Good morning,
The Lord blessed us with another amazing weekend of witness, fellowship, and worship. We showed the movie, "Courageous" twice this weekend. It is a very powerful movie with a very challenging and compelling message.
The Lord blessed us during our worship service this weekend. One of the readings for yesterday was taken from Mark 1:29-39. Jesus meets us in the ordinariness of life. He is the Good News for the Flawed,the Defiled, and the Excluded. In Mark chapter 1, Jesus performed miracles with a great sense of urgency and immediacy. He healed the man possessed with demons. He touched and healed a leper. He healed a woman. These three persons were flawed, defiled and excluded.
Women were particularly excluded from the mainstream of life as they are even today in the militant Moslem culture. We we hear about "honor killings" of Moslem women and Moslem girls. We hear about the positing of women inTaliban controlled society. We read that women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. We read about 10 million baby girls aborted in India. We read about the human trafficking for sex trade, even the thousands women and children who were brought in for the use of Super Bowl Fans. We read about pimps selling the services of young women who are defenseless in bondage all around the world. Jesus our Lord comes, setting the captives free.
It is interesting that in Mark it is the woman who was excluded was the first one to rise up and serve Jesus, the king and the Lord. In the unfolding drama, the men were mere admirers of Jesus. The woman, whose name is not written, was the first one to rise up and Serve Jesus. In John 4, though the Samaritan woman was defiled, flawed, and excluded, she believed and received new life and immediately she walked in freedom, free from shame and guilt. She became the first home missionary, running to her city to tell every one about Jesus. She not only told them about Jesus, but compelled them to come and see Him.
We read in Mark 1 that these were exciting days in Capernaum, because Jesus was present with authority and grace. He was in the midst of His people. Jesus is mighty to save. When Jesus is present He dispenses His Joy unspeakable to His own. When He is in the Sanctuary demons tremble. When He is in the home disease and sickness flee away. When He amid His people He casts out the demons of fever, anger, and all the works of flesh as they recorded in Galatians 5. It is recorded that Jesus entered the house of Simon Peter after a great time of teaching and healing in the synagogue on a Sabbath. When Jesus is present in the synagogue on a Sabbath miracles take place, but what is interesting, in a metaphorical sense, is that Jesus came into Simon’s house, entering the domestic world of his followers.
So it is with us. God enters our world, he enters the domesticity and ordinariness of our lives. Being a follower of Jesus isn’t a mystical, transcendental experience that takes us away from the responsibilities of this world. Being a follower of Jesus means that God comes into our lives and he ministers to us in the ordinary and everyday. Isn’t that what the Incarnation is all about? “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. In Revelation 3:20, Jesus said: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
We are not to despise the ordinariness of our lives. We are not to regret our domesticity or even to see it as a barrier to our relationship with God. If we desire to meet with God, he comes to us in the everyday and he finds us where we are. Jesus meets us in everyday life.
There was Jesus. He had just been teaching at the synagogue. He had exorcised an evil spirit. He had left a huge crowd of people in amazement at his authority. He had confounded the teachers of the law. His fame was spreading throughout the region as each minute passed. Then he arrived at Simon’s house where he was told: “My mother-in-law has a fever”. He went straight to her and healed her from her fever. He did that because he was not motivated from his own perspective but always the perspective of the person in need.
It is easy for us to discount the suffering of others because their pain may seem so small in comparison to our own pain. Still, pain is pain whether it seems to us to be large or small and, if we want to be Christlike, we must address pain and suffering wherever we find it. We must not judge that pain or compare it to the suffering of someone else and then discount it as “a job too small”. Jesus meets us in the mundane parts of our life.
Over and over again in Jesus’ ministry, his compassion was conveyed through the power of touch. Touch is an immense gift that conveys the compassion of Christ. There is real tenderness in the touch of a man who stood in direct opposition to a religious system that was quicker to declare someone as ‘Unclean’ than they were to offer the compassion of embrace.
He is always willing to come to us in ordinary lives. He is considerate of our needs. He shows compassion, particularly through his physicality. As we engage in mission and seek to proclaim Christ to our friends and families we would do well to consider how we can be Christlike in our approach. What does it mean for us to enter the ordinary parts of other peoples’ lives? What does it mean for us to be considerate to their needs, even if those needs appear to us to be small and insignificant? What does it mean for us to show compassion through our lives? As we pursue mission in our communities, may we do so in the example of Christ to Simon’s mother-in-law, as shown in this passage.
In Christ,
Brown
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