C.S. Lewis's book The Great Divorce, published in 1946, recounts the adventures of a group of damned souls - he calls them 'Ghosts' - who take a bus-ride from Hell to Heaven. They can stay in Heaven if they want, but most of them decide to return to Hell - Heaven is too real for them, and they prefer the comfort of their illusions. Lewis himself is a character in the story, and in a striking passage he describes what he saw inside the bus as it and its passengers approached Heaven. Gradually emerging from the grey dimness of Hell, a brilliant light begins to suffuse the bus. Looking around, Lewis is appalled at what the light revealed. He wrote:
It was a cruel light. I shrank from the forms and faces by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but of impossibilities, some gaunt, some bloated, some glaring with idiotic ferocity, some drowned beyond recovery in dreams; but all, in one way or another, distorted and faded. One had a feeling that they might fall to pieces at any moment if the light grew much stronger....And still the light grew. [1]
I begin my sermon with this disturbing image because it contrasts so strongly with what I saw here at All Saints' last week during our celebration of Candlemas. When I came down to read the gospel, I looked out into the church and saw a very different set of faces looking back at me. For the church was dark, and you were all holding candles. And unlike the cruel light Lewis describes in The Great Divorce, candlelight is a kind light. It makes young skin look rosy, and over older skin it casts a forgiving glow that smoothes and softens the signs of age. It is, in short, a gracious light. And so what I saw when I looked out into the congregation last Sunday was a set of faces shining with grace - hopeful faces, full not of impossibilities but of possibilities, not distorted and faded, but clarified and healed of all lines of fear and worry and care. Not damned faces, but redeemed faces. It was like a glimpse of Heaven, and I did not want to keep it to myself.
But now, having rather cunningly celebrated Candlemas last Sunday morning, rather than in the evening, we are back today in so-called 'Ordinary Time' and it's the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany. 'Ordinary Time' is of course a technical liturgical term, designating when we are not in one of the great seasons or festivals of the church year, but are somewhere 'in between'. But, like many technical terms, it can be misleading. For, really, there is no 'ordinary time' - all time is extra-ordinary, blessed, significant, precious, an irreplaceable gift that once received can never be returned or reused.
The American writer Annie Dillard, a nature-mystic turned Roman Catholic, even once wrote in her more pantheistic period that 'Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk'. [2] The Christian may draw back at Dillard's description of each day as a god to be worshiped, but we can still see that each day - even in Ordinary Time - is a gift from the one true God, a gift that is indeed holy and for which we should give thanks and praise.
But, as this is Ordinary Time, I want to focus for a moment on a very ordinary character in today's gospel lesson, a character so ordinary that she isn't even given a name, but is rather described according to her family role. And I mean, of course, Simon Peter's mother-in-law:
Now Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, and immediately they told [Jesus] of her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her; and she served them. [Mark 1.30-31]
Aside from the miraculous healing, what could be more ordinary than that? A woman lies sick in bed but then, when she feels better, she gets up and returns to her normal routine of feeding and taking care of others, particularly the men. That's just what mothers-in-law do, isn't it? Nothing extraordinary about it at all. And, within the context of this gospel lesson as a whole, this event is hardly the most significant, for the main action of the passage is what happens next, when everyone else comes to Jesus for healing, and when Jesus goes out and prays by himself the following morning, and is found by the awestruck male disciples, and then says dramatically, 'Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also; for that is why I came out.' [Mark 1.38] And so they head off into history.
But what is extraordinary about this brief story involving Simon Peter's mother-in-law - a story which is also found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke [see Matthew 8.14-17 and Luke 4.38-41] - is what it tells us without telling us. I have already mentioned that we are not told the woman's name - she's just Simon Peter's mother-in-law. But if Simon Peter had a mother-in-law, he must have had a wife. And, if he had a wife, then it is at least probable that he also had children. But, amazingly, like the mother-in-law, his wife's name is not given here either - indeed, she's not even mentioned directly herself, but only inferred from the mother-in-law. QED. And no children are mentioned at all.
Aside from this brief, inferred non-mention in Mark and the parallels in Matthew and Luke, the existence of Simon Peter's wife is only acknowledged one other time in the whole New Testament - and her name is not provided there either. In the First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 9, just before our epistle lesson in the lectionary this morning, Paul is defending his status as an apostle and the unusual way in which he exercises his apostolic ministry. Unlike most of the other apostles, Paul has chosen to remain single, and to support himself by skilled labour rather than receive donations from the Church. Because of this difference, apparently some of the Corinthians think that Paul is not a 'real' apostle. In his letter, he does not criticise the lifestyle of the other apostles, but - using the Aramaic form of Peter's name, 'Cephas' - he nevertheless compares himself to them and asks:
Do we not have the right to our food and drink? Do not we have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? [First Corinthians 9.4-6]
In other words, Paul wants the Corinthians to know that his singleness and external work have not been imposed on him from financial necessity, or by other authorities in the Church, but have been freely chosen for the sake of the gospel. Along the way, however, he reveals that some of the other apostles were married, perhaps even travelled with their wives, and were financially supported by the Church. Paul says, in effect, 'This is my right as well, but I choose not to receive it.'
Now, why is all this at all significant? Why comment on Simon Peter's wife and mother-in-law when their presence in the New Testament is so negligible? Why not just focus on what the text itself actually focuses on, rather than what is mentioned only in passing?
The hullabaloo is now fading somewhat, but I'm sure many of you remember the stir about six years ago caused by Dan Brown's lamentable novel The Da Vinci Code, and the inevitable Hollywood film based on it, which claimed that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and that their marriage was covered up by the early Church in order to spread and maintain the false belief that Jesus was divine. Now, there's a technical academic term for Brown's book and the conspiracy theory it propagates, and it's 'rubbish'. So, just for the record, no, I don't think that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, or to anyone else, for that matter. However, a secondary point made by Dan Brown, which I do find more plausible, is that in general the New Testament has indeed, for some reason, downplayed the actual role of women in the life of Christ and the early Church - including the wives of the Apostles such as Peter and James the brother of the Lord. And this is something you can learn from reputable scholars, without the dubious baggage of Dan Brown.
Thus, as the immediate heirs of a faith that gave us the names of Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Rachel, Leah, Miriam, Zipporah, Rahab, Deborah, Ruth, Hannah, Bathsheba, Esther, and many, many other Old Testament women, how remarkable is it that the writers of the New Testament would fail to give us the name of Simon Peter's mother-in-law, let alone his wife? It is indeed extraordinary. For - although I don't think Jesus was married - Simon Peter was, and yet if it were not for these two allusions, mentioned only in passing, we would not know Simon Peter was married, despite all the many other stories about and descriptions of him in the New Testament. For, aside from these two very brief allusions, the existence of these particular New Testament women is never even acknowledged.
But this silence, if we don't notice it, can give us a somewhat inaccurate picture of what it actually meant for the disciples to follow Jesus. When Jesus first called Simon Peter from his nets and said, 'Follow me, and I will make you fish for people' [Mark 1.17], Jesus didn't just call him from his work and house - he also called him from his wife, and perhaps from his children as well. And Simon Peter went. So, nine chapters later, when Simon Peter says to Jesus in Mark 10.28, 'we have left everything and followed you,' that indicates a far more radical and disruptive commitment than we normally recognise. And not just for Simon Peter, but also for his wife - for what was she doing while he was wandering around Galilee with Jesus for three years? Particularly if she had children to raise as well? What did they do? How did they eat? Where did they live? We don't know - the texts don't tell us - they are not interested in that aspect of the story - their focus is elsewhere. But we can be certain that Simon Peter's commitment to Christ was shared by his wife, if only vicariously, and perhaps even grudgingly, by the very fact that they were separated for the extent of Christ's earthly ministry. [3]
Now let me be clear. Unlike Dan Brown, I am not criticising the New Testament authors for their lack of interest in these specific women - although I find it surprising - but I am rather drawing our attention to it. I'm not claiming a conspiracy. I'm pointing out that if Simon Peter and at least some of the other disciples were married, it brings out a whole new dimension of what it actually meant for them to follow Christ - what it meant for them, and what it meant for their families. It reminds us that the time when Christ entered their lives was not Ordinary Time, it was Extra-Ordinary Time. Like the recent blizzard in London, the arrival of Christ created massive confusion. It disrupted work and marriages and households, it caused chaos and consternation, it turned their whole society upside-down. The normal order of things was suspended, for the Kingdom of God was at hand.
But now, we say, we're in Ordinary Time. All that is over. And it was a long time ago. Jesus has gone back to Heaven - although unlike the Ghosts in Lewis's story, probably not in a bus. Things have returned to normal, and we can carry on as before. Thank goodness. But if you believe that, then you have not understood our Gospel lesson, and the silent but faithful witness of Simon Peter's nameless mother-in-law. New Testament scholars will tell you that Mark is very hard on the male disciples. He presents them in a rather negative light; they are rather thick and slow to understand. Despite all Jesus' teaching and time with them, they just don't 'get it'. But Simon Peter's mother-in-law gets it: 'For when [Jesus] came and took her by the hand and lifted her up...the fever left her; and she served them.'
May we, who have been delivered from the fever of this world by the healing hand of Christ on our lives, also be given the grace to serve others in his name.
Amen.
Notes:
1. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce: A Dream (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946), page 25.
2. Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), page 11.
3. I was asked after the sermon if perhaps the term 'mother-in-law' could be just a mistranslation for 'mother,' in which case the woman would simply be Simon Peter's mother. That's an excellent question which deserves further investigation, but (although I am not a Greek scholar) I don't think this is a likely possibility. I am not aware of any translation which renders the term as anything other than 'mother-in-law' in Mark, Matthew, or Luke. On the other hand, it is certainly possible that Simon Peter was widowed, and that his mother-in-law mentioned in the Gospels was the mother of his first wife, and thus that the wife mentioned by Paul in First Corinthians was from a second marriage (although remember that Paul's letter was probably written earlier than the Gospel of Mark). So it's at least possible that, mother-in-law or no mother-in-law, Simon Peter was not married during the time of Christ's earthly ministry. The picture is further complicated in that, when Simon Peter says to Jesus in Mark 10.28, 'we have left everything and followed you,' Jesus replies: 'Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life' [29-30]. In Jesus' list of things that have been left to follow him, 'wives' are notably absent, although they seem implied by 'children' just as surely as a 'mother-in-law' implies at least a previous wife. Also note that in First Corinthians 9.5, when Paul asked, 'Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife,' the actual Greek text says 'sister as wife,' which some English translations render as 'Christian wife' and some just as 'wife.' So perhaps 'sisters' in Mark 10.29-30 refers to wives as well as to natural sisters and female Christians. It is certainly a murky picture. But that's precisely my point. The very fact that we only have these two highly ambiguous references to Simon Peter's married state, the fact that wives are not mentioned directly in Jesus' comments in Mark 10, and the fact that even when Paul seems to certainly mean 'wife' he wrote 'sister as wife,' indicates that apostolic marriage was either an issue to be avoided, or of no substantial interest to the writers of the New Testament other than the occasion of Simon Peter to have a mother-in-law for Jesus to heal and for Paul to comment upon as it related to his own un-married state (see First Corinthians 7, particularly verses 8 and 25-35). And, either way, this shyness seems incongruous with the list of Old Testament women mentioned earlier, as well as many other New Testament women such as Elizabeth, Mary, Anna, Tabitha (Dorcas), Priscilla, etc. But again, as I go on to say in the sermon, I am not drawing conclusions here, but rather asking questions.
Sermon by: Robert MacSwain