Hunting Down Jesus
Mark 1:29-39 and Isaiah 40:21-31
February 8, 2009
Some of you may remember a story I shared last summer about one of my family members, a precious little kitty named Bula, who loved to hide behind any old object in our house, and then jump out, paws stretched as high as possible to try and scare me or Lisa. Well, she has matured beyond that kitty playfulness and now has become much more adult—and being an adult leads to as many humorous stories as does being a child, so I have another Bula story for you this morning.
Lisa and I had noticed recently that Bula had begun to put on a winter layer of warmth, so we decided to get her some new cat food with a little less fat. For anyone who has animals at home, you surely know that when you introduce new types of food, you are supposed to mix it little by little with the old food, so the animal has time to adjust to the taste of the new food. Well, we did this appropriately and Bula, like the ever-hungry kitty she is, jumped up on the clothes dryer to get to her food bowl.
And, boy, did she start chowing down! Lisa and I were so impressed that she so quickly took to her new healthier food! So I stepped in a little closer for an intimate look at exactly how she was devouring this new combination of food so fast. And to my utter glee, I found out what was really happening. Bula only appeared to be eating all of her food, when all she was really doing was picking up a piece, tasting it for milliseconds, and then spitting it out if is wasn’t what she wanted. It was done so quickly it seemed as if she was eating it all. But no, it was kibble in, kibble out. Kibble in, kibble out. Kibble in, mmmmm, fatty food! Chomp, chomp, chomp! Oh how deep the similarities between humans and other animals are—for both of us it seems the unhealthier foods taste better! And what we want, what we desire, is certainly not always what is best for us, especially in large doses.
So what about that passage of ours today? And how in the world will our cat’s finicky eating fit into? I’ll see if I can find a way…
There are four distinct yet connected episodes in our passage from Mark today but I want to focus on two. Jesus’ healing of Simon’s mother-in-law and Simon’s hunting down Jesus.
And within these stories there are two sentences that call for our listening ears. The first is “Then the fever left [Simon’s mother-in-law] and she began to serve them.” The second is “And Simon and his companions hunted for [Jesus].” While these two sentences may seem disconnected and isolated from one another, I believe there are ways of bringing them together that can help us understand this passage in a new way.
“Then the fever left her and she began to serve them.” “And she began to serve them.” This sentence has been a curse for many women believers and theologians for decades if not longer. Because the woman who is healed of her fever immediately, without any questions asked, gets up and serves the men. Note that the passage doesn’t say she just serves Jesus, she serves all of them—all of the men in the room. Seemingly even more appalling this woman is not even given a name. She is simply referred to as “Simon’s mother-in-law.” A woman defined solely by her relationship to a man.
There are few passages in the New Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures that has the potential to domesticate women to the household more than this one. It almost seems as if Simon’s mother-in-law was healed just so the men could be waited on. Is that what is being said here? Is Simon’s mother-in-law just another woman who should serve men when needed? Is this the patriarchy of the ancient world coming thought loud and clear? Or is there a more subtle meaning behind the action of the healed woman?
We can get some clarification by looking at the actions of Simon in relation to those of his mother-in-law. Simon is one of the first disciples called by Jesus, along with his brother Andrew. He has been present with Jesus from his first casting out of a demon and he is with him throughout our passage for today. Indeed, Simon is with Jesus for the rest of the Gospel of Mark (though he is called Peter later). But though Simon is always with Jesus, he is also one of the densest characters in the gospel. Repeatedly the disciples and Simon-Peter don’t understand Jesus. They don’t get what he is doing or who he is, even though they have seen hundreds of miracles and healings and castings-out. As we learned last week, the demons know full well who Jesus is, but ironically, his disciples, the people closest to him, are slow in understanding. Even at the end of Jesus’ life, let us remember, it is Simon who denies Jesus out of his own fear.
And there is an echo of Simon’s denseness in our passage today. It is found in the word Mark uses to describe Simon’s search for Jesus. Mark says that Simon and his companions “hunted for Jesus.” This is the only time in the entire New Testament that this Greek word for “hunting” or “pursuing” is used [katadiw,kw], which makes it significant. And if we look at the Hebrew parallel we find the word @d;r' (radaf). This is one of the easiest words to remember in Hebrew because it sounds like what it means. Radaf means to pursue or chase or persecute. Such as he “rode off” on his horse after his enemy. “Rode off.” Radaf.
In the Hebrew, this word is usually not used positively. It is Laban who pursues or hunts down Jacob after treating him poorly. It is pharaoh who pursues and hunts down the Israelites after they leave Egypt. There are curses that pursue the Israelites when they do not follow God. To @d;r', to pursue, to hunt down, means one hopes to overtake their goal and to capture what they have set their eyes on. It is about ownership, about power over someone or something else, and frequently it is about vengeance.
Now when Mark says Simon and his companions “hunted for [Jesus]” I do not believe there was vengeance in Simon’s heart. But perhaps Mark was hinting that Simon was doing more than simply looking for Jesus. He was desperately pursuing Jesus. Simon had been a fisherman before being called by Jesus to ministry. And as a fisherman, Simon was essentially a hunter. He hunted for fish, he caught them in his net, he brought them to shore and he sold them. In essence he became owner the fish by pursuing and overtaking them. This was his life and it was what he knew.
So on a spiritual level, perhaps this is what Mark is hinting that Simon and his companions were doing. Jesus had left his followers alone before sunrise and they were hunting him down. They knew Jesus was powerful, and they wanted to follow him, they wanted to catch him, they wanted to learn from him, and they wanted a bit of his power.
Remember, it is the disciples who argue later in Mark, not once but twice, about who is the greatest among them and who will sit at the right hand of Jesus—they want to know who among them has received the most power from Jesus, who among them is the most righteous and faithful follower, who among them has hunted down Jesus and captured his essence. And the answer to their desperate pursuing is always the same: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” and “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
And this brings us all the way back to Simon’s mother-in-law. She had one experience with Jesus. He healed her and then he moved on. And in these brief two verses in which she appears, she grasps immediately what the disciples will be hunting down for the rest of their lives. That faith in Jesus means service to others. Because Simon’s mother-in-law does not serve the people of her household out of womanly duty or patriarchal expectation. If her service was merely out of masculine expectation, then the author would not have needed to write it down. If she served because that’s what all women did at that time, then why write it down?
Furthermore, and this is important, the Greek word used for the service of Simon’s mother-in-law is diakone,w (di-a-ko-NE-o). This is the very same word that is used to describe how the angels served Jesus when he was in the wilderness being tempted. And it is the same word from which the church’s notion of “deacon” comes from—one who serves others, not just in body but in mind and soul as well.
As I read over this passage this week, I couldn’t help but think of how much Simon seems to have in common with Elmer Fudd. Elmer Fudd was a hunter twying to kill a wabbit. Simon was hunting down Jesus. And both Elmer Fudd and Simon never realize that what they are looking for is right under their noses. To this day I still chuckle at how that wascawy wabbit Bugs Bunny could avoid detecting simply by putting on glasses and a hat. Or by sneaking up behind Elmer Fudd with a gun and asking casually “What’s up Doc?” with Elmer never realizing that the “hunter” he was talking to is actually the object of his endeavor.
That same irony, or lack of awareness, is exactly what we find in Simon. Because the example of service set by his own family member—his mother-in-law—is exactly the type of action that Jesus over and over tries to get Simon and the disciples to accept as holy and even the very key to the kingdom of heaven.
And do we not also have times when we become Elmer Fudds as well? Times when we desire so strongly to grasp Jesus, to hunt him down, to pin him to the ground and make him tell us all the secrets of faith and life? Times when our search for ultimate truths leads us to overlook the simple service that is a potent model of faith. Times when we hunt for the one perfect doctrine or dogma, while forgetting to seek ways of serving one another with love and grace. Times when, like my cat Bula, we pick out only what tastes good, only what we think is right, and spit out the parts of faith that may seem less enjoyable, but are in reality the truly nourishing parts of life—serving others, giving of ourselves, showing hospitality and humility, working gracefully with people who differ from us.
There is a sentence from the writer Walker Percy that I came across this week which says “The first thing a man remembers is longing and the last thing he is conscious of before death is exactly the same longing.” That longing may be what Simon felt as he set off in the early morning to hunt down Jesus. A longing for answers. A longing for the power of faith. A longing to grasp Jesus fully and have all his questions answered.
But with a bit of frustration, we must realize that there are parts of faith which must remain unanswerable. We can never hunt down Jesus, because Jesus, like our faith, is elusive and can never be defined by one person completely. We only get the briefest of touches with the divine and those small moments leave merely a residue of understanding.
Despite this fact it is important and it is my hope that our longing for God, like Simon’s longing for Jesus, never fades and that our hunt for the divine is always an inspired one. But, unlike Simon, as we hunt for our mysterious God we must never lose sight of the profound example of Simon’s mother-in-law. Because it is her path of service to others that may very well be the straightest trail to hunting down our ever-elusive God. Amen.
