. Perhaps that’s why we see so few miracles today. Not because they don’t happen fairly regularly, but because we have been co-opted into believing the tent meeting-televangelists spiel that you have to come to the front, have a grand prayer over you, be struck on the forehead, etc etc. When really God is asking us to do the normal thing in faith.