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Mark 1: 29–39
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Lead us, Lord, by your light and your truth. Amen.
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This morning we are in the fifth week of the season of Epiphany. And
Epiphany, as you know, means ‘revealing’ or
‘showing’ – specifically the revelation of Jesus
Christ to the world. But as we know from personal experience, our
understanding of the Son of God doesn’t usually dawn on us all at
once in some spectacular fashion — like a curtain suddenly rising
on a well–lighted stage, revealing everything that up to this
point had been hidden. Instead, each tiny new revelation, each
fresh understanding has to be illuminated by our own flickering faith
before we finally begin to grasp the full picture. And even then,
we are still learning.
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Now, you might prefer the more spectacular view, the cosmic view that
the prophet Isaiah offers us this morning as he describes how wonderful
our God really is:
Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is
larger and stronger and more impossible to comprehend than you can
possibly imagine! The everlasting God is powerful!
But if we are willing to look at things more closely, we can find some
astonishing revelations – even in Mark’s seemingly spare
account.
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And in that account this morning, just as he was last week, Mark is
focused on the very first day of Jesus’ ministry. Last
week, you remember, Jesus and four of his newly minted disciples
entered the synagogue at Capernaum, where Jesus taught a powerful
lesson and then exorcised a demon from a man in the
congregation. He went about his work quietly, but his impact
on the people who listened to him teach and watched him minister was
profound.
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In this morning’s passage, he and his disciples are just leaving
that synagogue after the service to go to Simon Peter’s house,
nearby. Clearly, the men are hoping for a Sabbath day dinner.
But when they arrive at the house of Simon’s
mother–in–law, they learn she is ill with a fever. Once
again, Jesus doesn’t say a word. He simply goes to the woman
lying there in her bed, takes her by the hand, and raises her up to her
feet. Her fever vanishes . . . and
she rises up and serves them.
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On the face of it, there’s nothing very dramatic in this
story. Jesus takes the woman by the hand and raises her to her
feet. Only, the verb Mark uses when he describes Jesus raising
the woman to her feet is the very same word he will use later in his
Gospel account to describe Jesus, risen from the dead. And
that’s not all. When he says that the woman rises
up . . . and serves
them . . . the verb he uses for
‘serve’ is dihkonei
(diaconei) – from which, of course, we get the
term deacon. And suddenly, the whole incident is illuminated
for us. This is no insignificant encounter. This unnamed
woman, rising up in gratitude for her healing and serving Jesus and his
new disciples has become the first deacon in the Christian Church. You
and I do the same thing – in gratitude for something the Lord has
done for us. We rise up . . . and
serve. It’s all about relationship. It’s all
about gratitude and giving thanks. It’s all about love.
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Now, we don’t know how long that meal lasted at the home of Simon
Peter’s mother–in–law. But as the sun set and
Sabbath was officially over, a crowd began to gather at the
door. Word had travelled fast about Jesus’s abilities to
heal, and Mark says that the whole town now brought their sick, their
demented, their afflicted ones – for Jesus to heal or deliver.
For in those days, many conflated those terms. If someone
fell ill, many took that illness as a sign of God’s displeasure
with that person . . . and Satan’s
hold on them. But Jesus is not judging. He’s simply
restoring each one he ministers to — to wholeness and wellbeing.
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And then, finally, he sleeps. And no wonder, for he has packed a
lot into this first day of ministry. But long before daylight,
Mark says, he is up again, this time alone, unaccompanied by any
disciples. And he goes out to find a quiet place — a
deserted place, our New Revised Standard Version calls it — where
he can pray. And now we think we’ve understood, for we too
seek quiet places where we can hear ourselves think and hear God when we
pray. As the old timey hymn puts it,
“There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.”
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Only, here again, there’s more going on in this passage than we
first understand. For the Greek word that’s usually
translated ‘deserted place’ in this passage is
erhmos (hierymos). And sometimes that word
is translated ‘quiet place’ or ‘deserted
place.’ But earlier in this same chapter this same word was
translated ‘wilderness’ – when it referred to the
wilderness where Jesus was tempted and tried by demons and ministered to
by angels. So on this dawning morning, his second day of ministry,
Jesus is not just praying quietly to his Father in heaven. Jesus is
about to be tempted – from a source no one expected.
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Simon Peter has been looking for Jesus, and when he finds him, says,
rather indignantly, “Everyone is searching for
you!” And right here the temptation arises, for the
clear implication is that Peter wants Jesus to come back to Capernaum,
back to the synagogue where he won the admiration of the congregation,
back to the doorway of Simon Peter’s mother–in–law,
where Jesus healed so many the night before. “Come
back,” he is saying to Jesus, “where everyone now admires
you, and we can watch you and learn from you.”¹
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That might not sound like much of a temptation, but as Tom Long points
out, it was a huge one. The choice was between going back to
Capernaum and a life of comfortable popularity in a town where everyone
now was crying, ‘Hosanna!’ – or doing things
God’s way and going on to a great many towns where Jesus’
welcome was by no means certain. It was a choice between the
Kingdom of Self–Interest versus the Kingdom of
God² . . . the choice, as an old
prayer calls it, between the hard right and the easy wrong.
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There’s no doubt which route Simon Peter wants him to
take – and it won’t be the last time Peter thinks he knows
better than Jesus. But Jesus’ time in prayer has helped him
to hear God’s voice instead. So he doesn’t argue with
his brash disciple. He simply says firmly, “Let’s go
on to the neighboring towns so I can preach there too. This is why I
have come.”
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I’m beginning to love the Gospel of Mark. It moves at a
pace I can take in, lighting my path with many small revelations, many
small epiphanies along the way.
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May God grant me the faith to take them all in.
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Amen.
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¹ Thomas J. Long “A Tempting and Lonely Place” sermon
in Shepherds and Bathrobes; Sermons for Advent, Christmas and
Epiphany (C.S. S. Publishing Company, Lima, Ohio; 1987) p.94.
² Ibid., p. 94
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