The Movement of God

Readings: Isaiah 40:28-31, Mark 1:29-39, True Christianity 438 (see below)See also on Youtube
Photo by Flo Maderebner



As we continue in the first chapter of Mark, we hear about Jesus’ first healing.  After preaching in the synagogue, Jesus goes to Simon’s home to find his mother-in-law sick with a fever. Post-pandemic, we can appreciate even more now, how in a world without antibiotics, a fever could be very serious. We are treated to a short but tender scene; Jesus goes to her, and takes her hand. Immediately the fever leaves her, and she resumes her duties. 

This healing episode follows the typical features of a biblical healing story: there is a description of the malady or challenge, a request for healing, the act of healing, and then the evidence that the healing has taken place. Most healing stories follow this intuitive formula. But of course, in doing this, the gospel is not only giving us a version of what happened and what Jesus’ did. It is also providing us with a picture of how God is with us now, how God heals us and regenerates us, and how God challenges us to respond.

In the Swedenborgian worldview, sicknesses in scripture represent spiritual challenges. (1)  Just as sicknesses can harm our earthly bodies, in a parallel way there are selfish feelings, desires, and perspectives that can harm our spirit. In recognizing that resonance, we can see that the outline for a typical healing story in scripture, might also be able to guide our own spiritual progression. 

First, the challenge must be identified. We can’t work on a problem that we don’t recognize that we have. This fundamental recognition is the starting point of all spiritual progress.

The second part is the request to be healed. The implication in the story is that Simon’s mother-in-law was not getting better on her own. We heard in our Swedenborg reading that we cannot navigate our spiritual challenges all on our own.
The third step is the act of healing itself, and of this we can do nothing but stand in awe and gratitude for the way God works within us for change. Swedenborg writes elsewhere that God fights for us and works for our salvation constantly (2). Isaiah reveals to us a beautiful promise: those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

The fourth part is the evidence of the healing, our response. Our conscious participation is crucial throughout the entire process, but how we respond to the miracle of transformation is the part that draws us into true partnership with God, that grounds any transformation within our character and within our spirit.

Simon’s mother-in-law immediately responded with service. Now, I’ll concede on the face of it, this is a tricky anecdote. Her response is clearly gendered, clearly according to the expectations of the time. There are no similar episodes of a man being healed and beginning to serve others in the specific way that she does.  In our day and time, when the cultural expectations of women’s work and men’s work are being rightfully deconstructed, it can be unclear how to interpret this story. There are all kinds of interpretations that try to explain away the gendered and historical nature of her response. But still, one can reasonably ask, wouldn’t true healing have freed her from cultural expectations as well? Her son in law dropped his net and abandoned his life of fishing in response to his experience of Jesus. Could not she do the same? 

And so we find that this is a story with an inseparable historical context. Perhaps in the end, it does not matter so much whether or not we now can impose some resolution upon it for the sake of our own peace of mind, but rather whether we pay attention to the question that it prompts us to ask. Which is:

What is our response to the movement of God in our lives? In the gospels, there are various responses to healings: we see people spreading the news, walking around if they could not before, showing public gratitude, following Jesus and joining his movement.  And we see here that one of the options is also service.  We can’t know how Simon’s mother-in-law experienced her return to her duties. The problem is, we are not even told her name, much less her details of her inner experience. Did she serve with honor, with relief, with reluctance, with gratitude? Inside her own context, could she even have thought to ask for anything more or different?  What we do know is that the kingdom of God would never ultimately call anyone into servitude, a structure that inherently places one person in power over another.  The whole kingdom mindset is the reversal of earthly power structures…the last will the first.  But just because servitude is rejected, doesn’t mean that the idea of service, serving one another, is likewise jettisoned.  Servanthood, freely chosen, is exactly what Jesus exemplified; mutual love a hallmark of God’s heavenly realm.

And so, even within the ancient context, we receive clues to this reality.  The verb used to indicate Simon’s mother-in-law waiting upon Jesus and the disciples, diakoneo, is used earlier in the same chapter, when Jesus was tested in the wilderness and we are told that the angels attended to him. Later it is used by Jesus himself, when he is characterizing his entire mission: “I come not to be served but to serve.”  And finally, it is echoed in Mark 15:41, at the crucifixion.  After all the disciples have deserted Jesus, we are told some women remained.  

“Some women were watching from a distance.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome.  In Galilee, these women had followed him and cared for his needs.  Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.”
What is translated as “cared for his needs” is the same verb, diakoneo, and it is not hard to imagine that Simon’s mother-in-law might have been among these “many” women as well, just as was the mother of James, another disciple. This small moment in scripture lifts up another story not told.  A story about women who followed Jesus and cared for him.  Who followed him and served him, not out of expectation but out of love. Women whose story gets so little play because of the cultural repressions of the era, women who were never designated disciples but who dared to be present at the cross, who did not flinch or turn away.  When we remember that Simon’s mother-in-law served, we can also remember that she and others persisted in presence when others ran away. But still, the tension remains. Our culture has certainly been tempted to take such stories and make them prescriptive, to make them about how women ARE, what they do BEST, and therefore what they *should* do.

To resist this impulse against prescription, we remember that the framework for healing is the same for all us. We are all called to reflect, to compassionately but courageously convict ourselves, to ask for healing. And we are all called to respond as our heart calls us to respond, in some form of sacrificial servanthood in the mould of Jesus himself, the beating heart of the kingdom of God. This kingdom mindset that we are all called to is one of the reasons that Jesus would not let the demons he was exorcising speak. They knew who he was, but they did not have faith in him, or the kingdom of God. They might speak, but they would never act for the kingdom. In the broad scheme, to Jesus, the miracle was never the thing, the response was always the thing. To Jesus, his fame was nothing. Rather, Jesus knew that the most important part was still to come. He knew we might mistake the whole point if we did not wait until everything was played out. 

But we will be in Easter soon enough. Let us today honor the miracle of the way God always moves us toward healing, and that this healing can transform us.

Amen.

(1) Secrets of Heaven 5711
(2) Secrets of Heaven 1642, True Christianity 142

Readings:

Isaiah 40:28-31

28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Mark 1:29-39

29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them. 32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!” 38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

True Christianity 438

Still, none of us can purify ourselves from evils by our own power and our own force. On the other hand, neither can we purify ourselves without having power and force as if they were our own. If we did not have apparent power, none of us could fight against the flesh and its cravings, although we have all been ordered to do so. In fact, we could not even think about battling them….

Clearly then, because we are rational in a way that animals are not, we have to resist evils using the powers and abilities the Lord gives us, although as far as we can tell, those powers and abilities appear to be our own. The Lord gives us all this illusion in order to regenerate us, attribute goodness to us, forge a partnership with us, and save us.