Time magazine reported in a short blurb last week that the average American worker spends $1,092 per year on coffee. Clearly, I’m not the only one who enjoys a good cup of coffee. And you don’t have to go any farther than the local Starbucks to know that people like their coffee, “just so.” But recently, Starbucks has been getting a lot of complaints from people feeling like their coffee wasn’t just the way it was supposed to be. Surveys have revealed that many people give Starbuck’s pricey drinks only an average rating. Customers also complain that Starbucks has reduced “the fine art of making coffee to a mechanized process with all the romance of an assembly line.” So the company has instructed baristas to start slowing down as they make drinks.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, baristas all over the country have been told to stop making multiple drinks and focus on no more than two drinks at a time. Baristas will also start steaming the milk for only one drink at a time, instead of steaming an entire pitcher of milk. They also must use only one espresso machine at a time. Apparently, Starbucks is learning to slow down and smell the coffee. Unfortunately, in response to this increased concern for quality, Starbucks customers are already complaining that they have to wait longer for their “Grande no-whip low-fat extra-hot pumpkin spice lattes.” Clearly, the key to a great Starbucks coffee requires a juggling act that is still being perfected!
If we learn nothing else from this morning’s passage, we at least get a glimpse of the varied demands of discipleship, not unlike those of a barista in Starbucks. But before we get into the juggling act of discipleship, let’s look first at the beginning of the discipleship journey and the center of this story, the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. Jesus has just cast a demon out of a person in the synagogue in Capernaum. He leaves the place of worship and heads to Simon Peter’s house with four of his disciples. We don’t know why Jesus and these disciples went to Simon’s house; perhaps they were looking for a place to have something to eat, or to get some rest. It is, after-all, the Sabbath. Whatever the reason for going there, when they arrive at the house, they find Simon’s mother-in-law in bed and sick with a fever. Then we are told that Jesus “went to her, took her by the hand, and raised her up. The fever left her, and she served them.”
The verb translated as “raised her up” is the same word used to describe Jesus’ own resurrection later on in Mark. In other words, the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law can be looked at as a metaphor for resurrection or Christian conversion! When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are raised to new life in Christ, to new purpose in Christ! Or to put it more accurately, we are raised to live the life we were created to live in the first place! And this is the beginning of the discipleship journey.
Before Jesus healed and saved her, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a fever. She was sick. She was immobile. And isn’t this, in a sense, the way we all are before we come to know Christ? We could pretty much say that this entire world is “sick in bed with a fever.” We are paralyzed and unable to do what we are created to do. Isn’t that how you feel when you are sick and in bed with a fever? You don’t feel like doing anything. And all you can think about is how miserable you feel. All you can think about is yourself. We live in a self-absorbed culture. People are sick with the fever of discontent. And so they run after all kinds of remedies in order to try and treat their sickness. Some run after money and materialism, but the fever remains. Others become involved in addictive behaviors, but these things only make them more and more sick. Yet, in the midst of it all, Christ reaches out his hand to us and we are re-created as Christ raises us to new life. The resurrection of Jesus Christ works itself out in our individual lives in the moment when the fever breaks, the sickness subsides, and we get up out of bed!
That is exactly what happened to Simon’s mother-in-law. After Jesus took her hand and raised her up, the fever left her and she immediately began to serve. When we reach out and allow Christ to take our hands and pull us out of the messiness of our lives; out of the stress, addiction, depression, worry, and everything else that afflicts us, we can do nothing less than begin to serve him immediately! That’s what discipleship is all about! We are saved to serve!
So if we are saved to serve and that’s what discipleship is all about, then what’s this business about discipleship as a juggling act? Let’s look at this passage a bit more closely. Of course, the focus in this early part of Mark is Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. But look at everything else that is happening here as well. Jesus has just come from the synagogue where he was teaching and casting out demons. As they arrive at the home of Simon Peter, Jesus sees the feverish woman and reaches out his hand to heal her. And, of course, that kind of thing doesn’t happen without word getting out. Evening has barely begun when Jesus and the disciples are swarmed by crowds of people wishing to be healed. So “[Jesus] healed many who were sick with all kinds of diseases, and he threw out many demons.” When the crowds finally subside, the men head to bed. Then Jesus rises early, “well before sunrise,” and goes out to a deserted place where he could be alone in prayer. But with all the activity of the day before, the disciples are a little nervous that Jesus is alone in a quiet place praying. They find Jesus and in urgent voices pleading for reason they say, “Jesus, everyone is looking for you!” With everyone looking for Jesus, one would think he would head back into the village and pick up where he left off the night before. In what seems to be a split-second decision, though, Jesus tells the disciples they’re going to head the other way to another village, so that Jesus “can preach there too.”
Just thinking about it kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? A day in the life of Jesus was so busy and full; teaching, casting out demons, healing, praying, and preaching! It’s kind of like trying to make five perfect Starbucks coffees all at once! Yet, this is the way Christ served the world. This is the way Christ shared the good news of God’s kingdom. And as Christ’s disciples, as those raised to new life and called to follow and serve, we are to do the same in our lives!
Now, certainly, it’s nearly impossible to do all these things in the course of a single 24-hour period, but I think the lesson from this passage is not that we should be trying to do everything all the time, but that we need to make sure our service to Christ and the kingdom is balanced. We have to be intentional in taking time to share the good news of God’s kingdom with our family and friends; to teach them about who Christ is and why he matters. We have to be available to help people know of God’s presence with them when they are inflicted with illness or disease. Equally important to those things we do to serve others, we also have to take time for ourselves, pausing and pulling away from the demands of discipleship to come into God’s presence through prayer. And the thing about prayer is, if we think we don’t have time to pause in prayer because we’re too busy doing everything else; well, it’s sort of like that Starbucks coffee that’s not “just right.” Our lives will become tepid, only “so-so.” Our service in Christ’s name will suffer.
Mary Ellen has been working on learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. She’s pretty well got the biking thing down as long as the training wheels are in place. She knows how to pedal and turn and brake. So a few months ago, Mary Ellen decided she was ready to try the bike without the training wheels. Ken got out the wrench while I pumped up the tires. And once the training wheels were off, we set Mary Ellen up at the edge of the driveway where she could coast down the gentle slope of the lawn and get used to balancing without having to worry about pedaling or falling on hard concrete. I stood with Mary Ellen on the driveway, and Ken was about 20 feet down the lawn, ready to meet Mary Ellen when she made it to the bottom. After a good bit of coaxing, Mary Ellen took the plunge, but as she coasted down the lawn, she kept her feet on the ground. We repeated this process over and over, Ken and I unable to talk Mary Ellen into putting her feet on the pedals. Finally, Mary Ellen pushed off and put her feet on the pedals as she coasted towards Ken. But all Ken saw was the look of terror on Mary Ellen’s face as she laid the bike down and slid to Ken’s feet. Ken leaned down to make sure Mary Ellen was okay, and in frustration, Mary Ellen said, “Dad, how do you stop?” With the training wheels off and Mary Ellen’s mind racing with all the new instructions about bike riding, she had forgotten the basics. She forgot how to slow down and stop.
Friends, Christ has pulled us out of the messiness and mire of life and he has given us the blueprint for discipleship, so that we might know life abundant in service to him. We must be faithful in following Christ’s example to love and serve others through preaching, teaching, and healing. But we must also never forget that component of discipleship where we slow down, stop, and enter into God’s presence in prayer and thanksgiving. And there is no better way to come into Christ’s presence than through the sacrament of Holy Communion.
