Lk 4:38-44 "And she got up and waited on them."

My sister waits tables in LA. It's a common story--the part, the role, the tv show, how will they all combine magically with the person who wants it?--only in this one, my sister dates the actor. He and I met for the first time during our family vacation. My parents came down from Seattle and I flew in from Chicago, met them at the airport and we drove the rental van to get Case and Travis. We shared space for three days on our roadtrip North to Monterey Bay. The beauty of the trip was as much outside the van as we sped along route one, cruising Big Sur precipices, as it was interior watching the dynamic of our family expand by another degree to incorporate the person of Travis. It was whenever we ate a meal at a restaurant that I watched them step into a role of authority, experts on the art of attending--waiter/waitressing.

Down the road from Carmel, Mom suddenly seized up. "Where's my credit card?" It turned out after much rummaging about, that by a process of elimination she must have left it in the restaurant. Case spoke up, suddenly clairavoiant. You left it at the cafe. The waitress had returned it to you wrapped in the receipt. She explained that for this very reason she never envelopes a customer's credit card in the receipt.

Small wonder.

The Gospel story shows Jesus attending to the mother of Peter. She is healed. She rises and immediately begins to wait on the needs of the disciples.

My sister has experience about the finer points of waiting tables. I wonder if she would find appealing this depiction of Jesus the waiter and the corresponding portrait of the healed qua waitress. To often the cultural depiction of the waiter shows us someone striving for someone else. The job is a day job, but not all. The question is posed, aggressively I think, what else does the waiter do? Perhaps we can't even escape this when we speak about the action of Jesus' attention/Peters mother's attention as a metaphor. That is, their action must not simply mean: go wait tables. We who crave the spiritual and the symbolic seek the application to something further and beyond. Yet try to stay for a moment in the plain sense of the word for today, sometimes the only way to get our attention--in the flesh--As Paul writes, "I speak to you not in the spirit" (1 Cor 3).  Then what?

Attend, notice, serve the needs of our neighbors. Peter's mother exemplifies discipleship when her acts of hospitality correspond to the healing she received from Jesus. Suppose we take the part in this gospel as waiter and walk about in our lives ready to serve. Would you like some affection with that? Can I make your day? Do you know that my compliment also comes in the form of an act of service? Sometimes I find myself stuck in one language of love (touch, gift, affirmation, act of service) and need to find creative ways to communicate in another language of love. Just for today I'll try...