5 Epiphany – February 4, 2024
Mark 1:29-39
Our gospel selection for today has three parts: a healing story, a description of the multitude brought to Jesus and the many who are healed and exorcised, an account of Jesus going to the wilderness to pray and, when found, expresses his resolve to go to proclaim the message in the towns throughout Galilee.
The scenes alternate between “private” and “public,” an encounter among a few people in a “house,” then a crowd outside “around the door,” then prayer in a deserted place, then a decision to preach farther and farther in Galilee.
There is a lot to unpack in today’s gospel. Let’s focus on the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up. She was released from her illness and restored to herself. And in being brought back to who she was, she became a disciple, called to minister, to serve, like the angels did for Jesus in the wilderness and like the Son of Man, who did not come to be served but to serve. And note that the door of the woman’s house “becomes the threshold for healing for all in the city who are sick.”
It seems that Jesus doesn’t heal just to heal, just to prove himself, or just to confirm God’s activity in the world. Jesus heals for the sake of, because of, and assuming that the Kingdom of God is here — and that we are a part of it, that we have a role in it, and Jesus needs us.
Mark’s gospel invites us to look for experiences of resurrection in everyday life in the lives of families and in the social and political order. To be released from illness and restored to oneself means one can fulfill responsibilities to others. Repair of the bonds of family is a dimension of resurrection. In Mark’s gospel there is no “individual” healing, only those that repair relationship, son to father, daughter to mother, and here, mother to children. Even the unaccompanied woman in the crowd, when healed, becomes “daughter” later in Mark.
Healing, in Mark, is about restoring relationships.
Nadia Bolz-Weber in her book Accidental Saints: Finding God in all the Wrong People tells a story of her panic attack when traveling in the Holy Land. Nadia was on a tour bus that was traveling to the Monastery of the Temptation from Bethlehem to Jericho. It was a narrow dangerous road with lots of hairpin turns. She was unable to focus on anything except her totally “mortal fear of driving on mountain roads”. She really didn’t know anyone else in the group and wasn’t interested in getting to know them, so four days into the trip she found herself asking these people for help. She realized they would have to take that same road back to Bethlehem and so she began asking others in her tour group for anxiety medication. Apparently, no one else in the group had anxiety issues like her, because no one gave her any medication.
When Mark, the Lutheran pastor who was in the group realized how afraid Nadia was of the road trip back he said to her, “I’ll help you face your phobia if you help me face mine.” You see, they were about to take a gondola ride and he was afraid of heights. They ended up in different gondolas but as Nadia’s rose in the air she began thinking about Rahab, one of the more famous prostitutes in the bible, since Rahab had once lived in the valley below.
Rahab had aided a couple of Israelite spies—she hid them when they were doing some recon for the attack Israel had been planning against them—and in return for her hospitality and help she and her family were the only citizens of Jericho spared when the Israelites brought down the walled city. Nadia sat in her gondola thinking about how God had sent a prostitute to help the Hebrew spies who would, through her help, and only through her help, conquer the city and fell the walls. She also wondered: Had that been humiliating to them? Receiving help from a whore? Would they rather have done it all by themselves or with help from someone of their choosing?
When her gondola arrived at the top, she exited with a stranger, traveling alone, who was having difficulty finding her balance. She offered to walk with her up the steep five-hundred-meter stone walk that led to the entrance of the monastery. They spent the next hour together, walking through and praying and sharing in the wonder of the ancient buildings.
As Nadia had successfully avoided her tour group, she found herself heading back down in a gondola filled with Kenyans and when the gondola began moving the woman next to her grabbed her knee with her shaking hands as she fought to breathe. Her friend explained that she was afraid. Without thinking Nadia placed her left hand on the shaking hand of this terrified stranger, and with her right hand rubbed her back. “You’re okay, I’m right here.” Nadia wasn’t sure she understood English, but she kept right on talking and praying. Perhaps the woman would never have chosen a tattooed American lady to be the one to meet her need, to be present to her fear and to pray as she fought to breathe, but the spies never thought Rahab would be the one to help them either. Sometimes help comes from unexpected places.
Evening had fallen and Nadia boarded the tour bus for the ride back. There was a crunching sound under the bus that cause everyone to jump. Nadia had been doing well up to that point. The bus had failed to successfully make a hairpin turn and was straddling both sides of the turn; the left side of the bus hovered over a cliff and the right side of the bus blocked traffic in both directions. The driver shouted for everyone to get out and when Nadia made it to a large slab of concrete on the side of the road, her panic attack began. She lost her ability to control her breathing or her shaking hands and her knees were soaked with her own tears. Sharon, a midwife, approached her and her hands landed on top of Nadia’s. “You are okay. I am here” she said to Nadia. She then placed her hands on Nadia’s shoulders and spoke warmly to her. Nadia survived her panic attack. They hailed a taxi to take Nadia back because she was not going to get back on the tour bus after it had been righted.
The next morning, Nadia was the first to arrive at breakfast. The room was bright with the morning sun, and the newness of the light felt like hope. She sat at a table alone until some of the members of the tour group—Susan, Sharon and her husband, Mark, the Lutheran pastor—joined her. The humiliation of the previous evening had almost faded and in its place Nadia felt an open-hearted fondness for them. A gratitude. In her rawest, most unguarded state, they had seen her completely lose control of her mind and her sinuses and they didn’t make a big deal of it. They just wanted to make sure she was okay. Whatever she had been trying to protect had been taken from her on that road. She had become needy and unable to “do it herself” and yet she had survived. She had received help from those she was trying to avoid and she had survived. She called it a spiritual exfoliation by humiliation. Her heart had opened.
Healing is about relationships. Nadia’s story highlights the real life journey of our call to discipleship. We may minister to others and then the time will come when others will minister to us.
Isaiah’s reading this morning ends with “but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint”. So….Have you not seen? Have you not heard? The Lord God almighty is at work in you, with you, and through you to care for the people and the world that God loves so much. Amen.
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