Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 4/ Sunday
Readings: Deuteronomy 18.15-20 / Responsorial Psalm 94.1-2, 6-7, 8-9 (R/v 8) / I Corinthians 7.32-35 / Mark 1.21-28
We can listen, and we can listen.
We can listen, hear and respond. Like children sharing their interests and parents encouraging them. Like friends unloading their burdens and those who care helping to carry them in companionship. Or, we can listen, ignore and walk away. Like spouses forgiving each other and asking for understanding, and saying ‘yes, dear’ but doing nothing else. Like work colleagues complaining and bosses ignoring. These are two ways we interact with one another, and oftentimes with God.
Today’s readings invite us to reflect on how we listen to God and respond to Him.
In the first reading, Moses announces to the Israelites God’s promised future prophet for them—one from among them who will speak God’s words. This news probably terrified them because this new prophet would replace Moses, who has been their mediator with God.
Their fear recalls their earlier fear they had when God descended on Mount Sinai as Moses brought down the ten commandments to them. Then, God came to them in a great fire, thunder and a blare of brackish trumpets, and they trembled in fear and stood far away. And as Moses reminds them, then they shouted out in fear: “Do not let us hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor look any longer on this great fire, or we shall die”.
Fear controlled their hearts and prevented them from hearing God’s word. Aren’t we sometimes like them? Don’t we sometimes in our smallness, our fragility, and our sinfulness feel threatened by a God so big, so powerful, and so almighty ? Don’t we sometimes ignore God’s voice that speaks commandments that go against what we want—like missing Sunday mass to sleep in more, disobeying our parents to do what we want, letting lust lead us into self-gratification, and choosing selfishness for our own profit?
Yet isn’t it startlingly and true that God keeps calling out to us? That his voice keeps resonating in our hearts, echoing in our ears, prompting us in our sinfulness to come to him, repeatedly. What else can this be but God luring us into his embrace, into his life?
Our gospel reading tells us that Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue left a deep impression on those who heard him. The New American Bible translates “deep impression” as “astonished”. I much prefer this adjective.
The people were astonished by Jesus when they showed up in the synagogue and listened to him. We show up in church and in prayer and we listen to Jesus’s words and witness his good deeds in the gospels. But are we astonished by Jesus, like those in the synagogue were? When did we last let Jesus astonish us?
According to Mark in today's gospel reading, the people who heard Jesus that day were astonished because “he taught them with authority.” I’d like to think that Jesus could astonish them because they were receptive to the newness of Jesus’ teaching—that God is love—and open to amazement—that he teaches with authority.
What about us when we encounter Jesus? Do we come to him with openness and hope? Or are we close minded and cynical? Will we let ourselves learn something new when we meet Jesus, or are we expecting the same old, same old? Do we dare let Jesus challenge us or do we just want Jesus to let us be?
These are hard questions to answer if we’ve been Christians for a long time. Hard because the new and fresh becomes old and familiar, and this tends to make us comfortable and complacent with our Christian lives. We might then forget that Jesus came—and comes—to make all things new.
The people in the synagogue were “astonished” by the work of God because they allowed Jesus to be unfamiliar in their midst. We should relate to Jesus in the same way, and so astonish and amaze us.
Amaze us with his authority to do two things for us.
First, to challenge and save us. In the synagogue, Jesus rebukes and drives out the unclean spirit in the man. His actions how us how his word—in the form of his commandments—can save us from the demons in our lives. They can because they warn us that some of our actions violate God and God’s relationship with us. His commands draw us back from our sinful, self-destructing ways. This is why I think we cringe when Jesus rebukes sinners in the gospels: we know he is really rebuking our sinful actions. Like his Father, Jesus uses authority to be hard-hearted for our own good—to save us, not destroy us.
Second, to enter into our messiness to heal us. Jesus heals the man with the unclean spirit by engaging him directly. He enters into the pain, rage, ugliness, and horror of a man possessed by an unclean spirit. Jesus’ brand of holiness moves him to get his hands dirty; he is ready to help all who are in need. Love is why he does this. Isn’t this why Jesus repeatedly enters into our messy, chaotic, sinful lives—to forgive us in mercy and to save us in love? Doesn’t he do this most especially in our hardest, darkest, most painful times? I believe Jesus does this because knows how the demons that possess us can lead us astray from God. And so, he rebukes them for our wellbeing and salvation.
The unclean spirit asked Jesus this question, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” What other answer can there be but this only: “Everything. I have everything to do with you.” Wherever suffering is, torment is, hopelessness is, Jesus is. And where Jesus is, there is God. He has everything to do with us, even and maybe especially when we are at our worst.
Jesus’ teaching is new and authoritative because he is indeed the prophet after God’s heart—the herald of good tidings, the one who announces the good news that “Your God reigns. Your God is here”, especially it looks like God is absent (Isaiah 40:9 and 52:7). We would be wise then to listen attentively to the good news of Jesus’ healing today, and hear God’s goodness at work. Then, we should act by letting God do the same for us.
For some scripture scholars the unclean spirit is a simple metaphor for anything that might “possess” or “control” us—like anger, fear, list, hatred and envy. If we are honest, we know some of these do “possess” and “control” us. Isn’t this why we come to Jesus for healing, like the man with an unclean spirit? And don’t we come because we recognise him as the Holy One of God? In Jesus we see the promise of God’s healing. More so, we believe that in Jesus, we will experience God’s certain love that wants to save us from the sinfulness that possesses us.
We will indeed experience this love of God in Jesus when we come to him with open hearts. Great, big open hearts ready to encounter a God who wants to abide in us and to change everything for our happiness. We need God’s Spirit to help us nurture such hearts in us. Hearts to listen to the newness of Jesus’ teaching—that God’s love is for all. And more importantly, hearts to be astonished by his authority—that in Jesus, God touches us with his very presence to give us his life.
This is why it will be good to pray this refrain from our responsorial psalm daily: “O that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’” Yes, let us never harden our hearts but ask everyday for the grace to keep them big and open to just not encounter Jesus but to be astonished by him.
Preached at the Church of the Transfiguration, Singapore
artwork: "prince of peace" by akiane kramanik (detail)
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