a sermon based on mark 1 :29-39
In the name of Jesus; amen.
It has been said that the purpose of the gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Jesus leaves the synagogue on the Sabbath, the day of rest and worship to spend the night at Simon Peter’s house. Once there he is informed that Simon’s mother-in-law is sick in bed with fever. And Jesus goes to her bedside, takes her hand, lifts her up and the fever leaves her.
It might seem to be a small miracle, but what Jesus does is quite big. Simon’s mother-in-law was sick with a fever and a fever in those days could have been a symptom of a serious condition. Infections were often fatal without the antibiotics of today and fevers are symptoms of infection. But even without an infection, this woman could have been sick enough to die. But that’s not what makes what Jesus does big.
What makes this miracle big is what Jesus is willing to do in order to perform it.
In The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary Ben Witherington III writes:
“Though there are later stories of rabbis taking the hand of another man and healing him, there are no such stories of rabbis doing so for a woman, and especially not for a woman who was not a member of the healer's family. In addition, there is the fact that Jesus performed this act on the Sabbath. Thus, while touching a nonrelated woman was in itself an offense, and touching one that was sick and therefore unclean was doubly so, performing this act on the Sabbath only compounds the social offense. But this is not all.
The service of Peter's mother-in-law to Jesus (and the others) itself could have constituted work on the Sabbath, depending on what was done (.e.g., preparing food). In any case, later Jewish traditions suggest that women should not serve meals to male strangers. The important point about Jesus, however, is that he does not see the touch of a woman, even a sick woman, as any more defiling than the touch of the man with the skin disease. Jesus' attitudes about ritual purity differed from those of many of his fellow Jews.”
What Jesus did broke the rules. In order to cure a woman of a fever he broke laws about working on the Sabbath and ritual purity. And these weren’t little laws, they weren’t minor offenses; they were big deals.
Jesus begins his work of preaching the gospel by comforting the afflicted. He did it in the gospel reading last week by driving out a demon from a man; it’s actually the beginning of this story of Simon’s mother-in-law and occurs on the same day. Jesus begins is work by touching people and bringing them comfort.
And by evening the entire city was gathered around Simon’s home to have demons driven out or sickness cured. It was a long day of work and he went to bed late only to get up early, while it was still dark, in order to go off by himself and pray.
Jesus will do this often in the gospel of Mark; he’ll perform a miracle, become surrounded by crowds of people, then retreat to be by himself. There’s a whole sermon in just that practice; to find time to retreat and pray is essential to Jesus. He practiced what he preached.
But more so than that; he knew that the gospel was about to afflict the comfortable. It was going to make people nervous, uncomfortable, angry. It was going to challenge sensibilities and practices that we as old as time for the society around him.
One of my favorite celebrities ever is Bono, the lead singer for the band, U2. U2 was popular when I was in high school and they have continued to make popular music. I saw them in concert once and remember Bono saying that they weren’t a political band; they were a rock-n-roll band. But Bono has always had a flair for the political from growing up the child of a catholic mother and protestant father in Ireland.
He’s always be active and outspoken about AIDs and poverty and you might remember a song that was released in 1984 called “Do they know it’s Christmas?” It was done by several artists, who called themselves Band Aid, in an attempt to raise money for starving people in Africa. The refrain was, “Feed the world, let them know it’s Christmastime.” Bono’s solo was a simple, but accusing statement: “Well, tonight thank God it’s them, instead of you.”
Recently, at the National Prayer Breakfast, Bono was asked to speak, to offer the sermon for the day, if you will. Jim Wallis, the editor of Sojourners, a religious magazine explains the purpose of the pray breakfast this way:
“The National Prayer Breakfast is normally a time for reaffirming spiritual truths and testifying to the power of faith in people's individual lives, but not so much a moment for prophetic and controversial social utterances.”
But Bono seemed to get the point of the gospel. He seemed to get the point that the gospel is meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I want to read to you some of what he said:
“Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.
Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.
I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill. I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff. Maybe, maybe not. But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor…
It's not a coincidence that in the scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It's not an accident. That's a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions. (You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor.)”
Bono then went on to speak about how good we are at charity, at giving to the poor, and how that was good news. But then he shared some bad news: “We aren’t very good at justice and equality.”
“Because there's no way we can look at what's happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn't accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the tsunami. 150,000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, "mother nature." In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it's a completely avoidable catastrophe.
“It's annoying but justice and equality are mates. Aren't they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.”
“A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord's blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it…. I have a family, please look after them…. I have this crazy idea...
“And this wise man said: stop.
“He said, stop asking God to bless what you're doing.
“Get involved in what God is doing - because it's already blessed.
“Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing.
“And that is what he's calling us to do.”
Now none of us may have the resources that Bono has; the ability to preach to presidents and reach great crowds of people through his music. And none of us have the abilities to touch a person like Jesus did; to perform miracles of instantaneous healing or exorcism. But we all have the gospel; this amazing message of hope and love and grace.
We are meant to use it. We are meant to tell others about it. We are meant to give it to others whether it comforts them or afflicts them.
May we all be given the voices to do just that.
Amen.
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