Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 7, 2021 – Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39

When I was working for WPIX for the Archdiocese, one of my jobs was to sit with the director at the midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and let him know what was going on on the altar all the time. And the way they would do midnight Mass, they had six or seven cameras set up throughout the cathedral, and one of them always was a center shot of the center aisle. And this was the mid-1970s, when streaking was all the rage. At one particular Christmas midnight Mass, a young man decided to streak down the middle aisle of St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the midnight Mass. And, of course, as soon as we realized what was happening, they got off that shot and unto something else. But one of the concelebrants at the Mass was our oldest living bishop, in retirement, living in the rectory in the cathedral, and they would sort of prop him up for midnight Mass, and he was half asleep during most of it, but the commotion woke him up. Yet he didn’t understand exactly what was happening. He stood up and waved his finger at the congregation and said, “There will be no running in the cathedral.”

That was sort of a lighthearted story, but here’s another one. In one parish where I worked, one morning I was saying the morning Mass and, like at most parishes, it was a small congregation for the morning Mass, maybe 15 people or so. And I was about a quarter of the way through the Mass when one of the people in the congregation came running up the center aisle, and our sanctuary was arranged like the one in our own church - the altar was in the middle and then, over to one side, was the tabernacle - and she ran up to the tabernacle, and threw her arms around it, and began wailing, keening, almost like a banshee. Of course, one of the members of the congregation immediately dialed 911. So, within a couple of minutes, there were police and emergency personnel there, and they had to pry the woman loose from the tabernacle, and drag her, still keening, out of the church, which sort of made it very difficult to go on with Mass.

In both of these instances, it’s like someone pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it right into the middle of a very staid ceremony, where everybody was sure they knew what was going to happen next, and, all of a sudden, everything changed. That’s what’s happening in today’s gospel. This gospel was not meant to be read in little pieces like we do at Sunday Mass. At least the first chapter, if not the whole gospel, was meant to be read at one sitting, because it’s all one story.

The story begins when St. Mark tells us this: “After John, the Baptist, was arrested, Jesus came from Galilee, preaching the Good News” - then you have to imagine a colon punctuation, quotation marks - “The Kingdom of God is here. Reform your life. Believe this Good News.” That is the whole of Jesus’ message, as far as Mark is concerned. That’s all Jesus really has to say. Next thing that happens is, He goes into the synagogue, this was last Sunday’s gospel, and the synagogue is a patterned service, just like our Mass is. Everything is always the same; all that changes is the reading, and the homily afterwards. So, in the process of this ordinary, expected program, Jesus, as the guest, gets up to read the scripture. And then, Mark says, “The people were astonished, because He spoke with authority, and not like one of their scribes.” Now Luke, in his gospel, tells us what scripture passage Jesus read, and then what Jesus said about it. But Mark does not. For Mark, the only important thing is that Jesus disrupts the flow of the ordinary congregational experience, and startles everybody. Before they can get over that shock, there’s a second shock. Another grenade is lobbed into their program. Some crazy man shouts out to Jesus, “We know who you are. Why are you coming to meddle with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” And Jesus says to him, “Quiet. Come out of that man.” No one can go on with the regular synagogue service after all of that. Everybody’s perspective is completely disorientated by what happens.
And then we get to this morning’s gospel. I said to you, pay attention to the reaction of Simon’s mother-in-law. It doesn’t say that Jesus healed her. All it says is, they told Jesus that she wasn’t feeling well, and He grasped her by the hand, and helped her up, and then she waited on them. Of course, the reaction of modern people is, “Sure isn’t t that just like a man. He got her out of a sick bed to serve dinner.“ That’s not what’s going on at all.

First of all, there’s a scandal here. Men did not go into the women’s quarters in someone’s house. Secondly, no man, who is not a member of the family, touches a woman. So Jesus has broken all the taboos. There’s already been a grenade lobbed into this situation. And, the reason why Mark tells us that she immediately began to wait on them, is because, in Mark’s gospel, most of the miracles that Jesus performs are performed so that the person who is cured can serve. In the other gospels, the miracles serve a different purpose when they are told. But in this gospel, the purpose of Jesus’s healing is so that people can heal others. They can serve others. And so, the very first miracle is depicted that way. Then, notice what Jesus does. He runs away. After an exhausting day of trying to comfort and heal people, he runs away. And when they come to drag him back, he says “I’m supposed to be preaching. That’s what I was sent to do. Let us go to the nearby towns and villages.” So, for Jesus, the healings are not what he expected would happen. But Mark tells us, at the very end of the story, “So he went to all the neighboring villages, preaching, and driving out demons. For Mark, the two are the same. Whether Jesus speaks, or Jesus heals, the purpose is the same. The purpose is the purpose outlined at the beginning of the story: Reform your life, and believe in this good news. Share this good news; that is your job.”

Now, I asked you about the first reading. I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, but let’s face it. The majority of our congregation are people in their older years, and I would bet that a lot of you identified, as I did, with the line in that reading that says, “If you are unable to sleep at night, you lie awake tossing and turning, and all the worries pile into your head.” I’m sure you’ve all had that experience. Is it a true experience? Yes it is. But it’s a very depressing experience. So the question is, why is it here in this Mass? It was meant to be a grenade, lobbed into this congregation, to every Catholic congregation, on an ordinary Sunday morning, when they think they know what’s going on. This reading is meant to startle us out of our complacency, and to recognize something. The something we need to recognize is that life is full of all sorts of troubles. And the reason why the book of Job is offered to us, is because in the book of Job, there is no solution given to the problem of human suffering.
About forty years ago, a very famous rabbi wrote a book called “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.” And that was the question hanging over the book of Job. Because, up until that time, Israelite wisdom said, “If you live a good life, and do good things, then you will have material blessings and happiness in this life. If you do bad things, then you will suffer in this life.” And everybody knew that that wasn’t the experience of the ordinary person; that many people who lived very good lives suffered greatly. So, the book of Job is meant to tackle that problem. The only answer that Job can come up with is, pretty much, what Chevy Chase used to say when he did the evening news on Saturday Night Live - “I’m God, and you’re not.” That was the only solution that he could come up with. But the interesting thing in the book of Job is that, although God does not answer Job’s questions and prayers, God continues to dialogue with Job. He never shuts him out, or shuts him up. That’s the important part of that story. That’s why it’s put here, because the gospel is meant to offer a response to the question hanging over the book of Job. And the response is “The Kingdom of God is here. Reform your life, change how you do things, and trust in, believe in, this Good News.”