First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Mark 1:29-39

[To help the people of our congregation, Friendship Lutheran Church, to prepare for weekly worship, every week I periodicially post notes on my studies of and reflections on the Bible lesson around which worship will be built. This is the first week's first "pass" at the lesson, Mark 1:29-39.]

The Lesson:

29As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. 31He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

32That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. 33And the whole city was gathered around the door. 34And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. 35In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. 36And Simon and his companions hunted for him. 37When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 38He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” 39And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Some General Thoughts:
1. The passage really seems as though it should have been part of the Bible lesson for this past weekend, Mark 1:21-28. I say this for three reasons:

v. 29 picks up with Jesus, accompanied by James, John, Simon, and Andrew, leaving the synagogue where Jesus exorcised the demon who had disrupted His teaching.

vv.29-32 recount what happened on the same sabbath day as in Mark 1:21-28.

v. 31 has Jesus performing a second miracle on the sabbath, the very "work" that will later bring Him trouble with the religious authorities. This second miracle however, stands in contrast with the first, which was an exorcism. This is a healing. Thus, on the first day Mark records Jesus performing miracles, He does one of each of the types the Gospel writer later records as the main categories into which those miracles fell: casting out demons and healings (v. 34).

2. There are two other main segments to the lesson:

vv. 32-34 recount how on the day after these first two Markan miracles, crowds thronged to people for healings and exorcisms. (In the ancient Jewish reckoning, and even today in that tradition, an old day ends and a new one begins at sundown. This is why the Sabbath Day is celebrated from sundown on Friday through sundown on Saturday.)

vv. 35-39 bring an account of the first conflict between Jesus and His fledgling group of disciples. More on this later.

Verse by verse:
v. 29: (1) The text actually begins with Mark's favorite adverb, immediately (euthus in the original Greek of the New Testament). In other words, what happens next fell immediately on the heels of the incident in the synagogue in Mark 1:21-28.

v. 30: There is here an intriguing connection between this first day of miracles recorded in Mark's Gospel and the first of Jesus' miracle as reported in John's Gospel. The first miracle mentioned there is Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding reception. There, the request for a miracle, if it can be called a request, was made most indirectly by Jesus' mother. She simply approaches Jesus and says, "They have no wine." Jesus, I think, consistent with the light mood of a reception, gives His mother a playful reply, asking her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and Me?" Seeming to understand Jesus' intentions, His mother immediately turns to the servants and tells them to do whatever Jesus tells them to do (John 2:3-5).

The point is that while Mary didn't know for sure if Jesus would perform this miracle, she certainly deemed Him capable of doing so. That seems to be the underlying assumption of those who tell Jesus about Simon's mother-in-law also. They don't make bold to actually ask Him to do anything for her, but after what happened in the synagogue, they must have the sneaking suspicion that He can do something for her. They simply inform Him of her condition.

(2) By the way, I have no idea who the "they" is in this verse.

v. 31: (1) Jesus seems to have physically lifted Simon's mother-in-law up. This, according to The Intepreter's Bible was the standard gesture Jesus made in healings.

(2) Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them: Because of the connection between Mark 1:21-28 and this passage, I wrote a little bit about this incident last week, based on a commentary by Brian Stoffregen and on his summary of several scholars' examination of this passage (I inserted several newer comments for this post in brackets):

...Mark says that as soon as the woman was cured of her fever, she stood up and served people. I used to think, "That's well and good. She was healthy enough to work. But it seems like a ripoff for her to have had to serve others as soon as she was feeling better!" I was looking at the text as a twenty-first-century person who hates sexism.

But for Mark, the woman's ability to once more serve others meant that the dignity of her station had been restored. Illness prevented people from functioning in the community. They were "put out to pasture." Healing allowed them back in. [It was deemed an honor owed to the oldest woman of a household to serve house guests.]

What all of this suggests is that part of the opposition that developed against Jesus had to do not only with when He brought them healing, exorcism, or restoration--the healing in this passage occurs on the Sabbath, thereby violating the commandment not to work on that day--but also that He uses extraordinary means to restore people to community. He freed people from being trapped on the sidelines of life.

For people like Scribes and Pharisees, who selfishly occupied positions of superiority in the religious hierarchy, Jesus' liberation of the demon-possessed and the ill represented a threat to their authority.

(3) One further implication of the mother-in-law's immediate attention to serving the guests is that the Bible doesn't share the world's demeaning view of servanthood. Servanthood is regarded as not just the highest expression of our humanity, but as the very highest expression of Jesus' deity. This is what Jesus was pointing to when He washed the feet of the disciples on the night of His arrest and betrayal. It's what Paul was writing about in Philippians 2:5-11:

5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

v. 32: The crowds only needed a little encouragement to chase after the Miracle Maker. (If two miracles can be described as a "little" encouragement.)

v. 33: (1) It's probably hyperbolic to say that the "whole city" was at Simon's door, but you get the idea. There were a lot of people there. (Note that Simon has yet to be given Jesus' new designation for him, Peter.)

(2) This mass of healings would not yet bring Jesus into significant conflict with the religious authorities because they don't occur on the sabbath. The religiously-subservient crowds only come to Him once the sabbath has passed.

v. 34: Once more, Jesus orders the demons, who recognize that He is God in the flesh, not to proclaim His identity. I also addressed this issue last week:

Jesus commands the demon to be quiet. The reason for this, I suppose, is that one must come to identify Jesus as the Savior-Messiah by faith.

Besides, Jesus maintains "the messianic secret" throughout His ministry. While Jesus willingly affirms those who worship Him as Lord, God, Savior, and Christ, He never initiates such overt identification, even in the Gospel of John.

And even to those who make such confessions, like Peter, Jesus gives instructions to remain silent until His entire ministry has been fulfilled. It's only after Jesus' death and resurrection that we see His Lordship over death and life, understand that His Kingdom isn't of this world, and see that we too must endure death before the final fulfillment of His promise of life.

Until we become acquainted with these realities, we might be tempted to see Jesus as a cosmic kewpie doll, a pushover king who will do our bidding, no matter how selfish and self-aggrandizing it may be. "When Christ calls a man," the martyred opponent of Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said, "He bids him come and die."

The crowds who riotously welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday all believed that Jesus would be a pushover king who would give them all they wanted. As the week wore on and they realized that Jesus had no intention of leading a revolt against the Romans who occupied Jerusalem and Judea, they became disenchanted with Jesus. This is why they asked the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to release a rebel terrorist, Barabbas, instead of Jesus. They had come to the conclusion that Jesus was, in the words of Rick Warren, more concerned with their "character" than their "comfort."

The good news of Jesus is good news. But, as someone has said, before it can comfort us, it must first make us miserable. It does this in several ways:

• Showing us the gap between our sinfulness and God's holiness, even the gap between our own standards of goodness and our performance.
• Showing us that there is no way we can ever be good enough to earn God's forgiveness or Jesus' good grace.
• Showing us that the only way to reconciliation with God is complete surrender to God and helpless acceptance of Jesus' offer of free help.

This is what the Bible means when it talks about "dying to self": Dying to a self-driven life and accepting a God-crafted life.Thank God He understands how limited we are. He knows that as long as we live on this earth, we'll see, as Paul puts it, "through a glass dimly."

That means that surrender to Christ is never, as I said last week I think, some "one and done" proposition. We need to surrender anew to Christ each day. This is because new temptations to rebellion against God assail us each day and because the closer we get to Christ, the more aware we become of previously unseen areas of rebellion.

v. 35: Jesus felt the need to face all the challenges He would confront in the coming sunlit hours. As many commentators have said, if Jesus, God in the flesh, felt this need, shouldn't we too?

v. 36: "Simon and his companions" enact what's going to become a common theme in Jesus' ministry. For all sorts of reasons, people will hunt Him down.

v. 37: It's hard to know exactly with what attitude Simon and the others say this. But whatever it may be, they definitely convey the notion that Jesus has become a hot commodity. Like the handlers of some charismatic politician or the agents for a new musical phenom, Simon and the gang are anxious for Jesus to give the crowds what they want. Neither they or the crowds understand Who Jesus is or that His miracles are meant to be nothing other than signs pointing toward the deeper truth about Him: That He is God and that He offers life to all who turn from their sin, accepting the crucifixion of their own selfish desires, and who will follow Him.

v. 38: Jesus' words here probably shock Simon. Instead of using this moment to spark a spate of positive PR for His cause, Jesus proposes leaving the crowds behind.

As Brian Stoffregen points out, it's hard to leave a successful past behind in order to embrace an uncertain future. But that's almost always what God calls us to do in His Kingdom. More on that in a subsequent pass at this lesson, I hope.

v. 39: Jesus continues His ministry. I hope to present more on Jesus and healing in a subsequent post.