My thoughts on our text this morning borrow heavily from the sermon our Bishop preached this week at the synod Eucharist. So if you want to hear the original, probably more eloquent version of this sermon from the bishop, you can reach it from his website, I’m happy to give you the web address.*
I was listening to the bishop’s words this week because I was stuck on what to say about this text myself. Healing stories are hard, because it’s easy for me to get caught up in the pageantry of it all. In my mind, Jesus flies into the scene like some kind of Oprah of healing, passing out magical medicine to his studio audience like a door prize, “you get a healing, you get a healing.” And in a world where we so rarely experience magic Oprah Jesus, I get stuck up in these healing stories.
But what the bishop pointed out in his sermon was there is something outstandingly ordinary about how this story begins. Remember, the text just before this one, Jesus and the disciples were in the synagogue for prayers, when Jesus was accosted by a man with an unclean spirit. And with a word, Jesus silenced the spirit and cast the spirit out of the man. And everyone who saw it was amazed and kept asking each other about this new teaching.
But then, after the worship in the synagogue had ended, Simon and Andrew and James and John did what so many of us will do after worship is over today, they went home for lunch. And they took Jesus with them. As any of you might do with a traveling preacher who came to visit Trinity for a Sunday and had nowhere to go, they brought the preacher to lunch at their house. You have to wonder how much the incredible event of the casting out of an unclean spirit had really affected the disciples. They just witnessed Jesus perform a miracle and instead of running out into the world to tell everyone about it, they went home for lunch.
Not surprising that the disciples missed it, they’d been pretty busy. The past few verses had been a whirlwind for Simon, he’d gone from tending his nets to becoming a disciple to witnessing an exorcism. But now, bringing Jesus through the front door of his home, he was faced once again with simple, painful domestic concerns. His mother-in-law was sick with a fever. We can assume Simon probably cared for and worried about his mother-in-law. Maybe this illness hadn’t yet taken hold when Simon agreed to follow Jesus on the lakeshore; maybe it had been gnawing away at him the whole time. Either way, bringing Jesus into his home, Simon was once again forced to reckon with the painful, tender normalcy of an illness of someone he loved.
I say it’s normal not to downplay illness, but to recognize the universality of Simon’s concerns. For Simon, for any of us facing a loved one in pain, be the pain illness, addiction, grief, what-have-you, the experience is anything but normal, it is gut wrenching. I say it’s normal, because the helplessness is an all too common experience.
Into this domestic scene steps Jesus. And he came and took Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifted her up. And the fever left her, and she began to serve them. The healing in this quiet little tableau is no the flashy, commanding “be silent” of the synagogue. It is, instead, a hand outstretched, a gentle touch, a “lifting up” back into a position of honor.
Now wait a minute, you might be thinking. This woman just got up from the sickbed, and now she has to rush into service? Can’t someone else do the serving for an afternoon and let her rest? But here’s that thing, her instant move to service signified a return to her right place of honor. As would be true in so many of our homes, who got to show hospitality to a guest was a sign of respect to the host as well as the guest. Yes, Simon’s wife could have served Jesus, but as the head of the household, Simon’s mother-in-law was the rightful holder of that honor, an honor that the fever had stolen from her. So when Jesus lifted her up, when Jesus pulled her from the fever, he did more than just heal her illness, Jesus restored her to a place of honor in the family and in the community.
All Simon did was bring Jesus home with him, bring Jesus home to the person he loved who needed Jesus, and Jesus did the rest. And then, the story goes on, it didn’t stop there. From healing Simon’s mother-in-law, the whole city ended up gathered around the door, and Jesus cured many who were sick, healed various diseases, and cast out many demons. But it started with tired disciples bringing Jesus home.
As I was reflecting on this sermon I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between Jesus taking Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifting her up, and the language the Women’s Co-op uses about offering a hand up not a hand out. And the bishop wondered, and I wondered too, if maybe ministry is just that simple. If maybe bringing healing, bringing life, bringing restoration of relationship is just as simple as bringing Jesus into our homes, our neighborhoods, our everyday concerns, and trusting Jesus to do the rest. Trusting that Jesus cares just as much about the ordinary as he does about the extraordinary. That Jesus is present in the simple, every day acts of breaking bread and sharing the cup, of gathering community and extending a hand.
And that bringing Jesus into these simple, ordinary relationships, trust that Jesus power comes even here has amazing and transformative results. After worship, we’ll gather for our annual meeting. We will have a potluck, we will break bread and eat soup, there will be coffee and water with frozen fruit in it and brownies. We will sit at folding tables and eat off disposable plates, it will all look overwhelmingly ordinary. Some will have the position of honor in service; others who held the position of honor in service for years will have the position of honor of being served. At the meeting we will pour over a packet of reports, we’ll discuss the budget, the roof, the parking lot. We’ll wonder about the past and worry about the future, it will all be exceptionally ordinary.
But here’s what this Gospel reading promises us, it promises us that Jesus will be there. That when we walk out the doors of the sanctuary and head down the hall for lunch, that Jesus comes with us. That Jesus is just as interested in the goings on of our day-to-day existence as he is in our worship. And that Jesus presence in our ordinary is transcendent. I know, because I get the privilege of seeing that every day. In the energy generated by a few coats of paint. In the constant hustle of women in the hallway, turning bags and bags of cast-off clothing into pure treasure. In strips of PVC pipe that turned into a bike rack for children at INASMUCH house, and varying degrees of skilled and unskilled labor is turning into a home for a family on Eagle Street, Jesus is transforming our church, our community, our world, even as we speak, even as we wonder, even as we, like the disciples go searching after him, begging him to return, Jesus is already here.
Simon brought Jesus home with him, and Jesus did the rest. That is the good news in our reading today, that is the promise we can cling to. That Jesus comes home with us, that Jesus wants to come home with us, wants to be in our churches, our houses, our lives, and that Jesus will do the rest. So as we head next door to eat potluck and discuss the budget, as we worry about ill loved ones, an ill community, an ill world, as we look for ways to use our hands in service, we can first know this. That Jesus is there with us, that Jesus comes into our places of fear and need and brokenness, and that he will do the rest. Amen.
* Bishop Satterlee's sermon on this text can be found on his website: http://craigasatterlee.com/logjam/february-8.html
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