Serve

Mark 1:29-39

After Jesus and his disciples left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Homily by Deacon Deb Lockhart

Let us pray:  Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, b acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.  Amen.

I love the Gospel of Mark. I love the intensity, the pace. Mark uses the word euthus (u-thoos), roughly translated as “immediately” 41 times in the text which serves to propel us through the narrative with urgency. Mark writes with drama, intentional mystery, power, much energy and more than a little hyperbole. The downside is there are often things left hanging that could use just a smidge more explanation..…as we will see here in a minute.  He hurtles us through this shortest of the four gospels and leaves us breathless as we leap from place to place in keeping up with Jesus.

What Mark lacks in literary elegance, he makes up for with short bursts of who Jesus is. From the beginning of this gospel, we know who Jesus is—Chapter 1, verse 1—“The Beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God”——said in Markan style, short , sweet  and with authority. 

Mark seems to hurry through Jesus’ life for no apparent reason other than just being his style. We aren’t even through the 1st chapter and Jesus has been baptized by John, driven into the wilderness for 40 days where he was tempted by Satan and later waited on by angels. Jesus begins his teaching of the good news of God’s reign, the Kingdom of God on Earth but first stops at the Sea of Galilee to pick up the first four of his disciples with these simple words, “follow me”. 

Today, we catch up to this small band of followers in Capernaum, where last week we left him teaching in a synagogue. He has already healed the man with an unclean spirit and now we join him as enters the house of Simon Peter, where we find Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in bed with a fever. 

Mark says Jesus went to the feverish woman, took her hand, and lifted her up. The fever left her and she began to serve them. Oh my—how many times I’ve read this and thought, Mark, I love your style but this passage leaves a bit to the imagination and sounds demeaning. One minute this woman is down with a fever and the next she is running around with her hair on fire, rustling up food for these hungry men to eat! This makes me want to drop Mark and preach some good news from those other guys, Matthew, Luke or John! 

But believe it or not, within this short sentence of this tiny passage, contains a huge part of the history of the church as well as revealing who Jesus is and what his message to all of us is saying. That pivotal place is the word “serve”, translated from the Greek word, diakonos, which means “to wait tables”. And no, I am not really speaking of waiting on tables; I am speaking of what waiting tables was then and remains true today when we understand that waiting tables is a service.

Service is key and foremost in the call and pursuit of Jesus. 

We only have to look ahead in Mark (10:45) to hear him say,

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, ……”

In this act of serving, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law becomes Jesus’ first fellow servant.  She is joining Jesus in this very radical way—-this action of serving others.  She’s received the gift of Jesus’ touch, has been set free from her illness, and has become whole again. This un-named woman, filled with the love she’s just received from Jesus , is sharing that same love with the others present. This love flows through her as she becomes a servant minister, a vessel, a diakonos in loving and serving God. The transliteration for this diakonos is deacon. Although she isn’t named as such in this scripture, she is indeed a deacon, someone who has been called to serve and witness to the Word of God, through the healing touch  of God’s son, Jesus. Although this is all said in what is barely a sentence, we see this woman modeling her own life as in the ways of Jesus. 

Quite simply, the act of serving and not being served defines her as a deacon.

Her life as a deacon will not be one of glamour, of being in charge or in control, and many times it will even go un-noticed. But while it is being done, it is adding to the power of the Kingdom of God here on earth, the good news message of Jesus.  Jesus has modeled it all for us throughout his short life and ministry.  There will be times when we can find ourselves doing this work willingly, like Peter Simon’s mother-in-law , but there will be other times when we drag our heels, when it gets really difficult, perhaps unpopular,  and the road seems fraught with too many obstacles and a whole lot of excuses.

This deacon, servant minister, mother-in-law “gets it”, she understands what she is to do without instruction from Jesus. This is coming from her heart. This is in stark contrast to the disciples, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, who won’t understand  this most important ministry until after Easter. How truly sad that after a year of repeated instruction and examples from Jesus, it won’t be until he is gone that much of his teachings will make sense to them.    For now,  they will not want to become servants of each other and they certainly aren’t seeing or hearing Jesus when he says he has come to serve and not to be served, but are instead, trying to keep Jesus on the task of performing miracles, oblivious to the true message.

Much of my life, I thought it boiled down to the healing,  when in fact Jesus was using healing and the dispelling of demons and spirits as a way of getting the attention of all who witnessed this and heard his teachings. It wasn’t about being healed and going off merrily giving him credit BUT it was about becoming whole by being healed, and being transformed in order to serve others.

We are all called to be deacons, ordained or not; to be servants of the Lord, spreading his Good News to the world by our actions of giving freely of ourselves to the service of God.   

It felt like this week’s scripture was dropped into my lap because of the diakonos of others.  It all began with a single coat hanging on the rack in the

pavilion—-it hung there for nearly a year.  Several months ago a food pantry volunteer asked if we might want to do a coat drive this year, as we all stared at that one coat still hanging there.   I thought it sounded like a good idea but with little time to plan, I sent a text to a sister church down the road asking for help;  this request turned up in a Facebook announcement about helping find coats for our neighbors—-contact Trinity; the FB announcement was picked up by another denomination where it was shared with that congregation, and ended with 2 more churches from way up in Westmoreland offering to do the same.  Collecting coats for distribution to those in need of warm clothing. 

There are a lot of deacons out there, in case you hadn’t heard!  (And many of them are present in this room this morning! )

Fortunately, we are able to work with an area department of social services who will deliver our coats into the hands of those needing them.

It is through service in God’s world, we reveal to others the head, the heart, and the hands of Jesus. That’s being a deacon, no matter what else you call yourself!

I leave you with this thought from the theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” There’s a whole world out there that hasn’t heard the Good News yet. Isn’t it time that we followed Jesus and told them?