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Sunday
spoken eucharist - 8 am
bible study - 9 am
sung eucharist - 10 am

Wednesday

services begin at 7 pm

healing service (1st, 3rd)

evening prayer (2nd,4th)

eucharist (5th)

It has taken us nearly two months, but we are finally at the end of Chapter 1 of the Gospel According to Mark! 

Let’s review where we have been.

First of all … back at the beginning – not the beginning of the Church Year, which started on November 30, the First Sunday of Advent, but the beginning of the Sundays after the Epiphany, and that was the second Sunday of the month of January (11^th)  we started reading the Gospel of Mark right at Chapter 1, verse 1.  January 11^th was, you recall, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, but also the First Sunday after Epiphany (Epiphany being, of course, January 6^th of each year … which celebrates the coming of the Magi to visit the Christ Child, and therefore in our Church Year, marks the end of the Season of Christmas).

We started reading the 1^st chapter of Mark on that Sunday and (with one exception, that being a brief side trip into the Gospel of John) we have been going non-stop, week-upon-week, Sunday-after-Sunday right to today.

We also remembered that most of the Western Church is doing the same thing, because we follow a Common Lectionary, that is built upon a 3-year cycle of reading the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in that order … with various occasions when parts of the Gospel of John appear for our listening pleasure.

And we said that we began this Church Year, Year B, the Year of Mark back on the First Sunday of Advent which was November 30, 2008 and will finish it on November 22, 2009 (the Feast of Christ the King) and then begin the next year, Year C, the Year of Luke the very next Sunday, November 29^th which will be the First Sunday of Advent … next Church Year … which means that it’s only 313 days until Christmas J!

But, back to the Readings of the Gospel.  We also learned that the order in which we read the Gospels is the order in which we find them in our Christian Scriptures (NT) … Matthew, Mark, Luke; but that is not the order in which they appear historically … which is … Mark – the earliest to appear, around the year 70 CE, coming into being during the Jewish wars with Rome, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the occupying Roman army, or some 40 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus from Nazareth – then, Matthew written after the destruction of the Temple, then Luke (with it’s second volume the Acts of the Apostles), and way at the end of the 1^st Century comes the Gospel of John … but that is another story and another sermon.

So … from January 11^th until this morning, each week we have been reading a portion of the Gospel According to Mark in order.  And what have we read?  You all remember how it begins … “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  That’s verse 1.  Then John the Baptizer appears on the scene summoning people to come and be ritually bathed in the Jordan River in preparation for the appearance of the Promised One, and then that Promised One does appear – Jesus himself – and he is ritually bathed by John in the Jordan at which time we are told that the heavens open up and the voice of the Holy One can be heard who announces that this is none other than his Son, the Beloved One.

Following that, there are but 2 verses describing Jesus time spent in the wilderness, the dessert (40 days) during which he prepares himself for his mission and is tempted by none other than the Evil One … verses which we do not read in Year B of the Lectionary, nor any other year for that matter, because there are much more exciting versions to be found of this story in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Then comes the news of the arrest of John the Baptizer (only 6 words in the Greek Text of the New Testament, 5 words in the English translation) … again, a story that we usually read elsewhere … and then Jesus comes into the Galilee with the message of the good news upon his lips.

As that happens, he walks along the shoreline (heading north to the top of the Sea of Galilee) and calls his first followers, and we find out who they are … two sets of brothers: Peter and Andrew, James and John … all fishermen … and Jesus entices them into the journey by telling them that they will end up on a different sort of fishing expedition, catching men and women and children instead of those Talapia that swim around in the Galilee which you can still buy and eat today … called St. Peter’s Fish.

Then we find Jesus in Capernaum (right at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee) in the synagogue in that village, and confronted with a man who is suffering with mental illness, and Jesus heals him.

Right afterwards, Peter invites everyone into his family home (which is, if the archeology is correct) about a block or so from the synagogue, and there in that extended family living space we find his mother-in-law in bed with a high fever, and Jesus heals her.

Word gets out and the house is surrounded by people wanting to be cured, and many are.

Then we are told that Jesus takes a brief respite, goes out to a deserted spot for some prayer time, whereupon Peter and the others find him, ask him what he is doing, because everybody is looking for him … and in a style which the Gospel Writer Mark will follow throughout his work, Jesus doesn’t answer their immediate concern, but stands up and says, “Let’s go visit other towns, because that is what I’m here for …” and off they go.

And, if you recall, we noted that there is a theme to all this in Mark’s telling of the life and times of Jesus from Nazareth … what is Jesus’ ministry about?  … Healing.  It is the first thing that happens.  Baptism, Temptation, Calling followers … then healing, healing, healing … it is … Mark is telling us … what the good news is all about, what the life of following Jesus is all about … the kingdom of God is a kingdom of healing, first and foremost … it is a repairing of the world, it is a binding back together what is broken … and today’s reading now is more of the same.

Here Jesus is met by an outcast, someone with a skin disease who is ritually unclean (meaning that he could not come into the synagogue) and not nice to look at (meaning that he spends his life on the edge of the community) … he lives along the edge of the village, a homeless person, he eats only what he is able to find, and what the people of the village might throw to him.  And it is this man who finds his way to Jesus.

We can visualize the scene.  Jesus surrounded by the crowd of people wanting his attention, wanting his touch … when suddenly there is the sound of this untouchable making his way to the Teacher.  The people shrink back from him … it is like the scene where Moses parted the Red Sea … they draw back, they grab their children in fear.  But he makes his way and then … he begs, he pleads, he kneels before Jesus asking for healing.

And then Jesus does two amazing things: he touches the man (thus he has made himself unclean, or taken the risk thereof) and he speaks to him.  And the healing takes place.

Were we to keep reading beyond this first chapter of Mark’s Gospel (because the chapters and verses of the Bible are quite artificial divisions of the stories therein) then we would find yet another healing story.   It is the story where Jesus is inside a home teaching and healing those who have come to listen to him, and a man who is paralyzed is brought by his two friends to see Jesus, but they cannot get into the house because the place is packed.  So they climb up onto the roof, make an opening in it, and lower their friend down through the opening right in front of Jesus.

If you read these stories together you have the sense that there is a crescendo of healing … each one more intense than the last.  And that is, I believe, just what Mark wants us to understand … the kingdom of God, the kingdom that welcomes, includes, embraces, invites, loves and fills with hope is just that manner of kingdom … one where the crescendo of healing is its very existence.

Next Sunday we find ourselves in the wonderful story on the mountaintop, the Transfiguration of Jesus … and it too is followed by another healing story, and that one quite amazing.

+ Deo Gratia