Today we deal with a text overflowing with opportunities for healing, and as Hippocrates, the “father of medicine” wrote, “Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”  In this lectionary passage from Mark we watch Jesus begin his public ministry by sharing God’s restorative powers with the members of a Galilean town.  Desperate for help, men and women surround this new prophet asking to be seen, to be touched, and to be cured.  Like Simon and his mother-in-law they’re unafraid of expressing their need for help just as Jesus is unafraid of ministering to each of them with compassion and love.  Through the night and into the morning they come, leading his disciples to later tell him, “Everyone is searching for you.”  Jesus responds: “Let us go on then to do what I have come to do. ”

Healing.  For us today this passage may sound like a tall tale taking place in a far away land where the realities of life are long forgotten.  Stories of disease disappearing and demons being cast away may seem to some of us to be just that:  stories written for superstitious people seeking solutions to their problems in ancient times.  We’re much too sophisticated and intelligent to believe these stories, some of us might confess, thinking that things could never really happen this way.

That is one approach to this morning’s reading.

Another is to throw caution to the wind and accept this text as literally true.  We could push our more rational sensibilities aside and have faith in the entirety of Mark’s passage, moving closer to the conservative claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God.  Then we would know without hesitation that these events took place and these people were cured.  Then we could trust, without any doubt, that Jesus worked miracles.

That’s another approach.

Then there’s the middle way, full of faith yet also full of faithful searching.  From this perspective we look at this incredible passage incredulously, wondering how and why Mark wrote it the way he did.  From such a place we ask not so much, “Did these things really happen?” but rather, “Why was this passage written in the way that it was?”  We step back and wonder what Mark is telling us about Jesus, moving to a place of more ancient perspective to see what is revealed here about the nature of God.

It’s this middle way I’d like to follow in our reflection today as it’s on this path - full of faith and yet full of faithful searching - that we tend to walk together here on Sundays.  Exploring an account of such magnitude, we agree to listen for Mark’s experience and understanding, prayerfully considering the truth he conveys to the world.  Like new believers in that ancient time we open our eyes hopefully to see the power of Christianity unfold.

For you see, if we were new believers back in the middle of that first century, we would immediately recognize that this “story” is filled with multiple layers of meaning and information apart, even, from the miracles it includes.  From that perspective we’d listen skeptically as Mark describes Simon taking Jesus to his mother-in-law after returning from Sabbath worship.  To us it may sound basic enough, but listening with the ears of our ancestors we realize that it’s not. It’s the Sabbath after all:  no work is to be done; it’s Simon’s mother-in-law:  a woman, unclean by gender and impure by illness.  This is no typical situation for the Hebrew people back in that ancient time.

Neither is the way Jesus chooses to handle it.  Here the radical nature of this passage unfolds, as Jesus doesn’t refuse to help a woman in need just as he doesn’t wait for the sun to set to offer such assistance.  “He took her by the hand,” we read, “and lifted her up.”  In those few words Mark documents the fact that Jesus, a faithful Jew, broke two religious laws in an instant:  he touched a woman he did not know and he worked on the Sabbath as a healer.

That’s not all that happens here.  From this vantage point we realize that Jesus does all of this almost too effortlessly.  Unlike the many other “miracle workers” of that generation (and there were many), Jesus heals with little bravado or pride.  Notice:  there are no chants or incantations, no brewing herbs or burnt offerings.  Mark shows us that Jesus is different from the many other secular practitioners and temple priests of his time by letting us see him simply take this woman by the hand, reaching out with divine compassion and power to one who is wounded.  His miracles are unique and immediate, causing word to spread in that town.  Once the sun sets, marking the close of the Sabbath, people gather at that doorway - the whole city Mark says - “and Jesus cured many.”

Oh, this is no basic situation in Mark’s community.  This is a radical testament to the character of Christ and the love of God.  In ten simple verses Mark breaks down the barriers previously imposed by gender and illness, by religious ritual and law simply by describing this scene where all are received into the merciful presence of this new Messiah.  Here in the very first chapter of his gospel (a point at which Matthew and Luke are still describing the eventual coming of the Christ child in their texts) Mark gives witness to the reconciling and miraculous powers of Christ, heralding from the start the reality of God’s limitless and abiding love.  Describing a scene where a prophet and his disciples treat those in need with impartiality, the doors of God’s grace are opened wide.  “Let us go on to the neighboring towns,” Jesus says like a true Savior, “for that is what I came to do.”

“Have you not known?” the prophet Isaiah proclaims in today’s Old Testament lectionary reading.  “Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God…[who] gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless…[for] those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles” (Isaiah 40: 28-31).

In a time of such global division this is a message we need to hear.  In a place where one national tragedy seems only to be topped by another, this is a truth we long to embrace.  Living in a state of high alert, fearing another terrorist attack, another economic downturn, another devastating war, we need to trust Isaiah’s prophecy that God, indeed, “gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.”  But how, really, can we do this?  How can we, like those first disciples in Mark’s community, come to trust that God offers the world healing and strength?

Corrie ten Boom probably asked herself questions like these over and over again.  An organizer of the Dutch underground helping Jews escape Holland during the Second World War, Corrie saw a world torn apart by hateful violence and chose to act with courageous conviction.  Rather than passively complying with the Nazi regime, Corrie and her family offered shelter and a means of escape to those brutally persecuted, ultimately saving hundreds of lives.  Although their efforts were eventually discovered, leading to their arrest and imprisonment, Corrie never regretted the decisions they had made.  She states:  “It was the divine, but incompre-hensible answer to my family's prayers for the Jewish people,” going on to explain, then, how God often makes us part of answered prayers.  Through their efforts to save strangers and friends and in their perseverance through the horrors of life in the concentration camps, the ten Booms lived out the Christian message of reconciliation and healing.

After the war, Corrie talked about this faithful process with thousands of people.  Traveling the globe twice, speaking in 64 countries, she shared her experience of God’s forgiveness and salvation, writing autobiographical works like “The Hiding Place” that continue to offer inspiration.  People were drawn to her. They saw, from the example of this stooped, silver-haired old woman, that God could be trusted and that Christ’s teachings were real.  Both in freedom and in captivity Corrie ten Boom invited God’s miraculous presence to sustain her, learning, then, the lesson of healing.  With great humility and understanding she writes, “It is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on God’s.  When God tells us to love our enemies, God gives, along with the command, the love itself.”

“The hinge of healing.”  In both the story of Corrie ten Boom and in the biblical passage before us today we recognize that it is indeed through God’s goodness and grace that we’re offered healing and the ability to live as loving disciples.  Rather than assuming this goodness must come from ourselves we recognize the need to first come before God, gathering as at the doorway of Simon’s house.  For it is there, at that place that we witness the power of Christ’s reconciling love.  It is there that we see the radical and transforming act of a woman healed by a simple touch on the Sabbath day.

Can we seek God’s healing presence in this world?  Can we trust its reconciling power?

Remembering that the word “healing” comes from the Old English haelen meaning, “to make whole,” we realize today that yes, with the help of God we may reach out for Christ’s tender touch.  While the question of medical miracles might lead some of us into doubt in this modern day we may have great trust in the reconciling powers expressed in Mark’s gospel, powers that lead to spiritual and personal wholeness and communal restoration.  For through these stories of healing we see a community made whole.  Mark gives us a vision that transcends the divisions of race and class, of politics and physical disability, of gender and sexual orientation, claiming God’s love is for everyone.  It is a message of personal renewal and social transformation where our faith is truly alive.  In the words of Walter Rauschenbusch, the great Christian theologian of social reform, we recall,

Dead religion narrows our freedom, contracts our horizon, limits our sympathies, and dwarfs our stature.  Live religion brings a sense of emancipation, the exhilaration of spiritual health, a tender affection for all living things, widening thoughts and aims, and a sure conviction of the reality and righteousness of God.

Yes, even as global and national and personal wounds shake us to the core, we are called to trust in God, gathering at the doorway where Jesus awaits.  For it is there, and it is then, that we see the words of Revelation clear before us as the first portion of this verse is carved above our very own portico:  “Behold, I have set before thee an open door and no [one] can shut it” (Revelation 3: 8).

Let us pray.
Almighty God, how we seek your holy presence, how we need your healing touch.  Help us to gather at your doorway, for your grace is the hinge on which our healing rests.
Amen.

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 cam out to do.”  And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
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