Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Last Sunday, we heard how Jesus had come to the village of Capernaum, had visited the synagogue, had amazed everyone with his teaching, and had cast out an unclean spirit.
Today we hear what happens next: Jesus and his first four disciples leave the synagogue and go to Simon Peter’s house. When they arrive, they are told that Peter’s mother-in-law is lying in bed with a fever. Without missing a beat, Jesus goes into her room, takes her by the hand, lifts her up, and heals her. So rejuvenated is she that she right away begins to serve Jesus and his company.
Some people have, in a tongue-in-cheek way, pointed out that Jesus’ healing miracle is rather self-serving: he healed the woman so she could cook for them. If I was ever tempted to think in those terms, my encounter with Emily cured me of that.
Emily and Frank were an older couple in the last congregation I served. Their whole lives they had been active in the church. Now they were aging and had ever more health problems. Eventually they became shut-ins.
Every single time I visited them, Emily would be in tears because she could not do anything to help at the church. Helping had been her role; now that she could no longer fulfill that role she suffered. She was depressed. She felt useless. She wondered why she was still alive. She wondered what good she was to anyone. How she would have loved to be well again so she could serve!
This experience opens a different perspective onto the story in the gospel. Peter’s mother-in-law is sick in bed. Company is coming to the house. She is not able to do what she wants to do, cannot fulfill her role as hostess. I bet she could hear through the wall that there were guests in the house, yet she couldn’t do her thing. By her fever, she was separated from her company and from fulfilling her role.
Jesus steps into her room, takes her by the hand, lifts her up, and heals her. She is well again. Immediately, she sets about doing what she had wanted to do all along: serve Jesus and his group. She is restored to her family, restored to her community, restored to her former life.
This is a pattern in the majority of healing stories: the person being healed serves or follows Jesus. When Jesus heals someone, he not only makes that man or woman healthy, he makes them part of a community, either their old community or his new community of the kingdom of God.
This helps me understand the healing miracles of Jesus. I have sometimes wondered, with some degree of jealousy, why Jesus healed this or that person in the Bible, but not someone I love. The risen Christ proclaimed that his healing power would continue to flow through his body in the world today, the church. We believers supposedly have the power to heal. And yet, I have not ever witnessed it happening.
As Pastor Mark Davis put it on his blog: The Easter message of the Christian church is that the spirit of the risen Christ continues to be present with us today. But, our lame limp, and our deaf sign, and those of us who are oppressed by destructive forces cope and seek help.
How we wish that in these days of COVID, Jesus’ healing power were at work among us. All that suffering and dying in our communities, our nation, the world. Yes, I am jealous of Peter’s mother-in-law.
In those jealous, wistful moments it is good to remember why Jesus healed so many people. It was not so much about taking away their suffering, but about making them whole members of the community. In Jesus’ day, when you were sick, you were “unclean” and you had to keep yourself separate from society, especially from religious folk. Illness isolated you. Jesus heals to overcome that isolation.
Emily cried every time I visited her. She did not cry about her arthritis that had deformed her hands. She did not cry about the osteoporosis that made her walk bent over. She did not cry about the pain in her body.
No, what she cried about was her inability to be among the people of the congregation and to help. That is what really made her suffer.
In these last months, we all have experienced what isolation feels like. We missed out on so much! In my own life, we missed having a college graduation party for my daughter Nora, and my parents being there; they were supposed to have come from Germany for the occasion, but of course, that couldn’t happen.
We were unable to hold the annual siblings weekend of Eric and his three sisters and their spouses. We have not been able to see Eric’s parents in a year; Eric’s dad is soon to be 90; Eric’s mom has Alzheimer’s. Will we see them again before they die? And if we do, will Mommy remember who we are?
Two of my children live in Baltimore. Because of exposures, they were not able to come for Christmas. I have not seen them in months.
I am sure all of you have had losses like that. And we all miss worship, real worship, in-person worship, when the church is full of people who can sing together, pray together, laugh together, and hug one another.
Never have I received so many emails from mental health organizations as I have in the past six months. Emails inform me about warning signs of mental illness among the people I minister to, about ways to reach out, about resources available for them and me, about things I can do to remain resilient.
Why all this focus on mental health? Because isolation is not good for us. We are social beings. We crave contact with other people. Even my introvert husband, who loved the first two or so months of the shut-down, is now longing for company. Being alone, or sequestered with just one of two other people, is stressful for our mental health. Add to that the other stresses of COVID, such as financial insecurity and health worries, and it is no wonder that the medical community is so focused on mental health.
One of the people I pray for all the time is my son Zeke. There is nothing physical wrong with him. However, he has Asperger’s syndrome and social anxiety. He is hesitant around people, especially people unknown to him, because he cannot read their non-verbal language. As a result, he has always had a very hard time making friends and being part of a community.
During his years in school and college, he was surrounded by so many other people that he did eventually have some good friends. Since graduation, though, he is very alone. He is 26 and works in an office with no other people in his age group. His social anxiety keeps him from joining existing groups of young people in the city. He lives with my daughter Julia and another roommate, who sometimes let him tag along, but he knows he is the fifth wheel and hates the situation.
So for hours on end, Zeke sits in the apartment. He is lonely. Now during COVID, he is lonelier than ever. His mental health is suffering. I pray for him all the time. I pray for him to find friends. I pray for him to find work that is more meaningful to him. I pray for him to find a hobby that gives him joy. I pray for him to find a group of people among whom he feels secure and at home and with whom he experiences the community he longs for.
I pray for Jesus to step into his room and take him by the hand and lead him out of his room. I pray for Jesus to call Zeke into a group of people who care. I pray for Jesus to place Zeke into a space where he can serve with the many gifts he has, and bless others with his service, and find fulfillment in serving and making a difference.
Emily was yearning for Jesus to come into her room and take her by the hand and bring her back to church, back to community. She was asking Jesus what good she still was, how she could still serve and find meaning in life.
Peter’s mother-in-law had that Jesus-moment. Our Savior did step into her room and lifted her up and healed her. Joyfully, she returned to her family, her guests, her community. Joyfully, she resumed her calling of being a good hostess. Joyfully, she served Jesus, her healer.
Jesus had promised his disciples that such Jesus-moments would continue to happen after his resurrection and ascension. How? Through Jesus’ body in the world today – the church – us! We are Jesus’ hands and feet in the world. We are the ones who step into the rooms of lonely persons and take them by the hand and bring them the love of community.
I am grateful for the many creative ways in which Calvary has brought community connections to our people during the shut-down. We have caring callers who call, text, or email our members. We have Stephen Ministers who connect with their care receivers. We offer our worship services over the car radio, online, and in print mailed to the home. Our Caring Touch group delivers bags or baskets to our shut-ins on a regular basis. Dedicated people hand-delivered this year’s offering envelopes. A Christmas greeting video showed us the smiling faces of our faith family. We are talking about a zoom coffee hour.
Together, we do our best to create Jesus-moments for one another, when the love and concern of a brother or sister lifts our spirits. Together, we restore one another to health and service, in the name of Jesus Christ our healer.
This is how Pastor Mark David concludes the article from which I had quoted earlier:
We will, however, honor the power of being in community with one another in the face of our weaknesses, our fragilities, and our brokenness. We will honor the power of a human touch, when someone anoints the head with oil and embraces another, as the community is gathered in prayer. Then, when our lame limp, we will slow our gait to walk together. When our deaf sign, we will sign back, to communicate. When our oppressed seek help, we will provide the space for counseling, for meetings, for ways to live in hope. And for those who are too far gone physically to walk, too far gone mentally to converse, too far gone psychically to engage, we will be gathered at their door, so they will not be alone. That's healing and wholeness.
Amen.