February 4, 2024

Last Sunday we sang one of my favorite hymns; the great Charles Wesley, “O for a thousand tongues to sing.” It’s one of the hymns I know practically by heart, one that I’ve sung dozens of times. As familiar as it is, like many hymns, its words can strike differently in different contexts. Take verse 6, for example:

Hear him, ye Deaf; ye voiceless ones,
Your loosen’d Tongues employ;
Ye Blind behold your Saviour’s come,
And leap, ye Lame for Joy. 

On the surface, unremarkable, perhaps but it points to something significant, and challenging in our times. We hear and say a lot about welcoming people, embracing people of different ethnicities and sexualities, of accommodating people with physical or mental challenges but especially in the latter cases—there are often unspoken assumptions that may raise barriers to full acceptance or engagement in the community. We often don’t realize how our hymns, and our scriptures can be such barriers. 

When we come to Jesus’ healing miracles, we may, unconsciously or subconsciously compare them to our own common life—looking to fix or heal other people rather than seeing them as challenging us to grow, and change, and learn. Some of you may recall a sermon a year or so ago in which I referenced the book: My Body is not your prayer request in which the author, Amy Kenny advocates for disability justice in the church.

There are physical barriers that have been constructed, and there are psychological, and even religious barriers that we erect that make full inclusion difficult, if not impossible.

In this little story, in these few verses, Mark has once again packed a world of ideas. First of all, think about the difference in settings between the healing that occurs in today’s story, and the story last week. Last Sunday, a possessed man was rid of an unclean spirit in a public space, in the midst of the synagogue. Today’s story takes place in private, in a home, in domestic space. 

There is a difference as well in the healing and in its aftermath. The unclean spirit, recognizes and identifies Jesus—You are the Holy One of God, but wants nothing to do with Jesus, and we don’t know what happens to him after the exorcism. In a way, the possessed man and Simon’s mother-in-law are in the same situation. They are both debilitated by their maladies, and by definition, they are robbed of whatever status and role they might have had. The possessed man can only disrupt synagogue services, and Simon’s mother-in-law is bed-ridden. Jesus’ act of healing, in both cases, restores them to their roles. 

There’s something else worth noting in Mark’s brief description of the healing. There’s a tenderness, an intimacy in Jesus’ actions. He reaches down to touch her, and “lifts her up”—language evocative of other healing stories in the gospel and of the resurrection.

Cured of her illness, Simon’s mother-in-law served Jesus and the others. But it is interesting. It’s interesting not because it is behavior we might expect of a woman in a traditional culture, or too often, in our own. Our culture, indeed our church continues to be conflicted about such roles. In the context of Mark’s gospel and early Christianity, her serving takes on added significance. For one thing, the term used is the greek word, diakonia, which of course is the word from which our own word, deacon, comes. But there’s more, much more. It’s the same word that appears just a few verses earlier, in Mark’s description of the temptation in the wilderness. V. 13 reads: “He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” The word translated here as “waited” is the same word used in our reading of Peter’s mother-in-law: “she began to serve them.”

 Much later, at the crucifixion, Mark tells us that there were women watching from afar, and Mark writes that these women had followed Jesus and “served him” in Galilee. They were his disciples, and as we shall see, in some ways these women were model disciples, disciples who stayed with him, while the men ran away.

To put it clearly. Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is not just about restoring her to her community and to her role. It is about equipping her to be a disciple. She got up and served them. We might be tempted to see this as her simply returning to the traditional, role of a wife and mother in a patriarchal culture. But for Mark, it’s more than that. She stands as a disciple, one who follows Jesus and ministers to him. She stands as a contrast to the unclean spirit who wanted to have nothing to do with Jesus. She also stands in contrast to those other disciples who came looking for Jesus when he went away for prayer and solitude.

This little gospel reading is challenging in so many ways, not because we have to struggle to make meaning out of it, but because it reflects our own situation, our own relationships with Jesus. Imagine the scene, after these two healings, everyone with a problem comes to Jesus. They’ve heard of his miraculous powers, and they want him to help them. We can imagine the scene. Dozens, hundreds of people waiting in line, pressing at him to get his attention, to feel his healing touch. At the end of it all, Jesus is exhausted, worn out, and he goes away by himself to pray and recover. Mark writes: 

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”

It’s a telling moment in Mark’s gospel, a rare occasion when Jesus is off by himself. After all that excitement and work, he needs to be by himself, recover and rejuvenate, to pray, to be with God

But even then he’s not left alone. His disciples come after him. The text says, “they hunted him down.” And what do they do? Do they ask, “How can we help? How can we serve you?” No, they tell him the obvious, that everyone’s looking for you.

Jesus responds enigmatically, saying, we’re not going back. We’re moving on. I’ve got more work to do. “I have to go elsewhere, to other towns, and proclaim the good news there.” Jesus turns his back on Capernaum, he turns his back on whoever back there he might not have healed, or whoever might have come late and missed their chance, and he moves on proclaiming the good news, of the coming of God’s reign.

In a way it’s a fitting end to this story, and brings us back to the beginning of my sermon. For even Jesus couldn’t do it all; he needed time to regroup, time to be with God, to deepen his relationship with God before embarking on a new mission in new territory. None of us can do it by ourselves. To respond to God’s call, to serve those in need require skill, and energy. But it also requires us to make room for others, to enable others to serve and do their part. 

One of the things I’m learning as I enter this stage of my ministry, is to make room for those others, to give others space and opportunity to use their gifts and skills, to follow their passions, to respond to God’s call in ways that are appropriate to their context, their experience, and their abilities. As a congregation, we would do well to hear that message, to follow Jesus, to equip and make room for everyone to serve the body of Christ, to be the body of Christ.

The words from Isaiah call us to remember the importance of bringing those burdens to God, as Jesus brought his to God in prayer. As we think about the upcoming season of Lent; they may inspire us: 

but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Amen.