Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The leader of our prayer team just sent out this month’s list of people we pray for. The list is long, two pages, filled with names of people who long for healing in body and soul.

Among them is my father-in-law. He is 92. A year ago, he had a stroke and has suffered from weakness and aphasia since. Two weeks ago, pneumonia landed him in the hospital. Now he is in a nursing home, and in all likelihood, that’s where he will remain.

Which means we have to make decisions about my mother-in-law, who is suffering from severe dementia. They had both been cared for at home. Now that might no longer be possible.

My own mother is starting with dementia. It is painful to watch such a kind, generous, giving woman change in front of our eyes.

I am sure everyone here this morning carries the burden of compassion for suffering loved ones. So many people yearn for healing. So many people pray for healing, their own or that of a person dear to them.

What does today’s gospel story mean for us? What does it do for us to hear how Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law? He hasn’t healed mine. So what good news is that story for me?

As Pastor Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “The problem with miracles is that it is hard to witness them without wanting one of your own.  Every one of us knows someone who is suffering.  Every one of us knows someone who could use a miracle, but miracles are hard to come by.”

Many folks have tried to answer this conundrum by coming up with their own rationalizations. You probably have heard them, statements like “God is testing your faith” or “suffering makes you stronger” or “have more faith and you will be healed”. None of these jive with the compassionate God we meet in the gospels; the God in Jesus who gently takes a feverish woman by the hand and lifts her up and heals her.

Statements like that also do damage because they assume that a healthy, pain-free, smooth life is the norm, and that any illness, suffering, or hardship is the exception, an aberration that God should remedy. Yet we all have lived long enough to know that pain is part of life on earth. I don’t know a single person who made it through life without experiencing illness or sadness or grief.

Suffering is part of our human experience. Jesus came into this world to address our suffering. Sometimes, he did so by healing people, like he did for Peter’s mother-in-law and for the people from town who lined up at the door.

However, today’s gospel reveals that curing illness was not Jesus’ main goal. His overall mission was to proclaim the gospel of God’s love and salvation for all people.

These are some ways in which this truth is revealed in our gospel text.

The whole city was gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many. Not all of them. Many.

The next morning, when Jesus is at prayer, Peter tells him that everyone is searching for Jesus. There are more people to be healed. Yet Jesus doesn’t go back into Capernaum; he moves on to the next city.

At the end of our reading, Jesus tells Peter, “Let us go to neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” Jesus’ number one priority is not healing but preaching the message of the kingdom of God.

For Jesus, healings are object lessons to undergird his preaching. When Jesus heals a person, he illustrates what is can look like when God’s grace touches a person’s life. Likewise, calming the storm and feeding the 5,000 are not so much about the miracle, but about letting people experience what the love and power of God can do.

One commentator points out that, in Mark’s gospel account, whenever Jesus heals a person, he restores that person to community. Let week, we heard about a demon-possessed man who was healed and now could fully participate in worship at the synagogue. Later, we will read about a son being raised from death and restored to his mother, a daughter being restored to her father, a paralytic able to walk home with his friends, and the Gerasene Demoniac returning to the village.

And Peter’s mother-in-law can rise from her sickbed and do what gives her life meaning: provide for her family and her guests. Jesus’ message is all about the joyful community of life in the kingdom of God; his miracles are one of the ways in which people enter this joyful community by the grace of Christ, one of the ways in which they experience God’s powerful love.

It is, however, not the only way. The good news is that we can experience that comforting, supporting, healing community even when we are not healed, even when our loved one still suffers. We know that suffering will be part of our lives. We also believe that Jesus cares and is present with us in our suffering.          

In her blog “Journey with Jesus”, Pastor Debie Thomas writes this:

“Sometimes I wish that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had included a few less dramatic stories in their books, too.  Did Jesus ever, for example, visit a feverish woman, take her hand, and offer only the comfort of his presence — no cure?  Did he ever tell a chronically ill child, “I can’t take away your pain, but I love you, and I’ll try my best to help you bear it?”  […] Did he ever sit in the dark with a profoundly depressed man — just sit?  Did he ever keep vigil at a deathbed, and cry with the family as they said goodbye?  No resurrection — just tears?”

This spoke to me. After 30 years of ministry and life experience I can say, that’s the way Jesus is much more like to show up than in awe-inspiring miracles.

I have never seen a blind man suddenly regain his eyesight, but I have seen family members and church folk kindly guiding a blind man to the communion table.

I have not seen a lame person just get up and walk, but I have seen this congregation place a chair in the front of the church so an elderly pastor could sit there in his vestments and do what he loved to do: share the communion bread with God’s people.

I have not seen a dead person rise, but I have seen a woman being surrounded by compassion, touched and held and assured and prayed for by those she loved, as she slipped from this life into life everlasting.

Life is full of hardships. There will be suffering and pain in everyone’s life. That is normal. Struggling with chronic disease or mental health or grief or injury is normal. It is part of the human experience.

This human experience is comforted and made bearable by the presence of Jesus Christ. He comes into our human experience to bring us the message of God’s mercy and love. Sometimes he makes powerful, visible, dramatic demonstrations of this mercy and love by healing a person. More often, we receive God’s mercy and love through the compassion of people surrounding us, and that is just as powerful.

Peter’s mother-in-law is healed. Jesus lifts her up, literally raises her up, the same word used in the resurrection. This healing moment is an Easter moment. It propels her into faith, into community, and into service.

For as soon as she is well, she begins to serve Jesus and his friends. This word “serve” comes up quite a bit in the New Testament and is translated in various ways. When it is used for women, the translators usually go with “serve”. A few verses earlier, we read that when Jesus was in the desert, angels “waited on” him; same word. In many places in the Epistles, it is “ministered”. And when Jesus dies on the cross, looking on are the women from Galilee who had “provided” for him.

I am sure that Jesus didn’t heal and raise up Peter’s mother-in-law so she could cook him dinner. I believe Jesus raised her up to the new life in Christ, to the live-giving community of the kingdom of God, to the fellowship of disciples. Who knows, she might have been one of those women under the cross, since she was from Galilee and did provide for Jesus.

Jesus came to earth to touch people’s lives with the message of God’s reign of love. Sometimes he undergirds that message with miraculous healings. More often, he let’s us experience God’s compassion and mercy through the community Jesus has called us into.

Just like Jesus took Peter’s mother-in-law by the hand and made her part of his group of mutual care, so Jesus has taken us be the hand and has brought us here, into this compassionate community. Here, as followers of Jesus, we are called to be an inclusive and compassionate community, where everyone is connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul.

The support my husband Eric and I have been given by this congregation has been healing, indeed. You walked with us when my beloved grandmother died in Germany. You walked with us when my son came out as transgender. You uplifted us through cards and gifts during pastors’ appreciation month. And you care for us know that we grieve my in-laws’ decline and struggle to know what to do next.

In none of those cases was there the sudden, miraculous healing like that in today’s story. But in each case, there was an easing of pain, a lifting of burdens, an increase of hope – there was healing. Thank you for your ministry.

And in each case, there was a lifting up, a raising to renewed life in Christ, a restoring of community, and encouragement on the path of discipleship.

Proclaiming the message of hope and salvation and making that message tangible by connecting us to a community of care, that is how Jesus brings healing into our lives.

Once we have been touched by that healing power, we are raised up to share it with others. We are healed so we can serve Jesus and all God’s children. We are sent to share the gospel of God’s love and to act out that gospel by extending care and offering compassionate relationships. That’s how we bring healing into the world, in the name of Christ.

May you always feel and share Jesus’ healing presence in your life. Amen.