Big Expectations; Little Miracle [Epiphany 5B - Mark 1:29-39]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Mark 1:29-39

 

Big Expectations; Little Miracle

 

The author of the Gospel of Mark sets the bar incredibly high from the get-go.  Verse one of this book is a theologically dense sentence fragment and the lens through which every moment in Jesus’ life is meant to be viewed.  It reads, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” 

 

It is difficult to set the expectations much higher than that.  Messiah.  Son of God.  The readers’ hopes, informed as they are by the messianic expectations articulated in the Hebrew Scriptures, are impossibly high from the outset.  If, in fact, this Jesus is the Jewish messiah for whom they have long waited, is there anything that he cannot do?  This is the question the opening begs.  Mark tells us, before we even have the pleasure of meeting Jesus in his Gospel, that Jesus is the Messiah.  Mark tells us, in verse one of chapter one, that he is the Son of God.  And so the possibilities are limitless.  The contents of the book must be no less than extraordinary, mind-blowing at every turn. 

 

The prophetic literature of the Old Testament and the collection of psalms give us some idea of what Mark’s first readers might have expected.  They expected a great king, one who cared for the poor and protected the needy, who judged the people with equity.  They expected a liberator, one who would free them from the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire.  They expected a transcendent figure, one whose charisma and character would usher in an endless reign of peace and justice.  They expected a righteous ruler, one who would finally conquer the power of evil that was made manifest in the oppressive economic and political systems of their world.  They expected a divine agent who would finally, in the words of a young Jewish girl, bring down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly.  They expected nothing less than the fulfillment of all their hopes and dreams.  And so, as I said, Mark sets the expectations quite high.

 

Disregarding even the impossible expectations established at the exordium of this work, Mark’s Gospel gets off to an admittedly slow start.  After the initial establishment of Jesus’ identity, the remainder of chapter one is hardly remarkable.  Jesus is dipped in the River Jordan.  He camps amongst the wild beasts of the wilderness.  He makes some new friends.  And he goes to church.  Nothing especially messianic on that agenda.

 

Oh, and then also, he brings down his buddy’s mother-in-law’s fever.  It is his first healing in the Gospel.  And while it is nice, it is hardly remarkable.

 

I have long been curious about this particular miracle.  I am both puzzled by its inclusion in Mark’s Gospel and its place of prominence in the ministry of Jesus.  The Gospel of Mark is the shortest and sparest of the four canonical Gospels.  It is known for its terse rhythm and fast narrative pacing.  It is unconcerned with backstory; there is no birth narrative – no manger scene, no angelic heavenly host.  Mark’s is a streamlined Gospel, no time or room for flourishes or unnecessary detail.  It is generally pretty barebones.  And still we are told the story of this feverish woman.

 

We are less surprised by the inclusion of the same story in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels.  Matthew’s Gospel is much longer than Mark – almost twice as long.  And so when we come across the story there, buried as it is in the eighth chapter, it is less conspicuous.  According to the final verse of the fourth Gospel, John, Jesus did so many amazing things during his brief earthly ministry that, “if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”  And John’s Gospel is again longer than Mark.  And still, out of all of the amazing stories in the life of Jesus, Mark chooses to tell this particular story.

 

Simon’s mother-in-law is in bed with a fever.  Jesus finds out.  He heads up to the bedroom.  Takes the woman by the hand.  Lifts her up.  And she makes them lunch.  This is the same Jesus who will later give sight to a person born blind, who will heal lepers, who will lift up those who cannot walk; this is the same Jesus who will, later in his ministry, raise the dead.  I guess one does not want to peak too early.  A simple bedroom healing gives you plenty of room to work up to the big stuff.  It is good to start small, with a fever.   

 

But he runs out of time before he can get to the really big stuff, the stuff of prophetic dreams.  The good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, it seems, fails to live up to the grand opening.  This messiah ends up on a cross rather than a throne.  He never does overcome the Roman Empire; he overcomes illnesses, often in peasant bodies.  He does not liberate the Jewish people from the political oppressors; he liberates individual souls from the torture of their personal demons.  He does some good stuff in Palestine.  But he leaves the people still waiting for the kingdom to come.

 

Simon’s mother-in-law, no doubt, was one of the many who was left waiting.  Like her people, she longed for the redemption of Israel; she longed for the promised Messiah.  She was one of the lowly ready to be lifted up.

 

And I suppose, in a way, she was.  She was lifted up, out of bed.  Which, I guess, sounds like a small thing – except maybe when you are the one sick in bed.  When she met Jesus, she wasn’t thinking about Isaiah’s poetic promises.  She just wanted to be well.  And Jesus found her in the intimacy of her room and made her well.  He was a messiah driven not by might or power but by the desperate prayers of desperate people.

 

We have inherited the big ancient hopes of our faithful ancestors.  And so we watch the skies, praying for goodness to break through the clouds and conquer the power of evil.  We long for the return of Christ, for his peace to overcome our violence, for his justice to reign in our world.  We cling to the old messianic promise that one day all of the bad things: pain, and suffering, and even death will come untrue.  We need Jesus because the problems of the world are just so overwhelming. 

 

And, like you, I do want Jesus to change the world.  But also sometimes I just can’t seem to think that big.  Sometimes I need the Jesus who does the little miracle. Some days I just need Jesus to take me by the hand.