Gospel:
Mark 1:29-39
Old Testament reading:
Isaiah 40:21-31
The last couple of years, I’ve
been baking my own bread. Homemade
bread, to me, is one of the great pleasures in life. I have a sweet tooth, but I will choose bread
over ice cream or pie, my favorite desserts.
My grandma used to bake bread and she had a tiny little loaf pan she
would give to me. Side by side we would
knead our dough. I can still smell that
bread baking. When I first started
baking on my own, I had some pretty bad failures. If any one part isn’t right, you don’t
achieve the rise you need to give the bread the sponginess. If the dough is too dry, if the flour isn’t
glutenous enough, if the place where the bread is rising isn’t warm enough, the
dough just won’t be lifted up.
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus
lifts up Simon’s mother-in-law, raises her.
When we say on Easter morning, “Christ is risen!” we use this same
word. Simon’s mother is risen! She is resurrected!
Of course she had been very
sick, with a fever. And not only her,
but the whole city has been suffering from illness. Maybe they never asked because they already
knew the answer the question, “Why is everyone so sick?” Maybe they assumed that was just the way it
was. Or maybe they knew there are powers
in this world that keep people sick, that keep them from the nutrition they
need to be well, that control the water, that make them work so long and so
hard that their bodies fall apart, that greedily collect all the money and land
for themselves so that regular people can’t get adequate shelter to stay
healthy.
Certainly they weren’t sick
because God created the world this way!
God created a world to give health and wholeness, gave rules to give
balance and rest. If God created this
world good, how had it come to grind people up, like Simon’s mother-in-law, and
leave her sick and deflated and unable to serve or participate in the family or
community?
Like the forces that stand
against my rising bread, there are many reasons, and multiple ways that life
and rising can be taken from people.
We’ve both experienced them ourselves, and we’ve participated in them,
taking the breath right out of someone.
We’ve found ourselves sick, although it isn’t always easy to say it was
because of some missing vitamin or a pollutant in the air or because of mold in
our house or apartment. Sometimes it is
easier to see if it was the greed to the folks selling us things that are bad
for us, although we accept some of the blame ourselves for participating in the
vice in the first place. Sometimes it is
easier to figure out what is keeping us sick, if we can’t afford to go to the
doctor or pay our medical bills, so we forgo the preventive checkups and
diseases spread before we ever know they are there.
It is harder, sometimes to accept the part we play on deflating others
and keeping them from their rise. It
turns out I have a child who is as stubborn as I am. We struggle with each other and I am starting
to see myself through his eyes. He is
going to remember these struggles. He
truly sees me when I am not acting like an adult. So, God help me, I am trying not to deflate,
but to help him rise to meet whatever challenge it is. I am trying to back off on the pressure and
help him find the motivation. It is an
art-form I wish I had a recipe book for, but instead it is full experimentation,
learning from each struggle. Inhibiting
rising bread can happen in so many ways.
People we will never meet suffer to provide cheap clothing and food for
our families. People suffer for our
convenience—that we drive everywhere we want to go, even that we have a church
that is so difficult to walk to. If we
were faithful, wouldn’t we ask you to find a church near you that you can walk
to and join that church? We are enslaved
to convenience, to the forces that deflate, that make people sick.
Now Jesus enters the story. He
takes Simon’s mother in law by the hand and lifts her up. The Gospel of Mark is said to be telling the
story of a new exodus, that Jesus is leading the people out of the slavery of
illness and death, into a new direction in the wilderness, where they/we will
be learning a new way of following God and receiving new life. Jesus is taking us by the hand, and raising
us up, to walk in a new way, to live in a new way, in relationship, in
abundance.
The Israelites were deflated in exile.
They complained against God. This
reading from Isaiah is God’s response through the prophet. It is perfectly obvious that God knows what
is going on and loves the people, according to Isaiah. Just because this rising is taking a little
time, doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening.
What seems like forever to ordinary people, the length of time a corrupt
leader governs, or the number of years a people are enslaved, is just a blip to
God. It is temporary. These powers of oppression do not have the
kind of power God has. God is created
everything and knows their name, knows their nature. God’s got their number, you might say. So even though people are oppressed, God has
not forgotten them. God empowers them
with God’s own strength, like eagles.
They will be given God’s strength and God’s endurance and God’s patience
and God’s power. God will lift them,
they will rise with wings like eagles.
They will experience resurrection life.
Jesus raises Simon’s mother in law, heals many in the city, and casts out
demons, but the people still want more from him. They want to own him. They want Jesus to be their personal
healer. However, Jesus goes out while it
is still dark to pray. I actually take
some comfort in knowing that Jesus sometimes had trouble sleeping. He woke up really early and he couldn’t
sleep. He was shaken by the amount of
need all around him. Maybe he wondered
if he would be enough. Maybe he was
worried he would let people down. But he
went out to pray and there he was reminded of what he was there to do. He did some healing and some raising, but he
needed to get out and get people ready for the second exodus, to help them turn
in a new direction, to prepare to follow a new way of relationship and health
and service and the sharing of life.
It was like Jesus was a bit of yeast and he needed to be stirred around
the dough. He didn’t come to one little
place. He came for the life of the whole
world. So he starts out in Galilee and
begins to preach the good news, breathes a little holy spirit life into this
dense dough. He raises Simon’s mother in
law, he begins raising others in the city.
It was like concentric circles.
He goes out from there throughout all of Galilee and then out even
further. His ministry was then
multiplied in those he raised. Simon’s
mother in law then takes up the ministry of lifting people up through her own
service. She begins to serve Jesus and
the Disciples, one imagines through cooking for them, but come on, why do we
hold her back just because she’s a woman.
It is likely that she went out and preached the good news of what
happened to her, maybe she took a few hands and Jesus healed people and lifted
them up through her. There are several
times groups of unnamed women ministering in the Gospel of Mark, maybe she is
there among them, serving God, lifting up, learning Jesus’ way of new
life.
Jesus raises up so many people in the Gospel, not so they can return to
their old, oppressed and oppressive, disconnected life, but so that they would
be empowered by the same Holy Spirit that he had to bring healing and
connection and new life, so they would be empowered by the holy spirit to serve
God, and live abundantly a kingdom life.
You may or may not remember that the Gospel of Mark ends with an empty
tomb and no Jesus. We are left hanging
about what happened to Jesus. Some
scholars have argued that the Gospel of Mark is so full of resurrection
stories, stories of being lifted up, that having read the Gospel and coming to
the end, we know what happened to him.
Jesus is one who continually lifts up and resurrects. So it only makes sense that this resurrection
life continues and that Jesus is risen indeed.
When Jesus ascends into the heavens, he then leaves this ministry of
lifting up with the Disciples and with us, to continue that work of lifting
up. Not that we do it by our own power,
but he leaves the Holy Spirit with us to empower us, to work through us to lift
up those who are sick or hurting.
Simon comes to Jesus who has been praying alone and he says, “Everyone is
searching for you.” Jesus knew what they
wanted. They wanted him to be their
personal physician. They wanted healing
for a few, they wanted a procedure, they wanted something temporary. But Jesus knew that he came to be the great
healer. To bring a kind of healing of
all creation, more like wholeness, or shalom.
This healing is for all creation, is a new way of life, it is something
in which we can all actively participate, and it is forever. Jesus couldn’t let himself be distracted by
these individual healings, and keep himself from the larger goal of
wholeness. And he couldn’t let himself
take away the power we all have for healing by doing it all himself. But I hear this statement on another level,
“Everyone is searching for you.” Everyone is searching for short-term healing,
the easy fix. But under all that is a
deeper hope for meaningful connection to everything, for love and forgiveness,
for learning a new way of life and a new direction, one in which we all rise to
greater heights of love and service to God and lift each other up and find
ourselves embraced by wholeness.
No comments:
Post a Comment