February 7, 2021 – Mark 1:29-39
Mark 1:29-39
Making a Home for Divine Love
Lectionary 5B – 5th Sunday after the Epiphany – February 7, 2021 – Devotion Moment #141
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Some of Jesus’ most memorable ministry events take place in homes.
Today, he heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law while he spends the day with his friends in Andrew and Simon’s home. He raises the daughter of Jairus in the synagogue leader’s house. At her home in Bethany, Jesus’ friend Mary anoints him with oil. Jesus has an amazing, encouraging encounter with Zaccheus when Zaccheus invites Jesus to his home as a guest. And it is in a home where Jesus is first revealed as risen when the disciples on the road home to Emmaus invite a guest to break bread with them. Jesus is at work in homes. Jesus is revealed in homes. Jesus works through people in homes. Jesus is at home in homes.
I think there is probably plenty of good news in this for us this week, as restrictive public health orders continue and we all spend disproportionate amounts of time at home. Some love it, some hate it, and most are probably at least getting tired of some aspect of it. But in this time of COVID, this is probably something we all need to hear: Jesus is no respecter of boundaries, and being bound to home doesn’t mean Jesus can’t be active in our lives in a meaningful way.
I have been thinking about how many more people are working from home than ever before. I have recently had conversations with many people who tell me that they do not think they will ever return to their workplaces. Our current level of technology means that we have the capacity to do this. And significant savings to governments and private sector employers likely means the current situation is the future as well.
A concern I have about this is that for many people their social life is significantly related to their work life. Indeed, for some, work provides the most significant relationships in their lives. This should not be discounted. It is wonderful to work with people on a daily basis whom you get to know intimately and well. To be physically present at work with people as they undergo significant life changes is a tremendous blessing. To get to know what’s going on in the lives of a co-worker’s children or grandchildren is a great privilege. To be able to provide support to a colleague when he or she is simply having a bad day is an amazing thing. Workplaces, certainly, are places where we fulfill our callings to be participants in God’s mission to love, bless, heal and set free this whole world and every person in it.
I have no doubt these kinds of relationships can continue as more and more of us work from home. But it will be different, and it is probably best if we recognize just how significant these workplace relationships are.
Nevertheless, the reality is that more and more of us will be working from home in the future. And it is also important to recognize that the home – as the site of work but also of recreation, rest, and hospitality – is also a significant site for Jesus’ healing, freeing activity.
Viewing our homes this way these days can be kind of liberating. We may have come to feel trapped in our homes, accompanied be feelings of unease or anxiety. We may feel we are just waiting for real life to resume and that we are in a kind of limbo right now. And yet, on days when I am making yet another meal for my son, or making a phone call to a friend, or writing a card to someone who’s experienced a loss it helps – tremendously – to remember that Jesus is present, that Jesus makes my home a sacred place, and that Jesus is working the work that God wants done in this domestic sphere.
Consider Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. The work of God that happens in the story is not only Jesus’ healing of her from fever. It’s what happens after she is healed. The way it reads could be construed as sexist: how convenient for Jesus to heal Simon’s mother-in-law so that the men in the story could have her well enough to cook them up a nice meal! However, that is probably a misreading of the story. In Greek, the word translated as “she served them” is a form of the word diakonia. It means “to serve,” with the connotation of providing food and hospitality – but certainly not in any sort of demeaning way. For one thing, it is what the angels did for Jesus after his 40 days in the wilderness – angels! For another, Jesus will say that service is our highest calling and that one who serves is the greatest of all. Indeed, Jesus himself came to serve (Mark 10:45). In the early church, deacons – those who practice diakonia or service – will form a very significant order of public ministry, which continues to this day in our own church.
And here is it important to remember this: what Jesus does for Simon’s mother-in-law is free her, as he does in all the healing stories. As Melinda beautifully reminded us in her devotion moment on last week’s Gospel story of Jesus freeing a man from an unclean spirit:
By commanding the unclean spirit out of the person, Jesus was setting that person free from the spirit and the powers that were oppressing them.
And in this week’s story, we see what a person is freed for: service. Amazing, beautiful, life-giving service. Sadly, that word no longer has the grandeur it once did. But my Greek teacher Sarah Henrich captures a bit of it in her comments on Peter’s mother-in-law in this story:
It was her calling and her honor to show hospitality to guests in her home. Cut off from that role by an illness cut her off from doing that which integrated her into her world. Who was she when she was no longer able to engage in her calling? Jesus restored her to her social world and brought her back to a life of value by freeing her from that fever. It is very important to see that healing is about restoration to community and restoration of a calling, a role as well as a restoration to life. For life without restoration and calling is bleak indeed. (You can read her wonderful commentary here).
“It was her calling and her honor to show hospitality to guests in her home.” To serve. To engage in diakonia. There are many ways to love. There are many ways to serve. There are many ways to engage in diakonia. Many of the most significant ways take place in our homes, where Jesus continues to call us, where Jesus continues to work with us, where Jesus continues to free us, where Jesus continues to restore us, where Jesus continues to be present with us. Whether we are under restrictive public health orders or not, our homes are the site of divine activity, of healing to be sure, but also of hospitality through God makes a home for love divine in the world.
Let us pray. God of healing, the risen Jesus continues to graciously heal and raise us to new life so that we can be freed to do those things you call us to do. Help us raise each other up and free one another for our highest calling – to serve in ways that nurture and strengthen and set free, for we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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