Miracle Drug
Scripture Reading: Mark 1:29-39
Miracle drugs. Every so often a prescription medication becomes so popular that it crosses over from the medical world into the broader culture and assumes the status of “miracle drug.” You may have heard of Ozempic. If not, ask your doctor if Ozempic may be right for you. (As someone who used to work in pharmaceutical advertising, I would welcome a total ban on all pharma ads on TV.) Ozempic is approved for the treatment of diabetes, but it’s become a phenomenon because doctors have been prescribing it off-label for weight loss, with impressive results.
Diabetes and obesity are of course serious medical conditions, and I celebrate that there is now yet another effective treatment for them. Add Ozempic to the pile. But when I think “miracle drug” I think of something that’s truly life-saving because there were no other options. Prior to 1996 HIV/AIDS was a death sentence. The disease had virtually a 100% fatality rate. The few drugs that existed back then treated only the opportunistic infections that were associated with advanced AIDS, but they did nothing against the virus itself.
Then in 1996 two new classes of medications appeared right about the same time. Protease inhibitors and NNRTIs, when prescribed in combination, produced results that were nothing short of miraculous. Patients whose prognosis had been almost-certain death were granted a new lease on life. These drugs transformed HIV/AIDS from a fatal disease into a chronic, manageable condition. Unfortunately, they appeared just a few years too late for my brother, who died of AIDS in 1993.
In one sense, all drugs are miracle drugs. Modern medicine is a gift from God. It’s hard to imagine life before penicillin, anesthesia, insulin, chemotherapy, and the polio vaccine. Yet most of these medications entered human history only in the last century. Prior to that, without penicillin, people routinely died from bacterial infections. Without insulin, people died from diabetes. Without chemotherapy, cancer killed so many more than it still does.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in a time before modern medicine people sick with incurable illnesses would flock to someone with the power to heal them. That is the situation that Mark describes in today’s Gospel reading. He writes that “the whole city was gathered around the door” where Jesus was staying, desperate for the touch of his hand or a word of blessing from his lips.
We pick up today right where we left off. You may remember that last Sunday we heard Mark tell of Jesus’s inaugural sermon at the local synagogue in Capernaum. The sermon was interrupted by a man possessed by an unclean spirit, which Jesus expelled, to the astonishment of all who witnessed it. Now we are moving from the synagogue to the home of Simon Peter.
In Mark’s typical hurried style, he writes, “As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.” Continuing apace, the disciples “at once” tell Jesus about Simon’s mother-in-law, who is in bed with a fever. Is her condition so urgent that it requires Jesus’s immediate attention, or is the “as soon as” and the “at once” just part and parcel of Mark’s style of writing? It’s hard to say.
What we see here in Simon’s unnamed mother-in-law is the first Christian deacon—someone who is blessed and therefore seeks to bless others.
In either case, Jesus wastes no time in turning his attention to her. Without so much as a word, he takes her by the hand and lifts her up. The fever immediately and miraculously leaves her. She feels so well, in fact, that she takes it upon herself to show hospitality to her guests by serving them.
At first glance, it’s easy to see in this older woman’s inclination to serve her male guests the kind of traditional gender roles that we might expect to find in the Bible. First of all, the Bible features plenty of examples of women who upend traditional gender norms. Several women in this congregation share a name with one (Deborah). Second, there’s likely more going on here than just a quaint tale of a healing that leads to the resumption of domestic life. The verb that’s translated as “serve”—diakonae—gives us the English word “deacon.” The service that Simon’s mother-in-law renders to her guests is out of the ordinary. She doesn’t just serve them, she ministers to them.
Really what this woman does is model for all these male disciples what true discipleship looks like. It looks like service. It looks like offering food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty. That sounds so simple and obvious, but it’s a lesson that the disciples will struggle to learn while they concern themselves with who ranks higher in the pecking order and who sits in the seat of honor at the banquet table. What we see here in Simon’s unnamed mother-in-law is the first Christian deacon—someone who is blessed and therefore seeks to bless others. In her humble service, the kingdom of God has come near.
Simon’s mother-in-law may be the first sick person that we meet in this passage, but she is hardly the last. As word of her miraculous healing quickly spreads, all the sick of Capernaum and all who are possessed by demons come to Jesus so that they too might be healed. In a bit of hyperbole, Mark tells us that “the whole city was gathered around the door.”
Try to picture the scene. The disciples are in the house, along with Simon’s mother-in-law. They’re sipping the tea and eating the sandwiches that she has prepared when there’s a knock at the door. A stranger appears in the doorway leaning on a crutch. He’s heard that inside there’s a man who has the power to heal the lame and cure the sick. Could he meet that man?
A moment later there’s another knock at the door, followed by another, and another, and then still another. The door now opens to a sea of sick people with all manner of illnesses—natural and supernatural. They have all come for the same reason. They’ve heard word of this Jesus who exorcised a demon from a man at the synagogue. They’ve also heard that Jesus merely touched a woman and her fever immediately went away. They knock on the door to beg, Please, would he have mercy upon me, and me, and me as well?
You can see the dynamic at work here: Jesus is drawn to the sick, and the sick are drawn to him. What we see in all the sick folk gathered in the doorway of Simon Peter’s house is a realistic depiction of the church…the church as it’s meant to be. I say “meant to be” because the reality can be different.
What we see in all the sick folk gathered in the doorway of Simon Peter’s house is a realistic depiction of the church.
Even in church, a place where we are meant to be comfortable in our vulnerability, we project a facade of perfect emotional and spiritual health. Oh, we don’t hesitate to publicly acknowledge our physical ailments—the arthritic knees, the bad back, or the weak eyes, as we put on our reading glasses to sing from the hymnal (or in my case, take off my glasses).
But what about all that ails us below the surface? The loneliness, the grief, the insecurity, the anxiety. What about the demons that possess us? The addictions, the resentments, the grievances, the envy. We are—all of us—walking wounded. There is no shame in admitting it, even—or especially—in church. The church is not a private club for the emotionally and morally perfect; it’s a hospice for terminally ill sinners.
Yes, I said “hospice” not “hospital.” At some point you may have heard the expression The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners. It’s been attributed to the early church father Augustine, but as Abraham Lincoln famously said, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
The church is not a private club for the emotionally and morally perfect; it’s a hospice for terminally ill sinners.
The idea of the church as a hospital for sinners is a useful but limited metaphor. It’s useful in that it recognizes the folks who fill the pews and stand in the pulpit not as paragons of virtue whose lives are in perfect order but rather as people who are seriously ill. It provides an honest assessment of the human condition; sin has made us feverish and frail.
But it’s of limited use because most people go to a hospital expecting to get well, yet there’s no recovering from sin. Sin is a fatal condition. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul writes (Rom. 6:23).
That’s why, rather than thinking of the church as a hospital, I’ve come to prefer thinking of it as a hospice, as a place where we come to die. Does that sound shocking? A tad harsh? Consider that hospice settings might be the most honest places on earth. Patients and caregivers alike freely acknowledge the reality of death. A person enters hospice expecting to die. Hospice is about learning to live with death. Death is not only expected but accepted.
The same is true of the church. There’s a misconception outside the church, and sometimes within as well, that we come to church to learn how to live. Follow these rules and live a sound, moral life pleasing to God. Here are three simple steps for learning how to love God and love your neighbor. To this way of thinking, attending church is basically like attending a TED Talk, where you pick up bits of inspirational wisdom that you can apply to your life.
We don’t come to church to learn how to live. We come to church to learn how to die.
That. Is. Not. The. Gospel. We don’t come to church to learn how to live. We come to church to learn how to die. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, that is good news! It’s good news because only in dying—dying to sin and dying to self—are we made alive in Jesus Christ…Jesus Christ who died for us. You see, the grace of Jesus is like a miracle drug on steroids. It doesn’t heal the sick; it raises the dead!