Mark 1:29-39 | Göttinger Predigten im Internet

Fifth Sunday of Epiphany | February 4, 2024 | Mark 1:29-39 | Paula Murray |

²⁹Immediately {Jesus} left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. ³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told Him about her. ³¹And He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them. ³²That evening at sundown they brought to Him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered together at the door. ³⁴And He healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And He would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew Him. ³⁵And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, He departed and went out to a desolate place, and there He prayed. ³⁶And Simon and those who were with Him searched for Him, ³⁷and they found Him and said to Him, “Everyone is looking for You.” ³⁸And He said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” ³⁹And He went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

“Come and see,” Philip said to Nathanael, after Nathanael poopooed the notion that Philip had found “Him of Whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote,” thus setting the tone not only for the Gospel of John but also for the season of Epiphany. Philip, that is, set the tone, not Nathanael, for what is Epiphany but an extended invitation to “come and see” what God has done in the One sent to us, born in a stable of a virgin, and adored by a wild crowd of shepherds, angels, and kingly scholars. To see we must have light, and light is the signal motif of Epiphany. Epiphany begins with the unusually bright gleam of a singular and glorious star, still, the light of that star is only the foreshadowing of the Light to come, a Light best seen on Transfiguration Sunday, when the very glory of God blazes from the person of Jesus, surrounds the figures of the Old Testament greats standing on the mountaintop with Him and blinds His disciples below them. Week by week, throughout the whole of Epiphany, the readings shed more and more light upon the nature and ministry of Jesus Christ, until we see Him as the beloved Son of God, made man by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We saw a bit of that power last week, enough to suspect of His being, if we did not already know and worship Jesus, more than just an itinerant holy man earning his bread and olives as many a prophet or preacher had in Israel’s past. It was the Sabbath, and he was to preach in a synagogue that morning, and as He began to preach “immediately” a man possessed by a demonic spirit confronted Him in that holy space in an unholy way, a way bordering on violence. The suddenness of the unexpected interruption and the violent tone ensures that everyone is on edge, everyone feels threatened, as the possessed man shouts out to Jesus, “What have You to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know Who You are, the Holy One of God.” There is an end to the world as we know it sort of urgency in Mark’s use of the word, “immediately,” reflecting not only the pace of events as Mark depicts them but also the gravity of the world’s sin-soaked sickness. In rapid order, Jesus rebukes, silences, and exorcises the demon, casting him out of the once possessed man to the wonder of the others at worship that day, who then say of Jesus that He preaches with a new authority, an authority different from that of the scribes and other preachers in synagogues.

But before we can wonder with them what this new authority means, “immediately,” again, the setting changes and we are in Simon’s house, a much quieter place, and worrying with him over his mother-in-law’s health. Again, the situation is threatening and urgent, for Simon’s mother-in-law is suffering from a fever, and we know that fevers, in the absence of antibiotics, often kill their victims plus, there is no supper ready for hungry men! Here, again, Jesus acts, but without the stern harshness of the just prior encounter with the man possessed by a demon. There is, instead, a sweet and simple tenderness to what Jesus does for Simon’s unnamed mother by marriage. Our Lord takes her hand and raises her up. There are no words, kind or otherwise, to the lady, just the act itself, an act that has a significance that goes beyond the illness of a single elderly woman, for we who know our Bible know of another instance when Jesus took someone by the hand and raised her up. In the presence of her grieving parents, Jesus takes the hand of the already deceased young daughter of a leader of the synagogue, and raises her up, up from her bed to her feet and up from death to life. In this very brief telling of the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, we have a strong hint of what is to come, the redemption of the world and the resurrection of the dead.

The healing of the elderly woman, specifically its manner and her vulnerability to death, sheds light on the whole of Jesus’ ministry and helps us to see beyond sin’s shadows and our fear of death. Indeed, as word of the healing gets out, the “world” descends on Simon’s doorstep, frantic people seeking from Jesus relief from pain, from suffering, from their fear of death. As Jesus and His newfound disciples deal with the sickness of creation in the bodies of the sick, Simon’s mother-in-law, now freed from her fever, fulfills her responsibilities as a homemaker and feeds hungry men. Contrary to some wayward theologians, we are not told this to ensure that Simon’s mother-in-law knows her place as a servant to men. We hear of her service for two reasons. First, so that we may know her healing is immediate (there is that word, again) and complete. And, second, so we may see in her service at the household table a model of Christian service or discipleship everywhere. We serve at the Lord’s table, handing out salvation in the body and blood of Jesus Christ and in the feeding of the poor and the hungry. We know this is not a fanciful interpretation of the Greek word diakonos and its derivations because it was used earlier in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel to describe the ministry of the angels to Jesus as He starved in the wilderness during the forty days of His temptation. It is also used to characterize the service of those women whose discipleship involved the physical support of Jesus and the twelve (Mark 15:41), and Jesus’ ministry to the world, where He tells us He has not come to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45).

The healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, for all its brevity, is no throw-away story or filler linking the exorcism of the possessed man and the healing of the crowds. It is more of a pivot than anything else, turning us from Jesus’ early days and His identification as God’s Son, to the ministry that will increasingly reveal God’s glory in Jesus, pitting Him against those who are determined to dwell in the shadow of sin and to be owned by all that is opposed to God. The healing of the crowds that follow is a sign of the wholeness and holiness of God at work, reversing the sickness of sin and revealing the hollowness of death’s apparent victory over God’s gift of life and light. It is a sign that will be repeated in many places, as Jesus leaves His nighttime prayers in the very early hours of the day to go to another community, to serve new crowds of people desperate for healing, life, and an eternal hope.

We need to understand that Christ’s healing happens in the context of His preaching of our need for repentance and salvation. Jesus’ healing is real, as are the exorcisms He performs. But they do not stand on their own, these healings and exorcisms, but rather point to the person and ministry of Jesus Christ. Like the Light shining round about Jesus at His birth and His transfiguration, the healings and exorcisms point to Jesus as the holy One sent by the Father to a world shrouded in sin’s sickness and dying to illuminate His saving grace. Each miracle, for that is what those healing acts are, occurs not to bring joy to a family though they will, or because some are more deserving of God’s compassion than others, or because the only way God can demonstrate His goodness is the destruction of cancer and heart disease or any other kind of disease. They are grace-filled reminders that there is more to the world than we can see, a hope that exists beyond our earthly life spans for a restored creation and life without end.