The Man Who Healed His Mother-ln-Law

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 153, 30 June 1945, Page 4

The Man Who Healed His Mother-ln-Law

By REV. CANON C. W. CHANDLER SOMEONE once said, "A man who can't make a mistake cannot make anything." I think that's true. Timid, unadventurous people may keep well to the chalk line, but they seldom if ever accomplish much ior the progress of mankind. Simon Bar-jona, who by Our Lord was surnamed Peter, made many mistakes, and as yesterday was tne day upon which the Church commemorated his life and martyrdom it is appropriate that this rugged Apostle, this leaper in the daiK, should provide the subject for our mutual consideration this week. Following his father's trade, Petei was a fisherman on the sea oi Tiberius. He and his brother Andrew with the two sons of Zebedee were in business together, and they must have been in a fair way of business, too for they had "hired servants, and Peter's house at Capernaum must have been something of aj mansion, for multitudes who weie attracted by the teaching and preaching of Jesus were said to have j resorted thither. What's more, he 1 was a married man, for we read that < his wife's mother "was sick of a ; fever" and lie healed her. That a l man can get on with his "in-laws' is usually put down to his credit. > He Was Tough

From the small indications we have of his social position it appears that it was at some considerable sacrifice to himself that he responded to the invitation of Jesus to become i "a fisher of men." Years of toil upon that beautiful but oft times stormy sea had toughened him, and there are few men in the world to-day who are generally more attractive for their manliness than those who go down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters. It was among fishermen of the North Sea that Grenfell of Labrador first embarked upon his work of medical-missionary evangelism. The fact as recorded in the Gospels that he, together with his three co-partners, was an "unlearned and ignorant man" has in all probability been somewhat over-emphasised. It is unlikely that men who were in the habit of I attending synagogue worship, which doubtless had some sort of rabbinical school attached thereto, were unlearned in the modern sense of the term. I fancy those words are meant to imply that they were "laymen" who had had no orthodox training for the work upon which thej' were engaged at the time when they appeared before the Sanhedrin. To have been well versed in the Scriptures might not have been considered by the Rabbis as any special mark of learning, for they held that only those who . were "educated" according to their standards were capable of arriving at the inner or hidden cabalistic meaning of much that they read. But enough of this. All we need to do is to glimpse the man who became the rock upon which Christ built His Church. The Chief Apostle

There can be no doubt that he held first place among the Apostles. Admixture of strength and weakness that he was, he has become for all time a truly representative character. We can all see ourselves in him when we are being most human. After jumping blindly and impetuously into some difficult situation, we take comfort in the thought that Peter was just as foolish. He would have built three temples on the Mount of Transfiguration if he'd had his way, and how utterly useless they would have been had he built them. It needed a man like Peter to go to Cornelius (Acts 10) and face the music afterwards for having done so (Acts 11). How many of us hide behind the frail excuse that "it's never been done before" when failing to measure up to a challenge, to embark upon some courageous enterprise? It would take more than a trance and a vision to move most of us. We believe in doing the same thing in the same way all the time, and pity help the man who goes off the orthodox rails when he goes among his fellow clergy after the event. Poverty and Power

When he went with his fellow disciple John to the gate of the temple where the crippled man was! begging, he was "broke" (Acts 3, 6), but he was filled with the power of ,the Holy Spirit, which was a great deal more useful than "cash" in the case of him whom he made to leap and walk and praise God. It is largely because his successor or successors have riches that they lack the power to-day to heal the sick and to help the lame to walk and the blind to see. It is because the Church is so deeply embedded in the world and its affairs, that is, in the present social system, that it isn't as revolutionary and world-changing as it should be. Perhaps it is that God doesn't work so much through organisations as He does through individuals. An organisation is a cumbersome body. Moses didn't consult a committee before he embarked upon his emancipatory enterprise, neither did Peter consult anything but his own conscience when he decided, on the spot, to forsake all and follow Jesus. From a study of the character of Peter must come the inspiration to do and dare in scorn of consequences when inwardly persuaded that God will have it so. One man who knows where he s going and with "the power to act" is a greater force by far than whole executives imbued with the single and unanimous idea that "it's never been done before."