From the Gospel according to Mark: “Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
A very close colleague of mine at the hospital was telling me the other day about raising her kids, and she joked with me that as they were growing up, she felt like she didn’t have a single hot dinner in twenty-something years—by the time she finally got to sit down, after getting everyone else all the various things they needed, her food would invariably have cooled off. I think my mother and my grandmothers would relate! It’s a very loving, if a little exasperated, sentiment, right? Parents and grandparents—often women, but not always—who care for others, who take care of the needs of so many of those around them, can find their own needs unmet—and their efforts not always recognized.
I couldn’t help but think of this when I read today’s passage from Mark’s gospel—where Jesus and his disciples go to Peter’s house—Simon, of course, is Peter before Jesus changes his name—and Jesus cures Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. This is Jesus’s first healing in Mark, but it’s not particularly surprising—he has just come, you might remember, from casting out a demon. What is surprising, and maybe it’s more surprising to my 21st-century American ears than it would have been to Mark’s first-century audience, is Peter’s mother-in-law’s response to the healing—“Then the fever left her,” Mark tells us, “and she began to serve them.”
So glad you’re feeling better! Now can you make dinner for us, please?
As usual, Mark is very sparing in his details. Matthew and Luke, in their versions of this story, are just as laconic. We know, logically, that if Peter has a mother-in-law, then he must have, or have had, a wife—but we don’t know anything about her, even if she is still living at the time Jesus enters the picture. We don’t learn the mother-in-law’s name, and we don’t know anything about her interior life—about what she feels or thinks about this miracle of healing she’s just experienced. We see only the action—“Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.”
In one sense, it might seem like things have gone back to normal. Peter’s mother-in-law has gone back into her role, offering hospitality to her son-in-law and the men he’s brought home with him. I can almost imagine her sighing, “Here we go again.”
And that’s something that can happen to us, right, even after something remarkable happens in our lives?
It reminds me of how we collectively experienced the onslaught—and the recovery from—the COVID-19 pandemic. As interminable as the pandemic seemed, it also surprised me, a bit, how quickly so much of the world got back to normal. Maybe, like me, you’ve wondered if those months of lockdown, those months of shortages and supply chain woes, those years of anxieties and worries and loss, have taught us anything—about how we find balance between our work obligations and everything else, about how we relate to and care for one another, both practically and spiritually, and about how we care for ourselves. After such a significant event—both the pandemic itself and the monumental efforts that were undertaken in response to it—have we learned anything, or are we back to business as usual? “Here we go again”—back to work, without missing a beat. So glad you’re feeling better! Now can you make dinner for us, please?
It’s shockingly easy to go back to ordinary life, even after something momentous. It’s easy, amid the hustle and bustle of daily life, to forget the blessings we’ve been given. When we’re stressed out, it’s easy to lose sight of God’s work in our lives, of how we, like Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, have been offered healing and restoration.
And so I wonder if there’s something else going on here.
When Mark says that “she began to serve them,” the Greek word for “serve” is diakoneo. It’s the same word that Jesus uses when he says that “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” It’s the same word that gives us the English word “deacon,” for that order of ministers whose vocation is one of service. “Then the fever left her, and she began to deacon them,” we might have Mark say.
What if the mother-in-law’s service, her diakoneo, isn’t just a return to normalcy, going back to the social role assigned to her? What if this service is a response, an affirmative choice that she makes to relate to Jesus and his circle of followers in a certain way in light of, because of the healing she has just experienced? If Jesus is the Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve—but who nevertheless serves the mother-in-law by healing her—what if the natural response, the expression of gratitude, is this form of service?
The drawing near of God’s kingdom doesn’t mean an end to the tasks and obligations of daily life. Two thousand years later, we still have jobs, and bills, and paperwork, busy-ness and stress and all the rest of it. But the healing grace God offers us, a grace we receive inwardly as we receive into our bodies the outward signs of bread and wine at this altar, this healing grace means that we are invited to live in new ways of relating to one another, and to God.
“Be subject to one another,” St. Paul writes in Ephesians, “out of reverence for Christ.” Our thanksgiving to God—our thanksgiving for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, our thanksgiving for those ways in which we have been healed, are being healed—becomes all the more meaningful when we can express that gratitude in ministering to one another and to the world around us. From building a life and career around service—as an educator, for example, or working in a caring profession—to engaged service in the community, to brightening someone’s day with a kind word of encouragement—we are never short of opportunities to be subject to one another, never short of opportunities to serve God by through service, through ministry, through diakoneo, to one another.
This kind of service doesn’t have to be draining. It doesn’t have to leave us feeling put-upon or worn out. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that, just a few verses after this healing, Jesus himself takes a moment to retreat—to go out “to a deserted place” where he prays—where he goes to be alone with the Father who sent him. This kind of spiritual self-care—finding opportunities for quiet, for calm, for prayer, for reconnection with God—is inseparable from an ethic of service. Maybe this very morning is that opportunity for you. Or maybe you can carve out a few minutes every day—early in the morning, when it’s still very dark, like Jesus; or, if you’re a night owl like me, late at night (when it’s still very dark!)—a few minutes to read a psalm, or pray the Lord’s Prayer, or just to be quiet with God in the middle of a noisy world.
Friends, the kingdom of God has drawn near. As we approach this altar today, as we receive the blessings of God’s grace, may we respond, as Peter’s mother-in-law did, not simply with business as usual, but with the gratitude of service, of diakoneo, that we may love and serve one another, as Christ loved and died for us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.