Summary: Remember what we discovered about Jesus and his dual role in Mark’s Gospel last week? He is both Teacher and Exorcist. As we spend this year with Mark’s Gospel pay attention to how often Mark will insist that the work of Jesus is driving out demons. Unlike the other Gospel writers, Mark sees the greatest miracles of Jesus in terms of his conflict with evil and the consequences of evil. So today Jesus has left the synagogue today, and he goes immediately to where people live. His life, his work, his presence is among the living, and there he finds suffering and sickness. There is an important detail here that we ought to keep in mind. It is the fact that there is a difference between disease and illness. Disease is a malfunction of biology. It is chemical thing that affects an organism. Plants get diseases. Illness on the other hand is much more far reaching because it disrupts human life, relationships are ruptured, and identity is lost. Curing is aimed at disease. Healing is aimed at illness. Jesus is a healer, and so are his followers, the church. We have no idea what diseases people had who came to Jesus, but we know what afflicted them, and we know what he did about it. Sickness or possession then and now isolates and alienates people. It takes them out of their proper place, their role, their very identity. It is not hard to see the correlation between sickness and possession and sin. The consequences are the same. Sin breaks relationships. It takes us out of our proper place, our role, our identity, and so it is an easy leap from healing to forgiving, a change we shall soon see in Jesus, who, in healing often begins to say: “Your sins are forgiven.” The point is, the presence and action of Jesus is not just to cure, but more than that: it is to heal what is broken, relationships. When he raises up Peter’s mother-in-law, she immediately resumes her proper place. She goes back into her role as servant. This is still the opening day for the ministry of Jesus. It is still chapter one in Mark’s Gospel. He has been in a synagogue and in a home. He has been teacher, exorcist and healer. But this is not all he has come for, and it is not all he will do. We have no idea what happened to that man in the synagogue after his exorcism. We do know what happened to the woman in this Gospel. The fever leaves and service begins. God’s service to her becomes her service to others. She is not only cured, but she is healed. In this woman, service is not menial work. It is the hallmark of the new humanity that Jesus came to establish: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” Curing sickness, driving out demons restores individuals to family and community, to the circles of love that grieve at loss and rejoice in reunion. As the ministry of Jesus unfolds in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus avoids the distraction of popularity. He attracts crowds. To the disciples this means success. Fame and notoriety drive Peter and his companions to hunt down Jesus. Jesus however, called followers, not fans. What he does, these cures and exorcisms are signs of a new revelation of God. They are manifestations of a spiritual revolution. Suffering is an invitation to heal our alienation from God and neighbor. The healing may or may not result in a cure. If a cure does happen, then there is a struggle to persevere in the healing that was begun in sickness. The Gospel begins with cures and exorcisms, restorations to health. The Gospel must eventually lead to personal transformation leading us into a deeper, more profound and life giving relationship with one another and God. It must lead to conversion, a change of life, of heart, and of soul. That conversion will lead us to service and deeper into the mystery of human suffering, the likes of which Jesus endured to lead us and show us. Unlike many other stories of exorcism or healing that lead us into the identity of Jesus, this story is not so much about proving the identity and power of Jesus as it is the story of one human being doing whatever is in his power to ease the suffering of another human being. You don’t have to be divine to do that.
