Baraboo, Wisconsin is home to the Circus World Museum state park. In one of the restored circus buildings is a scale model circus whose original performers were fleas. Time was when people actually trained fleas to be circus performers, which begs the question, "How?" Turns out, fleas are easy to train. After today's sermon, you, too, can have your own flea circus! Keep your fleas in a glass jar for a couple of days, then remove them. Voila! They will continue doing what you've taught them to do, namely hop up and down in place. Because their world has been reduced to the size of the jar, they can't imagine doing anything else.

And performing fleas are like the gospel lesson-how? Like Simon Peter's mother-in-law, healed by Jesus and getting back to work. Some feminists resent this story, as if it was a self-serving healing on Jesus' part. "Hey! Where's my supper?" Others point out that she, along with most of the women in Mark, are the ones who "get it" as far as Jesus is concerned, while the male disciples are portrayed as dunderheads. That the women follow Jesus' example of serving might arguably be because it's the thing they know how to do best. But they attend to the rhythm of Jesus' life in Mark, a ministry pattern that alternates between time in prayer and time serving in public.

In today's story, Jesus has just left the synagogue, where a demon recognized him as the Holy One of God. Jesus goes straight to Peter's house where he heals the sick woman, is mobbed by the sick and possessed of Capernaum, and then slips out to pray. He's hunted down by Peter, who tempts him to switch to a healing ministry. The center of the story is Jesus' time in prayer, time spent affirming his ministry, his call. Jesus gets back to the work he was called to, just as the mother-in-law quietly gets back to her work.

She reminds me of some of the saints I've known, mostly older folks, whose response to healing is often similar. "OK, I'm healed. That's out of the way. Now stop fussing at me and let me get back to what I was doing." My mother was that sort of person. It's not a particularly cuddly response, but contrast that with other folks you know who seem to go through life from one rescue event to the next, as if they don't feel loved unless they are being rescued. Health problems (perhaps from bad lifestyle choices), repeated bad relationships (the name changes but the pattern remains the same), money troubles (spending what they don't have), kids drive them crazy. It's a complex mix. Maybe the rescue and sympathy of friends is all the loving they get. Maybe they don't believe they "deserve" attention unless they're in a crisis. Maybe they think they aren't lovable and the constant mess proves it. These are folks who don't have time for following Jesus' example of quiet prayer, because they're running so hard, managing the mess. Maybe they're afraid of what they'll hear in the silence, but they keep moving and doing. Maybe the new responsibilities of wholeness are scarier than being stuck in a mess, because it's at least a familiar mess.

Other folks have such a distant theology of God that the prospect of a God who stoops to heal individuals is incomprehensible. The prospect of God renewing them personally is terrifying, while it is simultaneously the one thing they long for most. For these folks, the example of Simon's mother-in-law might be reassuring-the grace of Jesus taking the hand of one person. It is both a terrifying and tender mercy, but it's the reassurance they need to go back to work.

Writer Richard Rohr gives us language for the "then what?" of this story, in his book, Hope Against Darkness. He says there are three responses healing. The first is most common: the old self on the occasional new path. It's the fleas let out of their jar, but still hopping in place. The second response is made by people like Mother Teresa: the new self on a new path. The jar is such a distant memory that the flea is long gone. The third response is the new self on the occasional old path. The flea hops forward most of the time but sometimes gets distracted and hops in place just for awhile. This third response is where most of us are, where our spiritual growth takes place.

This week I read about someone who compared his experience of 24-hours of cable TV with 24-hours of silent retreat. What he found (this will not surprise you) was that the vital information needed to survive spiritually is learned in silence not on TV. More than just the content or the glut of useless information, it's also TV's format of short, flashy bites of sound and image that give the message that life is a series of disconnected events for the purpose of stimulation. No mystery, no deeper meaning, and certainly no consequences to actions. In silence, the writer found meaning beyond himself, transcendence to equip his soul.

You often hear me say that church stands counter to our culture, that we need each other to have the courage and strength to be that together. Springwater can never compete with television. But we can change the basis of the competition. We can let ourselves be transformed. And I don't mean we do that just as individuals. Jesus helped Simon's mother-in-law out of bed, not because he was hungry and wanted supper. He restored her to community, and the community itself was transformed by her return. At the beginning of his ministry, as Jesus formed a community of followers, here was someone who embraced his rhythm of silence and service.

"Church" is what we now call community, the place where, instead of making people feel inadequate for not having white enough teeth and hot enough clothes, church is a place that invites us to be authentically who we are and only who we are, a place where, because we are community, we belong together, we make a difference together. While church community is more notorious for clinging tenaciously to tradition (whether it works or not), "We've always done it this way" is not necessarily the healthiest or most honest slogan. Springwater's Mission Study Committee has been running into things we maintain are at the very heart of who we are, but which we no longer get volunteers to conduct, nor attendance and participation to justify the volunteer time even if we do get it. Just because we used to be in a jar doesn't mean we still need to act like it once the jar is gone.

If Springwater wants to be a church that survives in the 21st century-if we want to thrive in order to offer the gospel of Jesus Christ-we must get up and get back to work, as individuals and as a community. Maybe, like Simon's mother-in-law, our work won't look one bit different. But, like her, our work will be the work we are most suited to do. Like her, our work is in our community, and our work shapes our community. Maybe we're anxious about "what" that will be. Maybe we think we need more training, more getting ready. The jar is gone. We're as ready as we're going to be. This is what Richard Rohr means when he says, "You cannot think yourself into a new way of living; you must live yourself into a new way of thinking." Get up. Get back to work. It's not just proof that you are healed. It is the very means of your healing.

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