Meditation on Mark 1:29–39
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Pastor Karen Crawford
Feb. 4, 2024
Art by Stushie
Everything is going well with Jim’s healing journey. Thank you for your prayers, cards, and words of encouragement.
People have given me good advice about “caring for the caregiver.”
The reality is that it just isn’t possible for every caregiver to get the rest and relief they need, especially if there is no other close family member to help them. I see this often in my ministry. My heart goes out to the spouses and adult children caring for loved ones, not just recovering from surgery for a month or two, as is my case, but loved ones struggling with ongoing, progressive, life-altering illness and disease.
The one thing that has kept my spirits up and has had a healing power on me was, the last few days, being able to take time for some quiet walks of 20 or 30 minutes in my neighborhood. Sometimes I bring my toy poodle, bundled in her winter jacket! Sometimes, I go by myself. I go during the day or in the evening, after the supper is put away and the dishes are done. I carry a lantern flashlight. I love looking up at the trees in the dark shadows and orange glow of the lights at night. You can see all the twists and turns of their bare branches. They look like hands, with fingers reaching out to one another and up to God the Creator above.
Outside, in this urban area, when I am alone walking, despite the noise of neighbors and trains and traffic rushing by, I sense God’s loving presence. I know that I am not alone. The Lord God still has a hand in all the tiny and not so tiny details of my life. I believe in the One God, as Ephesians 4:6 assures us, who is “Father of us all…above all.. through all, and in all.”
The healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is one of my favorite healing stories. This same story appears in three gospels, with slightly different details. Often, those whom Jesus heals are strangers in a public place, encountered along his journeys. Not so, here. This healing takes place in the privacy of home and family. This is a person intimately known to the one whom Jesus will give his special nickname, Peter or “Petros,” Greek for “Rock.” He will make this promise in Matthew 16:18, “And I tell you that you are Peter (Petros) and on this “rock” I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
So many details are worth noting. This is the first healing story involving a woman in Matthew and Mark. Jesus, a man, crosses many borders to heal this woman, most likely a widow. She is “other” to Jesus, marginalized because of her gender and because she is older, past childbearing age. [1] In her culture, women find their identity and purpose in their roles of wife and mother. Why the gospel writer doesn’t offer her name—just her relationship to Simon Peter—is a mystery to me. The editors of my NRSV Bible fail to mention her in the heading above this passage, though her healing is the most important thing of this passage. Check your Bibles when you go home. Mine says, “Jesus heals many at Simon’s home.” At least Simon was mentioned!
A word about their home. It isn’t like ours! “It was (probably) the sort of courtyard house that was typical of urban areas in Syro-Palestine at the time.” [2] So, Jesus didn’t just walk through the front door and see Simon’s mother-in-law lying in a bed. He enters the home and THEN Simon and Andrew tell Jesus about her “at once” or “immediately” as this Greek word, “euythus,” is translated. (Mark, who isn’t known as a great writer, is fond of “euythus,” using it 41 times!)
Jesus goes to her and heals with a touch of his hand—another border crossing for a religious man in his culture. He “lifts her up.” This fever is more serious without the medical advances of today. This verb, “egeiro,” is also translated “to rise up” and is the same word Jesus uses when he predicts his own raising from the dead. The same “power by which God will raise Jesus from the dead is…at work in this woman’s healed body … Healing, then.. brings new life and anticipates the new life in Christ that transcends death.” [3]
More evidence of this woman’s “otherness” to Jesus and those sharing and hearing this account is that no dialogue is recorded. Did he really say nothing to her? Did she really say nothing to him?
Jesus will continue to cross societal borders to minister to other women and girls. The women won’t always be silent, like Simon’s mother-in-law, and they won’t always be Jewish. A Syrophoenician woman will follow Jesus into a house that he thinks is deserted. He is reluctant to help her, but she begs him to cast the unclean spirit out of her daughter. He doesn’t go to her home or touch her or the child. But when she returns home, she finds the child lying on the bed and the demon gone.
The detail that stands out in this passage and stirs much conversation is what happens after Simon’s mother-in-law’s fever leaves her. She begins to serve them! One feminist writer says, “Many women snort under their breath at the detail in Mark 1:31 about her ‘serving them.’ (Jesus has healed her) “just in time for supper.” [4]
Others point out that “a first century matriarch would have been ashamed not to be in charge when guests came to her home.” [5] My personal experience with women who are sick, struggling with mobility, or recovering from surgery is that they long to be able to do the ordinary domestic tasks that they did for themselves and their families before they were sick. They look around and see the cleaning that is needed. They want to be able to drive their cars, go shopping and go to church, and cook their own meals. We all want to be useful and to serve the Lord with our gifts and talents.
The important thing in this action of service is the word translated “serve”— “diakonei.” This where our word “deacon” comes from. Raise your hand if you have been ordained a deacon. Thank you for your service! This is a church office created in Acts to “supervise the distribution of food among Christians, though most English translations render it ‘deacon’ when applied to men and ‘servant’ when applied to women.’ ” [6] Is this more evidence of the continued “otherness” of women, whose gifts for ministry are not always recognized or appreciated as actual “ministry” for the Lord and His Church?
Friends, this isn’t just a healing story. This has all the elements of a call story, much like the call of Simon, her son-in-law, the fisherman. Her form of service as a deacon is “appropriate to one who follows the Lord.” [7] We will discover, as we continue to take a close look at some healing stories of Jesus that sometimes a healing and the call to discipleship go hand in hand. Is this part of your testimony? Did your gratitude for the Lord’s healing lead you to say YES to following and serving the Lord and God’s people?
Whew! What a long day it’s been for Jesus and his disciples, beginning with the exorcism at the synagogue. It isn’t over, yet. As the sun goes down, the whole city of Capernaum, a village of about 1,500 people,[8] bring “all who were sick and possessed by demons.” Jesus cures many of the sick and casts out demons, who are not permitted to speak—not like the one in the synagogue earlier that day—because they know him. From the first verse of Mark, “there is not a reader unaware of the identity of Jesus. …Only the demons name Jesus for who he is, but no one in the story seems to hear them or pay them any attention.” [9]
The part of this passage that speaks to me in my situation today comes at the end, when Jesus rises while it is still dark and goes to a deserted place to pray. Simon and his companions come looking for him. They scold him, “Everyone is searching for you.”
Jesus doesn’t apologize for these moments or hours when he is off by himself. He tells them what’s next for his ministry, after having spent time alone, listening for God’s voice. “Let us go to the neighboring towns,” he tells them, “so that I may proclaim the message there, also; for this is what I came out to do.”
This will be a regular practice for Jesus throughout his ministry on earth, to go off by himself to the wilderness or a mountain. His disciples will continue to wonder where he is and what he’s doing while he is gone.
Dear friends, our Lord was fully human—and a caregiver, as are many of us, in seasons of our lives. Walking and praying alone, in the outdoors, brought him clarity of purpose; he was refreshed and renewed!
This is my prayer for you who serve the Lord as healers and caregivers, for days, weeks, months or years. May you be blessed in your ministry with joy, peace, hope, and strength. May you find the miracle of time to walk and breathe in the outdoors and sense God’s loving presence with you. May you know for certain that you are not alone. May the Lord provide others to help you and protect YOU from harm. May you who are weary and worried find peace and rest for your body, mind, and soul. May you grow in your trust in the God who has a hand in all the tiny and not so tiny details of our lives, the Lord whose love for you and your loved one will never end. The God who is Father of us all. Above all, through all, and in all.
Let us pray.
Divine Healer and Caregiver, thank you for your Son who showed compassion and didn’t hesitate to cross societal boundaries to bring healing to those in need. Thank you for his example of taking time to be alone with you in your beautiful Creation, to walk and pray and enjoy being in your presence. Bless our caregivers, dear Lord, those who heal as a calling in the medical profession and those who heal as a calling more privately, caring for their families. Give them strength and peace to carry on. Grant them hope in your good future and your hand in the tiny and not so tiny details of our lives. Thank you for your love for us, dear God and Father of us all, who is above all, though all, and in all. Amen.
[1] Lawrence M. Wills, Not God’s People: Insiders and Outsiders in the Biblical World (NY:Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) 40. Wills writes, “We have so far considered the construction of the foreign nations as Other in the biblical tradition, but in every culture there are also, from the point of view of the dominant group, internal Others, such as Other races or classes, Other genders, Other sexual orientations, Other level of ability…In the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, public discourse was almost always from the point of view of the free, propertied, male head of household with a particular kinship lineage; this is generally the voice that speaks in the text, and is almost always the audience who is directly addressed. Thus projecting the woman or slave as Other presumes this arrangement. If there are any exceptions in the Bible, they are rare.”
[2] Walter T. Wilson, Healing in the Gospel of Matthew: Reflections on Method and Ministry (MN:Fortress Press, 2014) 70. Wilson was quoting Elaine Wainwright in Women Healing/Healing Women: The Genderization of Healing in Early Christianity (London: Equinox, 2006), 106.
[4] Deborah Krause, “Simon Peter’s Mother-in-Law,” in a Feminist Companion to Mark, ed. Amy-Jill Levine (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001), 39.
[5] William C. Placher, Mark (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 39.
[6] William Placher, 39.
[7] Walter Wilson, 77.
[8]https://www.touristisrael.com/capernaum/7636/#:~:text=History%20of%20Capernaum&text=It%20was%20a%20vibrant%20and,Capernaum%20on%20the%20Via%20Maris.
[9] Gary W. Charles, Feasting on the Word Year B, Vol. 1, ed. By David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor,( Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 335
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