Rembrandt: Healing of Peter's Mother-in-Law (1660)
(Please page down for the poem on the Markan text.)
Isaiah 40:21-31
Love Letter
There is no way I might construe
A poem that somehow could compare
To this, as if I'd e'er accrue
The faith and wisdom here laid bare.
This poet asks rhetorically
Why we might think we are alone,
Asserting categorically
What we have often claimed we've known.
And yet, though known, we're prone to act
As if it were the other way,
Imag'ning God as some abstract
Celestial concept, or cliché.
Isaiah shows another route,
Proclaiming overwhelming might
From One whose giving, absolute,
E'en lowly poets still recite.
Scott L. Barton
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;
who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
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.
To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power,
not one is missing.
Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
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.
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.
+ + +
Mark 1:29-39
Up from the Sickbed and Right to the Stove!
Up from the sickbed and right to the stove!
Into her work, Peter's moth'r-in-law dove!
Funny how quickly to work did she fly,
Asking, it seems, neither wherefore nor why;
Then the whole city showed up, while they pressed
Jesus to cure all the sick and possessed;
Out to the desert he went then to pray;
Simon and friends, showing up in dismay,
Maybe helped Jesus decide to move on -
Get out of town, while he could, before dawn.
Work's never done, and all need the good news,
Grace to the next one will God always choose.
Scott L. Barton
[In a sermon at Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Joanna
Adams once called Mark 1:31 one of the funniest verses in the Bible:
"Speaking of get up and go! Straight from the sickbed to the
cookstove!"]
As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house
of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was
in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her
by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve
them.
That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were
sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door.
And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many
demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and
went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions
hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching
for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may
proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.’ And he
went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and
casting out demons.
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