There are healing and resurrection stories in both The Narrative Lectionary and the Revised Common Lectionary this week. In these stories, Jesus does not seem to have any method for deciding who gets his help. He responds to the servant of an official in the occupying Roman army, to the only son of a bereft widow, and to the mother in-law of one of his first followers. There is no screening based on age, occupation, or pre-existing health conditions. Jesus simply heals all of them.
How will you tell these healing stories this week? Or has some other scripture text claimed your attention for this sermon? You’re invited to use this conversation thread to share your thoughts, your questions, your half-formed ideas, and drafts of your sermon in whatever state of completion it may be. Here is a place where we can brainstorm together and encourage one another as we prepare to preach.
Barbara Bruneau is a retired Lutheran pastor, living in southeastern Minnesota. She is a knitter, a weaver, and a very occasional blogger at An Explosion of Texture and Color.
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I debated over the texts for quite awhile. What finally jumped out at me were all the nature images in Psalm 147 and the Isaiah 40 text. God at work in creation. Too much stuff going on in the world right now. Conflict everywhere. Surprisingly, Mary Austin’s prayer for the day and my sermon title follow the same lines: “Let’s All Take a Deep Breath.”
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That sounds like a nice approach. I was thinking recently about how we can determine what is constant and reliable with everything seeming to change around us. Creation, for many people, is that constant element in our lives.
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I posted in another forum that I’m having a very hard time with healing stories- especially the healing of a servant/slave so he can go on being enslaved, and raising someone from the dead. All this in the midst of Black History month and so many losses due to covid! Lots of wrestling, but at this point my focus is on the relationship between healing and disruption. Any wisdom welcome!
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That’s a very important distinction, that the healing of the servant’s physical ailment is not a complete restoration to wholeness. There is clearly still much more work to be done. And the fact that the text appears in Black History Month seems to simply add insult to injury.
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