No Service for Jesus is Small: The Mundane Matters

Most of us live most our lives doing mostly mundane things. We might experience a few pivotal, defining moments in life. But most days we don’t get married, receive a positive pregnancy test, or achieve a breakthrough in our field. Most days, we’re commuting, studying, parenting, working, doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, or paying the bills.

Do those activities count in God’s eyes? Does the mundane matter to him?

Recently, as I watched a movie about the first man on the moon, it struck me that simple, ordinary activities on earth matter more in space. Eating is everyday on earth; in zero gravity, where food floats, it’s an adventure. Walking on earth is forgettable; a step onto the moon’s surface is immortal. If you find a screw lying around your home, it’s no big deal; if you find one floating in your space capsule, it’s a huge deal. The context of an ordinary activity can supercharge its significance.

A little three-verse story early in Mark’s Gospel shows that a mundane deed can matter enormously when offered in response to Jesus’s goodness and for Jesus’s glory.

Immediately [Jesus] left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them. (Mark 1:29–31)

The word for serve in verse 31 refers to attending, caring for, and helping others, including waiting on them at table. Simon’s mother-in-law is probably bringing bread, refilling cups, wiping crumbs, clearing dishes. Her service is ordinary. She’s not painting a masterpiece to honor Jesus, or building a cathedral for him, or composing a song to be performed by a two-hundred-member choir. Her service is more ordinary than that. She herself is an ordinary person. In fact, she’s not even named in the story — instead, she’s identified by means of her relationship with her famous son-in-law (Simon). Moreover, she’s performing her humble service in a humble town: the fishing village of Capernaum, which had perhaps fifteen hundred residents.

So, her service for Jesus is not an extraordinary effort by a famous person in a famous place. It’s not Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, Bach’s Mass in B Minor, or a Charles Spurgeon sermon. It’s just a no-name woman in a no-name place putting bread on a table.

And yet it gets a mention in the Bible. “She began to serve them.” Mark considers her service worth including. We still read about it two thousand years later. It matters greatly. Why? To understand, let’s draw two implications from this passage for our own service to others.

The things we do — even the most ordinary, everyday, blasé activities — matter when offered in response to what Jesus has done for us. Notice that, in the story of Simon’s mother-in-law, Jesus is the initiator of the action. He leaves the synagogue with his disciples. He enters Simon and Andrew’s house. He approaches the mother-in-law. He takes her by the hand. He lifts her up. We’re not even told whether she believes in Jesus or whether she speaks a single word. We’re just told that the fever leaves her, and she begins to serve. Clearly, she acts not to secure Jesus’s attention or favor — he’s not holding auditions to see whom he’ll choose to heal! — but because he’s already healed her. And that response to Jesus’s goodness is worthy of inclusion in Holy Scripture. Her mundane work matters.

It’s the same for us. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). A meal cooked for a neighbor, a patient interaction with a child, a kind word to a discouraged colleague — each can become an echo of Jesus’s full provision, perfect patience, and infinite kindness to us. When we love and serve others because we’ve already received infinitely more from God, the deed (as simple and mundane as it may seem to be) grows great. What a liberating and hope-giving truth! It blows the dust from our ho-hum days, causing them to sparkle with significance. It means the world is bursting with opportunities for us to act in ways that matter forever.

We’re not told the mother-in-law’s motivation for serving Jesus. But by reading the story in its immediate context, we get a clear sense of why Mark (the Gospel writer) included it. The immediately preceding story of Jesus casting out an unclean spirit in the Capernaum synagogue emphasizes Jesus’s authority in teaching and exorcism (Mark 1:21–28). The verses that immediately follow rapidly summarize lots of Jesus’s additional activity, thereby showing that his authority extends far beyond a single exorcism or healing (verses 32–34). His authority is over every spirit and every disease.

In context, the main point of the story of Simon’s mother-in-law is Jesus’s authority over her sickness. His authority is clear from the immediacy of the healing — the fever dissipates instantly. It’s also clear from the completeness of the healing, which not only deals with the fever but also heals the weakness that normally follows sickness. The key proof of both the healing’s immediacy and its completeness is recorded in verse 31: “She began to serve them.” Her service — simple and humble as it is — therefore carries massive significance. It’s exhibit A for the authority of Jesus, which is the main point of this section.

It’s the same for us: Our smallest, simplest acts can display Christ’s majesty. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). When ordinary people perform ordinary acts in order to display an extraordinary God, those acts grow great. They’re aligned with the ultimate purpose of the universe (Romans 11:36).

An ordinary deed, done in response to Jesus’s goodness and for Jesus’s glory, matters enormously. Here’s some good news: You can practice this today. Pick any of the umpteen mundane tasks that lie before you: vacuuming the carpet, driving a kid to soccer practice, fixing a faucet, completing a spreadsheet. Now surround it with these two phrases: “from Jesus’s goodness” and “for Jesus’s glory.” If you really feel the first phrase, it will yield cheerfulness, eagerness, generosity, and humility in doing your task. And if you really mean the second phrase, it will ennoble and enliven what you do, granting it direction, purpose, and consequence.

Jesus calls his followers to lives of humble, ordinary, deeply significant service, from his goodness and for his glory. The mundane matters.