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Mark 1:29-34 · Jesus Heals Many
Sandbox First, Soapbox Second
Mark 1:29-34, Mark 1:35-39
Sermon
by Leonard Sweet
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This sermon has a very simple, but very difficult, message: Faith is a social practice, but one that requires solitude.

Genesis 2:18 reads: “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Daniel 10:8 reads: “I was left alone, and saw the great vision.”

Sometimes society, sometimes solitude. Sometimes it is not good to be alone. Sometimes we need to be left alone to see what God has for us to see.

The most talked about movie at the time of this sermon’s composition is “The Artist,” a 2011 French comedy-drama film shown in black and white and mostly silent. In January 2012 it was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor in a Leading Role. The story takes place between 1927 and 1932, and revolves around the relationship between a declining film star and a rising actress.

The most celebrated movie star of the “Silent Era,” however, was Swedish actress Greta Garbo (1905-1990). She famously declared her own life’s desire in her epic film “Grand Hotel” (1932), when “Garbomania” reached its peak: “I just want to alone.” True to her word, Garbo “retired” at age 36 and went on to be a renowned recluse, living paradoxically as a hermit in the social center of New York City until her death at age 84.

“Loners” are, in this age of social media, an increasingly rare breed. Consider how often in your day you are actually “alone.”

When are you alone?

Not when you are at work.
Not when you are on the phone.
Not when you are on-line.
Not when you are awaiting a return text-message.
Not when you are watching TV.
Not when you are listening to the news.

How often are you really intentionally cut off from all outside influences and are genuinely alone? Actual aloneness is about as available as imported glacier water, volcanic artesian water, and Cuban cigars. It is a commodity you can get — but only at a very high price.

So why is it so many of us suffer from desperate loneliness while we live very busy lives with rafts of responsibilities? Surrounded by others, enveloped by institutions, defined by professions, careers, and expectations, for many of us there is absolutely no time left for “private time.”

Yet genuine “community” also escapes us. There is no “private time” but neither are there any bonding, binding moments that give us a sense of being a genuine part of something larger than ourselves, some organism that is bigger than we are.

We have no alone time. We have no communal time. We have no one-on-one time. We have no one another time. We have only designated time — the moments of our days divvied up between demands and filing in the spaces in other peoples equally crowded schedules.

Sometimes it only takes a strong wind to demonstrate how strained and artificially structured our lives have become. February is prime storm time — snowstorms, windstorms, rainstorms — all events that knock the power grids sidewise. When the power goes out, we all have our “emergency response” buttons that kick in. We gather flashlight, break out blankets, close doors, hunker down and cling together.

But then, as the off-line time continues, we get increasingly antsy. No telephone. No emails. No computers. No TV, movies, sports networks. What the heck do we do?

Well, we break out old board games or decks of cards. We find books and hope the flashlights hold out. We look for diversions to keep our minds off our sudden isolation. And we don’t quite know what to do with this sudden new “community” we find ourselves living in — the community of people in our living room, the community of strangers in our apartment complex, our street, or our neighborhood.

The extremes of solitude and society have always been the crucial poles that have kept our souls and psyches in equilibrium. Exclude one of those poles and everything in life gets bumped askew.

Jesus welcomed his friends, his disciples, and the crowds who followed and foisted themselves upon him, with a whole-hearted embrace. He rose early and worked late in order to meet the needs of these people, a community of the curious and the committed, the hopers and the hangers-on, that was always around him and always changing.

In today’s gospel text a simple, inconsequential healing is detailed. Simon’s mother-in-law is miraculously healed of a fever by Jesus’ direct touch. It is a minor event in Jesus’ ministry. But it is significant enough to Simon Peter, to his mother-in-law, and to the other disciples present, that this healing should became a part of the written legacy of Jesus’ life and mission.

Equally important was what Jesus did after this healing. There was no big celebration. There was no great parade of healed women or festival of gratitude. Instead, Jesus chose to come apart by himself. He got up before sunrise and in the darkness of the pre-dawn chose to get away from the settled neighborhoods of Capernaum and go to the undeveloped wilderness of the nearby countryside. There he spent time alone in prayer.

Time alone. In solitude. In prayer. These three practices became hallmarks of devotion over the next few centuries. Pagan religions had almost always required an audience. Sacrifices. Offerings. Festivals. Pilgrimages. Humans coming together to acknowledge the greatness of the deity.

Christianity claimed a different turf early on. Following Jesus’ own example of “coming a-part” in order to avoid “coming apart,” by the third century followers of Christ were seeking solitude as a way to better find Christ. Likewise communities of the faithful were being established and communal prayers were being offered to bind and bring souls together.

We all have stories of strange relatives in our family trees. Can I get a witness this morning? The church family is no exception. St. Simeon Stylites was a one such unusual branch of the Christian tree. When fasting and self-mortification didn’t bring him the spiritual peace he sought, Simeon “invented” what became known as “pillar asceticism.” Around 420 CE Simeon constructed and climbed up a pillar outside of Aleeppo. Eventually his pillar refuge from the world grew to be about twelve feet square. And since nothing fails like success, this pointy place of peace eventually became a major place of pilgrimage. Having elevated himself above the world in order to escape its demands and focus on prayer, Simeon found himself granting audiences and entreaties from prayerful pilgrims every afternoon, at least for those who would shinny up the sixty feet of his stalactite structure to seek his words of wisdom.

Simeon’s longing for privacy and alone time started a whole movement of “stylites,” pillar dwelling recluses, devoted to prayer and introspection.

Hermits, cave dwellers, monks and nuns devoted to a cloistered existence soon followed. The yearning for spiritual solitude drove generations of the devoted. But other spiritual disciples found fulfillment in communal faith. As the tribal and feudal boundaries of the medieval world were regularly over-run by various armies and invaders, men and women of faith found community in monasteries and convents, communities of faith that outlasted any political alliances, and gave spiritual meaning to the very hours of every day.

Each of us needs to find a rhythm between the ‘sandbox’ — our solitary life — and the ‘soapbox’ — our social life. Neither of these poles are self-directed. They must both be Spirit-directed. The whole life of Jesus was the swing between socialness and solitude. Like a bear, Jesus was either hibernating or hiking. But Jesus did not retreat from the crowds in order to indulge in “me time.” Jesus sought the oneness and one-on-oneness with the desert, mountains and water in order to find one anotherness with the Father.

One of our worst mistakes is to confuse solitude with solitariness, especially since, as John Wesley put it, “There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.” Jesus’ spirit did not swim on a solitary sea. Solitude is NOT solitariness. When you’re in solitude, when Jesus was in solitude, he did not enter it alone. When Jesus sought out solitude he took the weight of the world with him and laid its cares and concerns at the feet of the Father.

For Jesus, solitude was his spa; time alone with the Father was his masseur. It was in his “alone time” that he crafted his greatest prayers — the “Lord’s Prayer” and the “Gethsemane Prayer.” It was after Jesus’ greatest social successes, miraculous healings, the feeding of the five thousand, that he sought the solace of private time and personal prayer. The ‘sandbox’ time Jesus took was not to build pointless sandcastles. ‘Sandbox’ time built bridges of prayer that carried him throughout his ‘soapbox’ time.

When Jesus returned to “society” after these prayer “advances” (I refuse to call them “retreats” since Christians don’t “retreat”), it was with a re-energized message and clarity of mission. The coming of the kingdom, the message of repentance and the nearness of the fulfillment of God’s purpose was the heart of Jesus’ word to the world. This was the message that Jesus would communicate to the whole of Judea and Galilee, to all of God’s people. But Jesus didn’t go to the soapbox without having spent time first in the sandbox.

So I say to you this morning these words, inspired by our Lord: Don’t get on your soapbox without having spent time in your sandbox. You need solitude in order to be social.

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COMMENTARY

From the moment he walks onto the scene of Mark’s gospel, there is a pendulum swing movement between the public and private Jesus. A public baptism and the Spirit’s pronouncement are “immediately” followed by Jesus’ private sojourn in the wilderness. Back from that solitary temptation Jesus embarks upon his public proclamation of the kingdom of God and his up-front teaching in the synagogues. The first “healing” act Jesus performs, an exorcism, is in that public forum, with the unclean spirit identifying Jesus as “the Holy One of God” before it is dramatically banished.

Conversely, the second healing event that takes place in Mark’s gospel is quite private and distinctly low-key. Leaving the synagogue and the public eye, Jesus and his first four disciples retire to the private home of Simon and Andrew in Capernaum — a location that has been identified by later twentieth century archaeological excavations. The “fever” Simon’s mother-in-law suffered from does not suggest any specific illness, partly because “fever” itself was identified as a distinct illness in the first century, not as a symptom that accompanied other complaints.

The description of Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law is very similar in its telling to the later healing of Jairus’ daughter (5:21-24, 35-43). There is the private home location, taking the ill one by the hand, and the “serving” that occurs after the healing. After Jesus extends his hands to Simon’s mother-in-law and her fever departs, the woman’s immediate next action is “to serve” (diekonei”) or “minister” to her guests. This same verb was used by Mark to describe the “ministering” of the angels who waited upon Jesus in his wilderness sojourn (1:13). It is the same verb that will be used later by Mark to describe the thrust of Jesus’ own ministry — “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (“diakonesai”). It is hardly coincidental that Mark records the first action of this healed woman to be an act of service — an action carried out before Jesus’ very first, newly called disciples. Her response of service to the touch and call of Jesus serves as a template for these first followers.

There is a bow to proper Jewish behavior in Mark’s text. Despite Jesus’ reputation, despite the power and persuasiveness of his synagogue activity, the observant Jews in that Galilean countryside do not approach him until after the formal conclusion of the Sabbath. It is not until after “sunset” that the crowds begin to appear. Repeating his work at the synagogue, Jesus, from this “home port,” begins to offer miraculous moments of healing — both spiritual and physical — the exorcism of demons and the healing of physical illnesses. Yet as he had with the first miraculous moment, Jesus forbids the banished demons “to speak.” His abilities are being revealed publically, but his true identity is being veiled by privacy. In Mark’s gospel this “Messianic secret” is a constant throughout Jesus’ public ministry.

Mark’s text emphasizes the tremendous public response of Capernaum to Jesus’ presence and power. His public display at the synagogue, and even his private healing in Simon and Andrew’s home, seem to become public knowledge at “Facebook” speed. (One could argue that “Facebook” is just the most recent incarnation of the town well, the quilting bee, the Sunday coffee hour and the telephone “party line”). Word got out — and around — at break-neck speed.

Confronted with sudden popularity, Jesus’ response is surprising. He rises in the still darkness and once again heads out to the wilderness, to a “deserted space (“eremos”). Capernaum was not a particularly deserted or solitary environment. It was a densely populated, fishing and agricultural center, not known for its resources for solitary refuge. If Jesus wanted to “get out of town” he would be compelled to have risen early and wandered far.

This is only one of three instances where Mark describes Jesus being in prayer (see also 6;46 and 14:32-42). Jesus’ solitary sojourn for this time of prayer reflects his wilderness time and recalls Israel’s own wilderness wanderings, where fellowship with the divine was solidified and savored. But even at these first moments of Jesus’ public/private life, the boundaries are stretched. Jesus’ first called disciples are the ones to first intrude upon his sacred, solitary time. With Simon Peter in the lead, his disciples “hunted for him” (“katedioxen”), or “pursued him,” a verb with roots that suggest an innocent being pursued by an enemy.

Simon’s zealous pursuit is successful, and this neophyte disciple’s declaration to Jesus is revealing: “Everyone is searching for you” (v.37). The “everyone” Simon is concerned with is the crowd of those who are seeking miraculous cures from spiritual or physical ailments. Jesus the healer is the one who is desperately sought — both by his disciples and by the crowds.

Found — and “found out” — Jesus now redirects his disciples and their desires. This first public foray at Capernaum revealed how Jesus’ mission could be misconstrued and misdirected. Love and compassion led Jesus to offer healing, exorcisms, miracles of all kinds, to those people who approached him. But miracle-working was not Jesus’ messianic message. The “message” Jesus came to proclaim was announced in 1:15 – “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.” Jesus declares that “the message” is the reason that he “has come” (“exelthon”).

Having been “hunted down” in his private space of prayer and reflection, Jesus is once again thrust into the public eye. Mark concludes this week’s text with the affirmation that Jesus now “went throughout Galilee,” using local synagogues as his podium, proclaiming his message of the kingdom. He is in the public eye once again.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Leonard Sweet Sermons, by Leonard Sweet