Word to the Wise
Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - Tuesday in the 6th Week in Ordinary Time
[Gen 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10 and Mark 8:14-21]"Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?"
The Gospel of Mark is not kind to the disciples. It may well be that they struggled to understand Jesus, or it may have suited the evangelist's story agenda that they appeared that way. Maybe some of both was involved. In any case, Jesus speaks the words quoted above in today's gospel passage out of exasperation at the disciples' all too literal interpretation of his words of warning about the Pharisees and Herod. The disciples were focused on the physical and Jesus was speaking metaphorically. They just didn't "get it."
Their obtuseness seems all the more remarkable, as Jesus points out, in the face of his multiplication of the loaves and fishes. The disciples were focused on the work and not on the person. Jesus was telling them something about himself and they were worried about the fact that they had forgotten to bring some bread for themselves. The focus on signs seems to have been one of Jesus' major frustrations in communicating.
A faith focused on miracles can be dangerous. Love can be forgotten in the desire to see certain things happen that would not ordinarily happen, as if God is only the God of the miraculous. When a famous saint once said, "God walks amidst the pots and pans!" she was not expecting the pots and pans to wash themselves and jump up on the shelves. God has to be the God of the every day things as well as the extraordinary things. As the disciples learned, an ordinary thing about yeast may tell us a lot about how God works. AMEN
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