In the Hand of the Man (Marlk 1: 29-34) 2/5/12

          Remember how it was when you were little? When you were crossing the street or waiting in line or just standing in a crowd, your mother or your father would hold your hand. I really don’t remember that very well any more, but I remember like yesterday how many times I held my children’s hands in the same sort of situations.  There is a point on the way from childhood to teen years when that urge for contact is met with an equal urge for independence. It is a natural thing that we encourage.  Over time, we let our children go and the hand holding becomes nothing more than a fond memory. All the same, it is a different time; not as safe or secure as that parental touch that we all both gave and received and remember so tenderly. I treasure all my memories of those times when my children reached out to me…looking for my hand to hold. They trusted me then. My hand meant safety. My hand meant security. It became second nature for them to reach for my hand.  

As we look at the actions of our Savior in Capernaum with Peter’s mother in law, we see a kindred tenderness in his actions. Jesus did a lot of healing in Capernaum. By my count, there are at least eight different occasions where Jesus was either healing someone or helping someone or driving out demons and evil spirits while in or near Capernaum. It became his home away from home. We know that Peter was married and that his mother in law and probably his brother Andrew lived in the home. Archaeologists have unearthed what is very likely the home where Peter lived and it is big enough to have housed Jesus and James and John in commune style living. So Peter’s house in Galilee may well have been Jesus’ hangout. Whenever Jesus went to Bethany, the house of Lazarus enjoyed a similar notoriety. 

This is the first recorded occasion of Jesus in Capernaum. From Mark’s account, Jesus and his small group of new disciples had walked along the shoreline to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. They left the synagogue and headed over to Peter’s house. Jesus healed Peter’s mother in law from her fever. The next account finds the townspeople at their doorstep. According to custom, people were not to travel on the Sabbath. They were only allowed to go a Sabbath day’s journey, which by tradition was a thousand yards, or about half a mile. That may be why the whole town showed up at Peter’s door that evening rather than during the day. The Sabbath ended at 6 PM, or about dusk. Since the average Capernaum citizen didn’t have a handy sundial in his backyard, he used another custom to measure the end of the Sabbath. When one could see three stars in the evening sky, the Sabbath had ended. I’m thinking that on the rare occasion when it was raining, no one really cared that the Sabbath had ended because of the weather. At any rate, three stars must have come out on the occasion at hand because Mark tells us that the whole town gathered at the door of Peter’s house. This would have been quite a gathering. Capernaum was never a big town, but in Jesus’ day, it is estimated that it had a population of between ten and fifteen hundred people. Mark tells us that Jesus the healer went to work on all the diseases of the residents. Then he exorcised their demons as well.

Was all this activity caused by what Jesus did to Peter’s mother in law? I doubt it. She had a fever. Naturally, they mentioned it to Jesus. Mark tells us that Jesus went in to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began tending to her normal household chores and hospitality. Is this a miracle? Very possibly, but not necessarily. Even if it were, as I surmise, according to Mark’s story, it was accepted without comment in the household. Soon after, the whole town gathered to watch the miracle man. The congregation probably had more to do with Jesus’ healing of the man in the synagogue just hours before. Word of this would have traveled quickly throughout the town.

As I read this passage over and over, something began to catch my eye, and then my attention. Speaking of Peter’s mother in law, Mark says that Jesus took her hand. This is not the only event in the Gospels where Jesus takes someone’s hand. Some time later (Mark 5: 41), Jairus, one of the rulers of the Capernaum synagogue, finds Jesus beside the lake and pleads with him to save his little daughter. Jesus goes with him, but by the time that they get to her, the little girl has died and people are already grieving. He takes the hand of the dead 12 year old girl and tells her to get up. You know the rest of the story. In Bethsaida (Mark 8:23), Jesus takes a blind man by the hand and leads him outside the village, where he is healed.

Perhaps the most vivid story is that of the boy with the evil spirit in Mark 9 (27). In between the mountain experience of the Transfiguration and the trip back to Capernaum, a large crowd gathers around Jesus. A man edges forward and brings his son to Jesus. The boy is possessed by a spirit.  Encountering Jesus, the demon throws the boy to the ground, causing him to roll around and foam at the mouth. It is a pitiful sight and indeed the father asks Jesus to take pity on them. The disciples have tried and are helpless against it. And Jesus teaches. He teaches his own disciples the damning power of unbelief.  He teaches the crowd the power of the Son of God. The boy’s father speaks for himself and for us. He is Everyman. He pleads with Jesus first for his son, but also for his own soul. “I do believe,” he exclaims. “Help me overcome my unbelief.”  With a word from Jesus, the spirit leaves the boy for dead.  Jesus takes him by the hand and lifts him to his feet. He is healed. Variations of these same stories narrated by Mark are echoed in the other Synoptic gospels.

Again and again, the gospel of Mark makes it clear to us that Jesus takes us by the hand. The stories contain other steps, other rituals observed. There are stories which say nothing of Jesus holding our hand, but almost without exception, there is some overt act on the part of Jesus that touches us physically; that connects us in a personal way to him. In our Wednesday night Christology study, we have looked at how modern theologians debate the relative importance of Jesus as deity and Jesus as human. Here in the stories in Mark, we see repeatedly the tender, caring humanity of the Son of Man exercising the saving power of the Son of God. Yes, Jesus is our friend, but he is also our Savior. Deity and humanity or faith and redemption? Only the theologians need to debate these nuances. For us, we see Jesus as the bridge to, and the face of, God Himself. He takes us by the hand and we are lifted up.

Sometimes, we see God as great and powerful, but removed from us as the great Father in the sky who authored creation and writes our history. The Holy Spirit is both gentle and ethereal, the companion of our feelings but still mysterious and intangible. But Jesus! Jesus reaches out and touches us. Jesus is both God and brother. Jesus is the man on the cross bleeding for us. Jesus is as relational as it gets. He is one of us, but he is the one who got it right. Yes Jesus is very God, but he is also the God-man.     

There is a great old Broadway standard which talks about the hand of Jesus. In its lyrics we can feel the humanity and the divinity of Jesus coming alive.  Listen to its words and let them speak to you. It goes something like this:

          Put your hand in the hand of the man

          Who stilled the water.

Put your hand in the hand of the man

Who calmed the sea.

Take a look at yourself

And you can look at others differently.

Put your hand in the hand of the man

From Galilee. 

  

      I do believe. Help my unbelief. The unknown father of Mark 9 speaks for all of us as we grope in the darkness that is our lack of faith, reaching for the light. As we reach out to our Savior, we encounter him and realize he has already reached out for us. Like the lady of the house, like the daughter of Jairus, like the blind man in the village, like the boy possessed, Jesus takes us by the hand and raises us up… and heals us. Try it. Give in to the freedom of his touch! Put your hand…and your faith, in the hand of the man from Galilee.