5 Epiphany B

"And she began to serve them."
We all have something about us that needs to be healed, that needs for Christ to reach down, take our hand and lift us up. How, then, can we respond to that healing?

5 Epiphany B

Transcribed from a sermon given

February 5, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Mark 1:29-39

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

I used to have a really difficult time with this story of the healing of Simon’s Mother-in-law. The feminist in me couldn’t stand the thought of this woman getting up from a fever and immediately serving everybody. What’s that about?

But this time, as I’ve been working with this particular passage, I have come to a different understanding. I have thought a lot about this woman, this mother-in-law of Simon, who would later be called Peter. This story takes place very early in Jesus’ ministry. People don’t know him very well. Now I’m a mother-in-law and I have a wonderful son-in-law. He is a loving, solid person who has a good job and cares about my daughter. I try to imagine how I would feel if some strange wandering spiritual leader came along and said, “Follow me” and my son-in-law left his job and started wandering around with a group of strange people. I wonder how this woman felt about Jesus, especially since she was sick, had a fever and was lying in a back room of the house when Simon invited Jesus and all the disciples and all these people who want to be healed into their home.

Remember, they didn’t have big houses. I was in Capernaum when I was in Israel and they have excavated the town from the first century and you can see the foundations of the houses. They are tiny, tiny by any standards. They are three or four ten by ten rooms, maybe a little courtyard no bigger than that. This was not a house where she was off at the other end could have quiet. This was a tiny place. And yet her son-in-law Simon brings this entire crowd with him. I wonder what she was thinking. I don’t have any idea, but I like to use my imagination and think about how people, how characters, might have been thinking.

But then what happens is very interesting. It is very short, just one little sentence, but Jesus comes to her in her bed and he takes her hand and lifts her up. There is something sweet and tender in that gesture. He doesn’t come into the room proclaiming healing, he doesn’t do any laying on of hands, and he doesn’t make any mud or touch her ears or any of that stuff. He doesn’t demand a demon leave. Instead it is very gentle and very tender. He reaches down and takes her hand and lifts her up. What a wonderful image for healing. Christ taking our hand and lifting us up.

In the readings today we hear from someone else who was healed, and that is from Paul in his letter to the Corinthians. Now, remember that Paul had his issues, he had his demons. When Christianity started he was furious; he was filled with anger. He wanted to destroy them and he supported stoning Christians. He was so obsessed with getting rid of this heretical group that he was traveling all around searching for them. He was on his way to Damascus when Christ came to him. Maybe in not so gentle a way. He got knocked off of his donkey. But Christ came to him and healed him. Not necessarily of a physical illness, but from whatever it was that caused him to be filled with so much rage and resentment and need to control. He was transformed. What he says in his letter today is,  “I am obliged to preach the Gospel.” He has to do it. Nobody is making him do it, but there is an inner compulsion and need for him to serve - to tell others.

I think that is something that happens when we are healed, when we experience the loving, healing touch of Christ. It was thirty years ago when I had brain surgery and I will never forget that after the surgery everything looked different. The sky was a brighter blue; the trees were a deeper green, having faced the potential of my own mortality and coming through it. Even though there would be struggles in the recovery, coming through it I felt this profound thankfulness for being alive. I discovered that I started praying, “How can I serve?” At the time I wasn’t even an active Christian yet for several years I asked,” How can I serve?" There was some way in which the thankfulness for my life and my health meant I needed to give back. It was not contract. There was no sense that God healed me in order for me to give back. There was no sense of debt. It was just what else could I do with the thanksgiving that I had but to serve.

It took a couple of years, and no one was more surprised than I was when the answer was to be ordained. But I like Paul, I have to give back, because when I don’t there is no joy and when I do it is full and complete. And so when I think about this woman whose hand was lifted up by Christ - when it says she served them this wasn’t some woman who was told she should get in the kitchen, this was a person who was healed and needed to serve in whatever way she could.

We all need Christ’s healing. We all have aspects of ourselves that are not whole and complete. We may have physical ailments, we may have psychological struggles, depression, anger, fear, and we all have demons, those things that control us, our addictions, our fears, our resentments, the old hurts that still are percolating around in there. We all have demons we need to be freed from. Each and every one of us needs to be healed.

I’d like to invite you to close your eyes and think about and open up to what needs to be healed in you. Give it a word or a phrase or an image. A physical ailment, a psychological problem, an inner demon, a spiritual questioning, a sense of hopelessness, whatever it is, what needs to be healed? And then invite Christ to take your hand and to lift you up.

(Pause)

And if you feel now or in the future a sense of the healing power of Christ’s love you might find, you just might find, you might find yourself asking, “How can I serve?”