In all of the Jesus movies we’ve seen over the years, we seldom get much of an impression of St. Peter’s mother-in-law. Granted, she is a very minor character in the Gospels, but I wonder how “minor” her role was in Peter’s daily routine. My friend, the former Episcopal rector of Big Spring, was fond of saying, “Behind every successful man there stands an utterly surprised mother-in-law.” Whether St. Peter’s mother-in-law was surprised at Jesus’ selection of him to head the apostolic college, we do not know. But probably so! :)

St. Mark records the story of the time when Jesus went to Peter and Andrew’s house and found Peter’s mother‑in‑l­aw in bed with a fever. Jesus immediately decides to cure her. He grasps her hand, and she is cured. He doesn’t chant any magic formulas. He doesn’t perform any showboating, forehead slapping antics. He doesn’t have to raise His voice and scream. Jesus took her by the hand, lifted her up, the fever left her and she got back about her life.

Sort of, I guess. Because the next thing we hear is how the entire population of the town was at the door of the house, bringing folks who were sick or possessed by demons–and expecting something to happen! People know what works and they show up in droves. So, after dinner, instead of having coffee and watching football, Jesus was expected to cure all the sick and demonized neighbors who were camping out on the front lawn. Of course, He responds in His characteristic way–and this is a hugely important point! 

Jesus heals the sick, not simply as a way of establishing His credentials as Messiah, not just as a way of validating His teaching, but simply because this is what God does! Author Ken Blue writes: “The more secure we are in the belief that God’s will is our health and that he personally works for it, the more freely we receive his healing and the more eagerly we work for it in others. Openly receiving healing for ourselves and confidently praying for others rests ultimately in our understanding of who God is. A theology of healing only arises when God is viewed as one who is concerned about sickness and willing to do something about it.”

This essay explores The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth by Dr. Gerald May and describes how the book illuminates my own experience of spiritual darkness, the implications of spiritual direction for recovery from addiction, and the meaning of May’s statement (p. 179) that “God is nada, no-thing” for the director’s understanding of God. This essay, based on personal experience and previous exposure to the theology of St. John of the Cross will interact with May’s text and my theological tradition to address these areas. 

The Perfect Storm is a film about a fishing boat that was caught in a storm developed off the coast of Massachusetts  from the confluence of a hurricane, a storm coming off the eastern seaboard of the US and a cold front dropping down from Canada. In the movie, they’re trying to push through the storm and at one point the captain decides the best chance for survival is to turn around and go back. whence they came. The plan is to go up the face of one of these 50 foot waves and turn the boat at the top, surfing back down. In the movie we get the scene in the wheelhouse where one of the crewmen and the captain survey the situation. The captain says, “Now, we’ve only got one chance at this.” And his mate says, “And if we don’t make it?” The captain replies, “Then we pray.”

Unfortunately, that’s typical of the way many Christians approach life. If nothing else works, having exhausted all other remedies, all other options, and having tried everything else, we fall back on prayer. While for most people that may be normal, we’re NOT “normal” people–St. Peter says we’re a “peculiar people!” (1 Pet 2:9) Prayer should be our natural FIRST response to the character of a loving God who says, “This is what I’m like. Come to me. Ask what you will.” Prayer isn’t dead religious ritual but the natural response of a person alive with the Holy Spirit in a loving relationship with God.

If your congregation is following the lectionary and your preacher doesn’t give in to American civil religion and pressure to focus on Independence Day or the SCOTUS ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act, the text you’ll hear from St. Mark’s gospel this coming Sunday (July 1) is about a healing performed by Jesus. It’s a great story that can really help mainline denominational congregations get a right understanding about "faith healing."

The woman in this story had been plagued for twelve years with an uncontrollable hemorrhage. Not only was this a humiliating and discouraging condition, but also her disease made her ceremonially unclean which meant she was to have no human contact, no friends to encourage her through her dark days and nobody to celebrate with her on a rare good one. This woman was in a desperate place. She tried every remedy and every doctor, while spending all her money on treatments, only to find that none of her doctors could do the job. And then in an act of complete personal poverty she turned to Jesus. She reached out in desperation, believing in Jesus’ goodness and His power to heal.