Sunday, February 4, 2018 – Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany
Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-12, 21c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
Called to Courageous Healing
I realize you are as surprised to see me today as I am to be here. When I arrived back home late on Thursday, I found out that Anne is ill and our community of Yarmouth heavy with grief … so rather than ask someone else to fill in, I wanted to be here with you. I figure we’ll get through together, that’s always the best plan. Though this is a rough approximation of a sermon – more the idea of one.
Last week, we were at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and the first public act of Jesus’ ministry was an exorcism. Not an easy beginning for the Good News, but an important beginning. Fresh from his time in the wilderness where he was tested by Satan and served by angels, Jesus gathers four disciples and begins his public ministry by taking up God’s fight against evil.
For us, Jesus confronts evil in all its forms, going into all the dark and difficult places; Jesus heals what overwhelms us, brings us restoration to community, and ultimately, resurrection.
That’s very good news, always. But particularly now, because it’s been a tough few weeks – toward the end of last week there was the important and inspiring, but grueling testimony of the 160 women survivors at Larry Nassar’s sentencing hearing for criminal sexual conduct. (265 women have now come forward as of Friday.) And the week before that, there was the shooting at Marshall County High School, Kentucky.
This week, right here at home, we were shocked by the death of Emma Daley, a Yarmouth middle schooler, whom they believe may have taken her own life. Devastatingly tragic, difficult news for all of us. News that we don’t know what to do with. It can be human nature to try to distance ourselves from the pain, by imagining all kinds of reasons this tragedy befell this family. Yet, in our effort to convince ourselves it won’t happen to us, we heap unnecessary speculation and inadvertent cruelty on people whose despair is already unbearable.
Rather, let’s have the courage to admit that this could have happened to any family, even our own. There’s no way to protect and shield our children fully from the world. Nor can we guarantee to fulfill our promise to them that we will always be there for them.
Another family in town, whose mother died a few years ago, lost their father earlier this month. Bobby Burgess died leaving three children now without either parent. More loss and anguish; families with gaping holes and tremendous heartache; more than enough for one town to bear.
It would be easy to let others step up and deal with all of this pain and loss. To hope that someone else knows what to do or say. Or to hide behind that good old Yankee excuse of “respecting their privacy.” Yet, caring about those who have been shattered by tragedy is not over stepping our bounds as a community. The way this community responds at moments like these matters, it shapes us all collectively and individually. How we choose to bear the weight of it, and whether we are willing to do the demanding work of going to the difficult places together; how we care for one another, choose to interact, and engage one another, affects our children more than we realize. Because our kids live in the larger community, they reflect the values they perceive, they watch the behaviors we modeled. All of us.
How we live and move and have our being as a community matters. The way we are a community together – this larger community culture is ours to shape and mold. All of ours – we can change it together; we can confront the evil in the midst of us: that underlying sense of constant competition, striving to appear perfect, a little too much pride in our winning traditions, blindness about the amount of poverty, and economic disparity and real need right here. All that contributes to what distances us from each other and keeps us from sharing the weight of what we each carry. We can confront it, admit to being human, and share our lives a little more with one another; and in doing so, heal and restore to community, if we choose to.
Appropriately, our Gospel text from Mark is about healing and restoration in a family, in particular, the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. The setting is the house of Simon and Andrew and the person who is ill is a member of the family; unlike the public healings, this healing act is intimate and sacred, as family bonds, particularly the bond of parent and child are sacred throughout Mark’s Gospel. Our text says that Jesus took [Simon’s mother-in-law] by the hand and lifted her up. The word, ēgeiren, translated here as “lifted her up” is often translated as “raised” — so literally, “he raised her up.” We could say that the healing of Simon’s mother-in- law is the first resurrection story in the gospel.1
Having been “raised,” Simon’s mother-in-law “serves” them. Which may mean that she actually gets up and prepares and serves food. But the verb “to serve” is another important term in Mark’s gospel. It’s the same verb used just a few verses earlier, of the angels in the wilderness. Simon’s mother-in-law is serving like the angels. The verb, diakonein, shows that her service is her decisive response in faith. It is used to mean both to serve at a table and to do ministry.
It’s the same service we are talking about when we think of Jesus’ ministry, as described later in Mark’s gospel: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) Simon’s mother in law, who is healed or raised up by Jesus, responds through service: she is an icon of resurrection and Christian ministry.
Jesus calls us to be agents of resurrection in the lives of families, and in communities. Raising up, healing, lifting up from suffering; raising each other up through our compassion and genuine kindness, by being in honest relationship, showing truly goodwill toward those in our communities. Our loving compassion heals and restores relationships, lightens loads we may never see, or understand, smooths rough places, and shines light into dark places. Healing us all, restoring us all, renewing us as beloved community.
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge writes:
In Mark’s gospel there is no “individual” healing, only those that repair relationship, son to father, daughter to mother, and here, mother to children. …
The resurrection life that Jesus proclaims here at the opening of Mark’s gospel and that Christians experience, is not unambiguous or uncomplicated in the world in which we live. The verses that follow this story of resurrection suggest the enormity of the suffering (“the whole city was gathered around the door”) and the toll the ministry takes on Jesus. Mark’s gospel is honest about the opposition to and the cost of proclaiming the good news. 2
We don’t need Mark’s Gospel to tell us that our experience is complicated, or that our world is difficult, that the suffering is overwhelming, though it’s better to be honest about it than to make it all sound like easy going.
Easy news wouldn’t help us; but an honest assessment of the world, and Good News in the face of all that, now that’s something we can trust to see us through the hardest of times. For me, the best part of this text is the communal nature of healing – that healing is meant to repair relationship. To restore people to community and to one another. And that Jesus would value that so highly he would pour himself out, until he had to take a rest; and he would then go back and face hundreds more in need of healing and restoration. All for love’s sake.
In our Sunday School today, our children are making Valentines Cards. We thought it would be a good way for them to talk about the healing story and to work through the sadness some may be feeling as well. After all, Jesus healed to show people God’s love, to restore them to those they love, to build up the community of beloved. And to show us that loving one another is worth the work, it is our call, our service, our response to being raised up by Christ ourselves.
Friends, may we love those in our communities and love one another, as we have been loved by God. Amen.
1 Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Dean, President and Professor of New Testament, Seminary of the Southwest, Commentary on Mark 1:29-39, Preaching this Week, Working Preacher, February 4, 2018.
2 Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Dean, President and Professor of New Testament, Seminary of the Southwest, Commentary on Mark 1:29-39, Preaching this Week, Working Preacher, February 4, 2018.