The Rev. Keri T. Aubert    February 8, 2009

Isaiah 40:21-31

Psalm 147:1-12, 21c

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, RCL      

Jesus left the synagogue at Capernaum, and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.[i] 

To tell this story from Mark a slightly different way, an older woman who has just been bedridden with a fever gets up and serves a bunch of strapping young men. “Go get some rest,” we might protest, “these boys can take care of themselves.” For us looking in from the outside, the situation may look just this obvious. But for the woman involved, it might not be quite so simple.

Now, before I move on, let me apologize in advance and ask your indulgence. Two weeks ago I told a story about my father Joe. Last week, I told one about my daughter Morgan. This week, completing some sort of trinity, I’m going to talk about my mother Ginny.

A few years ago, two young men stopped by my parents’ home. They were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, out evangelizing door-do-door by bicycle. If it had been my door, I would probably have sent them quickly and curtly on their way and resumed whatever supposedly then-important but subsequently long-forgotten task beckoned me on that day. But my father, somewhat typically, engaged them in a bit of friendly theological argument. I am certain that no one changed anyone’s mind. Nonetheless, because it was a hot south Louisiana day, my mother invited them in for a cold drink. It being near dinner time, my mother then fed them. She invited them to stop by again if they were ever back in the neighborhood. They did, and she fed them a second time.

My mother is an excellent cook who genuinely cares about the people she is feeding and takes pride and pleasure in serving food that they enjoy. As she has aged, she has experienced a significant decline in physical ability. One of the many manifestations of this decline is that she finds it very painful to cook and therefore does a lot less of it than she used to. Large holiday meals are virtually out of the question. While my mother’s increasing overall disability has been a general source of grief for her, her increasing inability to cook has been a particularly sharp point of focus for that grief.

I’m pretty sure that my mother, facing a houseful of guests and given a body even twenty years younger than the one she currently inhabits, would immediately and gratefully get up and start pulling things out of the freezer to cook for dinner. For her, regaining her ability to cook would be a return to normalcy. Regaining her ability to cook would also allow her to return to the joy she experienced through that distinct way of expressing care and love. Connecting the dots to the woman in Mark’s gospel, Jesus returned her not just to health, but also to her particular roles in the family structure. If serving was not just work—if serving was important to her—she may have turned to the task with gratitude and love and even joy. The healing that Jesus brought was not just a physical repair; perhaps more importantly, Jesus also brought restoration.

Illness and aging not only affect the way we feel; they also have the power to impact our place in and our movement through the world. Jobs, hobbies, friends, family—across the board, activities and relationships change according to the ability we have to engage them. On a practical level, we may have to deal with financial insecurity or a home we can no longer maintain. On an emotional level, we can begin to feel nonproductive and isolated. On a spiritual level, it can seem as if God has abandoned us. While not all of us have experienced major effects of illness or aging, I think that it is not too much of a stretch to say that each of us has experienced the need for healing, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. It is sometimes the more subtle or hidden injured places in us that keep us from bringing our full selves to this project that is our life, that prevent us from responding to the call that from God that is uniquely ours.

We proclaim that, through Christ, all of our injured places can be healed. The complication with this is that the healing provided might not look like we expect it to. For example, we’re all getting older, and so each of us will continue to experience the decline associated with aging. Some things simply cannot be repaired. However, they can be healed, and ultimate healing rests in God alone. And so, as we grieve our losses, as we nurse our disappointments, we strive to act in faith that God will give us that healing, even if it is sometimes hard to recognize.

In her new book, author Kathleen Norris recounts the first time she visited a hospital oncology ward. She says this:

I was apprehensive, as I was going to the front lines of a battle that our culture labors mightily to keep hidden, but I needed to visit a friend. I did not expect that the ward would be an apocalypse in the literal sense of the word—an unmasking or uncovering. The intensity of misery was overwhelming, yet it did not frighten or repel me, for I had entered holy ground. People my own age, as well as the elderly, were shockingly frail and needed support just to totter down the hall. Still, they were alive, and walking, saying their goodbyes to friends, children, and grandchildren. What struck me was that the atmosphere was not merely one of sadness, but also one of beauty deepened by the sobering inevitability of death, and blessed by the presence of a vibrant love. While the restless activity of New York City surrounded us, here everything essential had been stripped away. Only life remained, a gift and a joy beyond our understanding. I had arrived in the real world.[ii] 

It is perhaps worth noting here that many years later Norris’s husband would die of lung cancer.

Even the woman who gets up to serve Jesus eventually dies. And yet we should remember that her earthly role is temporal, while her ultimate end is beyond any place or time. We might even say that her service to Jesus in one particular place and time foreshadows her broader service to God in the fullness of time through which all creation is reconciled to God. We might even say that our service to Jesus in one particular place and time foreshadows our broader service to God in the fullness of time through which all creation is reconciled to God.

Remembering this, we become cautious about our attachments to the particularities of our lives and the expectations that flow from those attachments. It seems to me that our goal is to remain grounded in and connected to the constant source that is both within us and beyond all temporal physical manifestations. The mysteries of our being are deeper than any outward indications of them can ever be. It is in those depths that we find ourselves and we find God. It is in those depths that we find true healing. And it is with this healing that we turn back to the world, doing the work we have been given to do, serving as God would have us serve, with gratitude and love and even joy.