Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, January 31, 2021 – Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

1968 had been one of the most divisive years in the experience of our country. We witnessed the executions and the assassinations of both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. The inner cities were ablaze. The great movement toward the great society, that had been Lyndon Johnson’s pet project, came to a screeching halt. The Vatican Council had brought great changes to the Catholic Church, changes that not everyone accepted. Little old ladies were complaining that they had to sing those stupid guitar hymns. Priests were refusing to take their tabernacles off the center altar. And our class was in its final preparation for the priesthood. We’d be ordained in the spring of 1969. The seminary was as divided in its population as was the rest of the country. There was mounting opposition to the Vietnam War here in America. People picketing and rioting on both sides of the issue. A new President had been elected – a law and order president – who began to escalate the war in Vietnam. Some of us in the seminary were on the side of law and order, and what we saw as patriotism. Others of us were on the side of the movement toward peace, and the movement toward greater solidarity. Some of us were enthused about the directions in which the Second Vatican Council was inviting the church to go. Others of us were holding on to the traditions that had brought us to the seminary in the first place. And so, we came to the final retreat before ordination - six or seven days to pray and reflect before receiving the sacrament. And we were allowed to choose our own retreat master. By a very slim margin, the person who was chosen was Monsignor Vincent Fox who was known, not only in Catholic circles, but throughout the New York area, because of his peace activism. A friend and protector of the two Fathers Berrigan, who had burned drafts cards, and were put in jail at various times for their picketing and rioting. A friend of Dorothy Day who, at the time, was a figure of tremendous controversy, although now she’s a candidate for sainthood. And so, there we sat in the chapel, each conference. One group of us sitting in stony silence because of this person; the other hanging in rapt attention on his every word. But seven days later, all of us processed into the cathedral, and the bishop’s hands were placed on all of us, and all of our palms were anointed, and we were told to imitate what we handled, and to treasure the Gospel that we proclaimed.

In order to understand today’s gospel, you have to understand what was happening in the time that Mark wrote. The church was only about forty years old at most. There were still people around who had seen and heard Jesus during his lifetime. The headquarters of the church was not in Rome, but In Jerusalem, but Peter had left Jerusalem and begun to teach in Antioch, and finally moved to Rome.

He left Jerusalem because of a controversy with James, the brother of the Lord. James was a stickler for holding on to all the tenets of the Torah. And he had argued with St. Paul over the question of circumcision, and over the question of the eating of non-kosher foods. St. Peter, perhaps, sided with Paul, although they had their own differences. And so, by the year sixty, Paul and Peter both are living in Rome. They’re both going to be executed, under the emperor Nero, sometime between the year sixty-four and sixty-eight. But the center of the church is still in Jerusalem, where James, the brother of the Lord, runs the church. They had two churches. The church of law, and the church of charism, operating at the same time, but all of them will suffer the same martyrdom for their Lord. St. Mark is probably a Gentile Christian, writing for Gentile Christians in Rome. But he has a mission. Everybody knew the story of Jesus, no one needed to have it written down. But he writes it down for a purpose. He writes it down to talk to his Gentile Christians about two problems.

I asked you to look for the flash points in today’s gospel. There are two of them. The first one is the dialogue between Jesus and the demon. The demon says, “I know who You are. You are the Holy One of God.” And Jesus silences him, says, “Quiet.” Because, in Mark’s gospel, everybody gets wrong who they think Jesus is. The disciples have it wrong. The Pharisees have it wrong. The crowds have it wrong. Until finally, somebody identifies him correctly. The person who identifies him correctly is the pagan centurion standing beneath the cross, who looks up at the dead body and says, “Surely this man was the Son of God.”

The implication is that it is the Gentile Christians who have the advantage of identifying who Jesus really is. But they have a problem. Their problem is that pagans look, in religion, for wonder workers. That’s why it says, at the beginning and at end of the story, that people were astonished and amazed. They weren’t believers; they were simply astonished and amazed because they saw magic. There’s a great danger that the church will succumb to the idea that Jesus is just another in the great bunch of stories of pagan gods who are wonder workers, and that will destroy the Church.

So there is this going on but, in Jerusalem, there’s something else going on. The Roman legions have surrounded the city, and both Jews and Christians in the city are fearful for their lives. The representatives of the great Whore of Babylon are about to destroy the center of Christianity. And so, Mark writes for two purposes - to make people realize who it is that they are following - He is not just some great wonder worker, he is God’s own Son, and to make them realize, as well, that the church needs to move out of its Jewish origins, where it is committed to tradition and to law, and to see the possibilities that are open to the church If it turns itself outward, to the rest of the world.

As so often happens in our Sunday liturgies, the reading that is meant to find our way through the challenges presented in the gospel, is something in the second reading. That’s why I asked you to pay attention to Paul’s motivation for writing, rather than the content of his writing. We’re not so much concerned, anymore, about which is the better way of life, celibacy or marriage. But Paul begins by saying, “I should like you to be free of anxieties.” And he ends the reading by saying, “I’m telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose restraint on you.”

Sometimes it is difficult, and sometimes it is impossible, to reconcile authority and charism, freedom and law. But there is a way through that dichotomy, whether it’s in civil life, or in church life. Speaking through Paul, the Holy Spirit says to us, “I wish to preserve you from all anxiety, not to put a restraint on you, so that you should not have anxiety.”