Have you been keeping track of the Republican candidates for the Presidential race? Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican or Independent, it’s been hard to miss, and everyone’s curious about how it’s going to turn out. Our own Florida Primary gave Mitt Romney the lead, and if he should end up as the Republican candidate, and then if he ends up winning the election, we would have the first Mormon President. These are interesting times!
When the primaries are all over, and all of the bad things the candidates have been saying about one another are brought to a close, it will be fascinating to see what they will do to repair the damage. I’m sure there will be some amusing backtracking!
President Lyndon Johnson told the story once of an old judge he used to know in Texas. He had been on the bench for thirty years. One day the chairman of the Judiciary Committee called and said , “Judge, I’ve got bad news for you. There was a bill introduced today that would eliminate your job.” The judge said, “I’m sorry to hear that, and shocked. Who is behind it?”
The chairman said, “Well, there’s Bill Small.” The judge said, “Him. Why do you listen to him? A week doesn’t go by but what we get in small claims court 6 or 7 cases of shoddy merchandise sold by him. If it weren’t for my long loyalty to the party and the fact that he was a member I would have come down on him a long time ago. Who else?”
“Well, there’s Ed Crawford, the editor.” “Him and his yellow journalism. If he weren’t a friend of yours I would have banned his reporters from the courtroom on a dozen different occasions. Who else?”
“Well, there’s Gordon Manning, the lawyer.” “You and I know that shyster should have been disbarred on a dozen occasions. I’m shocked that you would let people like that operate on your committee.”
The legislator said, “Well, judge, I also have good news. I had the votes and we voted the bill down, and your job is safe.”
The judge said, “Well, darn you (The language was a bit stronger than that, actually). “Why darn me? I just saved your job.” “Darn you because you just made me say some very unkind things about three of the finest men this country has ever produced!”
Don’t ask me why, but for some reason that story came to mind while I was thinking about the Presidential race.
All of the candidates want to be King. All want to be the Messiah, God’s anointed, to save the people in these perilous times. To do that they have to win the peoples’ favor by convincing us that theirs is the true saving message. Is it beginning to sound religious? Of course, it would sound even more religious if they could show us God is on their side. If they could heal a few people along the campaign trail, that would help.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is on a kind of campaign trail as well. He is travelling throughout Galilee to get his message to as many people as possible. He is the Messiah, God’s anointed one. In fact, he is God himself in the flesh. He wants to get the message out that he has come to save his people from their sins. Along the way, however, he encounters people who are sick and who have various diseases. He has the power to heal. It is his nature to heal, and so he heals them.
One of these persons is Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, who lays sick with a fever. He heals her, and her healing is so complete that she immediately begins to serve them. One commentator says that “the word translated ‘serve’ is the same as that used when the angels ‘waited on’ Jesus in the wilderness. Later Jesus himself will use that same verb to describe himself as one who comes to serve. Here Simon’s mother-in-law embodies the ideal of discipleship as service to others, and foreshadows the actions of the women who later ministered to Jesus at the cross.”
Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law really brings out the crowds. Persons suffering from arthritis or who had toothaches; people with gout, hip problems, digestive ailments, as well as more serious diseases, all heard about the healing, so that the whole city showed up at Simon’s doorstep, wanting relief from their maladies. They were not there to have Jesus tell them about God’s saving grace, which was really what Jesus wanted to communicate to them. But he was compassionate; in fact, he embodied compassion. So he couldn’t turn them away. He healed them, from the one who was nearsighted to the one with inoperable cancer, to the one who had an evil force in his life that he couldn’t overcome.
Our Lord Jesus had two major challenges with which he had to deal. The first was the prevailing notion of what the Messiah would be. The Israelites expected the Messiah to be a political ruler who would free Israel from Roman rule. When he went about preaching salvation, they thought that ultimately would result in establishing an earthly kingdom in which God would truly rule. Even the disciples suffered from that misconception, up to the very end. The other challenge was what Jesus encountered at Capernaum. They wanted him to cure their earthly woes.
Jesus had the ability and the power to do both, and his temptation was to be what the people expected. Ultimately, however, he would not be diverted. He must stay true to his calling, as real as those other needs were.
In order to do what the Father called him to do, our Lord had to stay focused. How did he stay focused on his mission? He prayed. Over and over again we see Jesus going apart and praying. After all of those healings in Capernaum, the next morning he got up, long before it was light, and went to a lonely place, and prayed. His disciples searched him out, told him people were looking for him, presumably for more healings, and he told them that he had to move on. His mission, after all, wasn’t to be a miracle worker, but to get the word out.
I wonder what his thoughts were. Was he disappointed that he had to disappoint the people in Capernaum? We aren’t told that. We’re merely told that he moved on to fulfill what the Father had called him to do.
If the Son of God used prayer to stay focused, how much more do we need to pray, so that the cares and challenges we face don’t rule over us? We have at least one mass here at the church every day. We have Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer every day. And yet, rarely do we have any more than half a dozen people at mass, and we’re lucky if we have any participants at Morning and Evening Prayer other than the person scheduled to officiate and read the lessons. I’m mystified that our people don’t feel the need to pray in this manner. Some might say, I don’t have to go to church in order to pray. Those who say that probably don’t pray alone either. Each of us needs to pray, fervently, in order to keep our focus on God and his will. Do it at home. Do it here at church. But brothers and sisters, pray.