Mark’s Gospel is coming at us at high speed — different stories piling up like the snow outside today. Now, it’s taken us two months to read the whole first chapter of Mark, and we took a week here and there to dip into the Gospel of John and Luke, but just stop and consider for a moment how much and how quickly everything has happened up to this point:
In the very first verses, John first appears on the scene to preach repentance, to baptize and to “prepare the way!” for Jesus. That lasts about 6 verses. Then enter Jesus – no birth stories in Mark, no little boy in the temple, just grown up Jesus, ready to go/ready to rock. And it all starts with a sky-ripping baptism. That lasts about 3 verses, and then the gut-wrenching temptation in the wilderness. Matthew and Luke take almost 15 verses to describe what happened to Jesus there; Mark does it in 2. Then Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee, calls some disciples, and some patterns begin to emerge. Moving in and out of the synagogue, he preaches and heals, preaching and healing. We almost settle into a rhythm of this in the book of Mark, and preaching and healing almost become synonymous, and where they happen is not as important as the fact that there is a healthy flow and balance to Jesus’ movement in and out of the worship space (nice reminder for us today). Whether Jesus is preaching or healing, the end result is that life and health are not just proclaimed gently but injected, like a life-saving shot (in Mark’s almost abrasive style), freely granted, over and against death and all those demonic forces that keep us down. This just keeps happening, keep watching for it in this Year of Mark. And let that good message become a part of your movement in and out of your worship space, following the example of Jesus.
“The life and health injection” is certainly the theme on a number of levels in our lesson today.
Here in the text, Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law. She doesn’t even have a name. (It’s not the first time this happens to women in the Bible. There are countless nameless women who teach us…and that’s the case here.) Now, I wonder if perhaps you had, like many who read this text today, an immediate and very natural and appropriate reaction when Simon’s mother-in-law is healed by Jesus. Did you catch what the first thing she does after is? It said Jesus took her by the hand lifted her up…the fever leaves her…and she began serving them. You almost get this impression, that the disciples are like, “Hey Jesus, can you fix her because we’re getting hungry in here?” At first glance, it’s almost like she’s a victim of Jesus’ healing.
And all that might be true. But I do think it puts a modern lens on the story. That’s OK. That’s what we do. And I think we should always read with critical lenses around gender roles, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and on...
But don’t miss also some of Mark’s major themes that are emerging, even in this first chapter...namely casting out demons and bread/feeding/eating.
Jesus is constantly trying to teach his male disciples about serving and caring for one another. Emptying themselves of ego, pride, bluster; and instead embodying love, compassion, service and justice for all. And Simon’s mother-in-law gets that immediately. Jesus is constantly trying to get the disciples to respond to the life and health he is injecting. (We’ll see that they’re not getting it as the Gospel goes on.) It’s almost like they’ve got a high tolerance to the Jesus injection. Like the vaccine doesn’t take. But Simon’s mother-in-law is immediately impacted by Jesus’ life-giving shot. He takes her by the hand, and “it takes.”
How’s your immunity to Jesus’ life-giving power? Is the shot only 50% effective? Is it taking? You know, those of us who have been around church for years, who have heard this language about grace and forgiveness ad nauseum, week in and week out — we have a tough task, because I imagine we’ve got a pretty high tolerance to the Jesus injection too. To hear Sunday after Sunday “How vast is God’s grace, through the power and promise of Christ Jesus our sins + are washed away,” “God gave us a gift to set us free, when the waters were poured down on you and me...”, “the peace of Christ be with you always,” again and again...means we’re in danger of producing some pretty potent antibodies to Jesus’ life-giving power and healing. So were the disciples. I couldn’t help but laugh thinking about vs. 36-37, where Simon and the others find Jesus and say, “Hey, everyone’s looking for you.” Hey, you do it, Jesus. All these people need help, and they go get Jesus. Great lesson for us – “You do it pastor, you do it church council, you do it bishop, you do it Mr. President, you do it Congress, you do it doctors, you do it teachers, you do it...everyone’s looking for you.” All these people need help, and like the disciples, maybe we have the tendency to go get the guru to help them. (It occurs to me :) we don’t say, “Go in peace, and find somebody else to serve.”)
Well, Jesus complies with their request here, actually. That’s because we’re still in chapter 1. The further we get into Mark, the more we get the sense that Jesus is constantly injecting this life-giving power into his disciples — it’s going to take a couple shots — they keep resisting, it doesn’t take right away...
But Simon’s mother-in-law gets it immediately. She serves. It is a fore-glimpse of our ministry in Christ. She is our teacher. Immediately, she began to serve them. (Yes I think there’s some sexism built-in. Always is. But don’t miss the transformation, the “immediately”, the fact that Jesus’ healing took.)
The life-giving power of Jesus is what we speak of at the end of our worship: Go in peace, and serve. That’s not just some catchy little thing to say at the end, and it’s not code for “Good news, this church thing is finally over now you can go home, go back to your life unchanged” – “Go in peace and serve the Lord” means, injected with God’s life-giving power, injected with healing, injected with Christ-light, injected with the promise of divine presence, injected with a peaceful assurance that the whole world is—in fact—in God’s hands despite all the turbulence (that’s the peace that passes all understanding), injected with Jesus himself in the holy waters of the font, bread and wine, injected with grace, GO NOW and share it with others, GO NOW and serve immediately...like Simon’s mother-in-law.
Jesus injects us again today with life and health over and against the powers that hold us down. Jesus raises us from our fevered state so that we too might get it, and serve in response.
And maybe part of that injection is finding quiet space too. Maybe Sabbath is part of the injection. This is a rich text today. It’s not just go work your brains out for the other. We also see our lord resting, amen? Vs. 35: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus went away to a deserted place to pray.” He’s doing that all the time by the way. As I hand-wrote this passage this week, I had this thought: “Wait a second, there were still more people that needed healing! He wasn’t finished! Jesus himself is going off to a deserted place to pray?”
Friends part of the injection is taking the moments we need, the downtime we need — Jesus is modeling it — the prayer time we need. What a gift the snow can be: it slows us down. It’s like a reminder from God: “Hey, take a quiet place.” Jesus is always silencing the demons. Maybe that’s the voices in our heads that never stop — anxiety about the future, traumatic voices from our past, the good and noble things we feel we have to do, the cries from all the people that need us — can you sense a certain FEVER? But Jesus models for us going a way for a bit, re-calibrating, praying. That too, friends, is Christ taking us by the hand, like he did with Simon’s mother-in-law, and lifting us up. That’s the snow day, everybody needs a snow day...no matter your climate. It makes the fever go away, you see?
This is our God: Lifting us up, healing us, showing us how to slow down, and calling us, from sabbath, back into Gospel action — back and forth, working for justice, offering peace, living in hope, and sharing God’s joy with this world. This is our God, friends: sheltering us and holding us in the palm of her hand, this day and always.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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