By the Rev. Alanna C. Sullivan
Associate Minister and Director of Administration
The Memorial Church of Harvard University
(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Feb. 4, 2024)
This week, the clergy and seminarians met to catch up and to anticipate our spring term together. It was the first time the group had been gathered since December, and in my case, the first time since May. We shared what had been going on in our lives during our time apart, and a theme began to emerge from our reflections, what Steph Grossano aptly named as dissonance. We felt a disconnection between how Harvard has been written about in the news and our lived experience being a part of the Harvard community, made up of fully fleshed colleagues and classmates, individuals who had been inaccurately portrayed and maliciously targeted. Life is so much more complicated and more precious than what can be captured in a headline. At any given moment, we only see a slice of someone else's life. And what appears at the surface cannot reveal all that lies beneath.
A pastoral care professor once told me that you should always be listening for two things when speaking with someone. What is the presenting issue and what's the underlying issue? Rarely are they one and the same. That's always stuck with me. And Professor Jonathan Walton once shared that when he approached a biblical text for preaching, he often looked for two inverse things. What is said and what is not said? Who is speaking and who is silent? Who is in the room and who is absent? Who is named and who is not? So it is with this lens that I approached our gospel lesson for today. So engaging our homiletical imaginations, let's see what emerges when we dwell in this gospel story for a bit.
Jesus and his disciples have just left the synagogue in Capernaum, where he has healed a man who has been possessed. They then head to the house of Simon Peter's mother-in-law. So let's stop there for a second. Peter's married? He had a wife? Well, that seems to be the case according to this offhand comment about his mother-in-law. So that leaves me wondering, were the other disciples married? Did they have families? When Peter dropped his fishing net to follow Jesus, he left behind a wife and the rest of his family. And before he set out to follow Jesus, I wonder if he decided to check in with them first.
And if so, what did he say? How did he explain that he was leaving them to follow this itinerant preacher, this unknown teacher? After all, not only would Peter be gone for extended periods traveling with Jesus all over Galilee, he would be away from the family. There would be no money coming in from Peter's fishing business. And did Peter's wife go to live with her parents when Peter was away? I wonder if she is the one who opened the door when Peter and Jesus came knocking. Did she welcome him with open arms, or was she resentful of his absence? We then learn that her mother is bedridden with a fever. Jesus comes to her side and takes her hand and lifts her up, and the fever leaves her and she begins to serve them.
There is barely a pause or a breath between her ailment and her recovery. Was there even a moment for her to rest? Did she feel compelled to get up, or was she pressured by the attention of those around her? And when she left her bed, did she take a moment to wash her face or straighten her dress, read a to-do list of all the things that needed to be done? Perhaps she put a comb in her hair to hold it back so she could get down to work. Did she say anything, or did she let her actions speak for themselves? Now, I must admit, I first bristled when I read, "She began to serve them." I wonder if a woman of a lowly station was always expected to serve others, especially men, even under the most extreme circumstances.
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And what did her service look like? Did she pour them tea? Did she offer them a snack? Did she make up some beds so they had a place to rest their heads after a long day? Perhaps. There are other places where the verb translated here as to serve can also be translated as to be attendant, to minister to someone. Diakonos appears elsewhere in Mark, thereby tying this story to the wider gospel narrative. Earlier in Mark, it is used to describe how the angels attend to Jesus when he is wandering in the wilderness. Later in Mark, Jesus chooses this same word to describe his own ministry.
"I came not to be served, but to serve." And in the Gospel of John, Jesus uses it as he washes the disciple's feet. "I am among you, the one who serves." It's the same verb that the early church used to commission its deacons. And perhaps that is why some call Peter's mother-in-law Jesus's first deacon. Her service in response to the love that she's received from Jesus is about building God's kingdom here on earth, what Martin Luther King Jr. called the beloved community. She has been called to care for those around her as Jesus cared for her.
Her ministry is less about waiting on others, and it's more about caring for their souls. It's less about provision and more about compassion. It's less about removing obstacles and more about loving our way through the struggles of life together. Writer and activist James Baldwin once wrote this. "The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. Gentle work, steadfast work, life-saving work. In those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed, loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for one another." I imagine the service and light of Jesus's first deacon looking something like that.
So as we return to the story, some hours later the whole city of Capernaum gathers at the door of her house, looking for healing. And Jesus goes about curing those who are sick. I think we would find Jesus's deacon right there with him, coming alongside those who are in pain, offering a tender hand, lifting the spirits of suffering souls. As Rabbi Sharon Brous put it, "The work is not to fix, but to love." Perhaps we cannot perform miracles like Jesus. We cannot bring about healing by completely removing someone's trauma or pain. I, however, doubt that is what Jesus is asking of us. A week ago, the Harvard chaplains and the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging held a panel about what it means to be a good neighbor. Our own Pusey Minister Professor Matthew Ichihashi Potts observed, "You have to sit with someone and listen to their pain, hear the depth of their trauma if there's going to be any chance of moving forward."
Muslim Chaplain Khalil Abdur-Rashid similarly shared, "We live in a context where we love to be heard. But to listen, to listen to somebody else's pain takes quite a bit of generosity and beauty and character and love too." Christ calls us, like he called his disciples and his deacons, to listen to the broken-hearted, to bind their wounds, to offer the comfort of our steady presence to those who suffer, to remember that the work of redemption is ongoing, to create and restore community, family, and dignity to those who walk through life weak and wounded. And in serving one another, may we take part in the eternal echo of grace.