After yesterday's shocking opposition to the healing actions of Jesus so early in the Gospel, Mark pauses in his Gospel so we can grasp hold of what is happening around Jesus. Up to this point, Jesus is enthusiastically received as a healer and as one who teaches powerfully. Very many are responding well to him. Mark sets this general summary in place to let the hearer appreciate its importance: people from many areas are converging on Jesus as the center of attraction. They want to meet him. In fact, they are coming from all directions.
Word of him has spread beyond Galilee and Judea. With great significance, Jews from Jerusalem, the capital, the holy city, are seeking him. Notice that the place to encounter God is no longer temple-centered, it is kingdom-centered. People come from Idumea in the south, beyond the Jordan River in the east, and Tyre and Sidon in the north and west - all lands that fall outside of Israel. These are the people who will first hear parables and witness exorcisms in the next few chapters. These people recognize something in this man as the Son of God. It does not stop there. Even the unclean spirits recognize him shouting out, "You are the Son of God."
Now is a good time for us to pause to examine what we know of Jesus. It might sound like a silly exercise, but we suffer from information-deficit-disorder. Let us examine how we know what we know of Jesus. We may find our knowledge of him is not as secure as we would like. We have built up illusions about his identity. Take for instance the many movies and plays about his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, or even of his nativity. These images of Jesus are often a product of a conflation of the four Gospels into one portrait. When we hold these conflated images, we lose the portrait of the man the Evangelist sought to portray. These are four distinct stories that highlight a certain aspect of Jesus with an intended message for a specific audience.
Then we have the dilemma of reading accounts of his historical life decades after his death and resurrection. The authors transferred their experience of the Risen Lord onto the life of the historical man. We lose the radical identity of the man when we perceive him as more God than man. In fact, those heretical views were condemned by the early church. In many conversations with faithful churchgoers, a large majority still believe that Jesus possessed greater divine nature than human nature. They conclude that Jesus had almost perfect knowledge of what would happen to him in his Passion. We've lost the man in our theological imagination.
Our faith is meaningful when we look at the historical man rather than the God-man. We are to look at the real person because it is his life and teachings that drew so many to him. It was his human faith in God that saved us. We are not saved because of our faith in him, but because of his utter fidelity to God - even a God he felt was absent in his greatest need. He needed to be completely human to make his work possible. Since he was steadfast to God, he gave us a way of life to emulate. Because he was fully human, not partly God while being human, we place our hope in him. His nature and identity are quite a mystery to behold.
During retreats, we petition God for an intimate knowledge of our Lord, who became human for us, that we may love him more and follow him more closely. We have to discover the truth of his identity in light of all the other data we have been taught. In some cases, we are to deconstruct what we think we know so we can come to a fuller understanding of who he really is. After all, this is what we do in prayer. We present to Christ who we are, our true selves, genuinely, authentically, while Christ responds to us and reveals more about his life to us. We grow in friendship with him and he places us with the Father through the Spirit.
We are here because we are like the people from Idumea, or Tyre or Sidon. We want to know Jesus, just as they desired. We have come from all directions to meet him again or to learn about him for the first time. We've heard about his words of life, his healings, the way he extends new boundaries of freedom, and that he radically cares for each person he meets and liberates us from our deep, dark, muckiness. He wants us to come to know the God he calls Abba so we can know the steadfast care of God.
He yearns to bring us into a new family that not only welcomes everyone and treats them with respect and dignity, but rejoices that they are here. He wants us to care for one another with a mercy that is befuddling curious to those who don't believe. They will find it attractive and will be led to our way of life. He wants us to be in a world where others remark, "See how they love one another. They should be natural enemies, but anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord is treated with mercy."
Come to Jesus today. Waste time with him. Don't force your prayer as if it is work. It is not therapy. Prayer doesn't have to be profound each day. Prayer can just be sitting next to your friend in silence, or in very frivolous conversation. It can be light-hearted and fun and gentle. Just be who you are with the one you want to be with. That's all. It's all so simple. Just relax and be who you are. Your true identity will help see his true identity. He is worth coming to know.
I'll shut up now, but I'll leave you with a story about a Trinidadian woman I met in Jamaica. She taught me great stuff about how to enter into prayer by a simple beholding exercise. Every day, this mother would send her daughter, Marissa, off to school with a simple ritual. Each night she would make her daughter a lunch before sending her off to school. They would have a simple breakfast and then it was time to part. The mother gave her child her lunch pail and would give her a huge hug. This woman could give a substantial hug. She would utter into her Marissa's ear, "I will miss you, and I love you." The girl would head towards the door and the mother would stop her and gasp, "Marissa, wait. Let me look at you one last time. You are so beautiful to behold. I just want to see your face one more time." The woman would savor the sweet image of her daughter while Marissa walked tall and straight towards school.
Come to Jesus today. Waste time with him. Behold him the way this Trinidadian mother would hold Marissa in her memory. Through beholding his humanity, we can say of him, like the unclean spirits did, "wow." "Wow!" "You truly are the Son of God." My best guess says that Jesus will behold you too and will praise and honor you. He wants you to know that you have a beautiful face. He wants to savor the good person that you are and hold you in his memory. Watch him as he gazes upon you so tenderly that your presence takes his breath away.
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