(Mark 1:29-39)
There's a hurting and a healing theme in today's gospel, which tells us the story of Peter's ill mother-in-law. But the hurt is not just concerned with her illness back then. It has an unintended contemporary ring. By that I mean that feminine consciousness might be hurt, offended, by the whole episode in the first place. Why? Because, on the surface, what do you have? You have a group of hungry men come into the house. But it so happens that the woman of the house is ill. So they tell Jesus about her and he goes over and cures her. And then the very next sentence says, "And immediately she got up and waited on them." How about that? Does that arouse the suspicion that the men folk could not even get their own lunch and so they prevailed upon Jesus to work a cure so they could have a woman wait on them? Is there a battle of the sexes issue here: men are served and women do the serving? A woman's place is in the home?
So it would seem, but, actually, that's reading a modern agenda into this episode. Nothing was further from the gospel writer's mind--in this case, St. Mark--and it needn't be in ours. What the gospel writer was saying in this story of hurt and healing was something near and dear to his heart: that when Jesus Christ touches you and you become his disciple, then you immediately enter into service. That's the nature and the power of love. Discipleship is not about freedom or power or authority. Discipleship is about lowly, selfless service in the name of God. That's the message here.
If you want another gospel writer's variation on the same theme, go to St. John's account of the Last Supper. At that supper, you well recall, Jesus put on a towel and knelt down and washed the feet of his disciples. And then he said pointedly, echoing Mark's gospel, "You know what I have done? You call me Lord and Master, and so I am. And if I, Lord and Master, have washed your feet, so must you wash each other's feet.' Thus the lesson once more: those who are touched by Jesus, genuinely touched, those who respond to him, automatically imitate him by entering into loving service. So this is the meaning behind Peter's mother-in-law's cure. She, along with her son-in-law, was touched by Jesus. She, like her son-in-law, became a disciple. She, like him, also served.
But let us move beyond that woman and that era and look at our own hurts, our own losses. As the poem says:
- O Savior, Christ, our woes dispel,
For some are sick and some are sad;
And some have never loved thee well,
And some have lost the love they had.
There is a restoration but perhaps not in the sense that we think, not in the sense of a sudden and miraculous cure that makes everything as it was before.
There is restoration, rather, in the sense that we have the opportunity not to have it as it was before. That is to say, we have a chance in our hurt for healing on a much deeper level, a healing toward that wholeness that leads us to God, a healing that leaves us scarred but different from what we were. Let me share with you five principles that lead to that restoration.
The first principle is this: We must search for meaning in the pain and suffering that comes to us. If we are preoccupied in running away from pain, we are not likely to discover the meaning that might be found in running with pain. Not that we ever seek pain out or that we revel in suffering. But when pain is present, there is also a call to discover a new facet of life in ourselves. It is not enough for us to recognize that we share common brokenness with all the other people who are hurting, and it's not enough simply to tell our tale of woes. It is only when somehow our pain is internalized in a meaningful way that it has the possibility of bringing us to some new place in life. Suffering may seem to break us, but unless our lives are not only broken, but broken into, then we shed tears "that turn no mill," as the poet says. We don't have redemptive suffering in our lives. Suffering must move us to a different place than where we have been up to this point. We have to discover its meaning for us.
The second principle is that all of us in our pain and suffering need help. St. Paul is a good example. Remember when he was knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus? He hears a voice saying, "Get up and go into the city and there you will be told what you are to do." And in the city he meets
a little man named Ananias, who cures Paul of his blindness and introduces him to the faith. Ail of us need an Ananias, a spiritual guide, a friend or, as the English put it, a soul-friend. And in turn we have to play Ananias to others. But we all need help toward restoration. Pain is a communal adventure.
The third principle is this: we need our past. This is often dismissed or ignored, but it's not wise to do so. St. Paul's change of direction in his life was not an invitation to abandon or deny his past. Rather it was a call to search for the connection between what he had been and what he had become, between where he was and where he was going. We need our past as a guidepost to our journey. We preserve this wisdom every time we sing
- Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now I see.
Fourth, if it is true that we need our past to see where we have been, it is also true that we don't need the past to keep us there and prevent us from connecting to the future. I mean, there is a past that we not only remember, but we remember with terrible and paralyzing guilt so that we do not pass through it, grow through it, but get stuck in it instead. This is especially true in the area of moral pain. This is the cry: years ago I was unfaithful, had an abortion, embezzled, was alcoholic, abusive to my family, and so on. Years ago I did this or that horrid thing. And that horrid thing just hangs there and we can't forgive ourselves. The memory of the deed is ever present, an ongoing pain that is not redemptive but constricting; it goes nowhere except ever deeper within. It provides no bridge to the future but is a dead weight to the past. The healing that moves us beyond this is to recall the words of the mystics, "God is greater than your own accusing heart. God is greater than your own accusing heart." That must become the mantra that moves us ahead. It's the rock-bottom conviction that turned a Saul into a Paul, a Simon into Peter, Magdalen into an apostle, Augustine into a mystic, and scores of other sinners who found God's mercy to be greater than their sin and so traveled forward with their new revelation into glory.
The fifth and final principle is a kind of summary. The question we have to ask about the pain and hurt that comes to us is this: "What is the weeping asking of me?" That is the critical question. "What is the weeping asking of me?" How can it move me from one place to another? To a fuller, more whole person? To the saint God created me to be? What is its message, its meaning?
St. Mark's message was that Peter's mother-in-law was sick and hurt. She had no idea of unexpected company that day and dearly wished there would be none, since understandably she was not in the mood for entertaining. But as she lay on her bed wondering what her sickness could mean, she received unexpected help. A healer came into her life. Afterwards, she never forgot the time she was sick and tired. It was a painful experience, but there's no denying something had happened to her. She grew into something she never dreamed possible. She became a disciple of the Messiah, not just any old disciple but one who did service with sensitivity and compassion, for she knew that was the ultimate meaning of her suffering.
[Reprinted with permission from More Telling Stories, Compelling Stories, pp. 89-93, copyright 1993 by William J. Bausch, Twenty-third Publications, Mystic, CT. This is one of three homilies on this text in his books. This resource, as well as many others, is available at a discount through the Homiletic Resource Center. If you enjoyed this homily, you might consider purchasing the BAUSCH TREASURY, a complete set of his homiletic books, including his new ones The Yellow Brick Road and A World of Stories for Preachers and Teachers, as well as all of his previous publications: