A sermon given by the Reverend Sarah Grondin, at St. Jude’s Anglican Church, Oakville, on Wednesday, January 14, 2025.
I speak to you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Most of us begin our day with a plan. We usually have some idea of what needs to be done, where we need to go, and how much time we think it should all take. Calendars are filled, alarms are set, and lists are made. And if you have ADHD like me, those lists are immediately lost out into the ether, where all the other important documents seem to end up as well.
And then despite our careful scheduling—almost inevitably—something happens. A phone call we didn’t expect. A traffic jam we didn’t plan for. A knock at the door by someone who needs our help when we had plans to be elsewhere.
We call these moments interruptions. And usually, we mean that negatively. Interruptions feel like obstacles to the “real” work of the day. They slow us down, throw us off course, and leave us frustrated or anxious. We pray for efficiency in our day, not for interruptions.
But I’d like to suggest that there are two ways that we can look at those unexpected and unplanned moments. We can see those interruptions as being exactly that… things that are interfering with whatever it is that we’ve planned to be doing, as things that distract us from our intended purpose or goal, as things that are getting in the way.
Or, we can take the opposite view and see these unexpected and unplanned moments not as “interruptions,” but as an important and even integral part of our day. What if the things that we consider annoyances and interruptions to our lives, were really an in-breaking of grace?
Our Gospel passage from today presents us with this possibility… Jesus is faced with interruptions all the time, and rather than respond with frustration or anger, Jesus offers his whole self to everyone who seeks him. He’s interrupted constantly by individuals, the disciples, and entire crowds.
Everyone is clamouring for Jesus’ attention, and he just can’t seem to get away from it all, even when he tries to seek out places of quiet and solace. But Jesus never treats these unplanned moments as distractions. He doesn’t say, “Not now,” or “This isn’t on the schedule.” Instead, he stops. He listens. He turns toward the interruption—and grace flows.
At the beginning of our Gospel reading today we’re told that as soon as Jesus and the disciples left the synagogue where Jesus had been teaching and healing, they went to Simon’s house. Once they arrive at Simon’s house, they discover Simon’s mother-in-law is sick, so Jesus heals her, and then they’re bombarded by the crowds bringing people to the house to be healed.
Mark tells us that the whole city was gathered around the door of Simon’s house. Now Mark likes a little hyperbole, so it probably wasn’t the whole city, but he wants to convey that it was a lot of people and Jesus was kept very busy for a long time. And despite the huge crowd and all the demands on his time and power, Jesus doesn’t turn anyone anyway. He doesn’t tell them to come back tomorrow.
Eventually the line up turns to a trickle of people, and Jesus has satisfied all those who were seeking him. Then we’re told in the early morning while it was still dark, Jesus went to a deserted place to pray and rest. In order for Jesus to have some quiet time, he had to sneak away in the dark to a place where no one else was.
But what happens? Even that doesn’t work for long. The disciples hunted him down and told him that everyone was searching for him… Jesus had his moment of quiet and prayer and we’re back to action again. Jesus replies, “Let us go to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do,” and they go off throughout Galilee proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Jesus’ whole ministry seems to be a series of interruptions. Every time he seeks some quiet time alone to rest and pray, someone interrupts him—someone needs his help, his healing, or his teaching.
You see the thing is… Jesus knows that it’s important to have quiet time, to rest and to pray. Because without quiet time to recharge, we would just burn out. But he also knows that all of those interruptions that he faces are the core of his ministry and his mission. In fact, you might say that instead of being interruptions they’re in fact what it’s all about.
It’s those unplanned moments where people reach out to Jesus in desperation, like the woman who had suffered from hemorrhaging for 12 years because she believed that he had the power to heal her, that we see the compassion of our God.
It’s the chance encounters with people like the blind man at Jerico, and the man with the withered hand, where Jesus was in the midst of one thing, and suddenly there’s an in-breaking of grace where he has a chance to demonstrate once again the power of God and the importance of lifting up those on the margins.
It’s the unexpected conversations, like the one Jesus has with the woman at the well, where he came for a drink of water, and instead changed a woman’s life, that demonstrate the power of showing up and listening to people whose voices are often ignored.
All of these “interruptions” that Jesus encounters provide us with some of the greatest lessons in scripture, and I don’t think it would’ve had the same effect if it was all pre-planned in Jesus’ papyrus day-book. There’s something special about the immediacy of these interactions, and the intensity of these chance connections.
What if we responded in a similar way in our own lives? What if the supposed interruptions we face every day aren’t simply obstacles to be endured, but invitations to be discerned?
I don’t mean to romanticize every disruption, because some interruptions are painful, some are exhausting, and some come in the form of illness, grief, or crisis—our own or someone else’s. Scripture doesn’t pretend that these moments are easy, because they’re not. But it does show us that God is present in the midst of them.
I think too often we see these unplanned and unexpected moments as inconveniences rather than an opportunity for an encounter.
An ‘interruption’ might be a neighbour who needs to talk when you’re in a hurry. A child who asks one more question at bedtime. A moment of sudden beauty that catches us off guard. A nudge of conscience that asks us to act differently than we intended.
These moments call for our attentiveness and presence, not efficiency and control
Grace rarely announces itself with certainty. More often, it arrives disguised as a delay, an inconvenience, or a disruption. And the question isn’t whether or not our days will be interrupted—because they will be—but whether we’re willing to believe that God might be at work in those interruptions.
I’m not suggesting that we should abandon planning or responsibility. Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. But he held his purpose with a holy flexibility, always attentive to the person in front of him, always open to the movement of love.
So my invitation, and maybe challenge, is for all of us to pause before we dismiss the next interruption we experience as meaningless or annoying. And instead, to quietly ask ourselves, “Where might grace be present here? What’s being asked of me in this moment?”
Because the God we worship isn’t only found in the carefully ordered hours of our days, but in the unexpected spaces between them. And often, it’s there—right in the interruption—that love takes on flesh once again, and grace abounds.
Amen.
