The Missing Years
A sermon on Mark 5:24-43, by Dwight A. Moody
Providence Baptist Church, Hendersonville NC
I wrote an email on May 28, 2021, to the worship team here at Providence. I outlined my preaching plan for June: Jesus and the spirits (especially evil spirits), on June 6; Jesus and the stories (especially those related to the kingdom of God) on June 13; Jesus and the storms on June 20; and Jesus and the sick on June 27—today! This preaching plan allows us to keep our focus on Jesus. Jesus is important and popular even when we are common and controversial. Many people admire Jesus who have mixed feelings about the church. Gandhi is famed for saying, “I like your Christ but I do not like your Christians.” At a time when we Christians have become unpopular in America, Jesus remains a compelling figure for many people. My friend Tom Krattenmaker is one such person. He is a publicist, a journalist and an author. Today is his birthday! His book Confessions of a Secular Jesus-Follower gives fine expression to this fascination with Jesus.
So today, and every Sunday this summer I am preaching on Jesus. But little did I know that my preparation to preach today, on Jesus and the sick, would be a powerful and very personal occasion for the intersection of what we believe about Jesus and what we know about life.
On the one hand, we have these stories of Jesus: an unnamed boy of 12 near to death and an unnamed woman sick for 12 years. The man is named: Jarius. Around these three minor characters are the surging crowds of people and the cohort of disciples traveling with Jesus. But Jesus is the main character. He heals the sick, raises the dead, releases the captive, announces good news all around, and calls us to follow him. “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”
On the other hand, we know about life. The sick die, the dead are buried, the captives stay behind bars, and too much bad news prevails. Four weeks ago my brother called from Edwardsville, Illinois. “Rana has taken a turn for the worse,” he said, referring to his wife and her two-plus-year battle with cancer. “We are taking her to Houston.”
Houston is the medical capital of the world: more medical students, more medical employees, and more medical facilities than any other city in the world. And it has the MD Anderson Cancer Center. I know personally four people who have been examined or treated there just in the last year. People come from all over the world. My brother said, after they arrived, “I don’t think I have seen a single Anglo person!”
The news they received was not good. “We cannot help your wife. Return home and call hospice.” Episodes like this bring into sharp focus what we believe about Jesus, the one who heals all our diseases (according to Psalm 103) and what we know about life.
The Bible describes this intersection. Matthew 13 records the occasion when Jesus goes home to Nazareth. He preaches and arouses suspicion and doubt. Even his family were skeptical. Their friends and neighbors said, “We know Jesus and his mother and his brother and his sisters. Where did he get all this he is saying and doing?” They even name the brothers: Joseph, James, Judah and Simon. The sisters, again, are unnamed. The summary of the experience reads like this: “He could do not many miracles because of their unbelief.” There, in his home town, what we know about Jesus—miracle worker, Torah teacher, kingdom proclaimer, risen Lord—ran headlong into a common slice of life: doubt, suspicion, and rejection.
I encountered the same reality when I visited my brother and his very ill wife last week. I confess: when I entered Rana’s room, took her hand, and began to speak, I was full of unbelief. I believed in Jesus, in these stories, in the presence of the Risen lord, but I did not believe Jesus was going to heal her, that Jesus could heal her. What I knew about life overwhelmed what I believed about Jesus.
I read the 23rd psalm; I recited the Lord’s prayer; then I did something I had never done: I prayed the Hail Mary. Rana and her children are all devout Catholics. This is their prayer. It reflects what they believe about Mary, the mother of Jesus. I recited it for her, thinking it would bring her comfort and encouragement. I recited it because of these lines in the prayer.
Hail Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the time of our death.
But the test of Jesus is not what he can do for us when we are dying, but what he does for us when we are living: not when we are desperate, but when we are deciding day by day how to live, what to sing, when to speak, why we live. how much to give. In a real sense, it is all those years leading up to the end that give opportunity for Jesus to work his miracle in our lives.
John Prine has a song called, The Missing Years. He was curious about that long period of silence between his 12-year-old coming-out engagement in the temple described by the gospel writers and the launch of his public ministry with the baptism by John the wilderness prophet. What Jesus did from age 12 to age 30 we do not know. We know only the last one or two years of his life: why they arrested him and how he died.
But for most of us, it is these missing years that are most important, the long haul of life as we live and learn, love and care, sing and dance, work and rest. In these years, we work out our salvation and press toward the mark of the high calling we have in Christ. In these years, we walk by faith and serve in love. In these years, we read the Word and pray the Prayer. In these years, we deny ourselves, take up our cross, our task, our vocation, our calling, and follow Jesus.
This morning a friend of mine posted this on FB. I want to read it to you.
Kitty Keaton had one of the most gentle and compassionate spirits I have ever known. It was my honor and a great blessing to work beside her day after day for years at Central State Hospital. Her faith touched everything she did as a social worker there–and later when she worked at the prison. I have sat in my office, prayed aloud with her, and cried when our hearts were broken. Sometimes, it seemed no matter what we were able to do for patients, it wasn’t enough.
Tonight, as Kevin and I were having dinner, I received a call from her husband, Larry, telling me Kitty had passed away from pancreatic cancer after a valiant battle against the disease.
The world was better because Kitty was here. I am better because she poured so much of herself into me.
Jesus did not rescue Kitty Keaton from the scourge of cancer; but Jesus throughout those missing years redeemed her life, filled her with the Spirit of God, and empowered her to be the hands of Jesus, the feet of Jesus, the voice of Jesus to people in all walks of life, year after year.
That is the Jesus we worship and follow and call Risen Lord. He forgives our sin, redeems us from the pit, fills our life with good things, good gifts, and good opportunity to do good for all people as we meet them.
Come follow me is no promise to escape heart disease, cancer, Covid, or the collapse of a condo building. It rains on the just and the unjust. But in sunshine and in rain, in life and in death, we can deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. So that when we come to the end of our journey, even laying motionless on a Hospice bed, we can say with Jesus, who died a lonely, forsaken death, “It is finished!” And we will hear in response the voice of God, “You done good. Enter now the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
(June 2021)
