The 2011 movie, The Iron Lady depicts the story of Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s first female Prime Minister. There’s a time early on when she meets Dennis Thatcher and agrees to marry him with a stipulation: she isn’t going to the adoring wife at his side looking longingly at him. She tells Dennis emphatically, “I don’t want to die cleaning a teacup.” She had big ambitions that would ultimately lead her to Number 10 Downing Street and had no interest in being subservient.
In our text in Mark, Jesus has just cast out a demon in man. After all of this, Jesus and his disciples head off to Peter’s house where they find his mother-in-law is sick with a fever. Back in those days, having a fever was no small thing. There were no antibiotics and you couldn’t just take some Tylenol. A fever could be life-threatening. Jesus comes in and heals her.
Then she goes and serves her guests.
In our modern day, hearing that story can be aggravating. It seems like this woman was healed so that she could do her “womanly duties.”
Of course, that is one way to look at this. But in the light of Christ, it doesn’t really jive. When the Bible says that Peter’s mother-in-law began to serve them it uses the Greek word, diakoneō. This word means service and links to the English word, deacon. In Acts 6, the first deacons are chosen to serve those in need. What if this nameless woman was serving, not because that is her place, but serving to care for others just as God has cared for her? Jesus served her by healing her and he goes out and continues to heal others. As theologian Sarah Heinrich notes, Jesus comes and restores people to community.
Jesus comes to serve through healing and teaching. In Mark 10:45, he says that he comes not be served but to serve. The Apostle Paul reminds his readers in Philippians that Jesus lived a life that was “poured out” to others. In thankfulness of Jesus being poured out for you and me, we go in service to care for others echoing Jesus in being “poured out” for others.
At the end of the Iron Lady, Thatcher is not several years removed from being Prime Minister and dealing with dementia. She has a cup of tea and then washes the teacup. Whereas her earlier protest was about being subservient, now her washing was done after a life of service. Washing the teacup was now an act of gratitude.