The Model Disciple

Gospel: Luke 4: 38-44

Once again the Gospels provide us with a woman as the one to model the appropriate response to receiving the mercy of Jesus in her life.  Peter's mother-in-law is beset with a fever; Jesus comes to heal her.  What is her response? To serve other people.  This unnamed woman shows us the way to respond authentically to the presence of God in our lives - to go and serve other people.

Throughout the Gospels Jesus will tell people whom he has healed to not tell anyone about it.  The scholars say this is the "Messianic Secret" motif, but this is false.  Jesus is giving us a lesson about authentic discipleship and response to receiving God's mercy.  It is to go and serve other people, not to go about telling others about it.  For in telling others it is not really about bringing people to Jesus; it is about ourselves and our own egos.  It is in reality bringing others to ourselves.  

To bring others to Jesus is to serve them as Jesus served others.  It is to be like Peter's mother-in-law - serving so faithfully that we do not even know her name, for it is in reality Christ who serves and it is Christ who is being served in our neighbor in need.  Take leave of the Christian media empires and cottage industries.  They have made their money; they have their fame and power.  They have received their reward.  Instead go about extending mercy to others and make no name for ourselves.