Joy Comes in the Morning

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Staff Appreciation Sunday

 

 

Psalm 30:1-5; Mark 1:40-45

It was a Holy Communion last Sunday, was it not? Through Mark’s Gospel lesson last week, we found ourselves at the home of Simon Peter. And we found, in Simon’s mother-in-law, a resurrected minister of grace ready to serve as our mentor in the movement to “welcome home” the people of God. And we came to the table of sustenance in celebration of the joyful feast of the people of God . . .

. . . and then we left the building . . . and then we went to work.

Whether it is a paying job or a non-paying job, we get out of bed on a Monday morning—after a Sunday morning—and we get to work.

And so the question is this: is our Sunday morning communion strong enough to wake us up singing “joy comes in the morning,” in the words of Psalm 30, on the Monday after the Sunday when we are refreshed at the table of sustenance and reborn into the world as a new creation for justice and peace? Or is Monday morning more like a blaring alarm clock demanding our allegiance long before we are really ready to get out of bed? Or is it, more likely, a little of both?

Because today is the first annual “Staff Appreciation Sunday” here at Madison Square, I have been thinking a lot this week about what it means as a person of faith to get up in the morning and go to work—joyfully or begrudgingly—whether our work is explicitly for the church, or if we live out our calling in the so-called “secular sphere.” And of course I would argue that there is no separation between the secular and the sacred in the end. That all work is God’s work. That all places are God’s places. That the gifts and talents God has given us to use in God’s good creation are to the glory of God, no matter where or how we use them.

It was, after all, Jesus, himself, with his work of healing, who left the building with us at the end of our gospel lesson last week. He is on the move this Monday morning in our text this week. Moving from healing in the religious space of the synagogue, to healing in the private space of Simon’s home, to healing in the very public space of the plains of Galilee where people are going about the daily business of their lives. And where the outcast of the outcasts wanders morning after morning in search of a redemption that seems like it will never come.

This outcast of outcasts is a leper. Which in the New Testament means someone with any number of diseases that are highly contagious. Or highly disfiguring. Or just plain scary to the folks who don’t want to be sick. The leper’s disease is so scary that no one will touch him. And no one will give him a job. And no one will welcome him home. Because their tables will be contaminated, and their beds will be contaminated, and their pews will be contaminated. And so the leper wanders. Outcast. Begging. In a kind of open-air solitary confinement.

And having tried everything else, the leper hopes against hope that this man Jesus can help him. And he does. Because that is the job God has given Jesus to do.

2000 years after this 1^st century Monday morning workday for Jesus we can almost hear the healed man singing Psalm 30 to everyone he meets from here on out: God has drawn me up . . . we can hear him croon . . . as if out of the waters of baptism. I cried to God for help, and God healed me, he sings. Weeping may linger for the night. But joy comes in the morning.

And the man who was once a leper is now a preacher. And he spreads the word everywhere he goes about the healing ministry of Jesus, to the point that Jesus can no longer go into town openly but stays out in the country, where the people come to him from everywhere for the same kind of healing the leper found today and Simon’s mother found last week and every one of us found at this table of grace last Sunday, the moment we admitted we needed whatever healing Jesus could offer. The moment we said, “If you choose, you can make me well.” And God said, “I choose.” And we were made well.

Jesus, for his part, is angry. “Snorting with indignation” is how one translator describes him. Furious that the social order has devolved to the point that the walking wounded are left to suffer in silence. Cut off from human contact. Cut off from any means of providing for themselves and their families. Cut off from the work God gave them to do. Cut off in the end, even from God. Furious that his own ministry may now be at risk because he has touched this man who used to be a leper. Because it is all fine and good to raise up a hard-working woman in bed with a fever, but it is something quite different to put your hands on a leper.

Jesus has been contaminated, too, by touching this leper. Now his job is at risk. Who will want to come to him for healing now? Answer? Everyone. “People come to him from every quarter,” the gospel writer says. As soon as they hear there’s a place they can be healed, they come. From everywhere. And Jesus heals them. Because that is the job of Jesus.

It doesn’t seem to matter where Jesus goes or what he says or how he says it. The people are desperate for healing, and they will go wherever they have to go in order to find it. And it is as true for us today as it was for them back then. We want to sing with joy in the morning wherever we are: at church, at home, at work. We just do. And we should!

According to the Presbyterian tradition, the number one job of humankind—the whole point of our existence, really—is simply “to glorify God and enjoy God forever,” no matter what we do to earn a living. Glorify God. Enjoy God. Forever. Period. Now this may sound like a no-brainer, but don’t forget this job description for the human race comes from the same tradition that is linked with the myth of the “Protestant work ethic”! (As if somehow God wants us to suffer through day after day of drudgery on the job in order to garner the keys to the kingdom.)

The truth is, the bottom line is, God wants us to live in joy! God wants us to delight in the good gifts God has created within us. And God wants us to be healed from any illness or injustice that would keep us from offering those gifts to the world. God wants us to delight in our work of creation the same way God delights in the work of God’s creation. For 6 days, God works in joy. And on the 7^th day, God rests. And delights. And starts all over again the next day.

And so do we. If we are faithful.

That is, in the end, why Jesus heals the leper. That is why Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law. That is why Jesus heals you and me on these Sundays at the table when our communion binds us to God and one another. Because what we do here on Sunday morning is not really, in the end, about Sunday morning at all. It’s about Monday morning. With the alarm blaring. And the children screaming. And the bones creaking. And the dog barking. And the schoolbus honking. Because even then the sound of psalm 30 can rise from our lips: that God has lifted me up. God has healed me. God has restored me to life. And joy really does come with this morning.

I pray it may be so. Amen.