Jesus has just left the synagogue after teaching the people there as one with authority, after curing a man possessed with an unclean spirit. He enters the home of Simon Peter and Andrew, encountering Peter's mother-in-law, who is sick with a terrible fever. This simple description from Mark’s Gospel of how Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law not only gives us insight into Jesus' ministry and his proclamation of God’s kingdom, but it tells us a great deal about how we are a part of Jesus' ministry as his followers, how living out the values of our faith can bring wholeness and healing not only to ourselves, but to others.
When we get sick here in modern America, we go to the doctor or to a hospital if it is a serious illness, and get a prescription of medicine. Yet, when I worked as a missionary in rural Ecuador, far from a hospital and modern medicine, we often turned to a curandero for help, a traditional folk healer who often used physical touch, herbs, and other natural remedies to cure people from both physical and spiritual ailments. I remember one weekend I was visiting a small village deep in the jungle when I came down with a terrible fever. I felt like I was on fire. It really scared the family with whom I was staying. They called the village's folk healer, who gave me a boiling hot herbal mixture to drink. He then prayed over me and wrapped me up in wool blankets in order for me to sweat out the fever during night. When I awoke the next morning, I was full of energy, like the fever never had happened.
The people of ancient Israel who heard this Gospel story would have been very familiar with the tradition of folk healers that was prevalent in their society, just like those I encountered in Ecuador. The poor in Israel had easy access to such healers, who would lay their hands on the sick, using their touch to heal. The ancient Jews saw these folk healers as brokers of the gift of healing from God.
In the healing stories told in the Gospels, Jesus does more than cure a physical illness. When we are physically ill, it involves a loss of meaning in one's life either from a physical impairment or from the loss of function in life. We can see that the fever that debilitated Peter's mother-in-law kept her from fulfilling her role as the mother of the household. When Jesus heals her, she rises at once to serve her family and her visitors.
What implications does Jesus' healing of Peter's mother-in-law have for us today? Just as Jesus, the healer, restores meaning to the life of Peter's mother-in-law, he gives meaning to our lives, he heals us from our infirmities, he leads us away from the things that keep us from God. But, beyond this, today's Gospel message challenges us to believe that we have the power to be a healing community of faith, to bring Christ’s to our lives and the lives of others.
Jesus was present in incarnate form in ancient Israel, but he is still incarnate in our world today in curing the sick, in preaching the Good News, and in expelling demons from our lives. Jesus does this through you and me, through the members of his Church who are now the Body of Christ here on earth. If we, as a Church, truly live no longer for ourselves, but for Jesus and his people, then Jesus who lives in us will be free to continue his mission of healing and salvation to the world.
In the midst of our modern lives, our faith still calls us to Jesus. St Teresa of Avila lived in the 16th century in Spain. She is one of the greatest mystics who ever lived, yet, a prayer she wrote is very much rooted in our earthly presence, telling us how we can embody Christ, as Christ lives in us and our actions: “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet by yours. Yours are his eyes through which Christ's compassion must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.” As we do not live through our own power, we also do not bring healing or love to the world through our own power.
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