5th Sunday after Epiphany

A fever.
A heat radiating through the body.
Medically, a fever tells us that there’s a heightened body temperature:
Due to some internal malfunction or disease.

People get fevers when they’re sick.
Lots of people have had them recently with the flu.
And a fever is nothing too abnormal.
We’ve all had one, or two, or a hundred at one time or another.

When we are physically ill:
We want a cure to make us feel better.
But sometimes:
Even though we may be feeling better:
Or cured of our ailment:
It doesn’t always mean that we are healed.

The Bible’s understanding of healing is much more than “feeling better.”
Much more than having a normal body temperature.
Real & true healing is a restoration of wholeness:
Wholeness in body, mind, and spirit.

When we are truly healed:
Even if we’re not cured of a physical ailment:
We have the ability to rejoin our community:
To experience, spread, and share wholeness.

And this is exactly what happens to Simon’s mother in law in today’s Gospel story.
She’s in bed with a fever:
Like many before and many after her.
There’s nothing abnormal about this.
But what follows: Is something truly special.

Jesus: takes the woman by the hand:
Lifts her up:
And the fever leaves her.
She was not merely cured of her ailment.
She was restored to wholeness: restored to her community.
And her healing in wholeness demanded a response.
And she responded.
The woman then immediately begins to serve them.

It’s interesting that the word translated here as “serve”
Is the same word that Jesus uses to describe himself as the “one who comes to
serve.”
It’s also the same word used when the angels “waited on” Jesus in the wilderness.

Simon’s mother in law:
Is restored to such complete wholeness:
That she takes on the servanthood of the Angels, and of Jesus himself.

This is the embodiment of discipleship:
Self-less service to others:
A full commitment to give of one’s self to change the lives of others.
And the response is immediate.

It seems to me:
That after Jesus heals this woman:
Her physical, flu like fever left her:

And another: quite different fever took hold.
A fever of fervor:
Fervor meaning: an “Intense and passionate feeling”

And Another definition of fever (Besides heightened body temperature) is that of:
“A state of exited emotion or activity.”

A fever that causes us to move:
To Act:
To respond:
And to serve in excited, self-giving compassion:

A kind of fever of wholeness:
that wont give up—wont give in.

A fever of fervor.
This is exactly what happened to Simon’s Mother in law.
And this is exactly what Paul is talking about when he says:
“Woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!”

Because Paul has caught the fever of fervor:
The fever of fervor in which he can’t imagine doing anything else:
He can’t let go: He can’t give in:
But has a state of excited emotion and activity:
An intense feeling and expression of the Good News of the Gospel:
And a need to share it with all people.

But the fever of fervor is also a paradox:
When Simon’s mother in law is freed of her physical fever:
Her amazement, her gratitude,
and her blessedness causes her to catch the fever of fervor.
She has been blessed:
In order to be a blessing.
She has been freed in order to be a servant.

Paul too: recognizes the perfect freedom in Christ:

A perfect freedom which is in itself a paradox:
The release of the fever from sin:
Leads Paul to the fever of fervor:
In which he can do nothing else but share and proclaim the good news.

Perfect freedom:
Leads us to the wholeness of service with the fever of fervor.
We are freed in order to submit ourselves to something else:
To Christ:
To others:
And to a life of fervent, faithful, feverish service.

Jesus’ life is a life of fervent service.
Throughout the entirety of his life:
Jesus is in the middle of the suffering:
In the middle of the sorrows, demons, sins, and physical fevers across the world,
Freeing humanity of all of it.

But even Jesus needs to take some time away:
Some time for renewal and refreshment.
Some time of quiet prayer.

We hear in the story today,
That after many healings, In the morning:

Jesus gets up, and goes to a deserted place:
And there he prayed.
After all that pouring out of himself:
Of giving of himself:
Of serving and proclaiming:
Jesus needed to get in touch with God again.

To give God the burdens:
To give God the desperate needs of the world:
So that even Jesus: can be freed to continue in service with the fever of fervor.

So that Jesus can keep going: freeing each and every one of us.
In order that we might spread the fever ourselves:
The fever of excited emotion and activity for what we have seen and felt through
God’s astounding love.

Yet like Jesus:
We too need a quiet place.
A place to take the time we need for ourselves.
A place to pray.
A place that frees us more deeply:
To enter back into the paradox of free servanthood.
To bring us back to wholeness.

After we’ve spent our freedom giving others their needs.

When your boss needs,
When your family needs,
When your school needs,
When your church needs,
When your friend needs,
When you give:
And you serve:
In the fever of fervor:
There comes the point where YOU need.

Where YOU need to give it all to God.
So that you can spread the fever again fervently to the rest of the world.

And this is why we gather together here.
To receive food for the journey.
To exhale the fever we carry on behalf of others throughout the week.
To give our burdens, our worries, and our fears to God.
Who takes them:
Frees us from them:
And places inside a new fever of fervor:
To return again into the world in feverish wholeness for yet another round.

Amen.

Announcements:
Ash Wednesday Service
2/14/2024 at the
First Congregational Church of Church,
110 E. Hancock St. New London.
6 pm Pancake Supper, 7pm service.

Soup Social, Sunday, 2/18/2024
Sign up available at church

We welcome Fr. Wilson Roan on 2/11/24