Right away after Jesus has come out of the wilderness, collected four friends, has gone to the synagogue to do some teaching, has sent a polluted spirit out of a man, and has gone to Simon and Andrew’s house, where he’s learned that Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a fever.

      Now before we get to the next part, I want to pause and ask a question.  Have you ever wondered about Simon Peter having a mother-in-law who lived with him?    Others lived there too – because the story goes that “they” told Jesus about her when he arrived.  Did Simon Peter have a wife? (Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians mentions a wife traveling with Peter.)  Did Andrew have a wife?  Did they have kids?  Did they have other brothers?  James and John left their father at the boat, but nothing is said about Simon and Andrew’s father.  When Simon Peter says later in Mark’s Gospel that they have left everything to follow Jesus, did he mean everyone as well?  Were their families not living or were they not important in the story?  It’s a little worrisome to me.

      The healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is a little worrisome too.  When talking about this part, many people I know start to shake their heads about the irony of Simon’s mother-in-law springing from her sickbed so that she can get dinner on the table for the guys – to serve them.

       There’s another way to read this though.  The word that gets translated serve here is the same word for deacon in the church, which also gets translated as minister.  At the very least, it is a story of how she ministered to them.  It is the same word that gets used just a few sentences before when Mark tells about the angels caring for Jesus in the wilderness.  The angels ministered to him.  Simon’s mother-in-law ministered to Simon, Andrew, James, John, and Jesus.  When the very same word gets translated into English as ‘minister’ when angels are doing it, ‘deacon’ when men are doing it, but ‘serve’ when a woman is doing it, it has a certain way of downplaying her actions doesn’t it?  But Mark used the same word and we can understand that he equated Peter’s mother-in-law’s service to that of the angels with regard to treatment of Jesus.¹  Simon’s mother-in-law and the angels were all doing the same thing in that first chapter of Mark.

       And there’s a more radical way to read this.  This could be a story about how Simon’s mother-in-law became a deacon after she was freed from her illness.  The archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum, where his mother-in-law lived, became a base of operation where Jesus and his followers came often to rest and talk and study.  The idea is that her home became a house-church that continued to function after Jesus’ death and this is a story about how it got started.²

       It seems to me that Mark wants his hearers to know that Jesus was immediately recognized as a healer, although he doesn’t seem to feel that that is his calling.  The word spreads about his ability to cast out demons and heal those who were sick, and before you know it, there are crowds – indeed the whole city of Capernaum was gathered around the door.  Jesus snuck out while it was still very dark and found a deserted place to pray.  In my imagination, he needed to go to a deserted place to pray because it was going to be loud!  (I once had a bumper sticker that read, “It’s been lovely, but I have to scream now!”)  I imagine he needed to scream.  In my imagination, Jesus  needed some time alone.  But his friends hunted him down to tell him that everyone was looking for him.  Jesus’ response is not, “okay – I’ll come back, just give me a minute.”  Rather, Jesus says,  “Let’s go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”  But the need for healing continues to present itself again and again.

      I’ll tell you what I think makes human beings who have resources not share.  Fear.  Fear of scarcity.  (Perhaps the experience of scarcity.)  Fear of running out.  Fear of not having enough for themselves.  And I’ll tell you what makes the human beings who don’t have resources leave.  Shame.  Shame is what keeps people from asking for help.  (I don’t actually think it’s pride – I think it’s shame.)  Shame is what keeps people from insisting (and from believing) that the community can give them what they need.    It occurs to me to tell you that this story that Jesus is telling is directed privately to his disciples.  He’s not speaking to the crowds, not to religious authorities or other teachers.  He’s trying to communicate something to his followers.  Here’s what I think is going on.  It’s foreshadowing.  Do you remember anything about Jesus’ followers falling asleep?  It’s at the end in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus is praying just before he was arrested in the middle of the night.  He told them to stay awake and when he needed them the most, they didn’t.  They couldn’t do it.    

      John Lennon once said that “life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”  And in this case, ministry is what happens while Jesus is making other plans.  I bet you have your own stories about ministry that happens while you are making other plans.

      Here’s one of my stories from about 10 years ago. I had finished seminary but still had to meet an ordination requirement of doing an 8-week chaplaincy internship at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.  It was a full-time, unpaid, and very rigorous program.  It prevented me from doing other work which stretched us to the breaking point financially.  The program was going to finish just two weeks before we had to move out of our campus home where my daughters Sarah and Laura and I had lived for four years.  I was trying to find housing in the little spare time that I had, and the rental market was so tight.  Joy and Grace were going to be moving to Massachusetts from Virginia and we were going to combine our families in the hopes of living happily ever after.

      I was having an impossible time trying to find a place that we could afford that would accommodate a 3 ½ year old (lead paint laws) and two teenagers, 2 cats and a dog, and the fact that neither Joy nor I had jobs just then.  I actually couldn’t even get most potential landlords to return my phone calls.  Sarah, who had just finished the 8th grade kept saying, “we’re going to be homeless, aren’t we?”  And I wasn’t at all confident every time I said, “no.” 

      One day, close to the end of the 8 weeks, I just came unhinged.  I spent the morning crying so hard that I just couldn’t even go to my chaplain job at the hospital.    I finally got it together enough to show up for a mandatory meeting that afternoon.  I was a complete mess.  My eyes were red and practically swollen shut from crying – and still pretty leaky, nose all stuffed up.  One of my colleagues told me that a patient on his assigned floor had asked for me and requested that I visit her.  We were not supposed to visit patients in each other’s areas of responsibility, but he invited me – and actually encouraged me to stop in to see her because she was very sick.

      My clinical assignment was the Emergency Room.  I had met her several weeks before.  Her name was Angela.  She had been in the ER with a severe asthma attack – pretty scared because she couldn’t breathe.  I had stayed with her for an extended time because she didn’t have anyone with her and the ER wasn’t particularly busy.  Now she had been admitted and was in very serious condition.

      I poked my head in her room.  She was hooked up to all kinds of machines and didn’t look well at all.  She looked up at me, eyes wide, and said, “What happened to you?”  I said, “oh, rough day.  But how are you doing?”  I don’t think she even answered that question.  She said, “you’d better sit down and tell me what’s going on.”  I shook my head no, smiled, and said, “Who’s the chaplain here?”  And she said, “I am.”  I said, “oh,” and sat down.  She told me to tell her all about it.   We had clear instructions to not do this – to not talk about ourselves, but to focus on patients’ needs.  I wasn’t even supposed to be in this room.  But I was so exhausted and she was so insistent, that I just started to tell her about my fear that we would have no place to live.

      She listened and then said, “you’ve got to take a week off to find a place. You have to take care of your family.”  I said, “I can’t.”  She said, “you can’t afford to take the time off?”  I hung my head, not knowing what to say.  She asked incredulously, “you’re not getting paid for this?”  I shook my head no.  She said, “you’re not getting paid and you won’t take time off?”  I shook my head again.  “I can’t,” I said, “It’s required.”

      She asked what time I got home.  “About 5:00,” I said.  She said, “rental offices are still open then.  You have to call 10 places a day as soon as you get home.  Don’t even change your clothes.  Don’t talk to the kids.  Don’t do anything else before you call 10 places every day.  Do you understand?”  I nodded.   When I got home that day I called ten places.  Not because I thought any would pan out, but because I wanted to be able to look Angela in the eye the next day and tell her that I’d done as she’d instructed.  I left a bunch of messages.  Later that evening I got a call back – a landlord in Watertown who loved that we had kids and pets, who offered to meet me that night, who showed me such a great house that I rented it on the spot.  He trusted that Joy and I would have jobs soon.  It was miraculous.

      The next day I went to find Angela to tell her.  She was gone.  And I had this weird feeling that made me wonder if she’d been real.  Had that conversation even happened?  And did it matter?  We truly had housing.  As is the case with so many scripture stories, even if they didn’t happen, it doesn’t mean that they are not true.  The story of Angela and the miracle of our finding housing are true.  And the miracle happened, in part I think, because Angela and I were open to playing different roles than the ones we had planned to be playing.  It was ministry that happened while we were making other plans.  Think a moment -- what are your stories of ministry happening while you were making other plans?  What is your ministry now?  What ministry is it that you are being called to in spite of your plans?

¹ “Mark,” by Mary Ann Tolbert in The Women’s Bible Commentary (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), p. 267.

² Martha Ann Kirk, Women of Bible Lands:  A Pilgrimmage to Compassion and Wisdom (Collegeville, MN:  Liturgical Press, 2004), p. 160.