HEALED TO SERVE

A Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany
by Pastor Laura Gentry

Mark 1:29-39

Healed by faith. Is it possible? In Lourdes, France, there is a world famous Roman Catholic shrine at which the Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a saintly young woman named Bernadette a century and a half ago. Thousands of pilgrims throng the shrine every year, hoping to be cured of their ailments. Over the decades, people have left behind their crutches, braces and other tokens of healing as witnesses to God’s power to make them well.

Some say it’s a total sham—that Lourdes and other such places are just tourist traps with no power at all. If a “healing” occurs, they claim it is either pure coincidence or the placebo effect. And with all the modern therapeutic advances, time and money would be better spent visiting medical experts.

What ever you think about modern day faith healing stories, healing is an essential element of the Gospel message. Christians of all denominations have embraced the scenes of healing found throughout the bible.

The ministry of Jesus is particularly loaded with healing. He heals from the very start. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus calls the disciples and then immediately cures a man with an unclean spirit. In today’s lesson, he leaves the synagogue, and enters the house of Simon and Andrew where he find Simon’s mother-in-law in bed with a fever. So what does he do? Of course, he heals her. He takes her by the hand and lifts her up—quite literally. She stands up beside him and her fever leaves. It seems to me that she must have been from Iowa since doesn’t delay a moment after being healed—she gets right back to work in the kitchen.

Like others whom Jesus touched withhis healing, he gives this woman a second chance. He gives hope where there is no hope. In an instant, healing brought freedom from physical debility and not only that, it brought inner change. No wonder “the whole city was gathered” at Jesus’ door. The scene was probably not that much different from contemporary Lourdes at pilgrimage time. People flock to healing.

But healing was never an end unto itself in the ministry of Jesus. In his very first words, as recorded by Mark, Jesus proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” Healing is but a foretaste of the coming of a kingdom that transcends this world of pain and death. And most importantly, this kingdom, Jesus demonstrated, is here within anyone’s grasp, not in some far off place. It has come near.

We are all still in need of healing—physical and otherwise. Everyone seems to be searching for something to improve their lives. These days, the web seems to be overrun with an obnoxious banner ad for some diet plan. The ad is an animated jiggling belly. You try to read the news page and all you see out of the corner of your eye is this wiggling belly. You can't ignore it! And it is trying to make you think: is my belly okay? Does it wiggle and jiggle like this horrible ad? Must I click the ad and go buy this diet plan that will make my belly suitable to be seen in public? But all makeovers and the latest fad diets the world offers cannot assure us of happiness and fulfillment. Real transformation, as understood in the Gospel, has nothing to do with belly fat. It is about our need to for God's healing. We must embrace our own ultimate frailty and death so that we can recognize our need for grace.

I remember reading the story about the Egyptian ferry that sunk in the Red Sea in February of 2006. Only 388 people of the 1,400 on board were rescued. Because the boat sunk so quickly, most of the lifeboats went down with it. The ferry captain apparently was able to get one of those boats but reportedly rowed away from the drowning wreck in it all by himself. He just abandoned his passengers in their time of greatest need.

I think a lot of people fear that God is like that runaway captain, that we can't quite trust that God will always be there for us. What if I'm just not good enough? What if my sins become to vast? What if the bottom falls out of my life? Will God still love me? Will God still be there for me? As humans, it is hard to trust such unconditional love. But we can be assured that God is nothing like the captain who rowed from the wreck by himself. God is always here for us, no matter how far we stray. God holds us close, offering healing for our brokeness again and again.

In the English language the words healing, health, wholeness and wellness all share the same etymological root, meaning full or complete. At whatever state of health we may be, we must recognize our deficiencies, our incompleteness. We need something or someone beyond ourselves and without it we know we are not complete. We are missing something. We are forever longing. We need God’s strength not just to make us well, but to make us whole.

Jesus “cast out many demons.” In our quest for wholeness, we face demons too—habits and behaviors that lead to ruin and self-defeat, sometimes even to death itself. Yet despite these demons, we press on for wholeness, for oneness with God. And healing is about God showing up in the midst of our pain and making that oneness possible. Jesus took Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and raised her up from her sickbed, and she was made well. She must have understood, as no one else, the meaning of the kingdom and oneness with the Lord. And that closeness and oneness is ours to have as well.

How can you know when you have been healed? Seems like a silly question. For many, the answer is obvious: when the pain is gone, the fever has come down, and the disease is no more. But the Gospel gives a better answer. “The fever left her,” we are told of Peter’s mother-in-law, “and she began to serve them.” As she was healed, she immediately began to serve others. When we are ready to help others in their need and focus once again outside ourselves we will know that we too have been cured. We will no longer be slaves to our own hurts and resentments. We will at last be made whole.

My friends, our captain is with us—reaching out to save us. Let us heed Jesus’ invitation today to be healed and to share that healing by serving others.


Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.

© 2009 Laura E. Gentry