Word to the Wise
Tuesday, January 14, 2014 - Monday in the 1st Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Sam 1:1-8 and Mark 1:14-20]All were amazed and asked one another, "What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him."
We are at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in the Gospel of Mark. Two things come to our attention right away in the story: Jesus as teacher and Jesus as exorcist! The temptation is to focus on the exorcism because it is a rather dramatic thing, but scripture scholars point out that Jesus was by no means the only "demon buster" on the block! Exorcists were common enough that the accounts of their actions tended to take a well-known form and Mark follows that form. What Mark wants to call to our attention is not the power of exorcism but Jesus' power which is the same for teaching as it is for exorcism! Note that the people comment about his teaching as something very new, not about the exorcism, which was considered "common."
Two things may be said about Jesus' teaching power. First, the crowd notes that Jesus is his own authority for what he says. He does not quote other rabbis to support his teaching! An exorcism requires physical proximity, but Jesus' word carries a power that can transform, no matter where it is heard! We may recall the words of the centurion, "Say but the word and my servant will be healed." Thus, Jesus is a powerful person whose teaching and healing is part of his identity. Even so, in the Gospel of Mark, his disciples still struggle with making the connection between Jesus' power and the power of God. Can we have faith in the power of Jesus' word to transform us? AMEN