A Healing Hand

Mark 1:29-39

February 4, 2018

            When I was at the grocery store last week, getting a cart from the long row of carts, I noticed a woman beside me taking longer than one would think is normal to pull her cart and start shopping. I realized she was busily disinfecting the handle of the cart with a cleaning wipe. I admit that at other times, I might have rolled my eyes a little bit at her prolonged precautions.

            “Life is risk, lady. Let’s keep things moving.”

            Let me put it this way, I was one of the moms who rejoiced when it began to be reported that children who grow up in homes that are not perfectly clean and disinfected, homes that have a little dust, have stronger immune systems than children who grow up in overly sanitized households. I battle the dust in my house, but the dust is winning, and I try to tell myself that my kids are better off because of it. A colleague of mine once came over to my house unexpectedly, and when I apologized for the house not being in pristine condition, she said,

            “Oh Amy, don’t worry about it. I have so many dust bunnies under my bed, if my husband dies, I can make a new one.”

            So in ordinary circumstances I don’t worry too much about who touched my shopping cart before me. I wash my hands – a lot, and move on. But this is no ordinary time. This has been an awful flu season, and it’s not over. In this season there have been over 70 deaths from the flu in Oklahoma alone. Zach told me that another strain of flu is going around the high school. Look around at the people who are not here today. So taking precautions like wiping off the handles of shopping carts and making the peace sign instead of passing the peace by shaking each other’s hand, may not be such a bad thing; at least until the worst of this flu season has passed.

            Not touching other people when we’re trying to avoid the flu or other contagious diseases is one thing, but what about avoiding contact with people whose disease could not be rubbed off through a handshake?

            When the HIV/AIDS epidemic began to get national attention, people were convinced that you could transmit AIDS through simple touch. There was so little education and so much misinformation that it resulted in people treating others terribly. Case in point was a boy named Ryan White who lived in Kokomo, Indiana. Ryan was a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. He was one of the first children to get the disease, and when he was initially diagnosed he was told he only had about six months to live. But he beat that original prognosis and lived five more years. The real problem for Ryan came in how people in his community treated him. The Kokomo school system would not allow him to reregister for school. People accused him of being gay. He and his mother were told again and again that he must have done something wrong, something really bad to get this disease. They were told that God was punishing him by giving him AIDS. The harassment got so bad Ryan and his family was forced to move to another town. But at the school there, a young woman who was the student body president, took it upon herself to invite medical professionals to the school to educate the students and faculty about AIDS and how it is transmitted, and how it isn’t. The students shared this information with their parents. Because of this, Ryan White was welcomed and was able to be a teenager, go to prom, and get a part-time job. He died just a few months before his high school graduation, but because of the efforts of the community, he was able to live, really live, before he died.

            Those people who welcomed Ryan were not afraid to be near him. They were not afraid to touch him, and make him welcome. I can’t help but wonder if the welcome, the love and the compassion that was shown to Ryan and his family didn’t contribute to his living as long as he did. I have no way of proving that scientifically, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

            In our story from Mark’s gospel, there is a detail that is often overlooked, but I find it profound. We are still on day one of Jesus’ public ministry. Last week we read that Jesus and the disciples were in a synagogue in Capernaum. Not only did Jesus astound those who were present with his teaching, he also exorcised an unclean spirit from a man.

            Now they have left the synagogue and gone to the home of Simon – or Simon Peter. Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a fever. When we hear the word “fever” in our context, it may not seem dire. But at that time, without antibiotics, a fever could be fatal. But Jesus did not hesitate in his response to her illness. Not only did he go near her, he touched her. That was how he healed her. He took her by the hand and lifted her up. Jesus took this woman by the hand and lifted her from illness to wholeness, from sickness to health.

            Along with the risk of contagion, Jesus most likely crossed accepted boundaries and defied social norms by touching this woman. He may have been considered ritually unclean. But Jesus did not hesitate to touch her anyway. He took her hand and lifted up and she was healed.

            Another difficulty of this passage is that Jesus did not just heal Simon’s mother-in-law, he healed her to serve. There is no getting around that. There is no way to put a more acceptable spin on this part of the story. She was a woman who was healed to serve men. We have to look at in its specific context. Gender roles were rigid. It was a patriarchal society. That would have been her expected role. No matter how much we may wish that the disciples would have said, “No ma’am, you rest, we’ll fix the sandwiches,” it didn’t work like that. Unfortunately, over the centuries this passage has been used to harm women.

            But Jesus healing her was not a subtle way of harming her. Not only did he heal her physically, he restored her to her community. Her role in the community was, in part, based on what she did. Her serving was not a measure of her servitude. It was how she contributed to her community. He restored her and brought her back into the fold of her home and her household.

            Jesus freed her from a fever that would have harmed her both physically and emotionally and socially. He freed her. Her response was just that. She responded to her freedom by giving back. We don’t have to agree with the strict role she had to play in her culture, but we can still learn from her response. We can still understand that Jesus does not only free us from that which keeps us from God and one another – as he did in the exorcising of the demon. Jesus frees to do something. Dr. David Lose wrote that Jesus frees us for a purpose. It seems to me that the woman’s serving the men upon her recovery was not just her taking up her expected task. I suspect that gratitude and love were also motivators.

            Jesus not only frees us from something, Jesus frees us to do something. How has Jesus freed us? How are we called to respond? What is our new purpose that comes with our deliverance?

            Jesus takes us by the hand and lifts us up to freedom, to newness of life, to newness of purpose. What are we now free to do? How are we called to serve?

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.