Grace to you and peace from God our father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Gospel of Mark is a great gospel, dear congregation. It is short, to the point, and everything is very intentional. We are still in chapter one. This is the fifth sermon on a lesson from the first chapter of Mark since the beginning of Advent. Mark is still mapping his territory. The territory which is the proclamation of the kingdom of God, the dominion of God which is so near, so close that it has begun already.

Let me tell you, dear congregation, during these past one or two weeks as the language used in the public discourse has reached a new level of hostility towards enemies and also towards friends of the United States, it has been very apt and reassuring for me to have to think about the dominion of God, God’s kingdom on earth here among us. In light of the kingdoms, the dominion of people, our Christian business seems foolish and futile; to worship a God who proclaims his power by giving power to the faint and strengthening the powerless, as we just heard from Isaiah, seems foolish. But, as the Apostle Paul says in his own unmistaken passionate voice, we will continue to proclaim the gospel, not for the sake of boasting, not for any selfish reasons, but solely because the gift of grace and unconditional love to us in Jesus Christ has laid an obligation upon us. May we make fools of ourselves, we will remain faithful to the call which we have received to tell about the God whose royal kingdom continues to be spread through such people who become all things to all people, the weak and the strong, the strange and the familiar, in order so that by all means we might save some.

This said let us go about our gospel business for this morning, and see how Jesus’ proclamation and incarnation of God’s dominion affects us and equips our community for a life in faith.

Allow me to recall what has happened before Jesus enters the house of Simon and his family.

First John the Baptist calls out in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!” This quote from Isaiah (the same chapter as our Old Testament lesson today) was originally addressed to Israel on its return home from exile in Babylon, with the LORD God, the creator, leading their way in royal fashion. “Prepare the way, make his paths straight! Clear away every stumbling block!”

The word used for ‘straight’ is in Greek the same the word as “immediately”, “at once”, “as soon as” which Mark uses so often throughout his gospel that it has become his hallmark. Including today’s lesson it is already mentioned 8 times, in a total of 29 verses since Jesus’ baptism. This means, each time that something happens ‘immediately’ or ‘at once’ in the gospel of Mark, the kingdom of God is being advanced a bit, yet another stumbling block is in the process of being cleared. Jesus’ ministry drives the kingdom of God, propels it forward with each step on his way.

The first step is Jesus’ baptism by John, where he is pronounced by the voice of God “son” and “my beloved”. Next he is tempted, and after that begins proclaiming that the time is fulfilled now and the kingdom of God has come near, reason for everyone to turn around, to repent. He prepares his public ministry with this, and with the calling of the first four disciples.

The very first day then of Jesus’ ministry is a Sabbath, and with Mark being so sparse in the information he gives us, this must be significant.

The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week, the day after God made the heavens and the earth. It is the day on which we as God’s creatures gratefully and joyfully remember God’s marvelous and royal act of creation, and it is also the day to reflect on God’s intention and destination for what he created in the beginning to be very good.

The Sabbath is the day when Jesus begins his work among the people. Mark chooses Capernaum in Galilee, on the lake, and here he focuses in on two places. The synagogue and the house of Simon (who later becomes Peter). They, Jesus and his newly recruited disciples, go to Capernaum together. However, he enters the synagogue by himself, alone. Jesus heals a man who is possessed by an unclean spirit. Mark seems to need this scene more for the reason that someone other than a human being call Jesus “the Holy One of God”, than for the performance of an exorcism which was in that time and age not so unusual. Jesus drives the unclean spirit out and silences him, demonstrating that he as the Holy One of God indeed is the beginner of the kingdom of God on earth.

The second thing that happens on this royal, radiant Sabbathday in Capernaum at the onset of the kingdom of God amidst a world of ordinary people, is the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law.

Jesus enters Simon’s and Andrew’s house together with the two brothers and with James and John, ‘immediately’ after they leave the synagogue. Something will take place now which will advance the kingdom a bit further, will clear the path, make it straight for God. This time it takes place right in the community, in the privacy of a home, in a family. And a little later the entire city will be crowding the doors of this house.

Jesus enters the house, is told about the woman’s fever, and he responds without delay. He goes to her, takes her by the hand and lifts her up. The fever leaves her and she is healed. She is healed, gets up and serves them, family and guests.

As long as she was ill, the life of this family, this social microcosm, was disrupted, her illness had taken away her role as senior woman of the household. Now Jesus has restored her to the community. This, dear congregation, is the advent, the advancement of the kingdom of God. The whole domestic network in which Simon’s mother-in-law usually operates, which was disrupted, out of joint, is restored to wholeness and given back its sense of meaning and purpose. This is why she serves them after her healing. She is restored, and the privilege of showing hospitality to important guests falls naturally to her.

So two things happen on this Sabbath in Capernaum. First, we get the name of Jesus straight as “The Holy One of God”, and then Jesus restores Simon’s family, a community back to health, back to wholeness, back to functioning.

The first place where Jesus goes and brings the kingdom of God to people’s lives, is where our own immediate lives take place, the home, the family, from which still most of us derive all the core values that determine our adulthood lives, no matter how different the family may look today. The home, the family, our immediate system of support, is where we go back in all stages of our lives in order to be nurtured, to be restored, to heal, and to be equipped for the next step or the next leap. The home, the family is also the place from which derive the longest lasting pains and disturbances when things go wrong.

If the family, the home is still at the center of where those lifelong values are developed, and where Jesus’ healing, restorative ministry still chooses to take root, then it becomes clear that we as church, as congregations have to do everything we can to learn how to promote and to advance the kingdom of God in our very own and ordinary homes and families and support systems.

Many of you may already be aware that under the leadership of Pastor Warpmaeker, we are right now working toward this very goal. On February 28th and March 1st, a Friday and Saturday, Christ the King together with the Melanchthon Institute and the Youth and Family Institute of Augsburg College will be hosting a conference which is called “The Child in our Hands”. The program ‘Child in our Hands’ promotes a partnership between home and congregation in which the reality of the kingdom of God as Jesus brought it first to the home of Simon, can become a reality also in our lives, in our families regardless of their shapes and sizes. The Child-in-our-Hands curriculum is a sound, excellent, and well researched program, presented by outstanding speakers, and everybody who has attended one their conferences, goes home enriched, enthusiastic, renewed and equipped. People from 28 different congregations have enrolled so far, one Episcopalian congregation among them. Pr. Warpmaeker and Donna Pierce, the administrative director of the Melanchthon Institute have worked toward this for the last months, and I encourage you seriously to consider enrolling in this conference.

We are all members of family systems and systems of support in some way. We are all receivers of care and love in these systems and givers of care and love. In the kingdom of Gof each of us is being restored and equipped to help restore and thus advance step by step what Jesus’ ministry is all about. Jesus’ ministry began on the Sabbathday, the day to celebrate the creation work and the ends of our God who is on the way to us on a path made straight in the desert. We are called to help clear the stumbling blocks, to drive God’s kingdom forward, and immediately, at once crowd those places as did the entire city of Capernaum, where God gives power to the faint, strengthens the powerless, and restores people to wholeness. For 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.
Amen.