HEALED FOREVER . . . ON THE INSIDE! Mark 1:29-39
After his baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus went north to Galilee proclaiming the Good News of God, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the Gospel.” He made the village of Capernaum the headquarters for his Galilean ministry. Last Sunday we heard that he began his public ministry by teaching in the local synagogue and by casting an unclean spirit out of a sick man. If his goal was to reach the maximum number of people, he sure found the way to do it. Mark records that “his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.”
Today’s Gospel portrays Jesus as a very busy man. “And immediately he left the synagogue, and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, and immediately they told him of her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left, and she served them.”
Now people know a good thing when they see one. “That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered together about the door. And he healed 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 came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Jesus’s first 100 days in the ministry was off to a smashing success. These healings brought so much publicity that people pursued him. The next day, when he had disappeared by going to a lonely place for prayer, Simon found him and said, “Everyone is searching for you.” One might conclude that Jesus was surely on his way to a successful ministry. Everyone wanted to see him or touch him or get their picture taken with him. Surely Jesus wanted people to be whole, but his primary purpose was not the specular performing of miracles. His purpose in his ministry was reaching out to people through the preaching and teaching of the Kingdom of God that was coming in his very own person. The miracles, which affirmed the authority of his message, were secondary.
Jesus wanted them to hear his message, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.” God’s time to rescue, redeem and save his people had come in Jesus the Messiah. The realm of God’s activity was breaking through in him with consequences both for the present and the future. People were to repent, that is, to turn around from the direction they were heading, and to believe the good news that God was acting in Jesus to bring his people back to him, to heal them on the inside with the forgiveness of sins and the inflowing and indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
But the people seemed to be paying attention only to the healing, to the miracles. The message of turning around and repenting, of believing the gospel and following Jesus and serving others is not as attractive as miracles. Illness is the common lot of all of us. None of us wants to be sick or to have a disease. Not only that, but illness in one form or another reminds us that sickness leads finally to death. No wonder we desire health and try to keep illness at a distance.
Hospitals, which were invented by the Church, have been most welcome in the fight against illness and death. Life is often a struggle for existence. The truth is that we are born to die. Even the healings of Jesus were temporary. Yet many good things come from this struggle for existence. We work hard to find new ways to heal the body, and we feverishly devote ourselves to that effort in the full knowledge of death’s ever-creeping shadow. We only appear to be in control. We have some temporary fixes for the outward dying but there is no temporary fix for the inward dying. What we often don’t recognize is that we are still sick even when we are not sick. We are possessed with a sickness-of-heart that is even worse than any bodily dying. Not only are we hardwired to our quest for health and beauty and immortality . . . what is worse, we simply do not trust the One in whom we need to trust to deliver us both from death and from our self-serving selves and from our quest for self-preservation.
Jesus discovered then that people were flocking after him, not because of the message of the kingdom, but because of the miracles. Faced with this situation, a weary Jesus gets up early in the morning to search out a place to be alone to talk with his Father and do some important sorting out of priorities. Prayer for Jesus was a great resource for his life. The disciples correctly observed that Jesus’ fellowship with his Father and his power in ministry were directly related to his prayer life. And so it is also with our prayer ministry. Prayer is to the Christian what exercise is to the runner. The answer came to him. He must proclaim the kingdom and bring it to its powerful fullness in the cross.
Simon finds him and in effect says, “Master, let’s get this show on the road, for everybody wants a piece of the action.” But Jesus knew that they were after him for the wrong reasons, for the glory of the miraculous, not for the message of the Kingdom of God. He responds, as Phillips translated, “Then we will go somewhere else, to the neighboring towns, so that I may tell my message there too . . . for that is why I have come.” In those villages he also continued underlining the authority of his message by casting out demons, and showing his mastery over Satan that culminated in Satan’s ultimate defeat at the cross.
Jesus did not reduce his ministry to healing the sick. He made “preaching the Gospel” his primary concern. God’s reign is here. Turn your life over to God and trust in the Good News. In Jesus, God has begun his reign of peace and forgiveness. God’s dominion over life and death and our own lostness is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in his crucifixion and resurrection. God answered our prayer for mercy in the triumph of his love and life in the cross. God made good on his promise to be with us until the end of the age. In Jesus, the Healer, we find God to be our loving Father. The real health we need is not on the outside, but on the inside where God sends his Spirit to change us to be more like his Son. When we are truly possessed by Jesus the Christ and His Spirit, then we are really healthy and really alive. Receive and believe the promise of inward health God gives us in Jesus.
Then, having received that promise, we can devote ourselves to the health and welfare of others. But like Jesus, we will not reduce our ministry to bodily healing or to social work. Though we are servants to the world, we are foremost servants of Jesus the Messiah, who like him, proclaim that in the cross and resurrection is the true and ultimate healing and the sure hope of immortality. And Hope Lutheran can be a true hospital, a safe haven for those who are ill or “possessed by the demon”of selfishness and self-importance and self reliance. We can be welcoming to others because we remain sinners just as they are. We can gladly give our time to help an elderly person shop for groceries; or by sticking with a dying or grieving person; or by listening endlessly to a depressed person.
For through the cross, the kingly rule of God’s love has burst before our eyes and into our lives. We have been forgiven and restored by Jesus, our Savior, who has died on an ugly cross and whose Father raised him in victory on the third day over Satan and his powers, over sin and death. You and I are forgiven and restored for Jesus’ sake. God loves the poor sinful and rebellious people that we are, and who in no way deserve God’s incredible grace. But we have received it in the king’s rule through the cross.
Ernie Banks, the great baseball player, once said that if the management only knew, he’d play baseball for nothing, he loved the game so much. His enormous salary did not compel him to endure the work to earn it, but the game itself was so enticing that the love of it bound him to baseball. So we, who have been captured by the Lord Jesus Christ, do not simply endure being Christians. We want to be and are compelled to be because Jesus Christ has loved us so much. If we are following Jesus to get some kind of a reward, then our Christian lives would be just something to endure.
And if the real work of touching people with the Gospel is happening, it is happening through the message and through the people who bear that message in acts of kindness, touching, feeling with people in their despair, and in love. Now we are about to be touched by King Jesus as he gives us his very own body and blood in this Holy Meal of the church. Here the great physician gives us the medicine for the soul, his own body and blood in the bread and wine. Let us with great reverence receive Jesus again into our lives and be healed in our innermost being. And being possessed by Christ, let us go forth to continue his ministry in this sin sick world. And let God’s people say Amen to that.
