“God, Help Me Do Something”

A sermon preached with the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California, based on the lections from A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year A.

It is so seldom that we get to hear the stories of women in scripture. And when we do, we often don’t even get their names. We get a snapshot — a single moment in a whole life — and we are left not knowing what came before or what followed after.

We know what happened to Peter. We know the story of the relatable man who did not always get it right, who put his foot in his mouth, who denied Jesus, and who nonetheless became the rock on which the church was built.

But Peter’s mother-in-law? We get one story. And no name; no name even for her daughter, whom we presume to be Peter’s wife. Just one moment. A woman sick with a fever. That’s all we get.

But we can imagine.

We can imagine that Peter’s mother-in-law grew up by the Sea of Galilee. We can imagine her earliest memories of Roman soldiers in her village — the clip-clopping sandals, the shiny, bulbous helmets. We can imagine the first time she saw a human being hanging from a cross.

We can imagine that she went to Temple, that she loved God, that she listened to the law and the prophets and the great teachers of her people.

We can imagine that she knew the story — that her people had been liberated from a tyrant king long ago. We can imagine that she saw the fear in her mother’s eyes when the battalions passed by, and that she learned early on to notice the gap between God’s vision of justice and love and the realities of the world she observed.  

And we can imagine that all her life she prayed for God to help her do something about that gap.

I believe deeply that this last imagining is true.

Because when Jesus set eyes on this woman for the very first time, I believe he saw a disciple—ready and oriented toward God’s work in the world. This is the only healing story in the Gospels where Jesus takes the initiative without a request or any particular outward act of faith.[i] Jesus simply sees her — and in healing her, makes real what is already true.[ii] Welcomes her into the service she had always been called to.

Many (including me!) have felt uncomfortable with the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it story of Peter’s mother-in-law. And that discomfort makes sense, because we have all been trained to read through our patriarchal lens. And through that lens, this story can sound as though Jesus and the men came home tired and hungry and dirty, and wanted a clean house and a hot meal — and so he fixed this woman up so she could get back to work. Like putting batteries into a robot.

But I want to suggest that is not what is happening here. Because that lens has nothing to do with God.

Jesus does not heal this woman so that she may fulfill earthly expectations of domesticity. He heals her so that she may fulfill heavenly demands of God’s mission to fill that gap with justice and love.

This woman’s service is not run-of-the-mill table-setting. The word the Gospel uses is diēkonei: the same word used for the ministry of angels,[iii] the same word Jesus uses for his own ministry.[iv]

Jesus welcomes this woman — old enough to be his mother I might add — into holy ministry. Into this work called church.

In this moment, Jesus shows us something that centuries of writers and translators and tellers of church history have missed or muddled: the church never was, and never will be, just a handful of young, self-sufficient men. It never did and never will exist without the work, the funding, the planning, the courage, the time, and the wisdom of women — of every age and ability. Every kind of woman. So often unnoticed, unappreciated. So often simply not taken seriously.

There’s a post going around online that says, my expectation of senators, “is that they find 1/10th of the bravery of your average 70 year old lutheran lady following ICE around mpls in her subaru crosstrek”

And we can laugh. And we should whenever we can, but also: Amen. If I had to entrust my life to any particular group of people, hot dish-making midwestern progressive church ladies would be a top choice. The people of God do ourselves — and God — a disservice when we dismiss the potential of leaders like Peter’s unnamed mother-in-law.

In every era, in every place, the church will find itself living somewhere in that gap between God’s vision of justice and love and the world we observe. Right now, I know that gap feels very large indeed. And it is enough to make us sick; fevered even. It is enough to make us pray, “God, help me do something.”

It is entirely possible that Peter’s mother-in-law journeyed onward with Jesus and the other disciples, as other women did — some named, most not; that she stood with them at the foot of the cross, refusing to look away. But we don’t know for sure. Because somewhere along the way, the church forgot her name. And her call, and her courage, and her ministry.

But she did not disappear. There she is. In Matthew’s Gospel. And in Mark’s Gospel. And in Luke’s Gospel. Meeting God. Healed by God. Sent by God. Serving God. And here she is still. Alive in this movement, this witness, this church. Alive in those who notice the gap and refuse to look away. In nurses and neighbors and car-pool coordinators. In posters and protesters. Preparers and protectors. In Subaru sentinels.

Still with us when the world makes us feverish with fear. When that gap between God’s vision of justice and love and the world we observe feels impossibly wide. Still with us when we pray, “God, help me do something.”

[i] Women’s Bible Commentary, pg. 471 (chapter by Amy-Jill Levine). I will say, we do have stories of raising the dead (distinct from healing) without request or outward sign of faith, and also examples when Jesus healed at the behest of others’ outward signs of faith. But, in Mark and Matthew, Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law without any request at all, and in Luke (a slightly different telling), the healing follows what I’d call a mere mention rather than a full on plea or act of faith. So in short, I buy Amy-Jill Levine’s claim here — and find there is something distinct about this particular encounter!

[ii] With thanks, again and again, to Bishop Jeffrey Lee (and Bernard Cooke) for the sacramental language of making what is true real https://www.chicagoconsultation.org/?p=170

[iii] See Matthew 4:11 and Mark 1:13.

[iv] See Matthew 20:28 and Mark 10:45.