“Take My Hand” – SUNDAY, February 7, 2021

REV. DR. ELIZABETH CUNNINGHAM

Stouffville United Church

Jesus moves from the private to the public and from the public to the private. Synagogue to house. Deserted place to towns. He is always moving to the next thing. He is moving forward, into the next day, the next town, the next encounter. Jesus says to his disciples, “Let us go on to the neighbouring towns … for that is what I came out to do.” Simon wants Jesus to stay in his house and heal all who come to the door. But Jesus knows he is called to something else, to move into the next day, the next town, the next encounter. To the next thing.

When I imagine this passage, I find myself standing in a crowd, and Jesus is in front of me, maybe 10 or 15 feet away. He is wearing a brown tunic, leather sandals on his feet. His hair is long. His hands are strong. His back is to me. But I can hear his voice. I hear him clearly say, I’m going on to the next town, for this is what I came to do.’ And then he moves off. Some around me don’t know whether they should stay or go with him. A few break off and catch up with him. There is mumbling around me. Why is he going? Things were going really well here. Look at all the good he was doing – all the healing. Why is he leaving? My eyes follow him, my heart follows him. But my feet stay rooted where I stand. It’s like the heart longs to follow, but the feet don’t move.

This is something that is familiar to us as followers of Jesus. So many of our Prayers of Confession in our worship say exactly this – forgive me for not following you when I heard your voice, when I turned the other way. We could defend this resistance to follow Jesus by saying we like where we am. We are doing ministry here that is good and helpful. When we feel this tug to move in response to God’s leading to something different, we feel our resistance to that tug. And we struggle. When we are rooted in one place, it’s because we are content to stay in that one place. It’s comfortable. It’s what we know. But the downside to this is that we can become complacent, or go on ‘auto-pilot’.

There is a sense too that as a church, we can become stuck in the ways that we look at the world around us. We can go on ‘auto-pilot’, doing the same thing we’ve always done, for years. And while good ministry, it has stayed more or less the same. We have outreach programs that have stayed the same for decades. We think about our neighbourhoods in the same way that we have for decades. It’s hard to move past the things that we know and love and are a part of us. Is Jesus calling us to move forward into something different than what we’ve always done?
February is Black History Month in Canada. In 1995, Dr. Jean Augustine presented a motion in Parliament to designate February as Black History Month in Canada. Jean was the first Black woman elected to the Parliament of Canada. “Twenty-five years later, Dr. Augustine continues to dedicate her life to addressing the systemic barriers and racial inequalities that persist in the Canadian education system with the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community & Diaspora at York University.” As a church, we celebrate the accomplishments of black people during the month of February. But come the months of March, April, May and June, where has that conversation gone? Back to the filing cabinet, to be pulled out again next February? We have had conversations about racism in the church, and we have read about the oppression experienced by people of colour, black and indigenous people. And we see the tears, we hear the pain. But do we go farther than the seeing and the hearing of the tears and the pain? Austin Channing Brown writes, “In too many churches and organizations, listening to the hurt and pain of people of color is the end of the road, rather than the beginning.” We read and we talk. But do we move?

The heart is willing but the feet don’t move.

Two years ago, many of us were enthralled with Greta Thunberg’s worldwide crusade warning the world about the impending global climate crisis. Many of us read her story and then put it away. She is on week 129 of her Friday Climate Crisis strikes. She is now 18 years old, not 16. We read and we talk. But do we move? The heart is willing but the feet don’t move.

We’ve got work to do. And it will mean more than following with our heart. It will mean moving our feet. It will mean getting past our comfort place. It will mean learning more than what we’ve already learned. It will ask us to change. It will ask us to dismantle systems. It will ask us to serve in a way we’ve never served before.

How do we move forward, the way that Jesus did, with intent, with determination, to use our voice, our hands, our feet to dismantle racism, to restore climate conditions, to get housing for the homeless, to open up warming centers, to give people a living wage income, to give health care workers full-time employment, to have safe drinking water in indigenous communities?

When Jesus said, I am going to the neighbouring town, he went. We can’t just look down that road with only our heart. We have to pick up our feet and move to the next place. We cannot read a book or two on racism and call it a day. We cannot watch a documentary or two on climate crisis and call it a day. We cannot take a few cans to a food bank and call it a day. A commentary wrote, “The gospel for this day reminds us that the story of Jesus is always on the move and will not allow any of us hearers to remain who or where we are.”

Jesus went into the room where Simon’s mother-in-law lay, deathly ill with a fever. He took her hand. And he lifted her up. And she was healed. The word translated as ‘lifted her up’ is the Greek verb egeiro, (eh-gare-oh) “to get up”, the same verb that is used for Jesus’ resurrection in Mark 16:6, “Do not be alarmed … He has been raised.” Jesus took her hand, and raised her up, and she was healed. He gave her new life. And she began to serve. She had work to do, and not just cook a meal, or clean the house work, but work to do, God’s work, as in serving God, as in ministry.

We’ve got work to do. And it will mean more than following with our heart. It will mean moving our feet. It will mean getting past our comfort place. It will mean learning more than what we’ve already learned. It will ask us to change. It will ask us to dismantle systems. It will ask us to serve in a way we’ve never served before.

I see Jesus ahead of me. His figure is slightly obscured by the people who have begun to follow him. I don’t see his face because he is looking ahead at where he needs to go. But I clearly hear his voice. “Let us go on.”

Help my feet to move, to follow where my heart is leading. Help me to follow him.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

1. Celebrate Black History Month with the Honourable Jean Augustine | CBC News, accessed February 6, 2021.
2. Austin Channing Brown, I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (New York: Convergent, 2018), 170.
3. Workingpreacher.org 2009
4. Feasting on the Word Commentary, Year B, Vol 1, Theological Perspective, 334.