Mark 1:29-39
February 7, 2021
When I was a little girl, I learned that you could tell the age of a downed tree by counting the rings on the stump. The more rings, the older the tree. A few years ago, when I was still a single mom raising two kids, I learned that you can tell how long mom has been sick by the number of dishes stacked in the kitchen sink.
I arrived at church one Sunday morning feeling very, very poorly. My Music Director and my Clerk of Session looked at me and said,
“You’re not well. Someone else can preach your sermon. Go home.”
So, I handed my sermon to a young woman who had preached for me before, and we went home. I told my kids they needed to fend for themselves and I went back to bed. Mid-afternoon I got up, feeling a little better, and ventured out to the kitchen. The sink was full, and that’s when the wisdom I mentioned above came to me.
You can tell how long mom has been sick by the number of dishes stacked in the sink.
It’s through this lens – the lens of a mom who gets up from her sick bed and starts cleaning dishes – that I often read this passage, particularly this opening section of our passage, from Mark’s gospel. A woman has been ill, and no sooner than she is healed by Jesus, she gets up and starts taking care of the people in her house. Whenever I read it, I want to shout,
“Couldn’t someone fix her a cup of tea first? And couldn’t we know what her name is too. For heaven’s sake.”
This part of the story has bugged me for a long time. It would seem that Simon’s mother-in-law was healed only to serve. She literally lived to serve. But to read the story through this narrow lens is to miss the beauty that is embedded in this story. And there is great beauty in this story. There is more going on in this story, in this whole passage, than what we may realize on a quick reading of it.
As soon as Jesus and the disciples leave the synagogue, they go directly to the home of Simon’s mother-in-law. She was ill with a fever. If we had read this passage last year at this time, we probably would not have thought too much about someone having a fever. It might have been life-threatening in the context of the story, but in our time? However, now in these days of Covid, fevers carry a new level of fear with them.
Understanding that fear of a fever may help us to emphasize with the fear the people in that house may have felt. Simon, his wife, the other family members who may have been there, the other disciples who were with them. They all knew that a fever could have dire consequences. Jesus surely knew this too. When they entered the home, they told him about her, and he immediately went to her, took her hand, and lifted her up. In a very real sense, he resurrected her to new life. That makes Jesus’ healing of her even more powerful. Just as people marveled at his authority in teaching and casting out demons, he also showed authority in healing. He brought this woman back to life. What’s more, his was unlike any other authority ever witnessed. He needed no words to perform this miraculous healing. He simply took her by the hand and lifted her up.
He restored this woman to health, and to her rightful place in her household and in her community. She responded by serving. She was brought back to life, and she responded by serving those in her home.
In response to this passage, Rolf Jacobson, a professor of Old Testament and a commentator on Working Preacher.org shared about his own mother. When she was getting too sick and frail to host a holiday get-together, her children came and did the work for her. This was a lovely thing for them to do, but it was terribly hard on his mother, because she had always been the one to host. She had always been the one to organize and coordinate the meals and the parties and the family celebrations. Now she was reduced to watching. I imagine this mother would have longed to be healed so she too could be lifted up to serve.
It’s the word serve that rubs me the wrong way. And it does so because it has been used and misused against women time and time again. But I am doing my best to separate out the ways this passage has been wrongly interpreted from what Jesus was actually doing. Hospitality was critical in that culture; it was not to be taken lightly. And a woman’s responsibility in the home was to make sure hospitality happened. In serving, Simon’s mother-in-law was doing what was required and expected of her. She was restored to health and she responded by serving.
But what kind of serving was this? Was it just an obligation? A well-defined and narrow role for a female in a male society? What does it mean to serve in the particular context of this story? The Greek word that Mark uses is diakonos. If that sounds somewhat familiar to you, it is because our word deacon comes from it. Traditionally, the deacons in a church are those who offer pastoral ministry. They help those who are sick, lost, hurting, alone. In other words, they serve. This is also the word that Mark used to describe the attentions the angels gave to Jesus after his time in the wilderness. In that passage, the word is translated as ministered. The angels ministered to Jesus. They served him.
Seeing the woman’s actions in this way is eye opening. Her response to being healed by Jesus was just that – response. He healed her. He manifested God’s love for her. She responded by serving. She responded by ministering. In that sense, she was light years ahead of the disciples, who would struggle with their response to Jesus and his call for the rest of their time with him. Yes, serving, offering hospitality, would have been her role and duty at that time, but I do not believe that she was serving merely out of begrudging obligation. This woman, this unnamed woman, was ministering. She had been healed, and in being healed, she had also answered a call. A call to serve others. A call to minister. A call to respond to the needs of others just as her needs had been met. She may not have been listed as a disciple of Jesus, but she took on the rolls and actions of one, named or not. She had been brought back to life, and in her new life, she served. She served out of joyful response. She served out of love. She lived to serve.
And that is what Jesus lived to do as well. He lived to serve and minister and teach and proclaim and heal and cast out the demons that possessed people. Word about the woman’s healing spread fast, and soon people were gathered around him, needing healing, needing help and wholeness and hope. And Jesus responded by serving. He healed and cleansed them. He brought them back to life. And early in the morning, he went out on hi sown to pray, to spend time with God, and I suspect, to recoup, to gather himself and rest and renew.
The disciples come looking for him, saying that everyone was searching for him. Everyone was looking for him. They wanted him to do more. I suspect that they wanted him to stay there, to stay and continue to heal and make whole. And you know, Jesus could have done that. He could have stayed. He could have lived there and been loved and popular and revered. He could have stayed there and remained safe and content and comfortable. He could have stayed in that place and lived a long life and died a peaceful death.
But Jesus had serving to do. He had more people, other people to reach. He had the good news of God’s kingdom come to proclaim. Jesus had serving to do, so he left and went on through Galilee, preaching the good news in other towns, to other people who were also searching. He left because he was called to serve, because he lived to serve.
In that place, everyone was searching for him. But Jesus knew that everyone was searching for him in so many other places, so he moved on. He went where he was needed. He went to minister, to heal, to serve.
Everyone is still searching for Jesus, aren’t they? Aren’t we? We are still searching for him, looking for him, desperately wanting to be healed of the many viruses that plague us. We search for him wanting to be cured of the sicknesses of body and spirit that harm us and diminish us. We are searching for him everywhere, but maybe we forget that he is already with us, not only healing us, but raising us up to serve. We forget, I think, that Jesus is with us in our serving, in our caring, in our acts of compassion and justice and righteousness. Jesus is with us. Jesus heals us, Jesus raises us up to new life, to love and to serve in joyful response. Everyone is searching, but we have already been found. That is the glorious and good news. We have already been found, so let us serve with joy.
Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”
Amen.
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