“Healing & Praying” Colchester Federated Church, February 4, 2024, Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Mark 1:29-39)

Today is the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany.  We are nearing the end of this season in the church year where we contemplate the stories of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  The Gospel story that we heard last Sunday was about Jesus teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum and healing a man who had been possessed by an evil spirit.  News about Jesus continues to spread because he was teaching and healing with authority, already putting into practice what he was preaching.

This morning we see another example of Jesus healing someone in need.  In fact, Mark explains that after Jesus left the synagogue he goes home to Simon Peter’s house with Peter, Andrew, James, and John.  Peter’s mother-in-law is in bed, and she’s sick with a fever.  Jesus goes right up to this woman, takes her by her hand, and raises her up.  Immediately the fever is gone and she begins to serve Jesus and the disciples. 

This story is another moving story about healing.  It shows that Jesus often healed with physical touch.  Jesus was not afraid to take a sick person by the hand and raise her up.  There is a physicality here and a sacredness to the way that Jesus touches this woman to help her be made well.  Episcopal priest John Koenig wrote about Christian understandings of healing and relates, “We yearn for the touch that will make us whole, or we yearn to be able to offer this touch of wholeness to someone we know.  We live in a society that defines healing as an activity that takes place largely between patients and their physicians or nurses.  Christians understand the practice of healing as something much larger than this.  The central image for us is not cure but wholeness.”[1]  Because this story isn’t just about a cure for Peter’s mother-in-law.  What’s more compelling is what happens next—her response to Jesus’ healing miracle points to what Jesus’ healings were ultimately about.  This idea of wholeness.

Now we might wonder about the detail of Peter’s mother-in-law immediately getting up and starting to serve Jesus and the disciples.  That could feel like she had to naturally fall into the traditional family role of the mother taking care of the guests.  And she’s just been sick in bed with a fever, could no one else make dinner?  Come on.  But there’s more to it than that.  The CEB Study Bible relates that the wording here recalls how the angels cared for Jesus in the wilderness and is related to the term “deacon.”  This healed woman, Peter’s mother-in-law whose name we don’t even know, ends up playing an important role in Jesus’ ministry and the lives of his followers in this moment.[2]  She responds to this healing by immediately being of service to others.  It ends up being a story about healing and hospitality and service, a story about restoration and wholeness.

This Gospel story is a reminder that the role of deacons in our church (or any church that has deacons) is to provide spiritual care for the congregation.  That isn’t the pastor’s role alone—I am just one person and not Wonder Woman unfortunately.  Our CFC By-Laws state that Deacons are called to care for “the spiritual growth, well-being, and worship life of CFC and its members, especially the needs of the ill.”[3]  This is the traditional role of deacons in any church.  Can we think of Peter’s mother-in-law as the first deacon?  It’s not so explicit, but the wording that Mark uses here is interesting.  Remember it harkens back to the angels caring for Jesus in the wilderness as he was in distress.  Isn’t this an amazing witness?  Peter’s mother-in-law responding to Jesus healing her by providing hospitality to these guests in her home.

After this healing, that very evening at sunset people start bringing to Jesus all those who were sick or demon-possessed.  People who were suffering in mind, body, and spirit.  The whole town gathers near the door of Peter’s family.  Mark tells us that Jesus “healed many who were sick with all kinds of diseases and he threw out many demons.”[4]  After this day full of healing and attending to the needs of others, Mark relates that Jesus gets up early, well before sunrise, to go out to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer.  No wonder Jesus needed that time to recover and simply be with God.

Sometimes I think of these healings that Jesus performed as the beginning of transformation for those folks who were healed.  Jesus is doing some seed scattering in a way.  Would this healing bear fruit?  It was up to the person to respond to this grace.  Because the central image of Christian healing is not just cure but wholeness.

This reminds me of the story of a pilgrim who one day set out on a long journey in search of joy, love, and peace.  The pilgrim walked for many weary miles and time passed slowly on the journey.  The landscapes she passed by were not always happy—passing by war, sickness, fights, rejections, and separations.  A land where it seemed the more people possessed, the more warlike they became because they had to defend what they had at all costs.  “Longing for peace, they prepared for war.  Longing for love, they surrounded themselves with walls of distrust and barriers of fear.  Longing for life, they were walking deeper into death.”[5]

Eventually the pilgrim came to a little cottage and something about this cottage spoke to the pilgrim.  It was almost as if the cottage was glowing from some inner light.  She went inside and discovered a little shop.  Behind the counter was the shopkeeper.  It was hard to know the shopkeeper’s age.  The whole place had an air of timelessness about it.  With a smile, the shopkeeper asked what the pilgrim would like.  The pilgrim questioned what the shopkeeper had to offer and the mysterious shopkeeper replied, “Oh, we have all the things here that you most long for.  Just tell me what you desire the most.”

Well, the pilgrim hardly knew where to begin after her long journey.  She blurted out, “I want peace— in my own family, in my native land and in the whole world.  I want to make something good of my life.  I want those who are sick to be well again, and those who are lonely to have friends.  I want those who are hungry to have enough to eat.  I want every child born on this planet today to have a chance to be educated.  I want everyone on earth to live in freedom.  I want this world to be a kingdom of love.”[6]  This is what I desire.

The shopkeeper quietly reviewed her shopping list and gently replied, “I’m so sorry, I should have explained.  We don’t supply the fruits here.  We only supply the seeds.” 

We only supply the seeds. 

We are called to do the best we can.  To offer compassion.  To view others with the loving eyes of Jesus.  To help and to be good neighbors.  And to trust that God is at work to bring about healing and wholeness.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] John Koenig, Chapter 11 “Healing” in Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People, Dorothy C. Bass, Ed., pg. 149.
[2] Footnote on Mark 1:31 in The CEB Study Bible, 69 NT.
[3] Colchester Federated Church By-Laws, Article VI, Section 3 Diaconate, Roles and Duties, pg. 9.
[4] Mark 1:32-34, CEB.
[5] “Only the Seed” in One Hundred Wisdom Stories from around the World, Margaret Silf, ed., pgs. 157-158.
[6] Ibid.

Photo by Jake Thacker on Unsplash