Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
4^th of February, 2024

Mark 1:29-39
1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Together the gospel readings from today and last Sunday describe a complete day in the life of Jesus. Last Sunday’s reading had Jesus going to the synagogue at Capernaum on the Sabbath and teaching with authority. Then he was confronted by a man possessed, and he rebuked the demon and healed the man. Today, we hear what happened next. On the surface, this is a story of astounding success and recognition of Jesus’ distinctiveness. It will probably not surprise you that I am going to argue there is a lot more happening underneath that surface.

It is still the Sabbath, and Jesus returns with the four disciples he has called to the home of two of them, Simon and Andrew. There they tell him that Simon’s mother-in-law is sick. They are unlikely to be expecting him to heal her; it is more likely that they are offering an embarrassed apology for their lack of hospitality. After all, it is still the Sabbath, and if Jesus were going to heal then he would wait until after sundown, and Simon’s mother-in-law, as a woman, is just not as important as a man. But, probably to the surprise of his hosts, Jesus breaks the Sabbath to heal a woman. In the worldview of the day her physical illness, like the demonic possession of the man in the synagogue, is a sign of the captivity of the world, its possession by evil. Again Jesus overcomes this evil. He lifts Simon’s mother-in-law up, and the word used is the same word that will be used for Jesus’ resurrection; the fever leaves her as the demon left the man possessed in the Synagogue; and healing and new life demonstrate the coming of the Kingdom of God.

‘The Healing of the Mother-in-Law of Saint Peter’ by Rembrandt.

The woman’s response is the perfect reaction to the gift of healing and new life: she begins to serve. The word used for serving is diakonein, which shares the same roots as the word ‘deacon’. It is the word that Jesus will use when he tells his followers that ‘the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve’. (Mark 10:45) Simon’s mother-in-law has been raised to new life and she responds with service. Professor Bill Loader says that: ‘It is spinning a yarn to make too much out of the word, ‘serve’ here, as if she is the first deacon.’ With all due respect, while he is probably right that the author of the Gospel according to Mark is just showing us a woman doing what women are meant to do, serving men, we do not need to read it that way. We can see a woman serving as Jesus serves – even if Mark does not bother to record her name.

The woman’s service is given in the home. Mark is the gospel of the home church, the gathering of Jesus’ followers in small groups and domestic spaces. In the Gospel according to Mark the church moves from Temple and synagogue to house, from cities to small towns. It is a gospel for those of us who gather in small churches in the suburbs. Megachurches in city centres find their reflection in the Gospel according to Luke, with its emphasis on Jerusalem, and in the Book of Acts, that takes the good news to Rome. Mark is our gospel, the gospel of the small and the marginal and the household.

This day in the life of Jesus ends with the crowds coming at sunset, after the Sabbath, bringing those who were sick or possessed. Jesus cures them; the kingdom of God is among them. Interestingly, Jesus forbids the demons that he casts out from speaking ‘because they knew him’. This first part of the gospel raises the question, ‘Who is Jesus?’ We, the readers, know, because Mark began the gospel by telling us: ‘The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’. And the demons know. Last week we heard one of them identify him: ‘I know who you are, the Holy One of God.’ So Jesus refuses to allow them to speak. People must discover for themselves who Jesus is, not have that revealed to them by demons.

The next morning Jesus seeks time alone with God. He rises early and goes to a deserted place to pray. This could seem like a gentle moment of communion between Jesus and his Father, except that Mark tells us that ‘it was still very dark’. There are two other times when darkness is mentioned by Mark. The first is in Jesus’ prediction of the end of the world, after the disciples have been impressed by the large stones and large buildings of the Temple which is so soon to be destroyed: ‘But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.’ (Mark 13:24-5) The second is during the crucifixion: ‘When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.’ (Mark 15:33) The place where he prays is desolate, wilderness, the same as the place in which he was tempted by Satan. It may be that Jesus is searching rather than communing. It is possible that in the darkness of the wilderness he is facing further temptation, to become a miracle-worker in Capernaum.

What happens next is evidence for this, because Jesus’ disciples do not leave him alone. In contrast to Simon’s mother-in-law, who serves Jesus, the disciples hunt for him, and the Greek suggests that they are pursuing him. They have come to tell him of the crowds seeking more healing: ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ It is the beginning of the insensitivity and misunderstanding that the disciples will show throughout Jesus’ life. The disciples want him to fulfil all the needs of the crowds who are seeking him. They want him to work more miracles locally. But this is not what Jesus has been called to do. So the story ends with a description of Jesus’ continuing mission: ‘he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons’. Jesus does not stay in one town; he does not give in to the demands of his disciples and the crowds to be a mere wonderworker. He continues his journey, proclaiming his message, obeying God.

We see the same imperative to proclaim the kingdom in today’s reading from Paul’s First Letter to the church in Corinth. Last week we heard Paul telling the ‘strong,’ those who knew that they could conscientiously eat the meat sold by temples because there is only one God, to refrain for the sake of the weak: ‘For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols?’ Paul said of himself that ‘if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall’. (1 Corinthians 8:1-13) Today’s reading follows: just as Paul will behave like the weak so as not to trouble their tender consciences, so he will use being ‘free with respect to all’ to identify with others, becoming as they are, to win them for the gospel.

Ministers are taught very carefully that we cannot be all things to all people, and that we will never in our preaching please everyone. Paul thinks otherwise. To us, someone who becomes a completely different person with every different companion would seem to be lacking integrity. That is what Paul claims to do. He knows that the Torah no longer applies to him, but he presents himself as under the Law to those who live that way. He knows that Christ’s law does apply to him, but he presents himself as outside the law to those who live that way. And, as he told the ‘strong’ when they asked about food, he is willing to present himself as weak with the weak. Being ‘two-faced’ is not a compliment, and Paul seems to be boasting of being more than two-faced: multi-faced.

Paul obviously does not lack integrity. Nor is he willing to let anything go; his letters are full of his criticisms of the behaviour of early Christians. My favourite Pauline exclamation is: ‘You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?’ (Galatians 3:1) Paul says he is identifying himself with people who are different from him to encourage the ‘strong’ among the Corinthians to identify with the ‘weak’. There is conflict within the church in Corinth, and Paul is encouraging those on one side to so identify with those of the other side that it is as though they have become one of them. Of course the ‘strong’ are right about food sacrificed to idols. The gods the idols represent do not exist; food supposedly sacrificed to them can be bought and eaten. But Paul tells those making that argument that, ‘To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak.’ If Paul the Apostle can do this, members of the church in Corinth should be able to do it too.

The church is meant to be a place in which differences are respected and divisions are healed, because greater than all that divides us is the gospel. The relationship between Christians is meant to be a sign to the world of the reconciliation that Christ brought. To both Jews and Gentiles, weak and strong, Paul promotes a freedom that enables people to identify with their opponents. In place of the conflict the church in Corinth was experiencing, Paul encourages community that enables people to care about those different from them, care enough to engage with them on their own terms. If they can do this, if we can do this two thousand years later, the world will see in the fractious community we call ‘church’ the same kingdom that was revealed when Jesus ‘went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons’.

It is not easy to identify with one’s opponents, especially not those opponents closest to us, those within the same house church, for instance. I want to end this week’s Reflection with a poem. After the very challenging poetry I have read in recent weeks, I thought that this week I would give you a satire to make you smile.

‘The World State’ by G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Oh, how I love Humanity,
With love so pure and pringlish,
And how I hate the horrid French,
Who never will be English!

The International Idea,
The largest and the clearest,
Is welding all the nations now,
Except the one that’s nearest.

This compromise has long been known,
This scheme of partial pardons,
In ethical societies
And small suburban gardens—

The villas and the chapels where
I learned with little labour
The way to love my fellow-man
And hate my next-door neighbour.