Sermonstudio

It was a powerful event in the life of Peter's family. His
mother-in-law had been sick for a long time. She had tried
everything. Peter's wife was deeply troubled and preoccupied with
her mother's condition. Lately they had experienced some
ambivalent feelings about Peter's new interest in this itinerant
preacher. This Jesus he spoke of seemed a nice enough man and
Peter seemed interested in making the fellow his friend. But it
was not entirely comfortable for the family when Peter invited
Jesus to stay with them at this troubled time. "Stay whenever you
like," Peter probably offered. And it soon sounded like Jesus
might even make their home his Galilean headquarters.
Now on top of it all it seemed like the family business was
starting to suffer. Peter was spending less and less time fishing
and even less time than that keeping the boats and equipment in
good shape. The bills were starting to pile up. Slowly but surely
it was becoming clear that Peter had more than a passing interest
in this Jesus of Nazareth. As time went on it was becoming clear
that his friendship was more than any of them expected. Jesus was
about to take the area by some kind of storm and he was about to
take Peter with him.
When Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law the event healed more
than Peter's mother-in-law. It was an event that did much

to bring Peter's whole family along in the faith. It was an
experience that showed all of them the balance that has to exist
if life is going to be healthy. In many ways this healing in
Peter's family demonstrated to the early followers of Jesus -- and
those of us who come later -- that the life of faith is a life of
some tensions and important balances. Serving our own needs must
be kept in balance with serving the needs of others. Fellowship
and the relationships of community need to be weighed against our
needs for solitude. Both are necessary dimensions to a whole and
healthy spirit. There is a mission to accomplish nearby and far
away.
Take the willingness of Jesus to do something so intensely
important for a friend and the friend's family. The incident
serves to remind me of the sensitivity of our Lord to the family
demands he was about to place upon all of them when he called
Peter to the ministry. Peter would one day have a remarkable
leadership role in building the kingdom of God Jesus established.
That would not be without sacrifice, however, from Peter, and on
the part of Peter's family. The ultimate hardship of Peter's
martyrdom for the cause of the kingdom would be only the final
price they would pay. He would be away from home a lot. He would
give up the security of a successful family business for an
income that was hit and miss at best. Dependent upon his hard
work and skill up to now, they would soon learn the contingencies
and challenges of being dependent upon the generosity of others.
When our Lord entered Peter's home and lifted Peter's mother-
in-law to health Jesus healed much more. He demonstrated the
healthy balance of God's sensitivity to our needs. He revealed
his concern for Peter's total well-being and the well-being of
Peter's family. Jesus addressed the needs of the whole person --
Peter. That meant the health of Peter's wife and her needs. That
meant the life and needs of his mother-in-law, the grandmother of
Peter's children. I expect that the whole family understood
Peter's commitment to Jesus in a new way when the Lord healed the
grandmother of those children. "So that is why 'dad' is following
him!" the children

might have thought. Now they would understand on a whole new
level why Peter believed his friend to be so powerful, so
important, so worthy of loyalty. No doubt Jesus knew that the
whole family needed this kind of healing so they would feel their
own loyalty could be placed where Peter was placing his.
Another tension would always be presented in Jesus' own
welcome of the crowds on the one hand and his need for solitude
on the other. The need for quiet time and space for oneself also
is part of the balance that our Lord modeled and which we need.
"Whole cities" crowded around him and he welcomed their pressing
upon him -- sometimes. At other times he would retreat to a lonely
or deserted place. Even though "everyone was still searching for
him ..." he would recognize his own need for quiet and peaceful
renewal. Jesus needed people and he needed privacy. Faith is both
social and personal. Our health is to be found keeping both in
balance. Now we emphasize the one; then we take care of the
other, attending to both over the course.
That is an important part of the balanced health needed in our
own lives. Fellowship is an important element of the needs of
each member of the Christian community. We need the support and
embrace of others as they will need it from us. Each of us needs
to live out in our relationships the reconciling nature of the
faith which celebrates our forgiveness. Forgiveness is an act of
social spirituality. It is not something you can do alone. It
exercises your relationship with the person who wronged you. If
you are the wrong-doer, your need for forgiveness will place you
in a deep relationship with that other person, upon whose
forgiveness your own health depends. Forgiving, as we have been
forgiven, is essentially a person-to-person act of faith. We pray
that God will forgive us to the extent, or in the same way, as we
forgive others. We ask God to do that every time we pray the
Lord's Prayer. We hardly realize what we are asking. It is as if
we are asking God to look at the way we forgive others and
exercise that same kind of forgiveness toward us.

But there is also the need to be alone. We have to have our
own personal space and time for that still, small voice of God to
communicate with us. My participation in the community of faith
brings me back again and again to my personal, intimate
relationship with God. My personal Savior is the Lord of our
church. The God to whom I pray is also our Father and Creator.
When the needs of Peter and his family had been met; when
Jesus had addressed the needs of the crowds and his own soul, the
time came to expand the mission beyond Capernaum. And here we
find the healthy tension that must always be present in the
mission of the Christian community. He met the needs of many of
the people in Capernaum. But there are other towns. He reminded
the apostles of the need to move out and beyond the immediate
horizon. A healthy ministry is one which keeps in balance the
needs of the people nearby with the needs of those far away.
Do you suppose that he helped every person in Capernaum who
sought him or did he move on before some received attention? Is
it possible that he traveled on, requiring other disciples to
stay behind and to attend to the needs of those who still wanted
attention? It is hard for me to picture an effective congregation
waiting to fulfill its mission in national and global ministries
until it has met all the needs of all the people in the
congregation or nearby. On the other hand, it is much easier for
me to picture a congregation that is committed to the enormous
and pressing needs of the world, then as a result, having the
courage, zeal and momentum to also meet the need of the people
nearby. If you and I wait until we have completely fulfilled the
needs of everyone in our community before we "go into all the
world" we will never get there. Much less will we meet the needs
of people in our community if we wait until we have served all
the needs of our congregation.
For these reasons, and important others, our Lord made sure
our mission would be oriented both toward a particular person and
toward all people. He addressed one individual

soul and that person's spiritual search and immediately sought to
fulfill the needs of all. He spoke to one person, by name, one
minute and to all people the next. Mission is always here and for
us at the same time it is there and for them.
Healing always has a spiritual dimension. Even the word
therapy can be translated as having a specific spiritual
implication. True therapy is not just about mental health or
one's physical or occupational recuperation. The Greek word is
clearly about the total health of the person. In Greek the
emphasis is on a total balance of spiritual, physical and
relational well-being. It leads us to connect all aspects of our
religious life. Real therapy, then, will not only address the
mental health of the client, but faces the facts of our faith:
there is an important connection to be made between our worship
and serving life of faith. Therapy of any kind that omits one or
another of our needs will not produce the health one seeks from
any form of therapy. I've never liked looking at my life as a
balancing act, but I do know that all the important aspects of my
life need to be kept in balance.
It is not easy to attend to all the roles we must fulfill. But
attend to them all we must. To balance the role of husband,
father and pastor is not easy. I am probably no better than
average at any one of them. What I do in those roles is keep
before me the need to give intentional time and energy to all
three. I know many pastors who believe that they managed all
these roles as well as possible. Unfortunately I don't know many
a pastor's spouse or pastor's kid who would agree. The key to the
balance is an open, trusting, committed effort to work out the
struggles and the schedules. A pastor may not be the very best
wife and mother she would be if she were not a pastor. There are
deep positive benefits, however, as the family sees and
participates in the excitement of the pastor's "call" in life.
There are aspects of our ministry that any of us might have done
better if we hadn't attended to our family as well as we did. But
that flaw would have eventually been apparent. We may have
sacrificed some, across the range of responsibilities, in the
attempt to honor all our responsibilities.

Who shall say if that has been rationalization or healthy
balance? I like to think that when a pastor attends to the whole
person of each family member and the whole spectrum of family
needs it is a therapeutic insight. All families need it. The
pastor's family seeks to model it.
Angela had been in one kind of therapy for many years. She,
too, had tried everything. But never had she put it all together
in a way that produced any real health or balance in her life.
She had physical ailments that interacted with her social and
emotional life. Each of them plagued the other. From time to time
she would attend to one and feel some relief only to find another
raising its ugly head. Only when she sought spiritual direction
did some balance occur and her health began to come together. At
this point life has not become much easier for her. In some
respects the healthier she has grown the more pain she has
endured; the more turmoil she has had to survive and learn to
integrate. The work never ends, though she is clearly better and
she knows why. To put it better still, she knows who. She knows
who it is who is at the source and the center of her health. But
she is most certainly healthier and her spiritual growth was the
key. She has found real health in the therapy of worship, service
and the pursuit of her own spiritual direction.
Angela will never be cured of all that has happened to her.
She will never be totally over all that has to be overcome. The
accumulation of insights and her progress toward acceptance will
not fix what went wrong. Yet in, with, and under all of that
Angela is healed. Nothing can take away what has gone so well for
her now and what everyone celebrates with her: Angela has been
healed.
That's therapy -- the spiritual life of balance.