Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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of universal joy to all people, in John the eternal Logos made flesh and glorified eternally in the death/resurrection event, then in Mark Jesus is the Vanquisher, the Rebuker of evil in the form of the suffering servant. Mark is loaded with conflict
and confrontation. The evil unleashed on and ravaging the world in the form of spirits, disease, violence, rivalry, and oppression is faced head-on by Jesus. Indeed, he is the only one who can, the only hope to break cycles began in the garden of Eden and the one to open the way to love and peace. The work is urgent, the need for focus and clarity are serious, the time is short, the stakes are eternal. Mark’s community is in crisis and looking for meaning in their persecution - why won’t Jesus save us from our suffering? The gospel sets them on the journey of the mystery that in their suffering is Christ alongside them, suffering in them and with them. The gospel shows them and us how to follow and to lay down our
lives, how to put down the sword and take up the cross.
All four gospels have so-called “reversal” sayings, but Mark really loves paradox: the first are last and the last first, the poor are rich, the blind see, the seeing are blind, the servant is the greatest. Humans in Mark are mostly hard-hearted, slow, and seeking to save our own skin first before laying down our lives
for others. We are a confused and hapless lot who provoke Jesus to ask “Have you still no faith? Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed?” Jesus is looking at us from the page, across the millennia, when he asks these questions. We can barely perceive a world of goodness and justice and so need prophetic awakenings - mighty acts - to rouse our hunger and open our hearts. Jesus sets about doing the impossible - undoing the physical, spiritual, social powers of isolation, exclusion, and dehumanization. The healing and making right which is the foretaste of the coming reign is joyful and healing but also disorienting and unsettling. We readers are being undone and refitted to think and act as fellow signs of courage and boldness alongside our crucified leader.
New Testament scholar Werner Kelber writes this of the gospel of Mark:
“Jesus announces the Kingdom but opts for the cross; he is King of the Jews but
condemned by the Jewish establishment; he asks for followers but speaks in
riddles; he is identified as Nazarene but rejected in Nazareth; he makes public
pronouncements but also hides behind a screen of secrecy; he saves others but not
himself; he promises return but has not returned; he performs miracles but suffers a
non-miraculous death; he is a successful exorciser but dies overcome by demonic
forces; he is appointed by God in power but dies abandoned in powerlessness; he
dies but rises from death.”
So keep all of that in mind as we look at the reading for today. We are not yet out of the first chapter and already Jesus is the successful healer and exorciser. He is doing all the rebuking and meeting the needs of the people for health and connection, for wholeness of body and mind and spirit. The elements for a
growing and influential ministry are there. Bigger crowds, more to share the message of the kingdom, more hope and joy are at his fingertips. All he has to do is stay and keep doing what he did last night. Just show up and give the people what they want. The potential for popularity and fame is limitless. Jesus goes to a deserted place. He prays. The disciples hunt for him. (And the Greek is quite explicit - not casually looking around, but stalking him like an animal). The disciples’ words on finding Jesus alone hang ominously in the air, loaded with assumptions and expectations.
“Everyone is searching for you...”
It’s nice to know that being passive/aggressive did not start with us…
So much hangs on the next words Jesus says! What kind of movement is this going to be? Will Jesus join the ranks of doomsday prophets, zealots, insurrectionists, rebels? Will he use his power to create yet another system of domination with attention and control centered in him? Are miraculous acts a way
to create throngs of people dependent on his physical presence for their identity?
If our Lord - loving and merciful and forgiving as he is - is also at times, perhaps most of the time, surprising, offensive, scandalous, outside the worn paths of any thought we might have of, “Well, if I were in that situation, here is the obvious right thing to do”, that is not because he intends to be inscrutable or
confusing, it is because he is the only fully and perfectly present, aware, free, and perceptive person who has ever lived. Jesus simply had no category of motivation toward being famous or followed for his powers. We imperfect creatures are the ones prone to create and worship a safe, manageable, and laid back image of Jesus who is cool with whatever or, at the opposite extreme, a vindictive, violent, and hell-obsessed Jesus who will slay the wicked who happen to be the people we don’t like. The journey is not caging our image and nailing down all knowable facts about Jesus so we have a clear and predictable definition (although that is a popular aim, it is misguided). It is closer to the capacity to continuously have my illusions shattered, my lack of imagination exposed to his unblinking gaze, to be surprised, shocked even, by the deeper reality of the one who continuously chooses the narrow path, the counterintuitive decision, the way that rejects every mark of success we idealize and worship.
“When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on…’” Whatever Jesus perceives it is that they are searching for must remain as search. Jesus calls disciples, he does not accumulate admirers. Jesus loves the people in Capernaum in two ways: he heals them and he goes on. Compassion compels both. The kingdom must include both. Our growth in union with Christ must reckon with how we receive both gifts. Jesus comes to us as perfect presence and perfect ache. He hides nothing of himself, gives himself fully, yet at the same time will evade and escape every
attempt to possess him as our pet savior, our mascot, our magic wand. I am thrown back onto the nature of my desiring so that I may encounter the presence of Jesus within me in the very desiring of the one I believe I do not possess. When the ache is a gift that teaches me what it is to a creature who desires, who yearns, who sighs and groans, then the paradox of the kingdom is doing its work in me to make me
human.
When I am healed of the fantasy of the unreal Jesus I can never possess - who brings clarity, who resolves crises, who evacuates mystery - then I can encounter the Christ who has packed up and moved on to the next village. What the folks in Capernaum will come to learn, as we ourselves are on the path of
conversion, is that while it seems as if he is absent, he is not truly absent. His absence is his presence. The searching for him is already the encounter.
“Everyone is searching for you.”
“Good”, Jesus says. Exactly what I wanted.”
Amen.
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