Seeing the Needs of Others
sermon based on Mark 1:29-39
by Rev. Randy L Quinn

A few weeks ago, I spoke about party invitations. Today, we are like the person who arrives at the party and recognizes the need to help in the kitchen or to open the door for new guests who are arriving. In today’s text we hear what it means to see the other guests the way Jesus sees them. We turn our attention from ourselves to Jesus, from what we value to what he values.

I remember talking to a man who loved to go to large cities and stand on a street corner looking up at the buildings around him. If he kept his focus on one particular spot, it wouldn’t take long before a crowd was gathering around, trying to see whatever it was that he was trying to see.

That’s when he would stop looking at the building and begin to watch the crowds. They had no idea why they were looking at the building, but often they would find something worth pointing out for others to see!

I want to look at the things Jesus is looking at.
I want to see the things he is seeing.
I want to look so intently at the things he is looking at that others will stand around and wonder what I’m looking at.
I want to allow Jesus to use my eyes and my energies to address needs in our world today.

With that in mind, I invite you to imagine what it is that Jesus was seeing as we read our text for today:

Read Text.

It’s easy to read this text and see the various ways Jesus heals people. Beginning with last week’s story of Jesus in the synagogue, we realize he doesn’t care where he is, he will heal those who are near him – whether it is a man in the synagogue, a woman in her home, people on the streets, or even in lands far away (Mark 1:26, 31, 34, 39).

Clearly, we can never do what he was able to do. In that sense, this passage is about him, not us. It conveys his ability to heal, not our sickness. We are reading about his power, not our weakness.

As we witness the events taking place in the scriptures, we are more like the disciples than we are Jesus. Still, I wonder what was going on in their minds?

Here’s what I think was likely to have happened. Jesus and the disciples leave the synagogue after worship. They go to Peter’s house and find that his mother-in-law is sick. I suspect Peter’s wife was frantically trying to do all that she normally did – as well as what her mother normally did; she was trying to compensate for the absence of her mother in the kitchen.

If it were our house, I know I would pitch in and try to help, too. Maybe Peter began to set the table. Maybe Andrew took the kids outside to play.

But all of those activities help prepare for their own meal. Jesus isn’t interested in the meal. He’s concerned about the sick woman upstairs. So he goes to her. He does what we may not be able to do – he heals her. But what we can do is to express our concern for her, what we can do is include her in the conversations, what we can do is see the people that have needs, rather than the activities that need to be done.

But that’s only the beginning.

After the meal is over, a crowd begins to gather outside the house. “The whole city was gathered around the door,” it says (Mk. 1:33)! Can you imagine what that would look like?

Whenever there have been tragic events in the news, there is a media frenzy around the home of the families involved – sometimes it’s the home of the victims, sometimes it’s the perpetrators. Like him or not, think he deserved what he got or not (I tend to think he got off lightly), but there was a media frenzy surrounding former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich for several weeks. It wasn’t literally the whole city, but it probably felt like the whole world was watching.

If you lived in his house, you might want to pull the drapes and lock the door. If you had people standing in the streets to peek into your lives, you might try to escape out the back door. You might pretend to not be home.

And while Peter may have felt that way, Jesus sees the needs of the people. He seems to be unaffected by the high energy of the event as he meets with them one by one, listens to their story, and offers a blessing. Like the meal earlier in the day, he wasn’t concerned with his own needs, in this case his need for privacy; instead he kept his focus on the people around him.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t have needs. He is fed and he later goes off to pray. Of course, while he is praying, people are looking for him again, although this time they express a truth deeper than they know as they claim that “everyone is searching for [Jesus],” (Mk. 1:37). But it really looks like they are selfishly seeking him out – so he can meet more of their own needs.

But Jesus sees the needs of people in other places. And so off he goes.

As I read this passage, as I try to discern what Jesus is doing and what Jesus is seeing, I am not only struck by his clear and consistent focus on people and their needs; I am also aware of the tendency of people around him – including us, perhaps – to look at the needs they have. The pattern is so persistent that a few chapters later, after having witnessed Jesus feed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread (Mk. 6:34-44), Jesus again looks at a crowd and sees their need for food (Mk. 8:2). The response of the disciples is clearly biased by their own need for food – they want Jesus to send them away so they can have their own meal. But Jesus isn’t interested in what the disciples need; he is interested in how the needs can be met.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we’re much better than the disciples. The needs of others, when we see them, are too often seen as hurdles to be overcome so that our needs can be met.

We’re in line at the grocery store and the person in front of us is struggling to get their wallet out. Maybe they have limited eyesight. Maybe they have severe arthritis. We see their need, and offer to help. But our offer is rooted in our desire to move the line along so our groceries will be scanned and we can pay and we can go home.

We hear the news about the economic recession we’re in, and our first response is to make sure we have enough to get our own families through the next few years. We don’t always imagine the people who are most affected by it.

When we read about stores closing, we know it will make it harder for us to get what we need, but we don’t always see the needs of the people who once worked in those stores.

Certainly there are exceptions. But for the most part, we tend to see the needs of others as an impediment to having our own needs met. It’s a scarcity mentality that forgets there are no limits to God’s grace. We forget that the invitation we received has been issued to anyone and to everyone.

Stephen Covey tells the story of being in a New York subway car one Sunday morning2. In the car with him were several unruly children and a young man who appeared to be their father. In an effort to maintain some peace in the subway, he asked the man if he could keep his eyes on his own children.

Clearly the children needed supervision. But the reason the objection was made had more to do with his own need for quiet, not the man’s need to be a good parent, and not the children’s need for proper boundary setting. The man immediately apologized and then offered an explanation. They had just come from the hospital where his wife – and the children’s mother – had died.

Knowing that piece of information changed their relationship. It was a shift of paradigm from his personal need for quiet to the needs of this family. Stephen Covey and everyone else in the subway car began to respond differently to the man and to the children.

It’s the kind of paradigm shift that Jesus does in every portion of our text today. Peter’s mother-in-law’s sickness is not an impediment to his own meal; it becomes an opportunity to minister to her. The people at the door are not a distraction for him, but an opportunity to make the community well. A time of prayer turns from personal introspection to a revelation of needs outside the community.

When I was in seminary, I had fun breaking stereotypes in a part time job I had at a Community College. I was the secretary for the evening class instructors. It was hard for some people to see a man in that chair when they came to school – and I took more than a little pleasure in watching their reactions.

But I learned an important lesson in that job, a lesson that has helped me immensely as a pastor. And it had to do with a paradigm shift. I was often frustrated by the interruptions I was getting while I was working.

Someone would come in and ask for something while I was on the phone or a teacher would call while I was typing test sheets for another instructor. It was worse between class sessions as several teachers would flood the office all at once.

My frustration level changed one evening when I realized that dealing with interruptions was my primary job; what I was trying to do in between was only preparing me for the next interruption. Once I learned that, I was rarely frustrated again.

It was a shift of paradigms.

Too often in the church, our primary paradigm is to meet our needs.
We ask what people want in worship, for instance, rather than asking what God wants.
We ask what will bring people into our church so we can grow rather than asking how we can help people meet and know Jesus.
We ask what programs our new Volunteer Coordinator will be planning rather than asking how he can teach us to plan our own activities.

In order to look through the eyes of Jesus, we have to shift the way we think. And when that happens, we not only recognize the invitation God has made to us, we begin to find ways to share the invitation with others. We not only send in our R.S.V.P., we also encourage others to send in theirs. We not only learn from Jesus, we begin to teach others about Jesus.

And perhaps most significantly, we find a way to allow God to use us to meet the needs of others.

And then what we do can become an answer to the prayers of others as the good news is experienced in their lives and in our midst.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

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Selected Bibliography

Barclay, William. The Gospel of Mark (The Daily Study Bible Series). Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975.
Quinn, Randy L. “Hurry Up and Wait.” Sermon preached February 2, 2003 on board USNS Kilauea (T-AE 26); based on Mark 1:29-39.
Schweizer, Eduard (translated by Donald H. Madvig). The Good News According to Mark. Atlanta: John Knox, 1970.
Soards, Marion; Thomas Dozeman; Kendall McCabe. Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Year B: Advent/Christmas/Epiphany). Nashville: Abingdon, 1993.
Williamson, Lamar, Jr. Mark (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching). Louisville: John Knox, 1983.
Wingeier, Douglas E., editor. Keeping Holy Time (Studying the New Revised Common Lectionary, Year B). Nashville: Abingdon, 2002.