Rise & Serve

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
February 4, 2024

5 Epiphany B 

          I have a recipe for a confection called “earthquake cake,” which, as you might imagine, involves no small amount of chocolate.  The cake has only 5 ingredients so when I make it for a party, I like to ask the guests what they think the five ingredients are.  This involves stopping for a moment and slowing down, trying to savor each bite of this dense, luscious, dark chocolate cake to discover what the ingredients might be.   The first guess is usually sour cream.  No.  Then we move on to heavy cream.  Also, a no.  Cocoa powder? Not a chance.  The five ingredients are a pound and a half of chocolate, 8 eggs, 2 sticks of butter, a little flour and some confectioners sugar.  Put all of that together in the right order and the right way, and you have one amazing, dark, dense, chocolate delight.

          This morning, we need to stop for a moment and savor the gospel reading to figure out what the ingredients are in this healing story.  On the surface, the ingredients seem to be one part bad mother-in-law jokes, one part gender stereotyping, and one part trying to get Jesus to heal every single sick person in town.  We may not find chocolate, butter, and eggs when we stop to savor the story, but we will find some scriptural equivalents that help us understand the whole passage.

          First, Simon’s mother-in-law has no name.  While that is depersonalizing and annoying, her lack of a name also opens the possibility that all of us might identify with her, not as a woman but as someone who has been healed.  When Jesus enters the house, he takes the woman by the hand and lifts her up.  What is lost in translation from the original Greek text is that the same word that is used for “lifted up” is used in at least 5 other healing stories in Mark’s gospel, including when he raises a little girl from the dead.  Later in Mark’s gospel, Jesus refers to himself as being lifted up when he tells the disciples that after he is raised up he will go before them to Galilee.  So there is even more going on here than a simple healing.  This is a resurrection story.

          Immediately after she is healed, Simon’s mother gets up to serve Jesus and those with him, which has opened the passage to much criticism about gender stereotypes in the gospel.  These words can sound abrasive to our 21^st century ears and with good reason.  However, again, the meaning is lost in translation.  The Greek word that is translated “serve” is the same word that is the root of the word “deacon.”  Deacons in the book of Acts are those people set aside to serve, to make sure all are fed, clothed, and housed.  Those deacons are the model for the diaconate, an ordained ministry that models service and leads all of us into deeper awareness of the needs of the world around us and how to meet those needs.  Our own Gretchen Green is one such deacon.  So, while Simon’s mother-in-law does get up off her sick bed and serve, what she models is not servitude, but service as the appropriate response to resurrection.  Jesus himself said “I have come not to be served but to serve.”  In the reading from 1 Corinthians, Paul is very clear that his ministry is to serve. 

          Word gets out about Jesus’ ability to heal and the whole city shows up at his door, bringing all who were sick or possessed by demons.  Jesus healed many, we are told, but many is not all.  He did what he could, then went to a deserted place to pray.  Simon and his companions came hunting for him.  Hunting is a strong word.  They wanted to take Jesus back to finish what he started and heal everyone.  But Jesus keeps moving forward, proclaiming the good news in new places.  And likewise in the 1 Corinthians reading, the apostle Paul serves, saves some, and moves forward.

          When we stop for a moment to discover all of the ingredients that make up the gospel reading, rather than seeing a message that diminishes woman or provokes bad mother-in-law jokes, we hear that the appropriate response to being healed, being lifted up, no matter who we are, is to serve.  What would the church, and the world for that matter, look like if everyone who was healed or loved by Jesus responded by serving others?  What would the church look like if we really faced forward all the time, not looking back at what we have done but looking forward to what we can do, seeing the needs of the world with forward facing eyes and responding?

          What Simon’s mother-in-law teaches us is that while resurrection is a gift, resurrection also demands something of us.  In baptism, we are joined with Christ in his death and resurrection as a gift.  In our baptismal covenant we promise to live as resurrection people.  Simon’s mother-in-law shows us what that means. As a church, Christ Church has experienced resurrection over and over again, most recently as we have moved forward from the pandemic, but this church has moved forward from even greater challenges.  Whether as individuals or as a church, resurrection is a gift that calls us to move forward and to serve, demanding that we actually live the new life we have been given. 

                                                                             Amen.