Following on from last week’s reading, where we heard about Jesus in his public persona, teaching in the local synagogue, this week we move to a very domestic situation (Mk 1:29-39). Jesus is heading home with his new friends for dinner. I always find the reference here to Simon’s mother-in-law slightly jarring. It’s like – wait a minute, his mother-in-law, you mean he was married, he had a wife, he had a mother-in-law!
We tend to think of Jesus as so special, so different, and by extension his disciples also, that it’s hard to think of them has having normal family lives, just like us. They had sick mothers in law, and doubtless sick children at times also. They had friends and neighbors, they lived in communities with people they knew, just like us.
But we’re not left long to appreciate the simple domestic scene and the comfort that Jesus brought to his friend’s family. The challenge of Jesus’ fame is already upon him. He’s the latest and greatest thing and everyone wants a piece of him. Jesus accepts this, but he also holds on to what makes him special, that unique relationship with the Father. He ensures he carves out time to work on that relationship, to maintain his strength and focus. And then he gets on with his job.
In that job the preaching and driving out of demons was linked. We maybe tend to think of preaching and healing as two very distinct things. Priests stand up in church and preach, doctors rush around in hospitals healing. But I don’t think either of those things are quite what Jesus was doing. He was somehow getting people to look inside themselves, to see themselves, and thus their relationship with the world, in a different way. That was the repentance part. And in doing that and encouraging and supporting them in that, Jesus freed them from their demons, the thoughts and habits that kept them bound, sometimes tied up in knots. They were able to approach life in a new way.
He can do the same for us, if we are prepared to listen to him.