February 8, 2009 at Saint Mark in Norman, OK
Job 7: 1-4, 6-7 + Psalm 147 + 1 Corinthians 9 16-19, 22-23 + Mark 1:29-39
Those silly apostles! They are all excited, and so easily impressed. You can almost feel their mood as they go chasing out to that “deserted place.” Mark tells us that it was “early before dawn” that Jesus had gone out there. If we were as familiar with scripture images and language as we ought to be, our minds would have snapped to attention at that phrase, because it is the same words and the same image as Easter morning when some women went seeking the tomb “early before dawn” only to find it empty. So, Mark with his attention to detail has now in just these ten verses put us in the context of the resurrection because just verses before the verb he uses to describe what Jesus does for Peter’s mother-in-law is the resurrection verb: “raise up.” Remember, this is just the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel. He wants us to reflect upon this incident in light of the resurrection which is the whole point of writing the Gospel to begin with.
Yet there are those apostles never quite putting two and two together. My guess is that they pursued Jesus feeling very important. After all, they knew where he was! They were his friends! Suddenly these no-body fishermen are important. They have access to power, and so they pretend to be the great facilitators. “Everyone is looking for you!” they say. Can’t you just hear how impressed they are? They think that it’s all about the crowds: the bigger the crowd the greater the success. It’s all in the numbers they are thinking, while Mark must have smiled as he concludes the Gospel with no one left but a handful: no crowd, no one pursuing Jesus, in fact, even these apostles who are so easily impressed are no where to be found when reality hits.
“What is this reality?” we ought to ask. What is it Jesus is revealing here and why is it that the demons of earlier verses are hushed in the face of such power? Perhaps it is because this is not about power but rather about service. Perhaps it is because this is not about what Jesus can do, but about what God expects us all to do. I have come to believe that Jesus demands that the demons keep quiet because they keep pointing to him, making him the focus of attention, and thereby making it more difficult for Jesus to make his point that we must go and do likewise. To whatever extent we have bought into the thinking of these demons, they have been successful. Spectator Christians are the demons success story. Excusing ourselves from doing what Jesus does because he was the “Son of God” is exactly what the demons are out to accomplish. It puts a stop to the work of God in this world.
This story is not about power. It is about service. It is about seeing what needs to be done, and doing it. Notice that this miracle happens inside Peter’s home. There is no one there to see it, no one there to impress. It happens privately because there is human need that Jesus sees and responds to. Miracles are not great demonstrations of divine power performed to stir up crowds of the curious. They are the moments when one human being sees the need of another and quietly responds to that need with the gifts that have. What is more impressive here, Jesus who crosses a room and holds the hand of Peter’s mother-in-law or the mother-in-law who gets off a sick bed to take care of guests in her home? I’m not so sure – perhaps both actions are what this is all about.
One thing is certain. Nothing Jesus did was for crowds in spite of how impressed the apostles seem to be by their growing numbers. Jesus knows that the crowds are going to be gone when what he wishes to reveal and teach becomes clear: a message of service, sacrifice, forgiveness, and love. Even today these things do not draw crowds even of the curious. None the less, this is what he has to say to us and what he will teach us. Eventually the apostles do catch on, and the hope is that we shall as well:
catch on to the truth that what is recorded in this Gospel is not here to amaze us, impress us, or excite us. It is not here to prove the divinity or the power of Christ nearly as much as it is to point to what can happen when one person does what ever there is in their power to ease the suffering of another human being.
That is miraculous and it is sure sign of the coming of the Kingdom of God.