4th Sunday Ordinary Time Year B : Gospel: Mark 1.21-28
Mark’s Gospel has a particular style.. Very action oriented. Very direct. Seems very simple, but beware- for under that simplicity lays really deep messages; every story, every event, every place, has some hidden depths. In the next few weeks, Mark will tell us stories that he believes will be able to help us understand the Kingdom of God. But it will not be what you expect.
Here is a Spoiler alert. The Kingdom of God is not a place. The Kingdom of God is where God reigns, where God is made present. The Kingdom of God is Jesus himself. Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Christos, the Christ, Jesus the Holy One of God. Jesus where God makes Godself present
Let’s take today’s Gospel for instance … It’s the Sabbath day and Jesus enters the synagogue, the Jewish house of Prayer. It is where the people of Capernaum went to hear the word of the Old Testament and pray the psalms and hear the insights of the preachers, the Rabbis. Jesus must have been preaching around the area a little bit, because he was invited as a guest preacher, an itinerant preacher from Nazareth, which was about sixty kilometres to the south. So, Jesus entered the synagogue and he taught.
And you might be asking ….. “I wonder what Jesus said?” But Mark is not going to tell you what he actually said. Because for Mark, the Kingdom of God is not a book. The Kingdom of God is not a series of lectures given by a rabbi. The Kingdom of God is a person. Mark is telling us to “Watch what Jesus does “ and you will understand that the Kingdom of God is among you.”
Now one of the men, a sickly man, one they said had an unclean spirit enters the story, Mark lets you kind of understand that this was a man who was mentally upset, who was physically, perhaps, in need of curing, but, most of all, he was in a struggle interiorly; there was a wrestling going on within his spirit, a struggle in his soul and at times, he would shout out in the middle of the service. And this day, when he heard Jesus, he cried out and said, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know you are the Holy One of God.”
And everything quieted down. And Jesus went over to him. He didn’t yell at him, but he just says these words:
“Be quiet. Come out of him.” And suddenly the man was thrown down to the ground kicking and screaming. And finally, he calmed down and whatever it was within the unclean man, had disappeared. And he was filled with peace. A very great silence fell upon the crowd. And the people were amazed and asked one another: “What is this? He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
Jesus stands before this man distraught and torn and screaming, disarranged and throwing fits. Jesus stands there
with great kindness and great sympathy and great understanding and says, “Come out of him.”
There is something that Mark wants us to understand. This man was not just a character in a story.
This man was you and me.
This man had been greatly disturbed in his life. And so too, can we be. We too can be torn by loneliness, depressed by the difficulty of living and the pain we endure when we reach out for help. We too have emotions that can be falling apart. We too have felt distress and loneliness and the terrors of war
and fear for our children and fears for their future. We too have many things that can tear at our peace,
And then, all of a sudden, on this day, this man is in this place, the synagogue, and Jesus stands before him
and says to all the fears and anxieties and worries and challenges flying around in his soul, “Be quiet and leave him.”
And then he becomes calm and quiet and at peace. At that moment, in the stillness of the healing, and the quiet of the people, we witness the introduction of the Kingdom of God into the town of Capernaum in Galilee.
But this is also the introduction of the one who stands before you and I in those dreadful and difficult moments of our lives when we feel bereft of any hope of peace or future or past or present. And as was spoken to the man in Capernaum, so too our Lord will say to our fears and worries and brokenness and distress, “Be quiet. Leave my beloved.” And the life of God and the hope of God and the love of God will flood into us once again.
Mark, in his Gospel, reminds us that no matter what happens to us, no matter what kind of circumstances we find ourselves, that when we encounter Jesus, we encounter the peace of God, the love of God, the forgiveness of God, the caring of God, the power of God, the strength of God and ultimately, when we encounter Jesus, we encounter the healing presence of God.