Elaine Wainwright and Ann Gilroy suggest that when the mother-in-law is healed by Jesus in Mark 1:29-31 she is also called to follow him, as were the men disciples.

Mark 1:29 And immediately Jesus left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. 30 Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. 31 And Jesus came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve him.

The story of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law occurs in the first chapter of Mark (Mk 1: 29-31) when Jesus has been teaching and healing in the synagogues.

Then Jesus moves “immediately” from the synagogue, a public place, to the privacy of a house. There is a sense of urgency and purpose in Jesus’s response to mission in the story — note how the text says: “he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.”

Although the named disciples are all men — representing male ownership of property — the story turns to one of the women living in the house.

“Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her.” This woman is the first female character we encounter in Mark’s Gospel and she is presented as “ill with a fever” — in need of healing. She is characterised differently from the men who are engaged in discipleship.

The phrase “sick with a fever” is a general descriptor used in Graeco-Roman narratives of healing for a range of illnesses. It doesn’t identify a specific illness. Jesus finds out about the woman’s sickness when the disciples tell him.

His response is immediate: he takes the woman by the hand and lifts her up from her sickbed. In the story, Jesus’s touch is the medium of healing and that healing touch is for women and men.

The story ends with the woman’s response: she serves him. The Greek verb diakonew is used to describe her serving. This is interesting because it is akin to diakonia meaning discipleship of Jesus. Which would mean that women’s diakonia is not just in the privacy of home but in the whole world. Certainly we find women from Galilee, who have followed Jesus and provided for him, standing with many other women from Jerusalem at Jesus’s cross at the end of the Gospel (Mk 15:40). Their discipleship is evident and commented on.

I think this story of Peter’s mother-in-law is not only a healing story but a story of her call to discipleship. The woman is not only restored to her previous state of wellness but called to a new state of discipleship.

In Matthew’s Gospel we have brief parallel stories — the call of the mother-in-law and the call of Matthew:

"And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever. 15 He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him" (Mt 8:14).

When we compare this story to the call of Matthew, the woman’s call to discipleship is reinforced: "As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, 'Follow me'. And he rose and followed him" (Mt 9:9).

Just as Matthew is called and rises to follow Jesus, the woman is raised from her sick bed to do diakonia, to take on the key roles of a disciple.

Call and Practice in the Church

These insights may appear unimportant but in our time when women are asking for leadership roles in the Church, they take on significance. From our reading of the Gospels it could seem that Jesus called only men to be disciples — and this is one of the arguments against ordaining women in the Catholic Church. But a close study of Scripture, especially in the original language, suggests that this argument is questionable. Scripture scholars and historians such as Phyllis Zagano (who was a member of Pope Francis’s committee to study if there were women deacons in the early Church) are pointing to instances where women’s call and service appear to have the same quality and equality as men’s.

The early Christian communities that produced the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — developed the stories of Jesus’s life and ministry in response to their own contexts. One of the issues and challenges they faced was the role of women in their societies and in the emerging gospel narratives that they were developing. Now, 2,000 years later, the discussion about women’s roles in the Church continues. The recent change Pope Francis made in canon law to permit women and girls to read the Scriptures, distribute communion and be altar servers at Eucharist is an example of the discussion continuing. It highlights the gendered division in the Church. We can ask why the Church listens and responds to men when they ask to discern a call to priesthood but holds it impossible for women to hear a similar call.

Healing and Practice in the Church

We can take inspiration for discipleship in this time of pandemic from the story of the healing of the mother-in-law. While the pandemic rages elsewhere, in our part of the world we are now relatively free from the community spread of COVID-19. But this doesn’t mean that we can lessen our efforts in keeping the virus at bay.

Thankfully the leaders of our Churches are encouraging us to think of discipleship as responding positively to the message of the health and government authorities that certain restrictions are necessary for the common good.

We have been asked — and may be asked again — to put aside our usual practices of discipleship which include touch and proximity — attending to people at home and in the community and coming together for liturgies — for physical distancing, tracking where we go, staying at home, avoiding large gatherings. Yet even in this strange time we need to ensure that the life of the community continues — that hunger, shelter, safety, company and health are attended to. Like the mother-in-law in Mark’s gospel, discipleship is calling us to new and creative ways of service so that the world is healed and emerges into renewed life.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 256 February 2021: 22-23