Adam sounds just like a teenager when God introduces him to Eve:This is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. ‘We were made for each other! We’re a perfect match.’It’s the experience of falling head over heels in love, no thought of difficulties to come, of the many compromises that have to be made if a relationship is to survive, and rightly so, love is, we hope, blind – although now that everyone under the age of 30 seems to have identical clothes, teeth and plastic surgery be they men or women, presumably there are other indicative factors that people look for in each other! But love is the theme of the readings today, especially it seems the first and second.But then Mark’s gospel brings things down to earth with its talk of divorce. It touches on the pain of falling out of love, on the sense of betrayal and deception — often self-deception as much as being deceived by one’s partner — that sometimes follows in the years when that initial excitement dies away and the love that was promised is no longer alive and the blind love that attracted two sets of shiny new teeth and Botoxed lips in the first place seems to turn to thoughts of law courts, writs and divorce papers. As it was in the beginning, so it is now. Legalism takes over love.Most people are turned off by legalism. Laws, rules, and regulations can bog us down. They can curtail our freedom. There are times when we want to do something, and can’t see any wrong in doing it, but we are told that it is against a regulation, a rule, or a law. It is attractive to think that we can do away with a lot of laws and legalism.If we use our imagination, however, it is difficult to see how a society or organisation could work without any rules. People would drive along whatever side of the motorway took their fancy. There would be no such thing as property, and so there would be no such thing as theft — you could simply take what you liked. You may have a personal moral code to live by, but you would have no recourse against someone who lived by a different code. Too much law, however, is stifling. We are then often not allowed our rights, and we can even be stopped from fulfilling our obligations. The spirit of the law should encourage us to claim our rights and fulfil our duties, but too many rules, or the wrong rules, can have the opposite effect and so it is in the church, our rules, our laws have to come from Christ or they are vanities, and they have therefore to be rooted in love and the ability of all people to flourish in love of God and therefore each other.When God created man, as we are given to understand in the book of Genesis, he saw that it was not good for him to be alone. (Gen. 2:18) And so he created woman. In that brief account, at the very beginning of the Bible, of an essential part of God’s creation we learn of God’s wisdom, compassion and love in forming the first ‘marriage’. The continuation of the human race exists thanks to God’s willingness to allow men and women to play a vital role in the continuation of his creative process, giving them a prime function in sharing God’s re-creative power – so it is undoubtedly that the human race, God’s people – have been born and continued. This is no sensitive subject, but divinely appointed procreative biology, but it is not all the story, as we are reminded by Christ himself on numerous occasions.Perhaps no issue has been greeted as being so sensitive to Christian faith, as the issue of how the Church deals with all these issues in the 21st century. We are indeed conscious of the diversity of views held in conscience by so many followers of Christ; and equally conscious of the anguish and pain that can be caused by a perceived reluctance on the part of the Church, to put into practice the compassion and forgiveness that is shown by Christ himself.Hebrews takes a very different tack. Its focus is on Jesus as the source of our happiness, the goal of our search for the fullness of life. In Him is our eternal bliss that transcends our mortal nature. Christ is the high priest, whose violent death in a fallen world is a perfect sacrifice of loving obedience to the Father. What all the previous sacrifices of Israel had gestured towards, now find their fulfilment in Him. Only through His Passion, and the grace which flows from the Risen Christ, may we now find forgiveness of sin and be made holy by a share in Christ’s glory. So, the family is transcended in the greater ‘family’ of ‘brothers’, men and women who in Christ are the adopted heirs of His Heavenly Father.You should be able to tell Christians by their realism and by their founded belief that God is greater than any uncertainties or questions that we may have. It is fashionable to say that we are all sinners. True enough, but this is only part of the truth. We are also repentant sinners, and we seek the grace of deeper conversion during the whole of our lives, however we live, whoever we are, we are all in need of forgiveness, grace and love, and the readings today call us clearly to show that to each other, more perfectly modelling the Body to which we belong, as it has been, as it is and as it shall be in the future. Love is His command, and love is why He died and rose again to share His body with us.Adam sounded like a teenager, but we are heirs of a new covenant and our voice is a different one, honed by his experience and brought into the light by the Son of God, who we are called to imitate.
In today’s extract from St Mark’s Gospel John, one of the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, complains about the success of an unauthorised person who has been driving out demons in Jesus’ name and he speaks for the rest of the disciples. ‘We saw a man who is not one of us casting out demons in your name.’ He uses the words ‘we’ and ‘us’; why are they so put out at this man’s good work? A few verses earlier in the Gospel a man had brought his son who was possessed by a demon to Jesus for healing. He said that he had earlier brought him to the disciples, but they were unable to cast out the demon. The success of the unauthorised man had shown up the earlier failure of the disciples. He was able to do what they could not. They felt this failure keenly. Somebody who did not belong to the inner circle was successful where they had failed. John says, ‘we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.’ They had tried to stop him doing good because he did not follow them. They seem to be having some leadership problems here. They had started their journey with Jesus. He summoned them to follow him, now they think that people who hear the word of the Lord are being called to follow them.The disciples are taken up with their own power and authority. Power is given them to serve the kingdom, but it is easy to divert that power and authority to self-serving purposes and this is what the Gospel is partly about: how to use the authority given by God in his way not in our way.He tells his disciples that they should not try and stop this man. In fact, they cannot prevent him because the man has been casting out demons in the name of the Lord. Speaking the name implies faith. The man has acknowledged the power of Jesus in his own life and now he is bringing others to the knowledge of that name. There is no magical property in the name. The man could not have exercised this authority without it being given to him. Why it was given to him is not clear. Jesus is telling the disciples that if they try to prevent it they are acting as obstacles to the unfolding of the kingdom. The Lord chooses his own instruments for the growth of the kingdom and to act as agents of his power. The grace of God is not confined in its operation to the college of the apostles or to the sacraments or to the Church itself. It can operate outside all of those instruments. When it does, it is always with a view to bringing others into communion with the Body of Christ. The grace of Christ is always directed to unity. It is designed to bring about communion, of becoming what we are called to be.We should not be so much concerned about whether God is doing his job properly, as Joshua in the first reading and John in the Gospel were, but whether we have cleared away the obstacles to his grace working in our own lives. John has forgotten the reason for which he was called. In Jewish tradition the various parts of the body were associated with sinful actions. So, theft would be associated with the hand for example, or covetousness or lust with the eyes. What Jesus is talking about is the comprehensiveness of sin, how it affects the whole of your life. If you have something wrong with your hand the whole of your body is affected.Living the life of Christ involves a reconstruction not only of our life story, but also of our whole way of being in the world. The way we are involved in the world is through our bodies and the disorder of sin has a kind of physical effect on us. We do not function in the right way. The answer to this is not self-mutilation but understanding what our life is for. Jesus says we must have a broader and more generous vision of what life is about not a narrow vision such as John and the disciples seem to possess. He is saying that if certain aspects of our life seem to exceed our control. If we lose the harmony of the proper functioning of the whole of our existence then we have to undergo painful realignment. He uses the metaphor of amputation. Sometimes a diseased member of the body threatens the health of the whole and we have to do without it.The beginning of the answer is the one he gives to John ‘stop worrying about whether God is doing his job. You are not God.’ Adam and Eve had started off by wanting to be gods and the consequence was a form of amputation, separation from the friendship they had enjoyed with God in the garden from which they were cut off. Jesus is saying ‘do not make that same mistake again.’ The path of return is a hard one. It is no easy journey, but it is much easier if you just leave behind what in fact you do not need. The vanity of John and the disciples was wounded by the success of the unknown, believing man in casting out demons. Jesus tells them they were so intent on seeing their own authority that they had failed to see the power of God acting for good in the lives of the needy. Their eyes had offended them since they had failed to see. Jesus says learn to see again and then you can walk in his ways.
Today’s gospel, Mark 9:30-37, occurs within the second major section of Mark (8:22-10:52), which contains a threefold pattern that appears three times, or three of Mark’s ‘sandwiches’ as theologians put it, with the bread of context and the filling of teaching. Jesus predicts his passion and resurrection (8:31, 9:31, 10:33-34), the disciples don’t understand (8:32-33; 9:32; 10:35-41), and Jesus then gives the disciples further teachings (8:34-9:1; 9:33-50; 10:42-45).In the narrative arc of Mark’s gospel, 9:30-37 furthers the revelation of Jesus’ identity, using the title “Son of Man” (Daniel 7:13) There can be no doubt by now in Mark’s gospel that Jesus is no ordinary rabbi. Yet still the disciples are confused.Here it will help to remember that this entire section in Mark’s gospel is framed at the beginning and end (a super bread of context if you like) by accounts of blind people who are given sight (8:22-26, 10:46-52). This stark image of going from blindness to sight is a big literary clue. As the blind man is given sight, however gradually, so the disciples, who are blind to Jesus’ mission and identity, are given sight, albeit gradually. The bread of the blind being given sight holds the filling of the teaching of who He, therefore, is. It’s a spectacular grammatical motif that belies the brevity of Mark and points to a grammatical structure that eloquently gives us a clear message.So how are we to accept and hear that message? In today’s gospel reading even the disciples, the people who were in the constant company of Jesus, were factious and antagonistic towards one another, quarrelling as to which of them was the most important and deserving in the group. At least they knew status should not be their concern because when Jesus asks them what they were discussing they are embarrassed about it. And no wonder. Jesus had just told them how he would abandon himself to the will of others, becoming the least in that he would put himself at the service of all, even going as far as dying for them. In that way he would become the greatest, a paradox at the heart of Christianity. So, Jesus teaches his disciples how they should behave.If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.Jesus then took a child as a visual aid. The Aramaic word for ‘child’ is also the word for ‘servant’ and to understand the implications of this we must realise that the disciples were looking at a child of their time and not of ours. Then children were totally at the mercy of adults, unlike today when adults are at the mercy of children. The children of first century Palestine were not demanding expensive toys from their parents or clamouring for the latest trainers because everyone else at school had them. Childhood is a recent concept, before which the vulnerability of children was obvious. Many died from childhood diseases which today are no threat to our children. To see what a child from the time of Jesus was like, look at children in the developing world today: babies dying from drinking contaminated water; young children helplessly weak with incurable illnesses; most children lucky if they have enough to eat to keep them alive and well; children scratching a living working in the fields; children helping to run the house and taking care of their orphaned younger brothers and sisters. It is this kind of child that Jesus tells his disciples to receive. He took one of the most vulnerable and powerless members of his society and asked the disciples not to become like one of these children, as he does in the other gospels, but to look after it and make sure it was flourishing. Jesus insisted that the Christian had to extend concern to the weakest members of society, to those who had not the power, authority or means to look after themselves.The sandwich filling is revealed in this way – once you know who I am, spend your life working for those who have less than you, and conform your lives to love – then I will know that you have heard me. It’s a hard challenge to a rank and privilege obsessed church, with its slightly ridiculous customs and points of difference, and there is a great deal of casting down the mighty and learning to be done, but here it is – the bread of new sight to the blind contains the filling of immortality, and to eat the sandwich, we must first learn to see if anyone else is hungry and, if so, to give it away.
Today’s Gospel invites us all to make two decisions. Each of these decisions threatens to overturn our whole life and our whole normal way of thinking. Each will demand absolutely everything from us, up to our life itself. We could say that the purpose of St. Mark, in writing his Gospel, is to help us face these decisions, and, by God’s grace, make them our own.First of all, Jesus himself asks: who do you say I am? Just before that, the disciples told Jesus what other people say. By and large, people could agree that Jesus is a great and authentic religious teacher. Clearly, he fits within the tradition of the Old Testament Saints. But who do you say I am? And as if with the force of an electric shock, Peter makes his declaration. Compared to the parallel account in St Matthew’s Gospel, particularly, this declaration according to St. Mark is stark; stripped to the bone. Simply: You are the Christ. That is: you’re not just one more in the line of prophets. All of them, by definition, pointed beyond themselves, pointed forward. All of them prepared God’s people for a definitive intervention to come. But no. You are yourself the object of their prophecy. You are the one towards whom all sacred history has been moving. In fact, you’re the central reference point for all human history, and even for the whole history of the universe. Through you, God will accomplish all he has promised to Israel. In you, God has made his definitive saving intervention. Beyond you, nothing further is to be expected. You are the reason that the Word was first spoken.We are here now because we also have reached St. Peter’s conclusion and taken his decision. But we’re also here because we know we have to keep taking it; we have constantly to refresh and renew it.Everything around us these days seems to conspire to make us let this decision about the identity of Jesus grow gradually cold, and even wither gently away. Modern secularism will tolerate religious belief, to an extent, so long as everyone understands it’s all strictly private, and purely relative. If Jesus is one religious teacher among others; if his preaching is all really just about benevolence and brotherhood; if he offers some people a certain inspiration or personal consolation: fine. But if he is presented as the single and unique mediator between God and man; if we say there is no salvation apart from him; if his demands become inconvenient or painful or sharply counter-cultural: then that cannot be tolerated.Just before this episode, St. Mark tells how Jesus gave sight to a blind man in Bethsaida. He did it gradually, in stages (Mk 8:22-26). So with the revelation about who Jesus is. By divine inspiration, Peter now sees the truth and declares it. But he doesn’t yet see the implications of this truth, and he quite radically misunderstands what it must involve for Jesus. For complete understanding he will need new grace, new light. He will receive that in its fullness at Pentecost.But now, Jesus immediately rebukes Peter and begins to teach how he must suffer and die, in order to rise victorious from the dead. And here we are confronted by our second decision. Having accepted who Jesus is, we have to be ready to follow his way. In principle, this will cost us everything.If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, says Jesus, let him renounce himself, and take up his cross, and follow me (8:34).Allow me to point again to the pressure exerted on us these days to evade these demands of the Gospel. It seems to me that a great temptation faces the whole Church these days. We want to soften out all the hard and difficult sayings of Jesus, in order to be accepted, liked, even honoured, or at least left alone, by those who hold power and influence in our society. These are no longer the elders and chief Priests and Scribes. They are the media, and those who dictate what is currently politically correct, and those who control big tech., and big finance. Submitting to their dominating will, we can land up keeping the name of Christian, doubtless, but in quite radically secularised form. In St. Paul’s words, we become conformed to this world (Rm 12:2). So we accept Jesus as one who offers us therapy; but not as one who invites us to take up his Cross.Here then is the paradox of the Gospel. We win our life by giving it away. Denying ourselves, we find ourselves. To decide to follow Jesus, even to the point of martyrdom, is supreme wisdom. Because this is actually what is supremely desirable, beyond all other things whatever. To follow Jesus, to be one with him, wherever he leads, is the greatest grace and blessing anyone could ever attain. Even in this life it brings rewards beyond measure. Beyond that: by this way we come to God, and to eternal life with God in heaven.
