Sunday: 5th Sunday after the Epiphany
Reading: Mark 1:29-39
Preacher: S. James Steen

Last Sunday Peter gave us an excellent introduction to the Gospel According to Mark. It reminded me that back when I was studying Mark in Seminary, my professor described the style of Mark as journalistic. Instead of a theological treatise, like you might find in John, in Mark we get brief glimpses into the ministry of Jesus. This presents us with both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to go back and plumb each deceptively simple encounter for deeper meaning. The opportunity is the same: to discover the depth and variety of meanings hidden beneath stories that, at first, might appear to be about as deep as articles on the front page of the Tribune or the Sun-Times, not to mention the Hyde Park Herald!

Today's passage illustrates this point nicely. Capernaum, a village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, was Jesus' home base. If he was Jesus of Nazareth in his youth, for a time, as an adult Jesus became Jesus of Capernaum; and the house of Peter's mother-in-law in Capernaum became his safe house. Right there we have a little irony: Mother-in-law and safety aren't words we always find together! But so it was. You may remember that last week we found Jesus in the synagogue at Capernaum, where he healed a man by casting out a demon that wasn't about to capitulatee without first making a racket. This called attention to Jesus, which set the stage for his growing fame and for future conflicts with the religious authorities.

Today, we see Jesus perform another healing; but this time the healing takes place in the privacy of the home of the mother-in-law of Peter, one of Jesus' chief followers. She only has a fever, not a demon, and she isn't likely to gossip about what Jesus has done for her. So here, comfort and privacy are substituted for the vulnerability of the public place, the synagogue, and this sets up a tension. How public is Jesus willing to be? The drama is also heightened by another detail: Jesus has now cured a woman. Implicit in this choice, and in the fact that it comes very early in Jesus' ministry, is the message that for Jesus, women were worth healing, and not just as an afterthought. This was radical.

But if Jesus thought he could remain obscure, he was mistaken. Immediately after the healing of Peter's mother-in-law, we read something that makes last week's miracle in the synagogue seem like a mere dress rehearsal for the notoriety he was about to attract: "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." Jesus is still trying to remain incognito by attempting to silence the demons, but it's almost humorous; there is no way this is going to work, because now his healings are witnessed by the whole town.

Jesus needs counsel. What is he to do? Just as he has already done following his Baptism and just as he will do again later, prior to his arrest, he goes off alone to pray, to seek understanding of God's will for him. The result of this prayer time is the transformation of his ministry and a resolution to the tension between public and private.
When his companions find him in prayer, clarity has come to Jesus, and he says, ""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." So much for safety! Jesus' days as a homebody - however briefly they may have lasted - are finished for good.

In their book, Excavating Jesus, Jonathan Reed and John Dominic Crossan tell us that "to settle down at Capernaum and let all come to him [would have been] against the geography of the Kingdom of God. That is why Jesus "came out" from Peter's (wife's) house. It could not be his "home base" as if the Kingdom of God could, like the kingdoms of Caesar, have...a local habitation and a name....That first-century Capernaum house may well have been where Jesus visited and stayed as a guest. But it was not the "home base" of the Kingdom of God. That could be neither with his family at Nazareth nor with Peter at Capernaum, because, unlike the conventional kingdoms it opposed, this...kingdom could not have a dominant place to which all must come, but only a moving center that went out...to all.1

In other words, God is the only location of this kingdom, and God does not stand still. As Jesus, having just left Capernaum, said to one man who expressed a desire to follow him, but without having thoroughly considered the cost, ""Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."" Jesus is asking, "Are you willing to give up your former security in order to follow me? Are you willing to give up safety, predictability, certainty, prejudice, or privilege?"

The tension that Jesus experienced and the choice that he made to leave the peace of Capernaum in search of God's abundant - if less predictable - life is as apt a metaphor for the primary choice and the opportunity God offers us as any I can imagine. And our answer may have little to do with our age or circumstance. We may think primarily of the young in this context; but I also think of a friend of great privilege who joined the Peace Corps when her children were all grown. Her world has been turned upside down. Would she go back to her former life. Never!

I recently turned 65. When I was younger, I thought of 65 as the time - the precise time - when I would settle down in my Capernaum and live quietly ever after. How wrong I was. Never have I been more excited about discerning where the Spirit is leading, about learning what I didn't even realize that I didn't know, and about seeking ways to become better at practicing my vocation - and even more important - better at being human. Every one of us is on a journey; and Lent is coming. It's a great time to take stock, to consider where the Spirit is calling us, and how closely we will are willing to follow.

Amen.

1John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed, Excavating Jesus: Beneath the Stones, Behind the Texts, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001) 81-97.