February 4, 2024
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 4, 2024 - Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39
One way of looking at Mark’s gospel is to say it’s the story of Jesus as an allegory of the story of Jesus. What? The story of Jesus as an allegory of the story of Jesus. I googled “allegorical stories” and right away a list came up with some very familiar titles – “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” “Animal Farm,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Waterford Down” and “Lord of the Flies.” “Animal Farm,” of course, is a story that’s an allegory about the evils of socialism, or communism. “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” was an allegory about the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. “The Lord of the Flies” was an allegory about how evil entered civilization.
An allegory is a story that’s meant to tell another story. And Mark tips us off at the very beginning of his gospel. His title - the exact words, when you open your Bible - it says, “The beginning of the gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” The beginning of the Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ. So, if Jesus’ whole life, death and resurrection is the beginning, that means there’s something more to the story of our Lord, Jesus Christ that comes after his life on Earth and his resurrection. So, right at the very beginning of reading, you have to wonder, “What’s the more?” What’s the more?
The very next thing he does, he says, “The Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” Of is a weasel word. It can mean “This is the Gospel about Jesus Christ” or it can mean “This is Jesus Christ’s preaching. His own good news.” Or it can mean both of them at once.
The story begins with John the Baptist. Jesus comes to be baptized by John. As Jesus comes up out of the water, he, and he alone, hears the voice from heaven and sees the dove descend, and immediately he goes out into the desert to be tested. When he comes back, the real story begins. Jesus’ first words, the ones we hear him speak, are, “Come, follow me.” The next words we hear him speak are to a demon. The demon says, “I know who you are. The Son of the Blessed One.” And Jesus says to him, “Quiet! Come out of him.” That’s the story you would have heard last week, if you were here during that terrible weather. “Quiet! Come out of him.”
There was no need for Jesus to say, “Quiet!” “Come out of him” would have been enough. So, why did he say, “Quiet?” It’s part of Mark’s allegory. The next thing that happens is what we heard this morning. “Having left the synagogue, Peter and Andrew invite him to come home for dinner. They introduce him to Peter’s mother-in-law, who’s lying in bed with a fever. Now, when you get to Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s gospel, those two writers make it very plain that Jesus miraculously cured Peter’s mother-in-law. But not in Mark’s gospel. What happened in Mark’s gospel is exactly what you or I would do if we went to someone’s home, and they were ill, and were taken into their room to say hello. We would reach down to them to say hello and shake their hand. And, as Jesus does that, she gets up. And then she waits on them. “Oh, sure,” you say. Typical of males expecting the woman to get up out of bed and wait on them. Yeah, no. That’s not what’s happening here.
Service. Service is one of the prominent themes in the allegory. That people are healed in order to serve. Whether it’s being healed of a physical illness or healed of great sin, the reason Jesus heals them is so that they may serve. And that point is buried in the story, so it slips right by you without disturbing you in any way. And then, notice what happens next. That evening, after sundown. Why after sundown? So that Jesus can be seen publicly as obeying the Sabbath Law. After sundown, they gathered outside the door, and he healed so many of them. He went to sleep exhausted. And, like so many of us that have been too busy during the day, he can’t fall asleep. And so, very early, before dawn, it says, he snuck out of the house, closed the door quietly behind him, and kept walking until he found a quiet place where nobody could find him. To pray. Ahh, but they found him anyway. And they said, “Everybody is looking for you.” That’s not true. Everybody is looking for you. In such a small town, not everybody is looking for you, but the hyperbole challenges Jesus. What? Challenges Jesus notion of himself. He says it to Peter. He says, “Let’s go to the neighboring villages to preach the good news there also, ‘cause that’s why I was sent.” Jesus is having none of his magnificent curing ability. And yet, the closing line of the story says, “So he went to the neighboring villages and preached the gospel (and drove out demons).
So, what’s the story here? There are several stories that Mark is telling. He has two audiences - Jewish Christians, Christians who used to be Pagans. The Jewish Christians are disillusioned because Jesus did not turn out to be the military hero who would overthrow Rome. And three generations have gone by since his death and supposed resurrection, and nothing much has changed. And now Rome has besieged the City of Jerusalem.
There are Gentile Christians for whom Mark is writing. What’s their issue? As the word of Jesus spread around the Mediterranean Basin - thanks mostly to the work of St. Paul - many people who worshipped false Gods enter into the Church, not quite leaving behind their past. And they begin to see Jesus as just another one of all those Greek and Roman gods. A very dangerous thing for Christianity. Moreover, it was common in those days for charlatans to circulate throughout the region pretending to be healers. Usually, what they’d do is have a plant someplace in the crowd who would claim to be ill. And the healer would do some incantation over them, and they would throw themselves on the ground and scream and cry and say, “I’m healed. I’m healed. I’m healed. How do they know, two generations after Jesus is gone, that that’s not what happened? How do they know that Jesus really miraculously cured people? How did they know?
All these problems face Mark. And all these problems are preventing what? Preaching the gospel and serving. The two things that Jesus had uppermost in his mind. And so, in order to get Christian people back on the right track, Mark retells the story that they’re all familiar with already, focusing on the things that will draw them into the story, and get them off the dime.
Notice how today’s story works. Who is the most uncertain person in the story? It’s Jesus. Jesus had to tell the demon to be quiet? Jesus sort of accidentally cures Peter’s mother-in-law. Jesus doesn’t wanna go back outside to the crowd, but he does anyway. Jesus runs away to pray over all of this and says, “Let’s get out of here,” but no matter where he goes his preaching is interrupted by people who demand his healing. Jesus is the most uncertain person in the story. He’ll become more uncertain as time goes on. But Mark wants us to see that Jesus, in spite of his uncertainty, continued to preach and to heal and to serve. And that’s what the story is all about.
All of us go through times of great uncertainty. A change in occupation, a change in our lifestyle, a change in the school we go to, a change in our health, and we become very uncertain. What God calls us to do is to move forward through our uncertainty, to continue to preach the gospel by the way we live our lives in our uncertainty, and to continue whatever healing work God has given us to do.