When I was in seminary, I spent a summer working as a chaplain in a Roman Catholic hospital. On one occasion I visited a man hospitalized after cancer surgery, and learned that his wife was being treated on another floor with heart arrhythmias. When I entered her room bearing reassuring news about her husband, some friends from the couple’s church were with her singing hymns. I joined them for a hymn, and then we held hands and prayed. When I left, a nurse at the station outside the woman’s room flagged me down. “What did you DO in there?” she asked. The woman had been on a heart monitor, and while I was with her, her irregular heartbeat had calmed to normal rhythms. The nurse had been watching the readout at her desk and was astounded by what she saw. Personally, I was amused and a bit chagrined that someone working in a religious institution was surprised that prayer could make a difference, but all too often such are the ways of modern medicine. Today’s readings invite us to place our trust in God, to expect liberation and healing -- and when they happen and we are restored to freedom and health, to minister to others with grateful hearts.
Isaiah 40:21-31
Today’s passage from Isaiah contains the final ten verses of the first chapter of the prophetic book scholars call Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah. Whereas First Isaiah (chapters 1-39, dating from the eighth century BCE) contains prophecies of judgment against Judah in light of the Assyrian threat, Second Isaiah (chapters 40-55) contains prophecies of consolation to Israelites living in captivity in Babylon (sixth century BCE) in light of their coming liberation under Cyrus of Persia. While most of First Isaiah can be attributed to the actual prophet Isaiah, in Second Isaiah another unknown prophetic voice picks up where Isaiah left off more than a century before.
Chapter 40 begins with the familiar Advent reading and refrain “Comfort, comfort ye my people,” and goes on to promise that Yahweh will soon bring the people’s suffering to an end and lead them joyfully out of captivity. The remainder of the chapter after the Advent reading (vv. 12-31) elaborates the power and magnitude of God over those who oppress God’s people and over the idols the oppressors worship. God has what it takes to make good on his promises: He is omniscient and omnipotent, even if some people doubt. The God who will liberate his people is the same God who created all the earth, who has supreme power in heaven and on earth. It is he who upsets the kings and powers of the world like wind blows tumbleweed (40:24). The heavenly hosts obey him as his creatures; they are his court, they are not rival gods (40:26). Surely the supreme power in the universe has the strength and power to rescue and restore his people. They are not forgotten, but those who wait and trust in him will be renewed.
Much of the imagery here is heavenly -- God sits above the circle of the earth, i.e., the horizon, and stretches out the heavens to cover the earth (40:22). The instruction in verse 26, “Lift up your eyes on high and see,” invites the hearer to consider the starry heavens, where ancients believed their gods resided. Those who wait on the Lord will ascend on wings like eagles (40:31), a powerful poetic image found also in Psalm 103 that elevates those once beaten down into the heavenly realms.
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Paul writes to the church in Corinth to address several disputes and sources of strife. In chapter 8 he has addressed the issue of whether or not to eat food offered to idols, and he has earlier defended his character and message against those who seek to split the church into followers of Paul, Apollos, or Cephas (chapters 1-3). Here in chapter 9 he again defends his call and character, arguing that an apostle merits pay for his work, which Paul has not claimed (9:3-15). In the opening verses of today’s reading (9:16-18), Paul concludes this claim, noting that for himself, his reward (wage) is the ability to proclaim the gospel free of charge to all people.
At the time of Paul’s writing, Corinth was a large, prosperous urban center with an ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse population. The church in Corinth likely consisted of several house churches in different parts of the city that assembled on a regular basis for a common meal and worship (11:18, 14:26). It was predominantly, though not exclusively, Gentile, and members were of both high and low estate. It is not surprising, then, that different practices and patterns of thought would develop among the believing communities in different parts of the city, just as they often do among modern-day parishes that share a common diocese, synod, or other administrative unit. In 9:19-22, Paul speaks eloquently of how he has sought to meet diverse people on their own terms in order to bring them the gospel. The implication is that if Paul can share the gospel among so many types of people, the Corinthian church should also be able to live Christ-centered lives in the midst of the diverse circumstances and cultures of its members. Paul sets himself as an example to emulate in finding one’s way through conflict and misunderstanding. Modern popular culture often urges us to “be true to yourself,” but Paul shows a confidence in the gospel and in his calling as an apostle that gives a more nuanced understanding of faithfulness, not simply to self, but to God and to the vocation God gives us. Jesus’ words “For those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35) come to mind in reading this passage. Paul gives up his identity -- his self -- in order to be true to God and the commission he has been given to carry the gospel to Jew and Gentile alike. In giving up his lesser identity, or self, Paul receives a greater identity from God and shares in the blessings of the gospel (9:23).
Mark 1:29-39
Things move quickly in Mark! Here we are still in the first chapter, and already the crowds are following Jesus, bringing him their sick and those possessed with demons. Whereas last Sunday’s gospel, set in the synagogue at Capernaum, (Mark 1:21-28), recounted Jesus’ first exorcism, today’s reading, which comes immediately after Jesus and his disciples leave the synagogue, recounts his first healing. Notably, this exorcism and healing occur on the sabbath, something that will soon get Jesus into trouble with the Jewish authorities (see the healing of the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:1-6). The detail in 1:32 that the crowds began bringing him their sick at sunset shows that they were waiting for the sabbath to end before asking Jesus to continue his work of healing and exorcism.
When Jesus heals Simon’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 (5:41, 9:27). Some consider this evocative imagery to foreshadow the resurrection, while others may be reminded of similar imagery from the Psalms and prophets (including today’s passage from Isaiah), about God who lifts up those who have been cast down. When we are told that Simon’s mother-in-law began to serve them after the fever left her (also translated as “wait upon them” or “minister to them”), Mark uses the identical word as in 1:13 for the work of the angels after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness.
Not surprisingly, after a long day spent teaching and healing, the first documented day of his public ministry, Jesus seeks time and space for prayer (Mark 1:35). One may speculate whether he again wrestled with temptation after his successes in teaching and healing in Capernaum, as he did after his baptism in Mark 1:12-13. Clearly these early morning hours were a time of discerning his next step in ministry, for when Simon and his companions find Jesus, he knows what to do next. He does not return to those searching for him but sets out for neighboring towns, beginning his peripatetic ministry in Galilee.
Application
Do we trust God? Do we center our lives around God or around ourselves, keeping God on the periphery? In this age of modern medicine and interplanetary travel, has science pushed God to the edge of our awareness? I recently read the book Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, a novel set in the 1660s on Martha’s Vineyard and in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is based on historic records of the first two Native Americans to attend Harvard. The work is fiction, but drawn from extensive historic research, including letters from that era, and the characters, both Puritan and Wampanoag, live in a world suffused with spirits, both good and evil, and with a constant awareness of the power of God in their lives. How different their conversations and voices are from present-day mainline churchgoers! Several centuries’ distance has profoundly changed our worldview here in Massachusetts and in much of the western world.
The question of whether we trust God is not a new one, however. Our reading from Isaiah exhorts discouraged hearers to trust in the power of the God who is the creator of the entire universe. They may be cast down, in exile, but God remembers them and has the strength and resolve to liberate them and restore them in health and spirit. The writer exhorts us toward awe at God’s creative power and reminds me of a Mormon national park ranger I met in Yellowstone years ago who told me: “Look around at all the complexity and beauty and interdependence of all creation: surely they show the hand of the Creator.” Some may argue against such reasoning, but it is such that Isaiah employs, and it still carries weight even, and especially, for a number of scientists I know.
Healing does still happen in this world. Someone no doubt could explain away the changes on a heart monitor after my chaplaincy visit by talking about stress and relaxation and the connections between mind and body, and they would no doubt make many good points. But I have seen far more profound healings than this, and read biblical accounts of healing without trying to explain them away. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Hamlet says in Shakespeare’s play, and this rings true. People who follow 12-step programs find healing in their surrender to a higher power. Healing may or may not involve a physical cure, but always it represents a transformation of the human heart and spirit such that illness or injury no longer determine a person’s life.
The true test of healing is in the consequent action of the individual or community, and this is where Mark’s note about Peter’s mother-in-law rising from her sickbed to serve her guests is so telling. She is not simply cured of her fever, but resumes her place in society and in service to others. While the patriarchal limits of the story are clear -- the woman has no name, requires men to intercede for her, and then waits on them (but in the manner of the angels, recall!) -- the final message is profound. We are healed for service -- all of us, male and female, young and old, Jew and Gentile. Healing is not simply about us, but about God and God’s love and power in the world. Paul speaks to the freedom of caring not for ourselves but for God. Pain and illness, be they of the body or the spirit, close us in and can leave us unable to experience the world beyond our own suffering. God’s healing pulls us out of our self-absorption and into a wider view of the world around us and our place in serving others. A pastor I know recounted a conversation he had with a college student from Iran who had arrived in the United States this fall. Asking for the student’s impressions of this country, he heard many positive reflections -- but he pressed on to ask if there was anything negative the student saw. “I would never want to live here,” the student finally said. “People are so self-absorbed. There are many problems where I come from, but we know our neighbors and we help each other.” The very first step in healing is admitting that we need it -- when we are caught up in ourselves, it is a clear sign that God has been pushed to the periphery of our lives, and that God’s abiding, healing grace needs to move to the center.
