Sunday 4 February 2024 - The Power of Proximity

God’s got my attention in two ways this week. One way has to do with power; and the other with what it means to take hands, to be in relationship with one another.

First up, power. I have this thing that I’ve noticed which I think might be one of the way God gets my attention. I’ll often have songs in my head, from films or music I’ve just listened to, but every now and again I’ll wake up in the morning with a song in my head that makes no sense in context. On Thursday morning I woke up with the hymn ‘Ride on Ride on in Majesty’ which I don’t even really like as it’s kind of dirge-y and is associated in my head with many years of following a donkey’s butt around the Cathedral on Palm Sunday.

But it was the last two lines that were in my head:

‘bow thy meek head to mortal pain / then take O Christ Thy power and reign’.

In particular it was the idea of Jesus ‘taking power’ that got my attention; a sense of gratitude that the resurrected power of Jesus is so strong in the face of the weakness I feel about my own ability, but also a wondering about what it means for us as Jesus’ people to have ‘his power that is at work within us’ (Ephesians 3:20).

The second thing that got my attention throughout this week was the number of times that I saw in the Bible people taking hands, or reaching out their hands. I don’t claim hardly ever to have a hotline to the Almighty but I began to see this so often throughout the week that it got weird. I even saw it in the reading in Genesis 19 on Sodom and Gomorrah which I reluctantly read during the week because it was in the lectionary and I felt I had do; in verse 16 when Lot hesitates before the destruction of the cities and the angels God has sent drag them out by their hands. I went to a talk this week and heard how the ‘right hand’ in the Bible signifies power. Throughout both testaments—Jairus’s daughter; the woman bleeding, the blind man whom Jesus “touched,” ‘doubting Thomas’, and so forth—there is one incident after another pointing to the power of touch; of reaching out hands for help or to help others. It is everywhere.

So when I realised what this week’s reading was too it felt like God was honking a horn at me. So, let’s dig into it.

Can someone start us off with a re-cap of the story?

So let’s re-cap: Jesus, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John arrive at Simon Peter’s house to find his mother in law is sick with a fever.

Their immediate response is to tell Jesus about it. It’s interesting that that’s even noted; as if maybe it would be normal not tell a guest that a member of their household is sick.

And here in the next verse is the stand-out moment, the still point after all the busy-ness of the first part of this chapter that I think we’re being asked to notice today. It’s just 11 words:

‘He came and raised her up by gently taking her hand.’

What happens next is that she is immediately freed of that fever and gets up to serve them.

Then what happens? People bring others from the town to the door for healing.

Wrap up re-tell

In a modern context it feels a bit icky that the woman gets up to serve the patriarchy, but unpacking that a little bit will help us not to get stuck on that, and to get to the heart of the story. Let’s have a look at around the text:

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What can we see in the text itself that might indicate how Jesus sees Simon Peter’s mother in law?

· Jesus is hardly maintaining the status quo of society– after all, he’s breaking Sabbath rules by healing in the first place. She in turn breaks Sabbath rules by preparing a meal.

· Jesus is not averse to asking people for what he needs: think of the woman at the well who he asks for a drink. He doesn’t ask the woman to serve, she chooses to do so freely in response to being made well.

· In freeing her to be well, he restores her mana as host; and she is able to provide a venue for Jesus to serve in turn the entire town come evening.

· Her actions of service are in contrast to her son’s in the next section, when he goes out to find the solitary Jesus praying, wrestling in that place of wilderness, and impels him in language which implies hostility, to come back and keep healing people.

For me the first part of v. 31 is the stand-out moment, the still point that I think we’re being asked to notice today. It’s just 11 words in some translations:

‘He came and raised her up by gently taking her hand.’

Finally, there’s something really powerful in the use of language in this little sentence, something that takes us back to the hymn at the start. That’s that the phrase ‘raised her up’ is the same as Mark 16.6 when the angel tells the women that Jesus is alive; that he’s resurrected and risen from the dead. These are the only two places where we find this language – in the first and last chapters, and both in association with encounters with women. This woman is Jesus’ first servant and joins him in the radical announcement, in action, of the kingdom of God, his first deacon.[1]

All of this just serves once again to note the upside-down nature of Jesus’ kingdom as he goes about revealing what God is like. Jesus has power, yet Jesus serves. Simon Peter’s mother is raised in power, and responds in love and service.

So in this little verse I think I can see both of the things that leapt out at me over this week: power, and taking hands. Yes, Jesus uses his own spiritual power to heal, but that power is not aggressive or manipulative. That’s the nature of God in a nutshell. It’s a resurrecting power, it’s a kind power, it’s a power that restores and evokes a response of love in turn.

It’s also a power that reminds us of the need that we all have for intimacy with others. That’s a word that many of us find icky and I don’t mean intimacy necessarily in a bodily way but more in terms of the human need for authentic and positive relationships which is part of what we experience as part of a family of faith. Being people who do ordinary life together in all of its fulness is part of God’s plan of human flourishing. That looks different depending on your context but throughout the gospels we see it’s into ordinary places where Jesus comes – yes to places of worship but more often than not to beaches, to places of work, to the roadside, or the fields, and especially, to people’s homes. For me, it’s the times when I’ve met God in ordinary, outside of church spaces, often as part of deep community with others, that my faith has grown the most.

There’s an invitation in this little line to remember that God knows the human need for nearness, in the actions of Jesus as the embodiment of God’s love. Jesus offers us an invitation to grow in power and proximity with him, simply because he loves us and wants a relationship with us. Remember there’s nothing in this text to indicate that Simon Peter’s mother was particularly worthy of receiving healing. There’s nothing in the text that indicates that Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John were any more worthy to hang out with Jesus than anyone else. There’s nothing in the gospels to indicate that even Jesus had done anything of great significance before he received his affirmation from God the Father at baptism.

As we close today I invite you to close your eyes, and stretch out your hand. Imagine Jesus taking your hand. What situation in your life do you most need Jesus’ power and gentle presence in? Let’s have some quiet now and bring those things to Jesus for his loving care.

[1]Ofelia Ortega, “Theological Perspective on Mark 1:29–39,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 334.