Step right up, come and see, for one day only, the spectacular, the miraculous, the amazing Jesus of Nazareth, Healer extraordinaire, to cure all your troubles right before your eyes!
Ever wonder if this is
what Peter and the other three disciples had in mind when they went searching
for Jesus the morning after the miraculous healing? How they didn’t just look for him, they
hunted him. And when they found him,
they wanted to bring him back home, where the whole of Capernaum waited. The disciples were excited. They knew they had a hit on their hands, and
they could probably have set up shop in town and sell tickets to see the one
and only greatest healer on earth.
Obviously, Jesus realized it too, and maybe just maybe he got up early
because he needed to turn to God to figure out what to do next. Should he settle down and get rich and
famous, like most doctors did back in those days? Or was he to be more than a local healer?
He knew that places
like Capernaum didn’t have a lot of doctors or good healthcare. Doctors were for the rich and powerful Roman
elite who could afford a Greek physician.
Hospitals didn’t become widespread until Christianity was made legal by
Constantine. They didn’t become separate
from the church until
King Henry the 8th, that infamous fellow with
disposable spouses, took over monasteries and churches alike. In fact, even today, one of the best run
hospitals in Alberta, Lamont, still is affiliated with the United Church and
its mission statement boldly proclaims access to all people, a faith in God and
a trust in the healing ministry of Jesus as well as the United Church Crest on
their walls.
So back to our
scriptures, healing has always been a core element of prayer and ministry of
the ancestors of our faith. Healing all
people is part of the understanding of what we are to be about as
Christians. Our worship time is to be a
chance to check our spiritual pulses.
Are we running an emotional fever? Are we needing a check up with
God? How are our love skills, our
forgiveness reflexes, our justice impulses?
Do we need a booster shot in our immunity to evil and oppression? Do we need stronger doses of prayer?
Jesus didn’t just heal
people from a poor community. It was
startling in who he had healed. Simon
Peter’s mother-in-law. Aside from the
fact that this means the first followers of Jesus were married, it also points
to the fact that he reached out to a senior, and a female at that. While men were measured by how hard they
worked and how many fish they could put on the table, women were often not even
mentioned by name unless they were extraordinary. And a mother-in-law living with her son-in-law
would have been very unusual to say the least.
It must have been a full household if Simon and his brother lived there
as well as a mother-in-law, and we might assume a wife and maybe even some
children. Mothers lived with their sons
more than their daughters and were not seen as a contributor to the household
coffers. Even today, seniors can
struggle to find a place to live, some end up bouncing from one household to
another, living with different children who take turns, having no stability or
ownership over who they live with.
Peter’s mother-in-law
had a fever, something that they had no aspirin to treat. Some fevers went away, some fevers spread
throughout the household and the whole community. Some lasted days, some hours, and some were
dreadfully fatal. And in that day and
age, people were helpless to treat it.
Jesus wasn’t
helpless. And he wasn’t dismissive of
this senior in need. He showed
compassion and reached out with words of comfort and inclusion. Words of healing that touched her soul and
reminded her she still had gifts to share.
Healing that transformed her into a giver of hospitality and generosity. She became the welcoming hostess who greeted
and fed the newcomers to her household and helped them feel at ease.
In fact, she became the
first convert to Christianity. We are
all called to love and serve others with compassion and justice. She started in with joy and enthusiasm to
just that. The four disciples didn’t
serve, they didn’t do anything we can see that was loving, except grouse at
Jesus that he had abandoned them to sneak out and pray. They chose to be grumpy and controlling
instead of generous. They chose not to
think about what Jesus was doing and why he was doing it, they didn’t want to
know how to pray or how to care for others, they just wanted to bring him back
to the waiting crowds like a pet monkey that would wow the audience and mark
them as the heroes of the town.
In the end, Jesus
wasn’t called to stay put and stay local.
He heard the call to be a messenger of hope and love to those who didn’t
fit in, who were ignored or dismissed or bullied by society. He heard the call to preach wholeness to
everyone who would listen. Healing was
not the core purpose of his ministry, nor was it going to be commercialized or
politicized. It was a free gift he was
offering.
Who are the people who
need a welcome today? Who are the people
feeling victimized by politics, who are being told that their access to healthcare
will be controlled by politicians? Who
are being told that their minds and hearts and souls are not as important as
their reproductive organs? Who are
having their hospitals bombed as retribution for terrorism?
Just
as Lamont Hospital welcomes all that come through their doors, just as Jesus
healed everyone who came to him, just as God heals the broken-hearted, let us
be a safe space of welcome for the fearful, the lonely, the ostracized, the
alienated and the desperate. God loves them all and wants to heal them, heart,
mind, body and soul of their fevers of fear and anxiety. May we, who have been healed, welcome and
serve all who come into our lives!
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