Year B

Mark 1:29-39

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

God’s Transformative Healing Power

“Have you not known, heard, understood what has been told from the foundations of the earth? Compared to the power of God, we are like insects or frail plants, for God is the source of all strength and compassion. God wills that we have life in its fullness for, “Those who wait on God will “fly up on wings like eagles.” Both Isaiah and the Psalmist today speak of God’s power and care for the weak and the outcast, and Jesus demonstrates that care by healing many and restoring them to their place in the community. Paul proclaims this good news as free of charge so that every aspect of the Christian life through the daily practices of faith, are shaped by Christ’s death on behalf of others. God’s transformative healing power needs to be known, heard, understood, and told.  

Second Isaiah, the great poet and prophet of the exile speaks words of consolation today to the Israelites who in sixth century BCE have been living in captivity in Babylon for decades. Isaiah gives a message of encouragement, hope, and reassurance to a hurting people. Yahweh will soon bring the people’s suffering to an end under the liberation of Cyrus of Persia, and lead them joyfully out of captivity. He believed that the one Lord of Hebrew faith-Yahweh-was present and powerful not only in the promised land and in the temple, but was the one, only God, and creator of the world.

He also believed, from his people’s experiences of exodus and exile, that this all powerful God is compassionate or “suffers with,” giving strength to the powerless. They are not forgotten, but those who wait and trust in him will be renewed. They will ascend on wings like eagles. They can be sure that although once beaten down, they will ascend into the heavenly realms. For the creator who gathers the lambs does not faint or grow weary in doing so. Psalm 147 today emphasizes this non-weary creator God who helps the outcast, the broken-hearted, and the downtrodden; punishes the wicked; feeds the animals and birds; and takes pleasure in those who place their hope in God.

God’s power and help are made visible throughout the scriptures as in the gospel text today of Jesus’ healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. The gospels themselves are so filled with detailed stories of Jesus as healer it is difficult to doubt that many were healed through his ministry. He had a remarkable attraction not only for the sick and the poor but for those who are, in the words of the prayer book, “in danger, sorrow, or any kind of trouble.” The NT is filled with all kinds of people and their needs seeking a healing encounter with one they know can make them whole. Jesus can, and he does. Transforming love pours out of him like water from a spring, restoring health and vision and quietness of mind.

We are only in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel and already the crowds are following Jesus, bringing him their sick and those possessed with demons. Just last week, Jesus was in the synagogue at Capernaum, where his first exorcism took place. Today’s reading, which comes immediately after Jesus and his disciples leave the synagogue, recounts his first healing which notably occurs on the Sabbath, something that will soon get Jesus into trouble with the Jewish authorities. When Jesus heals Simon Peter’s mother-in-law of her fever, he takes her hand and lifts her up, an action he repeats in several other healing stories in Mark.

This imagery reminds us of similar imagery from the Psalms and the prophets, including today’s text from Isaiah, of a God who lifts up those who have been cast down. Do we still believe today and trust that God continues to lift us up and heal us? Isaiah exhorts discouraged hearers to trust in the power of the God who is the center of the entire universe. They may be cast down, in exile but God remembers them and has the strength and power to liberate them and restore them in health and spirit. Peter’s mother-in-law in rising from her sickbed to serve her guests, is not simply cured of her fever, but resumes her place in society and in service to others. All of us, male or female, young or old, Jew and Gentile are healed by God for service.

Healing is not simply about us but about God and God’s love and power in the world. Healing may or may not involve a physical cure, but it always brings a transformation of the heart and spirit such that illness or trouble no longer has to determine one’s life. Paul today, as he address several disputes and sources of strife in the Church at Corinth, speaks to this transformation as freedom, as caring not for ourselves only but for others and for God. Pain and illness can close us in, unable to experience the suffering world around us. God’s healing of body and spirit opens us up allowing us to surrender in faith. When we surrender in faith, we enter into the power of God, into the realm of all possibility.

We open ourselves to new perspectives, thoughts and dimensions of life. We are brought more fully into ourselves and at the same time brought into that fullness which is greater than all that is. Drawing on all the resources God gives us, we hope, seek, and pray not only for our own healing but for the healing of the world-for the salvation of all. Clearly, we do not get everything we ask for in prayer but our prayers are answered; many in ways that are better than what we would ever have thought. Yet, we can be tempted to give up when we do not see the results we want. Jesus shows us today that God cares and that, it is important for us to stay in touch with God.

If we surrender our own limited vision of what our healing might be; if we can accept that presence of God in our lives, we may be amazed at what God has in mind for us and we live toward the promised day of resurrection, whose joy no eye has seen nor human heart imagined, where all of God’s promises are fulfilled. What God promises us is not an instant cure-all necessarily but a presence, a love, a power and a person. As we trust in Jesus, we are refreshed…we soar up with wings like eagles…we run and do not grow weary…we walk and do not faint. God’s transformative healing power in our lives needs to be known, heard, understood, and told.