Earlier this month, on January 3, I celebrated another birthday. Another year older. I use my birthday month to do a lot of my health check-ups. After a visit to the dentist, it was discovered I had a cracked filling, so I had that fixed. I had my eyes checked --- the eye dr. told me a year ago I should get bi-focals; so I now have bifocal lenses. Last week I also had a blood test, and my cholesterol is a little high. And I find, that if I’m in several stresses situations at the same time, it presents itself in my back – with tight muscles and pinched nerves, making me very uncomfortable. And so on Tuesday (Jan. 31) I read this devotion from Max Lucado, Grace for the Moment --- …. …
“Which word describes your body? My cancerous body? My arthritic body? My deformed body? My crippled body? My addicted body? My ever-expanding body? The word may be different, but the message is the same: These bodies are weak. They began decaying the minute we began breathing.
And, according to God, that’s part of the plan. Every wrinkle and every needle take us one step closer to the last step when Jesus will change our simple bodies into forever bodies. No pain. No depression. No sickness. No end.
This is not our forever house. It will serve for the time being. But there is nothing like the moment we enter God’s door.”

I pondered that reading for a moment, because I was thinking, in little ways, my body is telling me it’s aging. I realize as we are gathered here, I really have no room to talk; I realize that many of you are in situations where your body just won’t do what it used to be able to do. In the midst of this reality – that we are given physical bodies that will show wear and tear, that will show the signs of having lived lives full of bumps and bruises, the word of God as proclaimed in the prophet Isaiah is designated for this Sunday: Isaiah 40:28-31….

… 500 years before Jesus, the people of God lived in captivity. They were in exile in Babylon. Their captivity was real, as they were cut off from their home land and everything they held as sacred – land, city, temple. They believed they were cut off from God, lost and forsaken, without hope. It is to a people who feel cut off and without hope that the prophet Isaiah proclaims these words: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not understood?”

Isaiah is calling them to remember, remember your stories of faith, remember who your creator is, remember who your God is --- because God the creator has the power to re-create, to make new, to raise up. God the creator has the power to raise you up. These words from Isaiah are filled with words of hope and power and might and redemption as he proclaims the power of God to a nation of people that God’s power will lift them up out of despair and hopelessness. It is a power that “he gives to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

Isn’t that a beautiful picture, and wonderful image --- of our broken, worn out bodies renewed and strengthened, mounting up with wings of eagles, running and not being weary, walking and not fainting?

In the gospel of Mark, Jesus has been very busy. We are not even through the first chapter, and much has happened. Last week we read how Jesus commanded an unclean spirit to come out of a man who had come into the synagogue. In today’s verses, we read how Jesus and the disciples went to the home of Simon and Andrew, where Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever. And in that story Jesus came to her, and took her by the hand and lifted her up. And the fever left her.

While Isaiah proclaimed a message of God’s power raising up a nation; Mark tells of Jesus’ power that rasies up a sick woman. In fact, the terminology used by Mark speaks of resurrection. Mark says that Jesus took her hand and lifter her up. The Greek word is a RESURRECTION word; that Jesus “lifted her up” is the same as raising the dead.

Whether we are talking about raising up a nation by proclaiming a message of hope and comfort in the presence of God or the healing of the sick, we are talking about a power that can only come from God; we are talking about a power that raises the dead. Healing and liberation are evidence of raising what was once dead.

As soon as Simon’s mother-in-law was touched by the powerful presence of God that was embodied in Jesus, she was healed. She had been raised out of the deadness of her burning fever. And then, we are told, when the fever left her, she began to serve them.

At first I think, as a woman, “Oh sure, make the woman who was just lying in her sick bed get up and wait on all those men.” But there is more going on here. The Greek word is DIACONEO – which is where we get the words deacon and deaconess. It is often translated “to serve” but is also translated as to minister, to wait on, to provide what is necessary to sustain life. Interestingly, it is the same word used earlier in chapter 1, v. 13, when the angels ministered to Jesus after his 40 days in the wilderness and the temptation. Simon’s mother-in-law is described as serving or ministering to Jesus and his disciples, precisely what the angels did for Jesus in the wilderness following the temptation. She is being like an angel to them.

It seems to me then, that when we encounter the power of Jesus Christ, when we experience his awesome presence, we are raised up, lifted up in order to serve and minister to others. What happens, I think, is we enter into a cycle of ministry, where we are in service to one another and beyond. We are raised up to share God’s love and power to heal in new ways.

And I know there are people in our congregation who are going through difficult times; and while they may feel pushed to their limits right now, others are praying for them, holding them up, ministering to them. And at some point, the roles may be reversed. We may be in need – and others are being angles to us, ministering to us. Others may be in need - and we are being angles to them, ministering to them.