Deuteronomy 18: 15–20; Psalm 111; I Corinthians 8: 1–13;
Mark 1: 21–28
This is the homily given
at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, January 28, 2017 by Fr. Gene
R. Tucker.
“MORE
THAN MEETS THE EYE TO BE SEEN”
(Homily texts: Deuteronomy 18: 15–20 & Mark 1: 21-28)
At first glance, there isn’t much that
seems out-of-the-ordinary in Mark’s recounting of the beginnings of Jesus’
ministry. A summation of the events that Mark provides to us seems pretty
unremarkable: Last week, Mark told us about the calling of Jesus’ first four
disciples. Then, this week, we read that Jesus, this charismatic figure, begins
His ministry by offering wisdom and advice, and that He has remarkable powers
attributed to Him.
Such a story might characterize many
figures that have found their ways into the pages of our history books.
Certainly, in the ancient world, such accounts were the stock-in-trade of the
escapades of the heroes of those times.
But, if we look more closely at the
events that took place in the synagogue in Capernaum, there is much more to be
seen. Much more, it turns out, that will find its fullest and deepest meanings
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead on Easter Sunday morning. But
here, at the beginning of His ministry, we discover that the seeds of God’s
working through Jesus are already present.
So, let’s take a closer look.
At first glance, Jesus seems to be just
an extraordinary human being, perhaps a charming individual and one who is
possessed (despite His lack of formal education) of the gift of public
speaking. Put another way, we might say that this Jesus is a person who has the
ability to cause to people to sit up and listen when He talks.
But Mark tells us that Jesus’ teaching
is “with authority”,[1] an
authority that the scribes do not have. We ought to pause at this point to
ponder this truth.
The scribes, along with the rabbis of
Jesus’ day, derived their authority from the sources of their teaching.
Specifically, the basis for their teaching would have been the Law, the Torah,
the five books of Moses. So the Law provided the bedrock of their teaching. But
Jesus’ teaching was different somehow, different because it rested on the
authority of God directly. In due time, that authority will become more and
more clear to those who received it (including Christians down through the ages
as they heard and read the Gospel accounts).
Jesus’ teaching, however, is accompanied
by the power to conquer and defeat those things that would destroy human life.
In the case of the encounter in the synagogue, it involved the exorcism of evil
spirits from a possessed man.[2] As time
goes along, Jesus will also deliver people from the diseases and illnesses that
afflicted them. And in the fullness of time, we will see God raise Jesus from
the dead, as we said a moment ago.
This power, the power to defeat those
things that destroy human life, those things that separate us from God, is – in
its most basic form – the power to create and to re-create, a power that God
demonstrated at the beginnings of the world, a power we will see again as Jesus
defeats death and rises to new life on Easter Sunday morning.
The two ingredients of today’s Gospel
account go together. Jesus’ teachings come from God directly, as does His power
to create and to re-create. The latter confirms the source of the former.
We are faced with a problem, it seems to
me, for we are asked to hold Jesus’ humanity and His divinity together,
focusing not on one aspect of that identity to the detriment of the other. And
herein lies the problem: If we read lots and lots of the first three Gospel
accounts (Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are also known as the Synoptic[3]
Gospels), then we might come to the conclusion that Jesus was just an
extraordinary human being, one whose teaching caught people’s attention, one
who – somehow – had the ability to do miracles (which, we modern human beings,
might be tempted to discount as being the products of an ancient people’s
imaginations).
Our current lectionary cycle, the
three-year-cycle of readings known as the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL)
places before us lots and lots of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The RCL is laid out
so that we read and hear a lot of Matthew in Year A, Mark in Year B (the
current year) and Luke in Year C.
These three Gospel accounts – all
providing us a good deal of material from the Synoptics – focus on Jesus’
humanity. Not that they ignore Jesus’ divinity, they don’t. But their focus is
on Jesus’ humanity.
Personally, I believe that, because we
have been hearing so much of the Synoptics in the RCL, and in the Book of
Common Prayer three-year-cycle which preceded it, we’ve begun to regard Jesus
from a human point-of-view. This process, in my humble estimation, has been
going on for decades now. We’ve slowly been lulled into regarding Jesus from a
mostly human perspective.
The cure for this condition, it seems to
me, is to hear much more of the Fourth Gospel, John’s account, which focuses in
on Jesus’ divinity. (In fairness to the RCL and to the Prayer Book cycle which
preceded it, we do hear John now and again. But perhaps it’d be a good idea to
revise the RCL and make it a four-year-cycle, with a Year D devoted to a focus
on John’s account.)
Mark’s retelling of the events that unfolded
in the synagogue has the markers of Jesus’ remarkable humanity. But Mark’s
retelling also provides us with the raw material to see that God is at work in
the things that Jesus did. Indeed, Jesus’ powers are divine.
We have before us a case if divine
math: One man + one God = One Jesus
Christ.
To hold these two aspects of Jesus
Christ’s identity in connection is a challenge for Christians today, just as it
has been down through the ages. But one cannot separate Jesus’ humanity from
His divinity. The two go together, one nature informing the other, one aspect
of His identity forever connecting humanity to God, and the other aspect
connecting God to humanity.
[1] Luke also mentions this aspect of Jesus’
teaching (see Luke 4: 32), but Matthew does not impart this detail to us.
[2] Deliverance from demonic powers and
possession is a real phenomenon. Although, today, we might attribute some
conditions to a physical ailment or disease that ancient peoples would have
attributed to possession by the powers of evil, the nature of the interchange
between Jesus and the evil spirits makes it clear that this is, indeed, a case
of possession. The reality of demonic possession continues today. I know
personally of a priest who has been involved in an exorcism.
[3] “Synoptic” is a word which comes to us from
the Greek, meaning a “similar view” of Jesus.
