Signs, Wonders and Lots of Questions

Feb 5th  |  The Reverend Kevin Scott Fleming |  Mark 1:29-39

            I’ll confess that one healing story is enough for this preacher.  We had one last week – a story of a possessed man being freed from his demons and brought back to full life.  Now, this week, we have the story of Peter’s mother-in-law (Does that mean Peter was married?  Yes.). And, guess what?  There’s another healing story in the bullpen warming up for next week!  And that will bring the first chapter of Mark’s gospel to a close.  We need to think about what is going on with these stories of healing and restoration.   

            And let’s remind ourselves from the outset that none of the Gospels ever calls any of Jesus’ healings a “miracle.”  That’s our word – “the word we use for inexplicable phenomena that arise from a source other than ourselves.”[i]  Miracle borders on the magical, and Jesus was no magician.  Miracles suggest that the impossible has been accomplished and that there is no possible explanation except direct divine intervention. 

            There are several problems with that idea of miraculous healing.  First, it implies that God is distant and removed, but from time to time, arbitrarily, by chance, and without rhyme or reason, God breaks into our world and our time.  God wasn’t there and then God was there and that made all the difference.  But we believe that God is with us always and that God is never distant or removed.  So, that explanation won’t really do.

            Second, there is something of a terrible unfairness to the idea of God healing one and not another.  Why would God heal one person and allow another person to continue suffering an illness or malady?  Does it help if one person is on more “prayer chains” than another?  Does it help if one person is a regular attender at church, while the other hardly makes it on Christmas and Easter?  Does God pay attention to our faithfulness and reward that faithfulness with healing?  That doesn’t sound quite right, either.

            And, third, does it matter if the person seeking healing is a believer or not?  You get both kinds of people in the healing stories of the Gospels.  Some believe with great power and might.  Some don’t believe anything at all and almost avoid being healed.  Do miracles come only to those who believe, or can anyone receive a miracle?  That’s a tough one to answer, too.

            Maybe we need to jettison some of our innate literalism and approach these kinds of stories from a different angle.  Maybe we need to get rid of miracle language and begin using the language of the Gospels.  Usually, in the pages of the Scriptures, Jesus' actions are called “signs” or “wonders.”  A sign points beyond itself to something bigger – something more important.  A sign lets us see the direction we are going – or the direction a storyline may be going.  A sign is a guidepost – an indicator – pointing us to something else.   

            Maybe we need to begin thinking about these healing stories as what the Gospels call them – signs.  What does the healing of a possessed man in the synagogue point us toward?  What does the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law point us toward?  Where should we be focusing our attention and what can we hear these stories telling us?

            We catch a whiff of what this other way of looking at healing stories might be, when we look closely at the words that brought the first healing story of Mark to a close.  Mark writes, following the healing of the possessed man, “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this?  A new teaching – with authority!  He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” (Mark 1:27)  Mark brings this week’s healing story to a close with these words, “And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.” (Mark 1:39)

            “Preaching and healing.  Healing and preaching.  This represents the ministry of Jesus in a nutshell,” so writes Mike Graves, of the Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri.[i]   

            And let’s add this: healing is much more than being made well.  Healing is all about being made whole.  Healing is more than the restoration of physical health.  When the Gospels talk about healing, they mean the complete restoration of physical, mental, spiritual, and communal health. 

            Look at what happens to Peter’s mother-in-law.  The woman was in bed with a fever, while everyone else was meeting in the synagogue.  She was outside the gathered community.  She was alone.  Jesus came to her and touched her.  Don’t overlook that.  The power of touch is amazing.  The woman’s fever is gone and she rises and begins serving.  The Greek word is diakonia, from which we take the word deacon.  We were all taught that Stephen was the first deacon, but maybe it was Peter’s mother-in-law.  She begins doing what all of Jesus’ disciples are called to do – serve.  You see, there’s a lot more going on here than just being healed of a fever.  Peter’s mother-in-law entered into the wholeness she was meant to have and that was possible only because of Jesus.  Do you hear it?  It’s all right there in the story, if we are willing to read it. 

            Here is the very nature of Jesus’ mission: our complete restoration to who we were created to be.  Jesus pioneers the way to health and well-being in the individual and in every community.  Jesus comes to demonstrate to us how life is meant to be lived and to be shared.  Jesus enters our world and our consciousness mending the brokenness and restoring us to what we were meant to be when God created it all. 

            Healing and preaching.  Preaching and healing.  They are two sides of the same coin.  One leads to the other and back again.  These healing stories are signs – they point to something – someone – much bigger than the story being told.  These stories point to the love that is God – a love that brings the broken pieces together, restores, and recreates.  These stories point us to who Jesus is and why he has come.  Jesus comes proclaiming the love that is God – a love that heals.

            In our age of science, when, unless we can explain something in the finest detail, it is simply not true, these stories of healing can cause us to question their reality.  But, when you look at the stories as signs – pointing to something, or someone else, they begin to make sense.  The healings are not unlike the parables – each with a message that is much bigger, much stronger, and far more important than the vehicles of words or actions.  These stories point us to the love of our living God, a love made known to the world in the person of Jesus.

            It’s one of the reasons we keep coming back to this Table.  At this Table, we encounter the love Jesus came proclaiming.  At this Table, we are reminded of the brokenness that has been made whole, the illness that has been healed, the community that has been formed and reformed.  At this Table, we are no longer wandering without direction or purpose.  At this Table, we have a foretaste of what God promises to do when all is said and done – to take away the brokenness of the world and its people and replace it with a wholeness that can only be described with words like shalom and peace.  At this Table, we proclaim the love and healing presence of God’s love in Jesus Christ, until that day when God’s eternal Table in established on the new earth God will create. 

            And so we come to the Table.  We come searching for the healing presence of the God of love.  And when we leave the Table, we leave to join Peter’s mother-in-law and every disciple who has ever lived in serving the Love that makes us whole.  For now and evermore.  Amen.


[i] Feasting on the Word, year B, vol. 1, p. 335

[i] Will Willimon, Pulpit Resource, vol. 40 no. 1, p. 26