FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR B

Sunday 4 February 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 1:29-39

 

The Gospel readings for these past three Sundays have been taken from the first chapter of Saint Mark, where Our Lord’s public ministry of teaching and healing is just getting under way. And the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in today’s Gospel presents some interesting problems.

 

One commentator writes: this story “would seem to be simply another example of hopelessly chauvinistic religion. Jesus enters the home of Simon Peter, heals Peter’s mother-in-law, then as the boys settle in around the TV for some beer and Monday night football, Peter’s mother-in-law prepares and serves them a meal.”

 

Applying contemporary standards to this situation, we might expect Our Lord and his disciples to leave the poor woman alone to rest. Or better still, they might do the cooking themselves and serve her. After all, she’s just gotten over a fever; and fevers in those days often signaled a life-threatening condition. And we certainly wouldn’t want to entertain the possibility that Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law of the fever precisely to make her available to cook dinner and wait on them.

 

However, the ancients didn’t think about sickness and healing in the same way that we do. The distinction between disease and illness may be helpful here. Strictly speaking, a disease is a biomedical condition that may or may not be susceptible to a physical cure. But illness has a wider meaning that often involves the isolation and dislocation from one’s place in the community that often accompanies disease.

 

The corresponding distinction is that between cure and healing. By itself, a cure is the removal of a physical disease or impairment, resulting in the restoration of physical health. But healing, in the fullest sense of the word, means something more. It involves the recovery of wholeness and well-being, including restoration to the community life from which one’s been separated by one’s illness.

 

So, according to this distinction, the sign of Peter’s mother-in-law’s cure is the fever leaving her, but the sign of her healing is her restoration to her place and role in the household. And the word spreads like wildfire. Having heard that Peter’s mother-in-law is back on her feet, the whole town comes crowding around the door at sunset, bringing their sick, lame, and possessed for similar healing.

 

Notice, also, that Jesus is the one who has taken the initiative to be of service to Peter’s mother-in-law first. So, it’s arguable that in attending to Jesus and the disciples, she’s reciprocating the service that he’s already rendered her. On balance, our Lord and the disciples do the lion’s share of the work in today’s Gospel, ministering to the great crowd that gathers round the door of the house at sundown.

 

To go a bit deeper, the Greek verb used to describe the service of Peter’s mother-in-law to the disciples—diakoneo—is the same verb from which we derive the English words “deacon” and “minister.” It’s the same verb that Mark uses in the account of the temptations in the wilderness when he says that angels came and “ministered” to Jesus. And it’s the same verb that Jesus uses about himself when he says that he came “not to be served but to serve” and give his life as a ransom for many.

 

Initially, the disciples just don’t get it. James and John, who appear in today’s Gospel, later ask Our Lord to grant them to sit one at his right hand and one at his left when he enters into his kingdom. In response, he teaches them that whoever would be greatest in the kingdom must be the servant of all. The disciples may not get it, but in today’s Gospel Peter’s mother-in-law is the one who does get it.

 

Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall writes that for many if not most people today, the greatest fear of all is not the fear of death but the fear of becoming superfluous or redundant. Our greatest anxiety is the prospect of being unable to fulfill a defined social role in which we make some sort of valued contribution to the community. For, deep down, one of our greatest needs is to feel that in some small way our lives really do make a positive difference and that we’re of some use to someone.

 

If Jesus makes a difference in our lives, it’s not only because he saves us from our sins and leads us on the path to eternal life - which indeed he does - but also because in the meantime he gives us work to do, whereby we can be of service to God and our neighbor. A key part of the Church’s vocation is to be a community where no-one ever need feel that they’re of no use or that there’s nothing for them to do. Even someone confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home has an indispensable role to play in the life of the Body of Christ, even by so simple an activity as praying for the rest of us. No-one is redundant; no-one is superfluous. 

 

In many parishes, however, it often feels as though twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. And that presents a real danger of burnout. The real challenge for the parish community as a whole is to find ways of spreading the workload more evenly and to inspire everyone to help with something. Many hands make light work.

 

At the same time, we need to beware of the temptation to want to participate on nobody’s terms but our own. On several occasions in my past parishes, I’ve had to tell certain aggressive and pushy parishioners that they simply weren’t ready for the leadership responsibilities for which they were putting themselves forward, so they needed to back down and back off. 

 

In my own participation in the Church’s life, the most enjoyable and rewarding assignments were never those that I sought out, but rather those that sought me out. Incidentally, that’s how I came here to be your Interim Priest. I didn’t seek this position out. Rather, Canon Dena at the diocesan office reached out to me, and told me that this parish of Saint Mark in its interim period was a place where my gifts and experience might be useful, and asked if I would consider coming here. And I’m really glad that she did. But so often that’s how God’s kingdom works. We find the greatest joy not in deciding where we want to go and striving to get there, but rather in answering the call to go and be of service in places where we never even knew there was a need. 

 

In any case, in every parish community, there’s plenty for everyone to do. No-one is redundant; no-one is superfluous. We all have our own unique contribution to make. We all have plenty of opportunities to be of service, following the example of him who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.