on Mark 2:1-12....
What an incredible scene at the home of Jesus in Capernaum! He arrives home, and as the scenes always move so quickly in Mark, his home is surrounded, and the people keep coming, and coming, and coming, and some creative (deranged?) individuals decide to lower this paralytic down into the home through the roof. And, Jesus heals the paralytic. But, clearly this was a strange gathering as there were even scribes there who had entered along with the crowd (the crowd who would later cry out 'hail' on Palm Sunday and later 'crucify him'? - but I am sliding into Lent...sorry).These scribes question Jesus' authority to cast out sins, for sins were wrapped up in the purity codes of the time. The greek words for unclean and clean were tied up in the purity rituals of the temple (I preached on this a few weeks ago, sorry), and Jesus was doing something outside of the economy, power structure, and the imagination of these scribes, and perhaps the crowd as well. He casts out the sin, he puts away the sin, and he then raised up the man to health, and the man takes up his mat and walks.
The work of Jesus in Mark seems hidden so much of the time, but here, Jesus is almost in the mode of John's Jesus, in control, knowing what he will do, revealing who he is, for what purpose, and by what authority he does these things ... Jesus revealed himself to the crowd that had piled into his house, who had lowered themself into the house ... they had seen him do these things and " they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"
No they hadn't, and neither have we ... we proclaim Jesus as savior and redeemer and sanctifier, our guide and our destination.
3 comments:
Amen brother, so glad to have you with us! Glad to see the RCL get some credit too. I wonder if you have any thoughts on it as compared with the BCP Lectionary. I'll be making these decisons someday and would love some input.
Steve, it seems that this week there isn't much difference between the RCL and the BCP...only in the Psalm.
I talked with Dr S about it in ethics and he said that actually the RCL does a better job of including passages from John and others that get a short shrift in the BCP...
I'll let you know...
P
To quote the movie "50 first dates"
"right on!"
Thanks you for bringing to the surface how astounding this scene is. I've seen it so many times I forget to really think through the scene and how odd (and wonderful) the scene is. It is so easy to see Jesus the teacher. This though is more like Jesus the rock star. It's hard to really experience Jesus' gravitas if you can't "see" the mob.
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