Proper 25B

 If Jesus was standing right here and said to you “What do you want?” how would you respond. 

Proper 25 B

Transcribed from a sermon given

On October 28, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

As I looked at the readings for today I was struck by three words. The first is faith, the second is hope and the third is see or to see. Faith, hope, sight - they come up in the different readings and seem to cover things very well. 

We begin the collect for the day, which is a prayer we give at the beginning of the service that summarizes the whole service. Today it included, “Increase in us the gifts of faith, hope and charity.”

The gifts faith and hope.

Just what is faith? Most Americans might think that faith is to believe that God exists. There are lots of people who are asked about God and say, “Yes, I believe that God exists.” But it is some abstract, sense of God. Others might say that faith means not only that God exists, but that God has revealed Godself through scripture. Yes, that might be considered a part of faith. But the faith meant by the Greek word that is used in the story in the Gospel, where it says that Bartimaeus had faith, is faith in, faith inGod, faith inChrist. According to the Greek English dictionary that particular usage of the word faith means more than just believing in the existence of God or believing in something that God has supposedly said. It involves a relationship. It means that there is a belief that God has the power, and is is also near enough, to provide what we need, to make a difference. It is an idea that God’s presence is right here and God can make a difference and has the power to make a difference. That’s the kind of faith we are talking about with Bartimaeus.

And hat is the faith that Job had. This reading today is the last little bit of Job. We read some of Job last week. The lectionary summarizes the whole book with just a couple of readings, so I’ll give you some context. You may remember that Job was a righteous man who loved and had a really good relationship with God. He had the kind of faithful relationship with God that I am describing here. 

Then Satan, who in this particular book is like the prosecuting attorney, comes to God and says, “those people don’t believe in you.” 

God says “Look at Job, he is so faithful.” 

Then Satan says “Yeah, he’s rich and has lots of kids. Of course he is going to praise you. But if things changed in his life he would turn away in a moment.” 

So God gave Satan permission to test Job and Job was severely tested as no one else I think has ever been. All of his children suddenly died tragically on the same day. Then all of his wealth was taken away that same day. 

God says to Satan, “See, he is still faithful to me even though all that has been taken away.”

Satan then says “Yes, but he is still healthy.” 

So God gave Satan permission to make him sick. He then had sores all over his body and sat in sackcloth and ashes, scrapping his soars with a broken pot because there was so much pain. And he still had faith in God. 

Now Job had these four quote friends. With friends like this you don’t need enemies. These friends came to him and they basically said, “God wouldn’t have done this to you if you hadn’t done something wrong.” Like a simplistic idea of Karma. 

Job replies “No, that’s not the God that I have faith in. And I did not do anything wrong.”

Now we know as the reader that he has been righteous, but his friends say he must have done something wrong. 

Job continues to assert that, no, I am innocent. There is a long dialogue that takes place. Finally we have that profound statement of faith that we read at the beginning of our burial service, which many of you know perhaps from the Messiah. 

Job says, “I know that my redeemer lives.” When he says that he is saying that I know that there is someone out there, some aspect, some divine being that I can talk to who will justify me and say that I’m right I didn’t do anything wrong, I don’t deserve this. He has faith in a God that is present and able to help him. That never leaves. He has that faith. 

Bartimeaus has that same kind of faith. When he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is coming by he cries out. “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” 

He was the first one to recite the Jesus prayer which is probably the prayer that has been said more than any other prayer. In the orthodox tradition the Jesus prayer is a very common thing to be repeated over and over again.

“Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me.” 

He said this because he had faith in Jesus. He had faith not only that Jesus was special and a healer, but he believed that Jesus had the power and the willingness to help and make a difference. 

So what happened for Job and Bartimaeus was that their faith gave them hope in a hopeless situation. Job’s situation was hopeless. He had lost everything and his body was deteriorating. It was a hopeless situation but he never gave up hope. Bartimaeus was a blind beggar on the side of the street. You don’t get much more hopeless than that and yet he never gave up hope. And when Jesus came he called out to him and asked for mercy, because it is faith, faith that God is near and has the power and ability to help that gives us that wonderful gift of hope. 

The third word that struck me was how the word see is used in the readings. In the psalm it says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” What kind of seeing is that? We have Job who finally gets the opportunity to be face to face with God, that’s what he has been asking, he has been asking to be able to be face to face with God so he can give his part of the case, so he can testify “I don’t deserve this.” And he gets it. In the whirlwind God appears to him. All of a sudden Job no longer knows God by having heard about God but now sees God. Job is voiceless. He doesn’t have anything to say. God is so magnificent and so much more than he had imagined. When he sees God he is silenced. What kind of seeing is that. He talks about hearing and seeing with eyes but we all know that seeing God is much more than seeing something physically with our eyes. It is a seeing that is transformative. 

“Taste and see.” We don’t actually physically taste God. We don’t actually see God. We see the manifestations of God all around us but that kind of seeing that is transformative is an inner seeing. An awareness of God. The true experience of the presence of God. “Taste and see and know that the Lord is good.”

Let’s go back to Bartimaeus, the blind beggar on the side of the road calling out for Christ’s mercy. Jesus calls him over. He doesn’t just heal him. He doesn’t assume anything. Instead he asks him “What do you want.” 

Bartimaeus says “I want to see again.”

Then Jesus says “Your faith has healed you.” Bartimaeus trusted that Jesus could and would help. He is healed and he sees again with his eyes. But unlike some of the people who are healed and just walk away, Bartimaeus had more of an experience than just physical healing; he becomes a follower, a disciple of Christ, and follows after.

So I would ask you about your own faith. Do you believe that God or Jesus, whatever you want to call him, has the power to help? That Christ is near enough to help? 

And I would ask you if Jesus was standing right here. Physically standing right here, and you could see him, and he looked at you and said, “What do you want?” How would you respond? 

What do you want? Perhaps you want some healing, perhaps you have a physical malady that is causing you pain or suffering or confusion. Perhaps you are struggling with grief or sorrow or depression. Perhaps there is a relationship that is broken. Or perhaps there is someone you love who is sick, hurt afraid. 

If Jesus was standing right here and said to you “What do you want?” how would you respond. 

And the truth is, he is right here. He is near. If we have the kind of faith of Job or Bartimaeus we know that Christ is with us, present with us, all the time, everywhere. We also know that Christ told us over and over again just ask, pray, pray unceasingly. Tell me what you want. Don’t hesitate. 

Right now, today, don’t hesitate to tell Christ what it is that you want.

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?”

Sermon for Proper 25B

What do Job and Bartimaeus have in common? In spite of their hopeless situations they have hope. It is a hope based on confidence that  God is near and has the power and willingness to make a difference.

Proper 25 B

Sermon given on

October 28, 2012

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Mark10:46-52

As I looked at the readings for today I was struck by three words. The first is faith, the second is hope, and the third is see or to see. Faith, hope, and sight - they come up in the different readings and seem to cover the themes of the readings very well.

First is the collect for the day, which is a prayer that we give at the beginning of the service that summarizes the whole service. Today it said, “Increase in us the gifts of faith, hope and charity.” The gifts of faith and hope - well just what is faith? I think most Americans might think that faith is to believe that God exists. And there are lots of people who when asked say, “Yes, I believe that God exists.” That is some outside, abstract, out there kind of concept of God. Other might say that faith means not only that you believe that God exists, but that you also believe that God has revealed God’s self through scripture. That might be considered a part of faith, could be. But the Greek word that is used in the Gospel where it says that Bartimaeus had “faith” could be translated as “faith in”. It is faith in God - faith in Christ. As I looked it up in the Greek/English dictionaries, that particular usage of the word faith means more than just believing in the existence of God, or believing in something that God has supposedly said, it involves a relationship. It means that there is a belief that God has the power and is also near enough to provide what we need, to make a difference. It is an idea that God’s presence is right here and God can make a difference. That’s the kind of faith we are talking about with Bartimaeus.

And that was the faith that Job had. This reading today is the last little bit of Job. We read some of Job last week and the lectionary has summarized the whole book in a few readings. Just to give you the concepts, you may remember that Job was a righteous man who loved God and had really good relationship with God. He had the kind of faithful relationship with God that I am describing here. Satan, who in this particular book is like the prosecuting attorney comes to God and says, “Those people, they don’t believe in you.” And God says, “Well, look at Job, he is so faithful.” And Satan says, “Yeah, well he’s rich and has lots of kids, of course he is going to praise you. But if things changed in his life he would turn away. So God gave Satan permission to test Job.

Job was severely tested as no one else has ever been. All of his children suddenly died tragically on the same day. And the all of his wealth was taken away on that same day. Then God said to Satan, “See, he is still faithful to me, even though all that has been taken away.” And Satan said, “Yes, but he is still healthy.” So God gave Satan permission to make him sick. Then he had sores all over his body and he sat in sackcloth and ashes scarping his soars with a broken pot because they hurt so badly. Yet he still had faith in God.

Now Job had these four so called friends. With friends like this you don’t need any enemies. But these friends came to him and basically said, “God wouldn’t have done this to you if you hadn’t done something wrong.” Sort of a karma sort of thing. And Job said, “No, that’s not the God that I have faith in. And I did not do anything wrong.” We know as the reader that he has been righteous, but his friends said that he must have done something wrong. This wouldn’t have happened to you. “No, I am innocent,” repeats Job. And there is this dialogue that takes place.

Finally we have that profound statement of faith that we read at the beginning of our burial service, which I think many of you know perhaps from the Messiah. Job says, “I know that my redeemer lives.” When he says that he is saying that I know that there is someone out there, some aspect, some divine being that I can talk to and I can explain what happened and will justify me. Someone who will say, “You are right. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t deserve it.” He has a faith in a God that is present and able to help him. And that never leaves. What he wants from God is a whole other thing, but he has this faith.

And Bartimaeus has that same kind of faith. When he hears that Jesus of Nazareth is coming by, he cries out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.” He was the first one to recite the Jesus prayer, which is probably the prayer that has been said more than any other prayer. In the Orthodox tradition the Jesus Prayer is a very common thing to repeat over and over again. “Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me.” “Jesus Christ, Jesus, have mercy on me.” And he said this because he had faith in Jesus. He had faith not only that Jesus was special and a healer, but also he believed that Jesus had the power and the willingness to help - to make a difference.

What happened for Job and Bartimaeus was that their faith gave them hope in a hopeless situation. Job’s situation was hopeless. He had lost everything. And his body was deteriorating. It was a hopeless situation, but he never gave up hope. And Bartimaeus was a blind beggar on the side of the street. You don’t get much more hopeless than that, and yet he never gave up hope. When Jesus came he called out to him and asked for mercy, because it is faith, faith that God is near and has the power and ability to help, that gives us that wonderful gift of hope.

The third word that struck me was how the word “to see” is used in the readings. The Psalm started with the refrain, taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste and see that the Lord is good. What kind of seeing is that? And we have Job who finally gets the opportunity to be face to face with God, which is what he has been asking. He has been asking to be able to be face to face with God so he can give his part of the case, so he can testify, I don’t deserver this.” And he gets what he asks for. In the whirlwind, God appears to him. And we get to the reading for today where all of a sudden when Job no longer knows God by having heard about God but now “sees” God he is voiceless. He doesn’t have anything to say. God is so magnificent and so much more than he had imagined that when he sees God he is silenced.

What kind of seeing is that? He talks about hearing and seeing with eyes but we all know that seeing God is much more than seeing something physically with our eyes. It is a seeing that is transforming. Taste and see. We don’t actually physically taste God; we don’t actually physically see God. We see the manifestations of God all around us but that kind of seeing, that kind of seeing that is transformative is an inner seeing, it is an awareness of God. It is a true experience of the presence of God. Taste and see and know that the Lord is good.

Then we get to Bartimaeus, the blind beggar on the side of the road calling out for Christ’s mercy. Jesus calls him over. He doesn’t just heal him. Now most of us would assume that we knew what a blind beggar on the side of the road would want, right? But Jesus doesn’t assume anything. Jesus asks him, “What do you want?” What do you want? And Bartimaeus says, “I want to see again.” So Jesus says, “Your faith has healed you.” Bartimaeus trusted that Jesus could and would help. And he sees again with his eyes, but unlike some of the people who are healed and just walk away, Bartimaeus has more of an experience than that because he becomes a follower, a disciple of Christ and follows after.

So I would ask you about your own faith? Do you believe that God or Jesus, whichever you want to call him, has the power to help? That Christ is near enough to help? And I would ask you, suppose he was standing nearby, right there, physically, that you could see him, and he looked at you and he said, “What do you want?” How would you respond? What do you want? Perhaps you want some healing, perhaps you have a physical malady that is causing you pain, or suffering or confusion. Or perhaps you are struggling with grief or sorrow or depression. Or perhaps there is a relationship that is broken. Or perhaps there is someone you love who is sick, or hurting or afraid. If Jesus was standing right here and said to you, “What do you want?” how would you respond?

The truth is, he is right here. He is near. If we have the kind of faith of Job or Bartimaeus we would know that Christ is with us. That he is present with us all the time, everywhere. And we also know that Christ told us over and over again to just ask, to pray, pray unceasingly. Tell me what you want. Don’t hesitate. And he also told us that we are to heal, that we are to pray for one another. To lay on hands and heal one another. It is part of the tradition of the church. It is strong in scripture. And so today we will give you the chance to ask Christ for what you want. He is right here.

We have started up again the order of St. Luke’s, which is a group of people who have a concern for healing prayer. We have reenergized it here at St. Barnabas. We’ve had several wonderful meetings with 6 or 7 people each time. We have been studying the healing stories of Jesus and praying for one another. And you may have noticed that sometimes one of us is in the back corner during the Eucharist to offer laying on of hands and healing. What we want to do today is provide an opportunity for everyone who chooses to come forward like we do on our Wednesday healing service. To come forward and one of us will be here to offer prayer. It is said that some people have a gift for healing. When you hear that it doesn’t mean that that person heals it is only God that can heal, it is Christ that heals, but sometimes having a person lay on hands, put into words your prayer and offer it to God can be a powerful opportunity for healing.

Of course we never know exactly what that healing is going to look like. Bartimaeus got to see with his eyes, Job got to see with his heart. Today we would like to offer the opportunity for healing to you. So instead of our usual prayers of the people we are going to use the litany of healing that we use at our Wednesday healing service, and then after that I want to invite any of you who would like to come forward to come the altar rail for healing prayers, and anyone who is called to help is welcome to lay hands on people as well. It is what we were told by Christ to do and it can be powerful. And if you don’t want to come forward, that’s fine. Sit in your pew and pray and be with God and in God’s presence.

So let us stand and share in the litany of healing.

 

Sermon for Proper 8 B

This sermon was given in 1994 before the most recent changes in the lectionary. At that time the story of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years was left out of the readings. It is a reflection upon why Mark included it in the middle of the story of the healing of Jairus' daughter.

Sermon for Proper 8 B

Given on June 16, 1994

At St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Brentwood

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

If the Gospel reading seemed a bit long to you today, that’s because it was. I added a bit extra. Each Sunday we are mandated to read what is in the lectionary for that week, but it is up to the discretion of the priest to add to the readings. If we followed the lectionary today we would hear only the story of Jairus’s daughter. This is a powerful story even if standing alone. Certainly much could be preached about it. Themes of faith, and resurrection, the meaning of death and of life are there to be drawn upon. But when Mark wrote the story down he chose to add in the middle of it the story of the woman who had been bleeding. By editorial prerogative he could have put that story somewhere else, or even left it out, but instead he sandwiched it in the middle of another story. The people who put together the Sunday lectionary, unlike Mark, chose to leave the story of the hemorrhaging woman out. She doesn’t show up in the readings for any other Sunday, and I feel her story is too important to ignore. In addition, I feel that Mark must have had a reason for combining these two stories together, so I read the whole thing.

Jairus is a leader of the synagogue, that would be like being a Bishop and a mayor wrapped into one. Leaders of the synagogues had religious respect and authority, and were also community leaders. He was undoubtedly also well off financially.

In contrast, the woman who is hemorrhaging doesn’t even have a name. She has spent all her money on doctors, so she must have been quite poor. She has been bleeding for twelve years, which is usually interpreted to be a menopausal problem. When a woman was bleeding in ancient Israel she was considered unclean, ritually impure. In fact a man who touched (or was touched by) a menstruating woman was considered impure and had to go through certain rituals and wait at least twenty-four hours before being considered clean again. A man who was ritually impure was not allowed to enter the temple or partake in any religious services. Imagine what it would have been like for this woman. An outcast, untouchable for twelve years. Desperate she committed an unthinkable act - she touched a rabbi - thereby making him unclean as well.

Yet Jesus responded to her with as much compassion and love as he did to the rich Jairus. She is healed, not condemned.

Then Mark describes Jesus as continuing on with Jairus, without any purity rituals, without waiting the appointed time, and bringing the little girl back to life. A great miracle is performed by a ritually impure rabbi.

I believe Mark put these two stories together to emphasize Jesus’ total acceptance of all people. The rich and powerful and the most lowly and outcast are all welcomed and loved by Christ. It is the model which Mark would have us follow - total acceptance of all. It would have been easy for Jesus to focus his ministry on the rich - he could have healed them and lived will. But he didn’t, he responded to the poor, the outcast as well. It would have been easy for Jesus to only focus on the poor, to say that the powerful were already too corrupt. But he didn’t, he healed the rich and the powerful as well.

The community which Christ began - the Church - is called to welcome all. There is never a fee to enter the church. We are not judged by the amount of money in our pockets or the power that we wield. We are all in need of Christ’s healing love, rich or poor, powerful or outcast. We are all equal in his loving eyes.

Right now I feel a little like that hemorrhaging woman. I feel a bit awkward and unsure. I need to reach our and touch your robes for the health of this church. Asking for money is difficult for me. I don’t like to focus on the needs of the church, especially in a sermon, but I don’t know any other way to do this. This church, this tiny part of the great Kingdom of God, is in financial need. Each month we spend more than we receive and our savings are being quickly consumed. If St. Alban’s is to continue as a light in the world, if Christ’s work of reconciliation and healing is to continue here, in this form, we quite frankly need more money. The work of Christ will go on regardless of what happens here. The Kingdom of God is greater than you or I or St. Alban’s, but I believe we have some unique gifts to bring to this community and if you feel so also I ask you to increase your pledge or fill out a pledge card in the back of the church.

In the letter read today Paul writes to the Corinthians about members of the church in another city saying:

During a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave accord to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints. Begging for the privilege of sharing in the ministry.

In my mind from the readings today there can be no question about the kind of life a Christian is called to live. It is a life in which all people are valued, where no one needs to be ashamed because of their lack of the ability to give and no one is to be proud because of their wealth. It is a life in which one gives all that one can. It is a life where people give out of the abundance of joy that they have experienced as Christ’s gift to them.

All of us, rich and poor alike, are like the woman who feels she is unworthy to speak to the Lord and ask for his healing, yet has faith that just to touch his hem will heal her. We come on our knees to Christ, awed by the greatness of his gift to us, knowing that there is nothing we can do that would even begin to equal it. So we offer to Christ what we have, our time, our talents, our treasure. Not out of ought, but joyfully wanting to share in the privilege of Christ’s ministry to the world.

5 Epiphany B, Mark1:29-39

She is lying in the back room with a fever when her son-in-law invites a large group of people to the house. Someone walks in, takes her hand, lifts her up and she starts to serve everyone. What are we to make of this?

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 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.

Now 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?”