Jesus Heals Peter's Mother-in-Law, James Tissot
Brooklyn Museum

Fifth Sunday of Epiphany

Jesus does the unexpected. He often turns our expectations upside down. Today's Gospel is no exception. My pastor commented that she found a number of different references to something that had never struck me before this morning. Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law--

and then took Peter, who was probably her source of support and income, away.

So much for support of family.

That is one of those tensions in the Gospels that we don't often see, understand, or admit to its presence. It is the kind of thing that would get the cult deprogrammers on the lookout for old Simon and his friends who did the crazy thing of leaving the expected and understood for the new and exciting. I have a hunch that when God calls it isn't as nice and sentimental as we like to make it.

Sometimes we may even be called out of the church to do it.