What do you do when you're healed?

All three of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) have a brief story - a couple of sentences - about Jesus healing Simon's mother-in-law. It's part of a larger narrative about Jesus doing lots of healing, and followed by a description of many people with illnesses and demons coming to him. In Matthew, it comes after Jesus has healed a man with leprosy and remote-healed a centurion's servant. In Mark and Luke, it's after Jesus has cast out an impure spirit.

Jesus goes to Simon's house, where his mother-in-law is in bed with a fever. Without any drama, Jesus heals her. Matthew and Mark say that he takes her hand; Luke says that he rebukes the fever. It's all done with a minimum of fuss. Jesus goes to her, and she's better. And then she gets up and waits on them. I used to think that this seemed a bit unfair. Assuming that Simon is at least in his mid-twenties, his mother-in-law will be in her forties or possibly fifties, and a few minutes earlier she was ill in bed. But of course I was missing the point.

Simon's mother-in-law has been healed. Not got better, but been healed. She's not convalescing. She doesn't need to get her strength back. If Jesus has healed her, then he's healed her completely. She is, at this point, 100% healthy. It's not a hardship for her to wait on them - she's up to the job because right now she's probably feeling as good as she's felt for years.

Look back at the gospel stories. In each of the gospels, Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law, and then many come to him to be healed. What happens next? In Mark, Jesus gets up early and goes to a solitary place to pray. Simon and his friends come to find him. "Come on," they say, "everyone is looking for you." But Jesus says no, we're going somewhere else. There's work to do. In Luke, it's the people of the town who try to dissuade Jesus from leaving. But he says he's got to go, and then he goes and calls his first disciples and tells them to stop being people who fish and start fishing for people. There is work to do. In Matthew, there's a warning from Jesus that following him is not a comfortable option, but it can't be put off until later. There is work to do. 

What follows the healing stories is important. Healing is not the end, it's the beginning of doing work for Jesus. Just like Simon's mother-in-law, the response to being healed is to see what needs to be done, and get on and do it.

Each of us has been healed; some of us from illnesses and addictions, all of us from sin and guilt. And that's the beginning. The response to being healed, to being released, to being forgiven, is to get up and wait on Jesus. Anything else would be like Simon's mother-in-law getting back into bed and saying "Thank you, I feel a little better. I'll probably try a little chicken noodle soup and maybe get up for an hour or so tomorrow." Jesus heals completely, releases completely, forgives completely. There is nothing now holding us back from serving him.