Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“After leaving the synagogue he entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked him about her. Then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. Immediately she got up and began to serve them.”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, January 21, 2025
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Today I’m puzzling over the term “rebuke” in this story. It makes it seem as though the fever is a sentient entity, something that has deliberately grabbed hold of Simon’s mother-in-law in order to prevent her from doing her job. Of course, my modern, Biology-educated mind sees that as ridiculous. A fever is an effect of some microbe or other in a body, not a cause unto itself. And a virus or bacterium has absolutely no idea (as we understand consciousness) of what it’s doing, so scolding it probably won’t have any effect.
But what kind of jumps out at me is the idea that maybe sin is like a fever. It’s the effect of something inside of us—childhood hurt, trauma, ignorance—that we aren’t entirely in control of. Not that this justifies bad behavior in any way. But as the adage goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” We sin because we’re hurting in some way. Jesus loves us even when we do things out of old patterns we might not even be aware of, and Jesus rebukes those things that we do. We are loved unconditionally as we are and we can be working to address whatever underlying causes make us act out. I don’t know if this holds theological water. It’s just what struck me.
What “fever” am I suffering from that needs Jesus to rebuke it?
