Beyond Barriers: Inside/Outside
Mark 1:29-34
Rev. Monte Marshall
This is the second Sunday of Lent and we’re on a journey together. We’re moving toward transformation, but there are barriers to confront along the way—barriers that hinder our progress, stunt our growth, and keep us stuck in the status quo. Our aim is to move beyond the barriers and follow Christ into a deeper and richer experience of life in all of its abundance.
To help us along the way, we’re using various word pairings to highlight barriers as well as the transformative possibilities beyond the barriers. The word pairings we’ve already addressed are these: Conformity/Transformation and Upstairs/Downstairs. Our focus this morning is Inside/Outside.
Let us pray. PRAYER.
What a joy it is to be inside this building this morning! I like it in here! I especially like being in this space—this sanctuary. I like what the word “sanctuary” means. It refers to a sacred place, to be sure, but it also denotes a safe place—a place of protection and refuge.
And to be honest with you, I like safe! In fact, when I’m inside this place with you, behind these thick, stone walls, I feel safe—or at least much safer than I do outside on the streets. Here on the inside with you, I feel like I’m among friends. Here on the inside with you, it’s easier for me to speak of God. Here on the inside with you, I don’t feel so self-conscious about being a follower of Jesus. Here on the inside with you, I’m not so afraid of embarrassment or ridicule or rejection.
And besides, I like what we do here on the inside of this building. We worship, we pray, we sing, we preach, we teach, we baptize, we marry, we bury, we laugh, we cry and we play. We connect with God, we connect with one another, we help one another, we support one another, and we hold one another accountable. Inside this building we offer handshakes and hugs, food and health care, showers, and clean clothes.
And I like what happens as a result of everything we do inside these walls: Transformation happens, lives are changed, and lives are enhanced. Our community is impacted with unconditional love and justice because of what happens inside this place. The world is a better place because of what happens inside this place.
But here’s the deal: These walls that protect us—this sanctuary that makes us feel safe—all of this inside space that is so familiar and comfortable to us—can also become barriers that limit our impact beyond these walls. This is especially true when these exterior barriers are reinforced by interior, psychological and emotional barriers like fear.
Now with regard to our scripture reading, can we imagine how Mark’s presentation of the gospel would have been different if the transformative work of Jesus had been limited to the inside space of the synagogue? It would have been a radically different story, even though in this morning’s text, Mark tells us about a person’s life being transformed inside the synagogue at Capernaum on the Sabbath.
Bear in mind that the synagogue was sacred space. Inside its walls, people prayed, and studied the scriptures. There was preaching and teaching. In fact, in this morning’s story, Jesus was teaching. And the people inside the synagogue were spellbound because he taught with such authority.
But then, the service was interrupted when “a person with an unclean spirit” appeared inside the synagogue. Now I preached on this text several weeks ago, so I won’t spend time revisiting the details of this story. Suffice it to say, that transformation came to this tormented person’s life inside the synagogue as he encountered the power of God at work in Jesus. And the people were amazed so “the news of Jesus spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.”
But Jesus wasn’t done for the day. In Mark’s story, on that same Sabbath day, Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon and Andrew, with the disciples, James and John—but his work wasn’t done. Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a fever. When Jesus was told about her illness, he didn’t refuse to help her even though he had already had an eventful day inside the synagogue. Instead, Jesus went over to her, took her by the hand, and helped her up, and the fever left her. Then she went about her work—restored to her rightful place in the community, but with a special significance.
In Mark’s gospel, this is the first resurrection story because Jesus didn’t just help her up as our translation says; he literally “raised her up.” The Greek word used here is the same word used later in Mark’s gospel in reference to the resurrection of Jesus. And please notice: This woman’s resurrection—her transformation—didn’t take place inside the synagogue, but outside the synagogue in a home.
And Jesus didn’t stop there. The story says that “After sunset, as evening drew on, [people] brought to Jesus a crowd of folks whose lives were a mess—people who were ill and people who were not in their right minds. In fact, the story says that “Everyone in town crowded around the door.”
And Jesus didn’t send them away. He didn’t lock the door and hide in the house. He didn’t escape out the back door. This suggests to me that Jesus wasn’t overwhelmed by the need, or afraid of catching someone else’s illness, or terrified at the thought of being around folks who were not in their right minds.
And notice this: Jesus didn’t tell this crowd of afflicted folks to show up at the next synagogue service if they wanted his help. Even if this had been Jesus’ response, I doubt that many of these “ill and demon possessed folks” in the story would have shown up. Their ailments would have kept them away and on the outside of the synagogue.
So what’s the point? Well, the mission of Jesus is also the mission of those of us who follow Jesus. Like Jesus, we’re to be agents of transformation both on the inside and on the outside. This mission requires “inside work” and “outside work.”
And quite frankly, it’s the outside work that scares me. For example, I’ve told you before that while I was serving as the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Pflugerville, I made an effort to move beyond the “inside work” that I had become so comfortable with, and toward the “outside work” that I knew God was calling me to. But to make the move, I had to confront the fear that was a barrier to my transformation and my full embrace of Christ’s mission in the world.
So with fear and trembling, I signed up to participate in a 72-hour retreat on the streets of Austin sponsored by Mobile Loaves and Fishes. During those 72 hours, we would be living with our brothers and sister on the streets and quite frankly, I was terrified at the prospect. I couldn’t take money. I couldn’t take a cell phone. All I was allowed to carry was a back-pack and a sleeping roll. And as you might imagine, this was way beyond my comfort zone!
Now when I informed the congregation of my plans, and invited others to join me, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one afraid of this “outside work.” Members of the congregation came up to me with furrowed brows and worried looks, and told me to be careful. Several of them said to me: “Are you sure you want to do this?” The one guy who signed up to go on the retreat with me, was a dear friend whose only reason for signing up was to keep an eye on me and keep me safe.
Well, both of us experienced transformation on the retreat. We discovered that our fears were overblown, and that they only served to separate us from our brothers and sisters on the streets who had their own gifts to share with us.
A breakthrough came for me on the last day of the retreat. It was on Wednesday of Holy Week. We were sitting on the grass at Wooldridge Park in downtown Austin. After the closing devotional, I sought out a homeless brother and confessed my fear to him. I asked for his forgiveness. And as he reached out his arms and embraced me, he gave it to me. “I forgive you,” he said.
My brothers and sister, as our church moves forward into the future, we’re going to be challenged to embrace both the “inside work” and the “outside work.” The outlines of this task have been laid out in the strategic plan adopted by our congregation at the end of 2014.
Over the course of this year, we’ll be taking steps to strength and enhance our “inside work.” But we will also be exploring ways to reach out to the growing number of young adults moving into the downtown area, but this will require “outside work” to build relationships with our new neighbors on their own turf and in ways that are meaningful to them. We’re going to be stretching beyond a campus-centered approach for spiritual formation groups and toward a home-based model that takes advantage of the presence of our people throughout the city. And on my personal agenda, I plan to offer by the end of the year, our own version of a street retreat to help break down barriers that hinder transformation. This will require “outside work.”
In the meantime, I invite your attention to this week’s Experiment in Transformation. We are invited to identify one challenging, barrier-breaking step we can take to express the love of God in word or deed outside the church building—and then act to make it happen.
So I admit it: I like safe! But my brothers and sisters, it’s time to move beyond safe. It’s time to move beyond fear. It’s time to move beyond the barriers to embrace both the inside work and the outside work. In the process, transformation will happen in us, in others, and in our church! And may God help us! Thanks be to God! Amen.