The Glory of Service: An Epiphany Homily

 

Text:  Mark 1:29-39

During this series, we’ve been looking at the various themes of Epiphany, the miracles and signs that reveal Jesus in his glory as the Son of God.  Tonight we will take a look at last Sunday’s gospel, which never got a proper sermon, poor thing, on account of my absence sick, and we will talk about healing as one of the signs of who Jesus is and what he has been sent for.

Last Saturday we looked at a kind of healing, when Jesus in Capernaum frees the man of the unclean spirit (Mk 1:21-28). That was an act of healing in that the man was made whole again, but as I said last Saturday, that healing needs to be seen as a kind of cosmic confrontation, as Jesus routing the evil powers that occupy the world and frustrate his Father’s good purposes.

As we continue with Mark’s gospel, the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law doesn’t have any cosmic overtones.  It’s not an exorcism, there is no evil spirit, just a woman with a fever.    There’s a few things we can say about this story of healing.

First, it’s intimate and domestic, whereas the healing of man with the spirit in the synagogue was very public, in the synagogue.   This story should comfort us in that Jesus comes into a home, bringing love and healing with him.  It shows Jesus’ interest in us and love for us, wherever we are, especially for those of us who think that we can only find God in a church.

Likewise there is something comforting in the intimacy of touch and contact in this story.  Jesus taking the woman by the hand and raising her up reminds us of how Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter from the dead later in Mark’s gospel (⁴¹He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ ⁴²And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age).”   That Jesus should bother with this physical, comforting gestures, rather than airily waving his hand, says something profound about the incarnation and about a God who cares to be with us in the midst of our lives.    Anyone who has felt sick and frail can I think relate to this idea of Jesus’ healing touch and proximity.

There’s two more important things we can say about this healing miracle.  The first is that, like the other Epiphany signs, it functions as a revelation of the glory and power that the Father has given to the Son.   People throng the streets to see Jesus in hopes that he will heal them and their loved ones.    If the turning of the water to wine at the Wedding of Cana was a miracle of creation, then the healings are miracles of restoration, showing Jesus sharing in the creative power of the God, restoring people to wholeness.

The second thing we can say about this miracle is that it shows us that at it’s heart, the Kingdom of God is about service.    Healed of her fever, Simon’s mother in law can return to her vocation of hospitality to her guests. We might think it sexist of Mark to give her a name, and to think that her only role is to make sandwiches, but in Mark the word “serve” is vitally important.   The Greek word, diakaneo, is the origin of word “deacon”, one of the three holy orders with a specific focus on ministry to others.   It’s the same word that Mark uses to describe how the angels wait on Jesus after his time with the devil in the wilderness.

Jesus himself uses the word diakeno to describe his mission: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk 10.45).   In our culture, the words “serve” and “service” can often have a menial connotation – think of how little prestige we attach to jobs in the “service industry” – but for Jesus, the kingdom of God is about service as a vocation, about a purpose in life.   Healed, Simon’s mother can resume her proper vocation which includes offering hospitality to her guests.   Hospitality and service are what makes community and communion with others possible.   Likewise, in your food ministries, you the people of All Saints rightly see service to others as vocation.  Service is an action that unites heaven and earth, service binds the kingdom of God together.

Jesus in Mark is thus revealed as someone who wields so much power that demons fear him, and yet he used that power to heal and restore.   Jesus’ message is that we see the kingdom of God most fully when we are in community and communion, with God and with one another.   In this communion that we find our healing, and our saved from the forces that would refocus us selfishly on our needs and our desires, a kind of possession that can only lead us to the despair of our inadequacies.   Epiphany is about the glory of God revealed in Christ, as we see tomorrow with the Transfiguration, but amidst all this bright glory is the simplicity of service that restores us all to wholeness.