Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream....(1)
Up until last year, perhaps, many of us could have recognized ourselves in that hurried depiction of our days: rushing around in the morning, caffeinating ourselves to make up for lack of sleep, arriving at every place seemingly just on the verge of not making it in time, and then settling into a routine of the workaday world that passes like a dream.
It’s often the way that we treat our days with a casual disregard. Yet, as the writer Annie Dillard notes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”(2)
I don’t know about you, but when you put it that way, I am brought up short. When you apply the microscope to the ways in which I use my precious time in each and every day, it appears I am not doing too well with what Mary Oliver challenges us when she asks: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?(3) Because my answer is, too often, thinking less about the present than I should, looking too much at the future that the day I am in flows past me unaware.
But what we have seen in the last two weeks in our gospels has been Jesus’s rootedness in the present. We see here in our gospel today and last week a depiction of how Jesus spends one of his days, and not just any day, but a sabbath day, a day that should indicate a particular holiness and dedication to God’s values and God’s sovereignty. He starts it in study and teaching in the synagogue. Jesus teaches with an authority that is previously only granted to the elite scribes who were part of the dominant class in the religious life of that time. Jesus heals, but with an eye to restoring people from being outcast to being welcomed back into being productive members of the communities in which they lived.
Today, in case you did not notice, we see the very first woman mentioned in Mark’s gospel. Now, Mark doesn’t give her a name—nope, she gets defined by what her relationship is with a male relative. She is Peter’s mother-in-law. But then again, at least she gets a mention—Peter’s wife is completely off stage.
Thus the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law is significant in many ways. Jesus moves from the synagogue—a world in which only men spoke and dominated, a less-public space accessible only to insiders who belonged to that synagogue, to a house. This is a public space, as this reading makes clear, where the entire town can approach Jesus. The synagogue was the domain of men. Yet immediately afterward, Jesus now enters a private home, which, although it may belong to Peter, is where women are primarily the actors.
Peter invites Jesus into his home, apparently knowing that his mother-in-law is ill with a fever. Peter has just seen that Jesus is the only one who can heal her, as he's coming off the heels of casting out a demon. Notice that this unnamed woman is defined only in terms of her relationship to a man, and since we get no mention of a husband, we can assume that she is widowed and has been taken into Peter's household to be cared for. Yet in taking in his mother-in-law, the structures of the time would also demand that she is a woman of some in authority in the household, exercising some authority over her daughter by virtue of her status as mother. Therefore for her to be unable to take care of guests entering her home would be a matter of some shame. Hospitality was not a matter of servitude, but honor in this context.
So then the question arises: Was she healed so that she could put together a meal and do the “wimmin’s work” for Jesus and his hungry followers, or was she healed so that she could too, could become a disciple? Perhaps the answer is “Both.” What is clear from this story is that once, she is healed and she has begun serving Jesus and his disciples, she emerges as a disciple herself, and her house gains further honor as the location of Jesus’s healing much of those in the town suffering from any condition that further placed them in a precarious situation of isolation due to their various maladies.
No doubt, after Jesus leaves, the woman who is Peter’s mother-in- experiences a life that is both never the same and yet still places her in a position of servitude that all women in that culture experienced, from rich to poor. But in getting up from her bed, she also becomes, even if it's without the actual recognition by mark, the first Deacon mentioned in scripture. as such she labors alongside Jesus to make Jesus's ministry possible and to enable it -- to empower it. And that is truly honorable indeed. In healing this woman, Jesus also blesses her work and commissions it as being a vital part of bringing about the kingdom. Her service to Jesus enables the rest of his healing mission that day, after all.
What is interesting is that this is also the first time that it is stated that Jesus touches someone, and in this case, the touching happens as a prelude to the healing. He takes her hand and lifts her up. Unlike the healing of the demoniac in last week’s gospel, we do not have any recorded commands of Jesus to the fever—perhaps because it is just a fever. But this is still a miracle, nonetheless. And her service afterward enables more miracles.
There is an everyday miracle embedded in this story that speaks directly to our time in this pandemic in 2021. By entering into Peter's home, Jesus consecrates and hallows the home as a space where Jesus does his kingdom-building work.
Stop and think about that for a minute, and what it reminds us about right now. As we have spent nearly a year being very much confined to our homes more than possibly ever in our adult lifetimes, home has grown ever more important as the place where many of us spend most of our time. Especially for us as a community of faith, as a parish, we have missed being able to be in our sacred spaces. Yet by having Jesus spend much of this day in a home in today’s gospel reading, we were reminded of how sacred a space home can be.
Just like Peter's mother-in-law, we have been confined to our homes because of an illness --or at least because of the fear of an illness. Many of us have rightfully and logically chafed at this enforced domesticity. And yet the story of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law reminds us but the home can be just as sacred space and as much a source of healing and discipleship as the most beautiful cathedral on earth. Jesus takes an ordinary place and turns it into an extraordinary locus of healing and renewed hope.(4)
Even by the middle of that one day, Jesus’s fame as a healer has gotten spread about, and people are brought to him to be healed of either physical or psychological/spiritual maladies. Jesus willingly heals those who come to him. Since illnesses made it impossible for most of these desperately poor people to work, Jesus spends a large part of this long day restoring people to independence and hope.
Before the next day begins, Jesus sneaks out before dawn and goes to “a deserted place” or “wilderness place” to pray by himself. Unlike in Luke, Jesus as a person who prays is an incidental in Mark’s gospel. And he only gets a few moments to himself, for, as our text states, the disciples “hunt” for him.
So Jesus puts aside his prayers for now, and continues upon his mission, stating that they should be moving on into neighboring towns so that he can continue to spread the gospel. Jesus never rests. This remains true today. But he also honors time spent in solitude with God, listening as much as talking-- an important part of prayer that we often forget in our hurried, transactional world. Jesus also never stops praying, teaching, or healing. And neither should we.
This past year has forced some of us into solitude, or at least caused us to drastically contract the places to which we feel comfortable traveling. But what if perhaps we could try to find in our enforced stillness an opportunity for spiritual growth?
As disciples, our jobs are to try to imitate our teacher as much as possible. Jesus is our teacher, and our healer, who calls us to repentance and reclamation of our one wild and precious life. What can we learn from this “typical day” of Jesus’s?
Perhaps this: How can we place ourselves more in the present like Jesus did in this one ordinary, extraordinary day—to see the people right in front of us, in all their need, and rather than flick our eyes on to the next thing, instead reach out to them and lift them up? Can we dedicate ourselves to the same deeply rooted spiritual life that Jesus clings to as he repeatedly is found in prayer, and imitate that, if only to see what effect it might have in our lives?
Can we see even the nameless people around us, like Jesus sees Peter’s mother-in-law, and honor the common life we have together thanks to their labor, and honor them for it, rather than take them for granted, or worse, take pride in our exploitation of their labor at the cheapest rates we can negotiate?
May we never forget that the most visible testimony anyone who claims the name of Christian gives to the watching world is the way that we spend each day. What are we testifying to each day? How can we make each day a miracle for those who would otherwise be overlooked? This is the heart of the life lived by Jesus’s disciples-- which is to say, by you and me.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 am online worship service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.
Readings:
Citations:
1) John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "A Day in the Life," from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967.
2) Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1989, p. 31.
3) Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day."
4)Debie Thomas, "A Day in the Life," Jan 31, 2021, at Journey with Jesus.
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