“He Took Her by the Hand”: Mark 1: 29-39
Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, February 4, 2024
In the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, is Michelangelo’s unforgettable masterpiece: “The Creation of Adam.” In it, Adam lies supine, with his left arm languorously outstretched. God reaches forth his right hand, index finger nearly touching Adam’s, capturing the moment just before he imparts the spark of life to Adam. In Genesis, God spoke the world into creation – sun, moon, stars, earth, plants, animals, but God creates humankind with his hands: “the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being.” There is a tenderness in this description of how God created humanity, like a sculptor working the clay. There is an intimacy implied between us and God, who knows every part of us, because God created us with God’s own hands.
The creation story is a poetic description of something beyond our understanding. You don’t have to take it literally, but the spiritual truths in Genesis are deeper than their literal meaning.
The creation story is an extended metaphor explaining who we are and who God is, and God’s relationship with us and with the universe. This story reveals God as our loving Creator who created us for relationship with him, with each other, and with Creation.
Genesis also says that we are created in God’s image. That means that each person has value, dignity, intelligence, and creativity. We can express ourselves. We have the power to love. We have moral agency – that is, we know the difference between good and evil, and God has given us the freedom to act on that knowledge, for better or for worse.
We are also created as material beings. We are part of the material universe. We perceive reality through our senses: sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch, perhaps the most basic of senses. Pediatricians say that skin to skin contact is important for newborns. It calms and relaxes both mother and baby, reduces stress levels, and even promotes growth. The right kind of touch can express love, concern, and care.
Perhaps this is why is it such a violation to be touched in an inappropriate way, a way that demeans or devalues someone, reducing them to an object for pleasure or domination; or in violence to do harm.
Theologian P.C. Enniss writes, “One cannot dismiss as insignificant the number of times the Scriptures refer to touching…Throughout both testaments – the angel who touches the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, [the raising of] Jairus’s daughter; the blind man whom Jesus ‘touched,’ …there is one incident after another pointing to the power of touch. It might even be said that in Scripture touch is a metaphor for intimacy, for presence, for relationship.”
God desired so much to be with us, to touch us, so to speak, that God became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus walked among us as God and as man, a man who experienced reality as we do – through our five senses. They say that the human touch has healing powers. Maybe that is partly why God became a human being. In Jesus we have all been touched by God.
That brings us to our gospel reading from Mark. Earlier that day, Jesus had gone to the synagogue, where he healed a man possessed by an unclean spirit. Today we might understand this as a mental illness, or a disease such as epilepsy that was not understood to be an illness with physical causes at that time. Whatever the man suffered from, it caused harm to him and separated him from his community and from God. Jesus healed him and calmed his spirit. This was Jesus’ first miracle recorded in Mark. It proclaimed that Jesus had power over evil, to cast it out, and to heal those afflicted in body and mind.
The second miracle is the one we read about this morning: the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. I bet Simon Peter was thinking about what a delicious home-cooked meal awaited him when he brought his new friend, Jesus, home to his house after the worship service had ended. Disappointment awaited him – his mother-in-law was sick. Naturally Peter’s wife would have been taking care of her mother. Neither woman would have been able to focus on preparing food – it was cold lamb sandwich for Peter, or maybe dried fish with pita bread.
Let’s pause here. Mark says that Jesus entered the house of Simon and his brother Andrew. God comes to us where we live. God comes to us where we are. The incarnation is God’s way of coming to our house, entering our lives as one of us. Jesus entered the house, and people told him that Simon’s mother-in-law was ill. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and she was healed. This is not the only time Jesus took someone by the hand or touched them in order to heal them. Just a few verses later, a man with leprosy came to him begging him, and kneeling, said to him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him and healed him. When Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter, he takes dead child’s hand, saying, “Little girl, get up!” Touching a leper or a dead person render a person unclean in Jewish tradition, but Jesus touched them both. No one is too unclean or unworthy for Jesus to touch, for Jesus to heal. There are many more examples in the Gospels of Jesus laying his hands on sick people to cure them, as well blessing little children by laying his hands upon them.
God comes to us where we are, especially if we are suffering. God takes us by the hand and lifts us up, and, like Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, we are healed, perhaps not always physically, but always spiritually. Peter’s mother-in-law responds by serving them. This may seem a disappointing turn of events to the feminists among us. But the word used for “serving” διακονέω, is the same verb used earlier when Jesus is in the wilderness, tempted by Satan, and the angels ministered to him. So she is presented here in the same light as a ministering angel. Furthermore, the word διακονέω is where we get our word “deacon,” so she is in some sense the first deacon in the New Testament. Theology professor Ofelia Ortega comments, “Jesus does not command her. She is the one that assumes the initiative… discovering the value of mutual service above the sacredness of the Sabbath… Her diaconal work is the beginning and announcement of the gospel…Deep down she is already Christian, …a servant of the church gathered in her son-in-law’s house…a revelation of what true Christian discipleship means.”
It's hard to serve food without using your hands. Jesus used his hands for healing. This woman used her hands for serving. As Christians we are called to use our hands. We are called to act. We may not be able to miraculously heal as Christ did, but our hands can be healing in the way we serve others. Our hands can bless others, whether or not we speak a word. We can be a part of building God’s kingdom.
In John 14:12 Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these…” Indeed we see in Acts 3 that Peter heals a lame man in much the same way that Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law: “Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.” Most of us will not experience a miracle like this, but we can still do good to others by praying for them, by helping them access medical care, or other services that they need, by simply accompanying them in their distress and suffering.
Recently Joe and I watched The Color Purple – the new version. The main character is Celie. Her daughter-in-law Sofia is unjustly imprisoned for several years. Each week Celie goes to visit her, bringing her a home-cooked meal. After she is released, she tells Celie that she survived because of those visits. She says, “Set in that jail, done near rot to death…I was feelin’ real down; I was feelin’ mighty bad. And when I saw you, I knew there is a God. I knew there is a God.”
God created us to be with one another, to accompany one another. There is no such thing as the “rugged individual” in God’s Kingdom. It’s never “Jesus and me.” We need each other. We need to serve each other. We need to lift one another up.
This idea is echoed every time we baptize or confirm, someone, every time we ordain someone as deacon, elder, or minister. In baptism the congregation is asked if they promise to guide and nurture the one being baptized. After the baptism, the pastor is to lay hands on the head of the baptized to pray for them and bless them. It is the same for confirmation. And when someone is ordained to an office of the church,
the elders and pastor all lay their hands upon them and pray for them, that God’s Spirit will be poured out upon them. These traditions date from the earliest days of the church. In this way, God’s love and blessing are shown to God’s people in a special way, through the touch of hands of their fellow Christians.
Pastor Andrew Taylor-Troutman wrote a short piece in this week’s Presbyterian Outlook. I will conclude with part of it:
Our church recently had a laying on of hands, the ancient rite we still use to ordain and recognize leaders… I invited the rest of the congregation to raise their open palms from their seats. After we laid hands on the person, I prayed, and truth be told, I went on for a good bit… The passage of time was not too difficult for those standing immediately around me, for their hands rested on someone else. But it was tiring for folks in the congregation who were holding their arms in the air!
I know this because my father was seated next to my 8-year-old son. They enthusiastically lifted their hands at my invitation,
but as I prayed (and prayed and prayed), my son lowered his arm onto my father’s, his smaller hand resting on Dad’s larger one. The laying on of hands is obviously about the power of touch, but here was something else … Something about how faith is passed on not with words but with actions. Something about how we are supported as we support and held as we hold. Something about how we might elevate our spirits as we tenderly reach for others.
As we partake of the Lord’s supper, as members of Christ’s body, we come together and are strengthened. We remember that we are Christ to one another, that we can minister to each other’s needs, and allow others to minister to us. As we partake of the bread and the cup, let us remember that Jesus comes to where we are and joins us in our suffering and our joys. In love Jesus takes us by the hand and heals us. He raises us up to serve this world together with him. In turn, we touch others, and help to raise them up, for their healing and for ours. Amen.
©Deborah Troester 2024