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St. George's Episcopal Church Roseburg, Oregon Fifth Sunday After Epiphany 5 February 2006 Go To St. George's Home Page

Isaiah 40:21-31
Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39
The Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. (Mark 1:29-39)

Heal Us And Make Us Whole
The Rev. Bill Stroop, Ph.D., Rector

     If Thomas Jefferson was in church today, he would squirm. Indeed, I doubt he would have stood up for the gospel reading – or if he stood, he would have quickly sat down. In the early 1800’s, Jefferson was a frustrated man. But it was not the burdens of office that bothered him, it was his Bible.

     As described by historian Marilyn Mellowes, “ Jefferson was convinced that the authentic words of Jesus written in the New Testament had been contaminated. Early Christians, overly eager to make their religion appealing to the pagans, had obscured the words of Jesus with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The task, as he put it, was one of abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separate from that as the diamond from the dung hill.”

     “With the confidence and optimistic energy characteristic of the Enlightenment, Jefferson proceeded to dig out the diamonds. Candles burning late at night, Jefferson composed a short monograph titled The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.”[1] In 1820, Jefferson returned to this project and produced The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French and English. The text of the New Testament appears in four parallel columns in four languages. Jefferson omitted the words that he thought were inauthentic and retained those he believed were original. The resulting work is commonly known as the “Jefferson Bible.”

     In Jefferson’s Bible, there is no beginning or end to the Gospel story. There is no annunciation or birth, and there are no angels; the resurrection is not even mentioned. This is because Jefferson believed that an authentic Christianity had long ago been hijacked by the Church. He felt that Jesus’ teachings had become so distorted as to make “one half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.”

     Jefferson had no liking of priests. Jefferson wrote to Charles Clay in 1815, “I abuse the priests, indeed, who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of their Master.” By stripping away the Gospel claim that Jesus was the divine son of God, and by stripping away the subsequent miracles the church invented to prove it, Jefferson boasted that he had extracted the ‘diamonds from the dunghill’ to reveal the true teaching of Jesus for what it was: ‘the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man’.”[2]

     Today’s Gospel text from the first chapter of Mark portrays Jesus on a mission to “proclaim the message.” But as he goes about his work, he is besieged with requests for healing. Having come from the synagogue where he cast demons out of a possessed man, Jesus cures Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. Apparently impressed by Jesus’ skill Simon and Andrew go about rounding up all of the sick in the village and bringing them to Jesus for healing.

     I can just see Jefferson squirming in the pew, crossing his legs in one direction and then the other; eyes rolling around in his head. “How can these people believe this rubbish?” he would be thinking.

     The writer Erik Reese noted that Jefferson’s Bible bore a striking resemblance to the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas – a work that was not included in the Bible – and a work that was unknown to Jefferson. The Gospel of Thomas is, like Jefferson’s Bible, an unembellished series of sayings of Jesus. The Jesus of Jefferson and Thomas was a person who emphasized the importance of reaching deep inside to tap into the energy and power of God that lies within each and everyone of us.

     You can save yourself, Thomas’ Jesus tells the crowds: "If you bring forth what is with-in you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you." What everyone has within is some fragment of divine light. That spark is proof of our kinship to the Creator—of our own divinity. But human vanities blind us to it.

     There is an empirical way of knowing, and there is an intuitive way of understanding. Jefferson was the product of the Enlightenment, and he wanted everything to be rationale. Tidy.

     But the authors of Mark, Matthew, and John were more intuitive. They understood that God‘s light exists within everyone and "will be disclosed," but we cannot know it intellectually. It is something that exists in our hearts, our souls. And when we tap into it, the light within will illuminate the world and reveal the kingdom of God.

     All of the Gospel writers – beginning with Mark – struggled with how to describe the power of the message that Jesus preached and lived. Mark tells us that Jesus believed the Kingdom of God was very near. I think that meant that the rest of the story shows us how it is in our power to create that Kingdom. It is at hand in our hearts; now lets build it with justice, mercy, equality, and dignity for all persons.

     Let’s look at today’s story. On the surface of it, Jesus has come to Simon Peter and Andrew’s house at about noontime right after the synagogue service. That was when the Sabbath meal was taken. The way Mark constructs the story of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law tells us a lot about kingdom building.

     First, Jesus did not require a crowd of onlookers to be of service. Although he was probably tired, the need of others took precedence. There were many exorcists in Jesus’ day – belief in demons as the cause of illness was widespread – but Jesus did not do any of the customary incantations or formulae or spells common to their practice. And that tells us something very, very important about the Kingdom of God Jesus proclaimed.

     It is a kingdom in which people truly care for one another. They do what they can for one another because it is an act of love and compassion. It is something that reaches beyond our sense of self and gives of ourselves to another human being. It is pure love.

     Many hearers of this story might wonder about healing the mother-in-law so that she could return to a life of servant hood. After all, as soon as she was healed of her fever, she began to serve them. But to hear that message that way is to miss the point of the story as Mark meant it to be heard in his own time.

     This unnamed woman was someone who by her illness, had been marginalized – cast out, as it were – from her position in the microcosm of her family structure. What Jesus did was to restore to her place in the family. As the senior female \, the role of seeing to the preparation and serving of a meal to guests would have fallen to her. Wracked with fever, she undoubtedly felt disvalued as a contributing member to her family. Jesus’ healing restored her to her social position in the household, and to her sense of meaning and purpose. Although many people today might see this as hardly something to be celebrated, that would be to deny the historical context. What Jesus did was to give back to her the privilege of showing hospitality to honored guests. Her work was an honorable occupation, not servile activity.

     More important than these details is the fact that Mark’s story shows us that we all have the power to heal. We are not talking about a “cure.” The word “cure” conjures up medical or pathological imagery. We are talking about healing; the capacity to restore people to wholeness. In all of Mark’s healing stories we see Jesus ministering to the afflicted where they were. It did not matter whether they were affluent, poor, or lived at the margins of society, Jesus attended to all, and he did what was necessary to restore them to wholeness.

     Jesus calls to us today to do likewise; to seek wholeness. Jesus asks us if we are in fact really that accommodating to our friends and neighbors. Do we always meet them on their terms and do what we can to help, or do we try to manipulate the situation so that we derive some direct benefit by our actions?

     There are so many things we can do to heal one another. But to heal others requires that we reach outside ourselves; reach beyond our self interests and personal ambitions. We need to put ourselves in their place and see the world through their eyes. It means trusting in ourselves and the other person and the action of the Holy Spirit to work with our spirits to make us whole, even when we are at odds or estranged from one another. It may mean re-evaluating our ideas of relationship, love, and friendship in order to reach beyond our own desires and wants to meet the needs of another. While this can sometimes seem uncomfortable or risky, the rewards are beyond imagining when we let that power within us reach into the heart and soul of another person. It is love at its best. It is caring more for the other more than for ourselves. And the product of that kind of love can be nothing short of miraculous.

     It can sustain and empower all of us to love one another more deeply and in greater ways than we can imagine. And that, my friends, is exactly what the Kingdom of God is all about.

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Isaiah 40:21-31

Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

Psalm 147:1-11, 20c

1 Praise the LORD!
How good it is to sing praises to our God;
for he is gracious, and a song of praise is fitting.

2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the outcasts of Israel.

3 He heals the brokenhearted,
and binds up their wounds.

4 He determines the number of the stars;
he gives to all of them their names.

5 Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his understanding is beyond measure.

6 The LORD lifts up the downtrodden;
he casts the wicked to the ground.

7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
make melody to our God on the lyre.

8 He covers the heavens with clouds,
prepares rain for the earth,
makes grass grow on the hills.

9 He gives to the animals their food,
and to the young ravens when they cry.

10 His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the speed of a runner;

11 but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.
Praise the LORD!

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel. For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

Mark 1:29-39

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them. That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

The Collect of the Day

Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[1] Marilyn Mellowes. Thomas Jefferson and his Bible. Accessed 2 February 2006 at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/jefferson.html.
[2] Erik Reece. “Jesus Without the Miracles: Thomas Jefferson’s Bible and the Gospel of Thomas.” Harper’s Magazine 311(1867), 1 Dec 2005. Accessed 2 February 2006 at http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Jesus-Without-Miracles1dec05.htm.

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Copyright © 2006, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
2 Feburary 2006

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