The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
February 9, 2003

To Love and Serve the Lord
Mark 1:29-39 

Good News. That’s what the Gospel reading each week promises us. After all, that’s what the word Gospel means—Good News. The passage I just read is from the Good News of Jesus Christ according to Mark. That’s what we all need from church each week isn’t it? We get enough bad news all week long. By Sunday it’s time to return to the Good News of Jesus Christ and to be refreshed. But this week’s reading gives a mixed bag of news at best. For one fleeting moment, we meet Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. She appears so briefly in the Gospel and is gone again. It would be easy to read right by this woman and miss her part in the story.  

Three verses of scripture contain everything we know about Jesus’ healing encounter with Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. I want to read these three verses a second time. While I do, try to picture the scene.  

“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.” 

There is no doubt that this brief story contains some Good News. The mother-in-law, we are never even given her name, is bedridden. Simon and Andrew tell Jesus that she is sick and at once he goes to her. Jesus touches the woman and makes her well. Then comes the bad news. She gets up and begins to serve them. The word for serve used here is the Greek word diakonos, which means to wait tables. Does that sound like good news? Imagine the story in a modern setting and it only gets worse. 

Picture your own home. The men folk whoever that may be in your extended family are all off together at a church meeting of some kind. They come in all excited from their evening out. They’re hungry. Not only that, they’ve brought some friends with them. The woman of the house is lying sick in bed. She’s lain up with a fever and now her son-in-law is bringing home a hungry group from the church meeting.  Perfect. 

Then in comes Jesus. He heals the sick woman, makes her whole. Now she has to get up out of bed and wait on them. One minute she’s lying in bed with a fever, the next minute she’s fetching beer and chips and trying to figure out if she’s got enough food in the house to scrape together a meal for all these hungry men. Somehow that doesn’t sound so much like good news to me. What about Simon’s mother-in-law? Where is the good news for this unnamed hero of the faith? Doesn’t she need to stand up to these men and tell them to fend for themselves? 

I am reminded of a scene from a family reunion. All my mom’s extended family was gathered together for a weekend reunion. On the first evening, a group of us pitched in together and made supper. Everything was prepared, the makings for the meal were laid out in the kitchen. Everyone paused for a blessing. Then my Aunt Emily said that everyone should come and help themselves. Her husband, my Uncle Fred, piped up. “When your Mama was alive, she always made sure the women made plates for the men before they sat down to eat.” Aunt Emily didn’t flinch. She paused not even half a second and said, “Fred, my Mama is dead and you need to get over all that nonsense and come and fix yourself some supper if you want to eat tonight.” The whole house erupted in laughter. Now that was good news.  

So what are we to do with this Gospel reading for today? Do we just toss it out as an outmoded story of gender roles? No. First, I think that we should dig a little deeper into this story and find the good news for everyone. The answer lies in the one word in the story that causes the most problems. It’s that word serve. After all, if it said that she got up and began to talk with them, or began to eat with them, the story wouldn’t be such a problem. But it does say she began to serve them.  

Mark used the Greek word for service—diakonos—which really does mean to wait tables. But the word diakonos meant much more to the Christian community for which Mark wrote the Gospel. To talk about service in the early Christian Church was to use charged language. Just as we can talk about bread and wine today and for Christians, those words mean more. While we talk of having bread and wine with supper, it also brings to mind the body and blood of Jesus Christ. So the word diakonos was a word used a lot among the early Christians. Diakonos, we get our word deacon from it. 

To deacon for others did mean to wait tables, but it meant a lot more than that too. Earlier in the first chapter of the gospel, Mark used the same word to describe the way the Angels ministered to Jesus after his forty days in the wilderness. So the first time he used the word was to describe the work of Angels. Mark used the same word diakonos again in quoting Jesus, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Jesus describes his own work on earth as service, and he does it using the word diakonos. Jesus told his disciples that they were to be deacons for God. Their work for God would be menial, it would be hard and they would get little or no credit for it here on earth. That life of service was one Jesus described as a life of diakonos, a life of being a deacon. Now we can return to our story with a new understanding.  

Simon’s mother-in-law had a life-changing encounter with Jesus Christ. Jesus came into her house and touched her. And in Jesus’ life-changing touch, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was healed and made whole. Maybe this is where you want to find yourself in the story. Are you looking for a life-changing encounter with God? Perhaps it has been a long time since you have felt that healing touch. If so, you have come to the right place. Right now, right here, this morning, you can turn your whole life over to Jesus and begin a life-changing journey.  

But most of us have had an experience like that before. We have felt the touch of Jesus in our lives. That’s where Simon’s mother-in-law is in this story. And Mark describes Jesus going to her, touching her and healing her in the past tense. Jesus took her by the hand, lifted her up and the fever left her. These are all described as actions that are over and done with. But Mark said that Simon’s mother-in-law served them using a different verb tense—the imperfect tense. This imperfect tense means that she began to deacon, has continued to deacon and as far as I know when I am writing this, she is out their deaconing still. 

The imperfect tense refers to an action that is begun but not completed. This one shift of verb tense means that she began to serve them and continued to serve them. Her service was not a one time over-and-done-with action like fetching some dinner. Simon’s mother-in-law began to serve Jesus and his followers. But the meaning of her actions was transformed by Jesus’ healing touch. She did not serve and minister to them because of some duty. She served out of love. Simon’s mother-in-law became as much a follower of Jesus as any of his disciples. Simon’s mother-in-law was not, as far as we know, ordained. Yet Mark describes using language that makes her the first deacon in Christianity. She was the first person to have their ordinary diakonos, or service of others, transformed into ministry.  

The early church called persons ordained to care for the physical needs of the believers deacons. Both men and women were ordained as deacons. In fact, women would continue to be ordained as deacons in the west for 1000 years and in the east for 1400 years. There was a long tradition of women ordained as deacons that all began with Simon’s mother-in-law serving Jesus.  

Yet, the ministry of deacons, priests and Bishops does not get you off the hook. You too have your own unique ministry to fulfill. All of us gathered here today share in ministry. We all come to church to be touched once again by Jesus. We gather to worship God and in doing so, we renew our strength in the story of our common faith. We enjoy the spiritual nourishment of Communion. Then every week our service of worship ends the same way. We are sent out into the world in peace to love and serve the Lord. Right as we leave, we are reminded that we come here not just for ourselves, but to recharge our batteries so that we can better serve God through serving others.  

There is a story told of a man who on visiting a church thought the service would start at 11 a.m., but it actually started at 10. As he arrived people were leaving the church. He asked an usher, “Did I miss the service?” The quick thinking usher replied, “No, you missed the worship. The service is just beginning.”  

It is the same for all of us gathered here today. When our worship ends, it will be time for the service to begin. As we serve others, we follow in Jesus’ footsteps. Our service for others is transformed by God’s love just as Simon’s mother-in-law’s service was. And I think that is good news.  

Amen.