When it's misread (which is often) it's either viewed as a joke or as an insult. In today's gospel reading, Jesus has just finished dramatically teaching and casting out demons that we talked about last week. He and his disciples have been invited for dinner by Simon Peter, one of Jesus' brand-new disciples.

Simon Peter's mother-in-law, however, is sick and in bed with a fever. In the words of Mark's gospel, Jesus, then, “came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and …”. And this is where the story is often misread as a joke or an insult.

When Jesus saw that Peter's mother-in-law was sick, he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and … and she began to serve them!

The joke and the insult are the same. When Jesus sees that Peter's mother-in-law is sick he heals her. But, so the joke or insinuate goes, Jesus heal’s Peter's mother-in-law so that she can get out of bed and wait on Jesus and the disciples, as women are expected to do!

Ha ha! Either it's an insult or a joke.

Or is it? Might God today--February 5th, 2012--be using this story to say something important to each of us today?

I first came across this on Tuesday, but I understand that it's gone viral ever since. It's a letter--a real letter--written from Ohio in 1865 by Jourdan Anderson, an escaped and freed slave, to his former master, a colonel in the Confederate army, named P.H. Anderson. Jourdan had dictated the letter in response to the Colonel's request that the former slave come back to work, once again, on the Colonel’s farm.

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.

Isn’t that remarkable? And now, briefly, I want to draw together the two things we’ve talked about this morning. We began with the story of Jesus going to Simon Peter’s house to eat with his disciples. Simon’s mother-in-law is sick in bed with a fever. Jesus goes to her, takes her by the hand, and raises her up. The fever leaves her and she begins serving them.

For far too long, at least by some, that story has been treated as a joke or an insult. Jesus heals her so that she can wait on the men hand and foot! Ha, ha.

Far from being a joke or an insult, however, get this: in Mark's gospel, Simon Peter's mother-in-law is the first person who truly “gets” Jesus. And she shows--she proves--that she “gets” him by being the first to truly embody what it means to follow Jesus.

She serves others! She cares for others. She becomes like Jesus.

The story of Jourdan Anderson is a powerful accompaniment to this story. In his letter to his old master, Jourdan showed that he “got”who he really and truly was! As Luther famously wrote, Jourdan was now “A ... perfectly free lord of all, subject to none ...,” while, at the same time, “... a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”

But not a slave! Jourdan now has only one, true Master, and that Master has truly set him free (just as that same Master set Peter’s mother-in-law free in this morning’s story)!

There’s an interesting postscript to the Jourdan Anderson story. As I said, once this story first made its appearance on the internet this week, it went viral. One reader, a genealogist, searched census records to see whether Jourdan ever went back to Tennessee or whether he remained in Ohio.

What do you think? ... He stayed in Ohio where he and his wife and children lived a good, prosperous, and long life.
Live like him! “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.”

In Jesus’ name. Amen!