Week beginning 22 October 2018
Gospel Readings:
Mark 1:29-34
Mark 1:35-39
Mark 1:40-45
Exodus 18
Devotion 1
Wait: Take time to sit in silence together, allowing space for God’s voice to be heard.
Read: Mark 1:29-34
This episode begins as Jesus leaves the central space of the synagogue, through which is mediated the rule of the Jerusalem elite and by extension the interests of Rome, and enters the marginal space of the home of the fishermen Simon and Andrew. As he does so, his modus operandi shifts from one of confrontation to one of care and restoration.
Reflect
- What words or phrases stick out to you as you read through today’s reading?
- What kind of picture does this episode paint of the Reign of God?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
Devotion 2
Wait: Take time to sit in silence together, aware of God’s presence in a broken world.
Read: Mark 1:35-39
Having spent time in prayer and solitude, Jesus is able to clearly and intentionally see the next step of the mission: to “go on to the neighbouring towns, so that [he] may proclaim the message there also.” It is a message for all the towns of Galilee—one of the renewal of local communities and of awakening to their enslavement to the ruling powers. Perhaps we might see Jesus’ teaching as what Paulo Freire called conscientizaçāo, or “conscientisation”:
Only as this situation ceases to present itself as a dense, enveloping reality or a tormenting blind alley, and they can come to perceive it as an objective-problematic situation—only then can commitment exist. Humankind emerge from their submersion and acquire the ability to intervene in reality as it is unveiled. Intervention in reality—historical awareness itself—thus represents a step forward from emergence, and results from the conscientizaçāo of the situation. Conscientizaçāo is the deepening of the attitude of awareness characteristic of all emergence.1
In other words Jesus, in his teaching and enactment of the Reign of God, is awakening his hearers to see the ways in which their reality is dominated by imperial powers—ways which are usually presented as just “the way things are”—and is empowering local Galilean communities to imagine another way.
Reflect
- Do you feel like you have a clear sense of purpose like Jesus did? What helps or hinders you in that?
- Are there forces in your world which you sense hinder you from seeing beyond “the way things are”?
Pray for one another.
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
1 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Ed. (New York: Continuum, 2005), 109.
Devotion 3
Wait: Take time to sit in the silence of repentance together, aware of our inadequacy and God’s grace.
Read: Mark 1:40-45
The story we encounter today is a powerful story of healing and identification with the poor and marginalised. That Jesus touches a leper is, of course, a radical way of identifying with the man with leprosy and acknowledging his humanity.
There are other things going on here in this passage that we can pay attention to. The NIV translation of verse 41 reads, ‘Jesus was indignant’, which is very different to many other translations that say something like, ‘Jesus was moved with compassion’. There is no doubt that Jesus acts compassionately here, but there is good reason to believe that the NIV reading of anger/indignation is what Mark wanted to say.2 So what might Jesus’ be angry about? We get another clue in verse 44, as Jesus sends the healed man to the priest to sacrifice as a testimony to him. In the only other times Mark uses the phrase eis marturion autois, it carries the sense of a testimony against someone (6:11, 13:9). Jesus seems to be angry with a system which was meant to facilitate the restoration of afflicted people back into the community, but had for so long kept this man marginalised, unable to participate in the life of the community.
Of course, the man doesn’t follow Jesus’ orders to go back to the priest, but instead ‘began to proclaim it freely… so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly…’ Jesus is not avoiding the crowds because he is suffering from too much popularity. He has touched a leper, and is now himself unclean!3 He has taken on himself the marginalisation of the man with leprosy, and is now himself ostracised and confined to the ‘lonely places’. But that’s not the end of the story, for ‘the people still came to him from everywhere. In this seemingly unimportant post-script to the story, we find a beautiful picture of community forming, not in the important places in the centre of towns or villages, but on the margins, in the places where most do not go – and the community is centred around Jesus.
Reflect
- What strikes you as you read today’s reading?
- In what ways do you sense God’s Spirit inviting you to live out this story?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer
2 Many ancient manuscripts use the word orgistheis (angry), rather than splanchnistheis, (compassionate), pointing to the fact that at some point copyists have changed the word. It is unlikely that copyists would have changed Jesus’ compassion to anger, leading scholars to conclude the original must have been anger.
3 Ched Myers, Binding the Strongman: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. 20th Anniversary ed. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008), 154.
Devotion 4
Wait: Take time to sit in the silence of gratitude together, giving thanks for the ways you’ve experienced God’s loving kindness.
This week’s Common Value: Team Formation.
Read: Exodus 18
Ask
- In what ways can you be a mentor or encourager to someone on your team or in your neighbourhood this week?
Pray
Share Communion
Close with the Lord’s Prayer