Epiphany 5B

 

Mark 1:29-39

So today we have week two of our year-long occasional series on women in leadership in the church, yesterday, today and tomorrow.   Those of you who were here on Gaudete Sunday in December will remember that I told you that this year, 2024 marks the 50^th anniversary of the first ordinations of women to the Episcopal priesthood.  So in honor of this milestone, I have decided that this is a good year to take some time to examine the role of women in the bible and in the church.  So every time this year we come across a woman in our lectionary, we are going to stop, drop everything and take a really good close look at her.  And I bet that we are going to discover some things that we have forgotten, over looked or never really noticed before.  Because while we may be a lot more visible now, women have in fact been leading the church all along.

And so we begin today with Peter’s mother in law.  A woman so easily overlooked that she isn’t even given a name.  But when we take time to look closely at her, we discover that she is so incredibly important, world changingly important.  And yet the world has rendered her almost completely invisible.  I will say, it doesn’t help our cause that Mark is so perfectly Mark in this passage.  Always in a hurry he manages to tell 4 distinct stories in 11 verses.  There is not a spare word, even a spare syllable to be found here, yet every word is intentional and he manages to tell us so much about life, ministry and who we are called to be in this tiny little action-packed morsel of text.

And our text or today begins with this story of Jesus healing of Peter’s mother-in-law.  So let’s begin with the fact that Peter had a Mother-in-law.  Which means that Peter has a wife and a family, who he still lives with, who he is in charge of caring for.  So often we picture Jesus and the disciples as these solitary men.  People who have left all the other bonds of their lives to follow Jesus.  But it becomes increasingly clear in this little story that Jesus and his disciples are much more woven into the community than we often notice and that they are more reliant on others and others are more reliant on them than we often think or imagine.  Though Peter and the other male apostles are given the starring roles the Gospel texts, they were never the only ones in the community around Jesus. A community that Jesus finds to be incredibly important. 

And Jesus is just coming from the Synagogue where he has healed the man with the unclean spirit in the passage we heard last week, and he goes to the house of Peter and Andrew, where this whole group appears to be based and Peter’s mother-in-law is sick and in bed with a fever.  And our English bible says “He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”  And that’s it.  One sentence, it’s only 15 words in Greek.  She gets 15 words but they are some of the most important and action-packed words in the bible.  Where we begin to see the reality of Jesus’s mission for the first time.  This text is in a very real way a microcosm of all that is to come in Mark.  You see, the word we hear as lifted up also means resurrected.  It is one of Mark’s favorite ways to talk about healing.  But it is also what happens to Jesus.  On Easter morning, when they arrive at the empty tomb angles tell the women, maybe even this woman, that Jesus has been lifted up, resurrected and to send the disciples back to Galilee, probably back to this very house where we are today to find Jesus.  To remember what he did and to follow him in this new resurrected life.  In a very real way, this woman is the first person raised up to new life in Jesus Christ.  She is the first and she is the example that we are all called to follow. 

And then, the first thing she does when she is raised up to new life is to serve Jesus and the community.  But this statement is perhaps even more loaded.  Because probably what we think of when we hear this is that she got up and cooked dinner for the men.  But the word we translate as serve here is Diakonia.  It is the word for minister.  It is where we get Deacons.  She is in fact the first person to be called a Deacon.  How different might the world be today if for the last 2000 years when we read this passage we heard “and the fever left her and she became their Minister.” 

And this word for service or ministry is used again in several important places in Mark.  First to describe the women who care for and support Jesus in his ministry but also more crucially to describe Jesus himself.   Later when James and John (who are there to witness this story) ask to sit at Jesus’s right hand in his glory, he tells them “For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve.”  This passage has often been used to diminish women’s roles in the church, but in reality Jesus uses her as a model of faithful discipleship in contrast to power hungry men.  This passage becomes a model for Christian living.  We are freed, resurrected, brought back to new life in order to love and serve our neighbor.  Not for ourselves or our own comfort or pleasure but in order to be part of a wider community.  To restore relationships and to give us new purpose.

But this call to self-giving service often comes as a double-edged sword, especially for women.  If and when we are allowed to serve in meaningful ways, we are often then expected to give more and more, to give it all, to give until it hurts.  And so the rest of this story becomes important as well if we are to discover who Jesus is calling us to be today.  Because after raising up Peter’s mother in law Jesus is still not done for the day.  Now his attention turns to those on the outside.  And that very evening, people from the whole community gather outside the house to be healed.  And Jesus heals many (but not all) of them. 

But all of that healing and ministry comes at a cost.  It appears to take a heavy personal toll.  And so Jesus leaves after this.  He goes off by himself to pray, to seek peace and answers.  Because ministry does not mean all service all the time.  Even for Jesus.  Even he, the perfect son of God, must take time out to rest, recharge, pray and learn.  And this too can serve as an example for us.

Because Lent is coming.  A time where we are called to serve others and to care for the world, but also a time where we are called to tend to our spirits.  A time where we are called tend to our spiritual practices and to spend extra time in prayer with God.  Because with Jesus it was never just one or the other, he always knew that the only way to truly love and serve his neighbors was to make sure that he was spiritually health as well.

And so I hope that each of you will spend some time this Lenten season creating space to listen to what God has to say to you.  Because I know he has something to say each of you.  He has a call for every one of your lives.  Each and every one of us has been drown in the waters of baptism and raised up to new life in Christ.  And this new life has been given to us so that we may serve others in wonderous and beautiful ways.  And so I hope you will join me during the season of Lent in taking special time to rest and rejuvenate ourselves in God’s word and to listen to the words that God is speaking into our hearts and the call he is extending to you.

Because you never know where God might be leading.  Jesus returns from his time of prayer, energized to expand his mission to a much wider community.  It led him out in ways he and his disciples had not yet imagined.  And it is leading you somewhere too if we have the courage to follow.  Amen.