Lectionary Commentaries for February 4, 2024
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Year B)

If the vibe of last week’s Capernaum synagogue narrative was public and confrontational, this week’s pericope picks up the same apocalyptic story with a decidedly private, even mystical feel. Mark 1:29–39 brings us into home, hearth, prayer, and purpose to experience Jesus’ gospel of God from the inside out.

The sacred time is still the same. This more private narrative in 1:29–39 still presupposes the Sabbath observance and all its meanings from 1:21–28. At this point, however, Jesus and his four disciples leave the synagogue and enter a nearby house, the home of Simon and Andrew.

It is telling that the need for Jesus’ ministry is found in private spaces, too. Simon’s mother-in-law, who lived in the home, had come down with a fever. Andrew and Simon were keen to update Jesus on her situation when they entered.

Apocalyptic at home

By now, those of us familiar with Jesus narratives expect that a healing is at hand. What is remarkable about this healing, however, is its brevity and its tenderness. In verse 31 Jesus “came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.” The action is simple and direct and not as elaborate as some other healing stories. Here the embodied action speaks volumes.

Scholars like Joel Marcus note the resonance of Jesus taking the hand of a person he was healing and its link to “lifting her up” themselves as acts reminiscent of resurrection (for example, the delayed approach to the young girl in Mark 5:21–43).¹

With a similar economy of language, Simon’s mother-in-law is restored and begins to serve them. Please note that Mark’s use of the verb “serve” in this context is the same one used to describe the angels’ service to Jesus in the wilderness back in 1:12. We may be in a home, but the horizon of service is still the divine purpose and not just another reinscribing of traditional gender roles.

Apocalyptic on the front porch as night falls

Mark is careful to mention time changes more than once in 1:29–39. And we should expect it as readers since all of this continues to be related to Sabbath practice. With the arrival of evening at sunset, the Sabbath is concluded. And now, like some seed sprouting vigorously in the dark, it seems the whole town is joining in the emerging healing and restoration. Still at Simon and Andrew’s home, Jesus has brought to him all the town’s sick and possessed people. Mark, as narrator, wants to help readers draw the right conclusions with his phrase “and the whole city was gathered around the door.”

People are beginning to throng Jesus, and it all begins at the home of Simon and Andrew just as the Sabbath ends. Jesus obliges by healing many and casting out even more demons. Yet he still desires to keep his identity under wraps and so, as in 1:21–28, makes sure to keep the demons from disclosing anything. The reader is invited to be in the know here with a demonic clausal reference easily passed over: “because they knew him.” Mark is not the most artful narrator, but the way he tells the story brings out in passing that this Jesus is something more.

And all this is important. Not because the events happen in an important place or to important people, but because Jesus’ own epiphany is both hidden and revealed. The demons were silenced because they knew his significance. And they were silenced, and the secret kept, at the door of a home with a mother-in-law in a city where the sick and the possessed just kept showing up. Such is the coming reign at the end of Jesus’ Sabbath in Capernaum. And here the very gospel of God has come to a home and to persons at the sunset of the day at a city in Galilee.

A mystical turn to prayer: Jesus hidden and revealed

Most scholars interpret the material toward the end of this pericope as “summary” sections. I do not deny the truth of that. Mark likes to offer summaries at various points in the Gospel, usually as a way of identifying where the action shifts, but also to highlight the general acclaim and response that Jesus is receiving. That’s all true.

Even so, I want to stick to the micro-narrative level here. My sense is that Mark wants to highlight just one more thing about the epiphany of this Jesus healer/exorcist who aims to be both hidden and revealed in a home in Capernaum. The narrative points out that the next thing Jesus does is to steal away and pray. Mark is even careful to note the time of day: “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”

Who does this? I do pray, but I am certainly no rise-and-shine mystic. I live in the noontime brightness on the other side of disenchantment, which is just a few miles north of Boston. Yet Mark has been careful to portray Jesus as something special: a charismatic, apocalyptic healer whose hand and touch matter for the well-being of others. Yet this same Jesus prays, like many a mystic, to be grounded in God. The disciples and all the others are more perturbed than understanding about his departure to pray alone. Mark even says that in their desperation to find Jesus they “hunted him down” (katediõxen).

But they did not really need to find him. Instead, fresh out of his time of prayer, he announces something of his purpose to proclaim. And only here can any ensuing summary make sense. This Jesus, grounded in his deep relation to God, announces that it is time to go through all of Galilee to preach, exorcise, and heal. But the summary is not the point. The point is God … and Jesus prayerfully rooted within.

The inside-out apocalyptic gospel of 1:29–39

That’s why I call this pericope “the gospel from the inside out.” Jesus is beginning his ministry at Capernaum in Galilee. And he starts with a public confrontation with apocalyptic forces in the middle of a synagogue. And yet, it does more. It goes also to the home, to the hearth, and to prayer, while moving ever toward an apocalyptic purpose grounded in the very Godness of God.

Notes

1. Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8, Anchor Bible 27 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 199.

This poem is a display in exilic hope. The hope this poem provides is ultimately grounded in the claim that the God of the Bible is able to influence history beyond where inertia might otherwise take it. Because God sits above creation as both its originator and its sovereign, God is able to bring “princes to naught” and make the “rulers of the earth as nothing” (verse 23). Those are very bold claims, especially coming from a poet whose community had experienced defeat and shame. The fact that his words are bold probably also means that they were hard to believe, especially given the circumstances in which this audience found itself. 

The author points to history, adorned in the guise of agricultural metaphor, to underscore his point: 

Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
    scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
    and the tempest carries them off like stubble. (verse 24) 

For Isaiah 40, the ephemerality of human kingdoms is evidence of God’s sovereignty. Human regimes are like “dust in the wind,” swept away by natural forces like storms. Change is constant, especially when it comes to human societies. 

Just because change is in the air, however, doesn’t mean that it will be good for anyone involved in the fallout. The additional rhetorical burden that Isaiah 40 bears is to convince its audience that God is not only capable of effecting change, but that God is also capable of moving history toward redemption. In these lines, God’s power and God’s goodness are on trial. 

And in order to do that credibly, the poem also needs to acknowledge the real and legitimate pain of its audience:

Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and assert, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”? (verse 27)

The Jews of Isaiah’s time felt overlooked and cast aside by their God. The language of hiddenness is not particular to Isaiah. Psalm 10:11 states, “They think in their heart, ‘God has forgotten; he has hidden his face; he will never see it.’” In many ways, the hidden face of God should be read alongside—and in contrast to—the shining, beaming face of God that we hear in the Aaronic blessing: 

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26) 

When the poet says that God hides, he is saying that God’s favor, delight, and smile are not felt in everyday life. This is an experience that people have throughout their lives in moments of acute pain, tremendous loss, et cetera. But for ancient Judah, the feeling was also corporate, dramatic, and deeply diminishing. 

Having named this pain in verse 27, the poem shifts its attention to convincing the audience of two things: that God the creator is powerful and that there is a strange, mysterious power available to the weak, the weary, and those who wait. 

The poem grounds these claims in God’s nature as creator: 

The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable. (verse 28) 

As creator of the entire earth, God was never out of reach for God’s people. Many deities in the ancient world were associated with particular locations and therefore limited in their scope of power (see, for example, Deuteronomy 32:8). That is not the case with God. The God of Israel created the whole earth, does not grow weary, and is infinitely wise. 

What’s more, the creative power of God is especially available to those who are faint and powerless. Yhwh is the God of tired people. 

But all of this still leaves the audience with a significant problem—and one that remains true in various forms for both Judaism and Christianity: When one worships a God who makes promises, one must reckon with the fact that many—if not most—of them appear to be unfulfilled. There is a delay between God’s commitments and their realization. The author of Isaiah 40 recognizes this problem and draws on a response that should be recognizable to Christians: waiting in hope. 

He gives power to the faint
    and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary,
    and the young will fall exhausted,
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint. (verses 29–31)

For Isaiah 40, there is a power at work in faithful waiting. In waiting, one can attain a strength that exceeds the vigor of youth and allows one to take flight into hope. 

Hopeful waiting is a deeply important Christian practice. In fact, if one considers the broader strokes of salvation history, Christians exist within a long season of waiting, between Christ’s resurrection and the promised eschaton. In that long interim, Christians find themselves bound to the realities of a deeply tragic world that is ravaged by human sin. At the same time, they are also asked to cling to promises that God will one day make this world right, joyful, and just. 

This is the deep and fundamental tension at the heart of Christianity: the claim that God is faithful and good must be asserted in the face of a daily onslaught of contradictory evidence. 

This seemingly endless delay is enough for some to reject the God of the Bible altogether as untrustworthy, unreliable, or even cruel. What parent—divine or otherwise—could stand to see so many children suffer over so long a time, especially when they have the power to prevent it? For some, that’s the last straw. 

But for Isaiah 40, God’s goodness is only hidden for a time. God’s work of bringing cruel princes to naught is slow and grinding but, ultimately, inevitable. History bears witness to God’s sovereignty and God’s goodness.  

Psalm 147 is the second of five “Alleluia” hymns that close the Psalter.¹ Each of the last five psalms starts and ends with the imperative, “Praise the Lord!” (Hebrew, halelu; Greek, alleluia). Together, these psalms put a final exclamation point on the book that the Jewish community calls “Praises” (tehillim). In other words, the Psalter closes with an extended call to praise that is directed at the Psalter’s audience.² More on this call to praise below.

The psalm itself conforms to the standard pattern of the hymn of praise. The psalm has three stanzas (verses 1-6, 7-11, 12-20), each of which opens with a call to praise and then continues by recounting reasons for praise. The lectionary for this Sunday includes only the first two stanzas.

The call to praise is iterated four times in the psalm—once at the start of each stanza and once at the very end:

verse 1 “Praise the Lord! How good it is to sing praises … and a song of praise is fitting.”
verse 7 “Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make melody to our God on the lyre.”
verse 12 “Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem! Praise your God, O Zion!”
verse 20c “Praise the Lord!”

What should be noted about the call to praise is that it, quite literally, calls for a response. The audience is called to open our mouths, lift up our voices, and join in the psalmist’s joyous song. The fact that the book of Psalms ends with five psalms that include calls to praise, and with a final psalm (150) that is nothing but an extended call to praise, means that the audience is enjoined to take up the songs that we have learned from the Psalter, and to sing those songs out in the world.

In general, we tend to think of the purpose of singing in worship as something we do as part of our relationship with God, as something we do for God. But the direction of the call to praise at the end of the Psalter is a little different. We are enjoined here to come to worship, to learn the praise of God, and to go out into the world and sing these songs (these psalms) out there. And the praise that this psalm calls for has a specific content: it is testimony about God.

Speaking in a general sense, there are two types of praise—on the one hand, there is praise sung to God; on the other hand, there is praise sung about God. Praise that is sung to God generally uses the second person. For example, “All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord” (145:10). Praise that is sung about God generally uses the third person. For example, “The Lord lifts up the downtrodden; he casts the wicked to the ground” (147:6).

Psalm 147 is exclusively praise of the second type—praise that is sung about God. The purpose of this type of praise is testimony. As Patrick Miller has written, “The purpose of praise [is] … to bear witness to all who hear that God is God.”³

The content of the testimony of Psalm 147 ranges between two poles—creation and redemption. In terms of creation, the psalm bears witness to God as the creator and the sustainer:

He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names. (verse 4)
He covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills. (verse 8)
He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry. (verse 9)
And so on … (see verses 15-18)

Focusing on God as creator, the psalm emphasizes both the initial act of creation, but also the ongoing, sustaining actions of the creator—providing food, sending rain, and so on.

In terms of redemption, the psalm bears witness to God’s acts of blessing and redemption in Israel’s history—especially the act of restoring Jerusalem following the Babylonian exile (verses 2, 13). Here, the psalm attends to the scandal of election.

In the New Testament, the scandal of the good news is found in the proclamation of the incarnation of God in one human person (Jesus of Nazareth) who was crucified and died. In the Old Testament, a similar scandal is found in the proclamation that God chose one nation to be blessed as a blessing to all the other nations—Israel.

The psalm calls for us to lift up our voices and sing of God’s history with that nation—rebuilding Jerusalem, healing the brokenhearted, strengthening the gates of the city, granting peace, declaring the divine word and commandments to Israel (verse 19). The scandal is summarized in verse 19: “He has not dealt thus with any other nation.”

But because God did choose Abraham and Sarah and their offspring, healing and reconciliation and blessing have flowed out through Israel to reach all of us.

Praise the Lord!

Notes

1. Commentary first published on this site on Feb. 5, 2012.
2. See Beth Tanner, “Rethinking the Enterprise: What Must be Considered in Formulating a Theology of the Psalms,” in Rolf Jacobson, ed., Soundings in the Theology of the Psalms (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), 139-150.
3. Patrick D. Miller, Interpreting the Psalms (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 68.

Paul’s apostleship was a distinctive one. This Jew firmly believed he was sent to proclaim the good news to gentiles. Both Paul himself and Acts tell us that he visited Jerusalem to seek the support of the leaders there (Galatians 2:1–10, Acts 15:1–35; Paul would be upset if we called it approval) for his gentile mission. Yet he had no direct ties with any of them or any of Jesus’ firsthand disciples. He had not encountered the historical Jesus. Instead, his apostleship depended largely on his success in founding communities and maintaining good relationships with them. Letter-writing was one of the crucial ways he stayed in touch with those churches.  

The Corinthian correspondence shows that Paul’s apostleship was a somewhat precarious one. Paul and the Corinthians exchanged several letters over some period of time (2 Corinthians is a collection of multiple letters). Their relationship had ups and downs, and Paul’s apostolic authority was one of the reasons. After he wrote 1 Corinthians and made his second visit to Corinth, and after other apostles visited Corinth, some Corinthians complained about Paul, saying, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Corinthians 10:10). 

We do not know what led Paul to discuss his apostleship in 1 Corinthians 9; he still seems to speak as a trustworthy adviser in this first letter. Paul presents his own defense to those who want to examine him (verse 3) and wants the Corinthians to know that their church, nothing else, is the proof of his apostleship. He writes: “If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord” (verse 2). His apostleship does not require any other endorsement than his work of the proclamation of the good news. 

The rest of 1 Corinthians 9, including the lesson for today, develops his pleadings. What does the proclamation of the gospel entail? Paul argues that, first and foremost, proclaiming the good news means being less concerned about rights and more focused on the call. In 9:3–7, Paul distinguishes himself from other apostles, including Cephas and the brothers of Jesus, who seemingly enjoyed certain rights. Those rights are the right to their food and drink, the right to be accompanied by a wife, and most importantly, the right to refrain from working for a living (verses 4–6). He and his companions could also claim those rights but would not because he does not want to “put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ” (verse 12). 

The Greek word for “right” here is exousia, which the New Revised Standard Version translates as “liberty” in the previous chapter (8:7). So Paul’s message on careful and thoughtful use of exousia resonates also in this chapter. Here, Paul believes that exercising exousia in order to be self-sufficient is a better way to follow Jesus’ command: “Those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (verse 14). It is this call that determines his apostleship. 

In the same light, proclaiming the good news comes with no reward. By reward, Paul means wage (verse 17; the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition translates it as “wage”). Paul makes it clear he does not expect any wage from his work for the gospel. Why? Because he is obliged to proclaim the good news. There will be misery if he does not preach the good news (verse 16b). It might be surprising that he does not view apostleship as a voluntary vocation. But this is to amplify that his apostleship is what he is called to, not what he chose. It looks like Paul did not receive any financial support from the Corinthians; instead, he asks for the collection for the believers in Jerusalem (16:1–4). 

Interestingly, Paul sometimes did receive financial support for his ministry, particularly from the believers in Philippi (Philippians 4:15–18; 2 Corinthians 11:8–9). Yet, he was extremely cautious about monetary gifts from the Corinthian church, possibly because some Corinthians understood such support as compensation. Paul teaches the Corinthians not to associate spiritual things Paul and his companions sowed with fleshly things (verse 11). He does not seek a reward for the work he is obliged to do. It is this obligation that sets apart his apostleship. 

Lastly, proclaiming the good news involves contextualization. In 9:19–23, Paul calls himself an apostle free from all. Basically, he is a free agent with no supervisor to report to or company to work exclusively for, other than the Christ who called him. Paul continues to write that this freedom allows him to be enslaved to all (verse 19). This description, like his self-identification as a slave of Christ (Romans 1:1), is problematic rhetoric since Paul was freeborn. It can be best understood as an expression of self-emptiness. 

The following verses show how he engages with different groups for the sake of the gospel. To the Jews, he proclaims as a Jew; to those outside the law, he proclaims as one outside the law; to the weak, he proclaims as a weak person (verses 20–22). He adapts himself to each context because the gospel is never one-size-fits-all. Contextuality is not to bend the gospel to fit different cultures but to respect diversity among all of God’s creation. The gospel is open and inviting in order that more people will respond to it. As one called to preach the good news to more, Paul is required to become “all things to all people” (verse 22). It is this fluidity that characterizes his apostleship. 

Apostleship is manifested in many different forms of mission and evangelism today. Whatever one is called to do for the sake of the good news, this passage reminds us that proclaiming the gospel brings us moments of self-examination, at which we are faced with vulnerabilities. As we prepare ourselves for Lent, this reminder may lead us to a time of deeper reflection.