Lift us up for service!

The first woman to appear in the Gospel of Mark is the second person in the Gospel to be healed. In the thirtieth verse of the first chapter of Mark, we meet her: Simon's mother-in-law. (And now is not time for mother-in-law jokes, because she, like most of the individual women depicted in the Gospel of Mark, turns out to be a model for discipleship—a model which has become the focus of understanding pastoral ministry in the Christian church from the very beginning—the model of the “wounded healer”.

The first thing we learn about this woman is her relationship to one of the newly-called disciples of Jesus: Simon. She is Simon’s mother-in-law. This nomenclature is the correct convention for the era. We are introduced to the woman via her male relatives. In this manner, she (and her male relatives) are depicted as appropriate and honourable people who follow proper convention. We are not told the woman's name. We are not told her daughter's name: the name of Simon’s wife. We are simply informed that she is present in Simon's house and by this simple information, we are meant to gather that she is in the right place and that she is a person of proper social convention.

The second thing that we are told about Simon's mother-in-law is that she is in bed with a fever. She is ill. She is in need of help. She is in need of healing and wholeness. She is wounded.

There are hundreds of questions we may want to ask about the woman and her illness but the information given is very limited. Why is she at Simon's house? Is she visiting? Does she live there? Is her husband dead and has she been taken in by her daughter's family? Are there then no sons to take on the role of caring for the widow, the rightful role of a son? Has she been brought to Simon's house to assist while Simon is away with Jesus? Have both Simon and his wife joined the band of Jesus' disciples? Is Simon's mother-in-law there to take their place while they follow Jesus? Is her fever physical? Or is she burning with concern for her daughter who may have been left by her husband for Jesus? Is she burning with concern for the family of parents who are both following Jesus? Is she worried about their welfare; about their lack of proper convention? Was she torn between her own ideas of proper social convention and the call of Jesus to discipleship? All this and so much more, we do not know. We only know that she is Simon's mother-in-law, and she is ill. From this information, we surmise that she is an honourable person of correct social convention. The fact that her male relatives intercede with Jesus on her behalf confirms this.

Honourable women of honourable families were generally encouraged and often even required to remain in the private realm of the house to protect their reputations and the reputations of their male relatives. Their contact with men outside the family was restricted as was their contact with women who were deemed not to be honourable. This story of Simon's mother-in-law, then, opens in a "staunchly conventional tone". Simon's mother-in-law is introduced via her son-in-law and she is interceded for by her male relatives. All is proper and appropriate and in keeping with acceptable social convention—at least up until then.

The next part of the story introduces a break with all that has gone before, a break with proper social convention. Jesus, a male outside the family, goes to the sick woman and touches her. Moreover, this is no ordinary touch. It is a touch which lifts her, which restores her health, raises her spirit, gives her new life. The Greek word has a myriad of connotations. It is an unorthodox approach, an improper connection, but it is a healing touch for a wounded person, someone in need of healing and wholeness.

The first woman in the Gospel of Mark becomes the second person whom Jesus heals in that Gospel. It is an unconventional healing but, for Mark, it is a sign of the restoration of wholeness to this woman's life, and not just to the life of an individual, but a household, a community, a people.

This unconventional restoration is confirmed by an equally unconventional response from the woman herself: she ministers to them.

The Greek word used here, diekonei is the same word used for the angels who ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and through his temptations. Simon's mother-in-law ministers to Jesus. Simon's mother-in-law serves Jesus as the angels in the wilderness are depicted serving Jesus. It is an unconventional healing and hers is an unconventional response but it is the story of the restoration of wholeness to this woman's life—the story of one who was wounded who becomes a minister; the story of one who was ill who is not only healed but who enters into service to the one who heals; who becomes an agent of healing service herself.

The story of the healing of Simon's mother-in-law signals a major development in Mark's Gospel. Jesus who has acted outside of convention is virtually besieged that evening by many others who are ill and who seek healing. It is at the door of the house of Simon and Andrew, on the threshold of the once confining private realm of Simon's mother-in-law, that Jesus is depicted as beginning his massive and unconventional healing ministry, his restoration to wholeness of many people.

Doorways or thresholds are important symbolic places in the ancient world and in their stories. They are symbols of the places and the times and the ways in which two different elements of the world meet with interesting, revealing, life-giving and even cataclysmic results. Jesus brings the outside world into Simon's house and Simon's mother-in-law is healed. Jesus brings lack of convention into the conventional and an ill woman is transformed into a serving angel. Jesus touches one who he should not have touched and the beginning of healing for many is signified in the action of the taking of a hand that should not have been held.

Jesus himself is a threshold place in Mark’s Gospel and for the people of God who are his followers—Jesus is the ultimate paradigm of the wounded healer; the one who brings wholeness through passion (not wild excitation; but submission to the will of God—an undergoing, an undertaking of the predicament of the world in his person; the taking on board of the suffering of humanity).

And here in this story of the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, we learn that his disciples are also to be wounded healers. People just as much in need of God’s love and God’s grace as those with whom they minister; and yet people who are willing to enter into God’s passion as reticently willingly as Jesus; people who are willing to be threshold people standing between life and death in order that others might know the way; people who choose life because they know the pain of living; people who choose God because in the midst of the discipline of discipleship is the hope of new life, healing, wholeness and restoration.

This is our calling as disciples of Jesus too. Practical Theologian, Alistair Campbell, writes: “Healing comes within a community of sufferers, because there, where weakness is freely acknowledged, the power of God’s love enters in.” (Rediscovering Pastoral Care, 1986, p. 45)

This acknowledgement is unconventional for our times where strength and wealth and power are valued and coveted. This acknowledgement of our need for God, for others, for help; and our willingness to sit with others who are also in need is a challenge to a world that does not value weakness. But this acknowledgement of who we are before God is a threshold place of liberation, a place where we discover healing and wholeness in the midst of chaos and woundedness.

Henri Nouwen, who made the phrase “the wounded healer” popular for Christian ministry, recalls an ancient Talmudic story:

Rabbi Yoshua ben Levi came upon Elijah the prophet while he was standing at the entrance of Rabbi Simeron ben Yohai’s cave… He asked Elijah, “When will the Messiah come? Elijah replied, “God and ask him yourself.”
“Where is he?”
“Sitting at the gates of the city.”
“How shall I know him?”
“He is sitting among the poor covered with wounds…” (The Wounded Healer, p. 81)