Polls indicate that many Americans have lost faith in institutions such as the government, large companies, the church, and newspapers. Such loss of faith can leave people unmoored and alone. Suffering is not limited to the suffering of the body alone, but includes mental and emotional suffering. The excerpt from the Book of Job, today’s first reading, is a vivid example of depression and sadness. No one knows when Job was written, but most scholars suggest it was composed around the time of the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE. “I shall never see happiness again” is a cry you would expect to hear from exiles.
The Gospel today provides another example of suffering, but with a different outcome. In his first day of ministry, Jesus visits the home of Peter. Peter’s mother-in-law, however, is ill. When told about her, Jesus approaches her, grasps her hand and helps her up. At his touch, “the fever left her and she waited on them.”
Some might ask why the mother-in-law’s service was not reckoned as part of the healing and teaching going on all around her. We cannot change the customs of antiquity, but we can draw lessons for ourselves today. How the woman responded to Jesus’s healing touch indeed holds a lesson for today. William Grimm, an American journalist and Maryknoll priest, has written a reflection.
How did she respond to this healing? Did she glorify God? Did she thank Jesus? Did she tell her neighbors”? Did she congratulate her son-in-law on his choice of friends? No, she immediately began to wait on them. In other words, her immediate response to the loving word of God in Christ was to get back to her everyday activity. She began to look after her guests, setting a table, making a meal, seeing to their comfort. These sorts of things we all, in varying ways, do all the time. Normal stuff.
It is clear that “the first day of Jesus’s ministry,” as it is sometimes called, was a resounding success. “The whole town was gathered at the door.” If Jesus were a political candidate, his campaign staff would be ecstatic.
Yet as sometimes happens in modern politics, the candidate and the election team take different actions. Jesus goes off to pray, causing Simon and those who were with him to pursue Jesus and point out “Everyone is looking for you.” But Jesus leaves the place of yesterday’s place of triumph. “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there. For this purpose, have I come.” Normal stuff for Jesus.
Like Peter’s mother-in-law, Jesus responds differently than we expect. She responds to Jesus’s healing touch by continuing to serve others, and Jesus responds to successful preaching and healing by continuing to work in other villages preaching and driving out demons. He leaves us an example of not getting caught up in temporary success and becoming complacent, but to continue Jesus’s mission. May it become “normal stuff” for us.