A Dose of God Today.

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Simon and those who were with him pursued him and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.” He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages…  Mark 1:37-38.

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Look at the words and picture above, and I am sure you will agree with me that Jesus was no politician! Everyone looking for him? Yet he wanted to move on to other places where he was unknown. That is the opposite of political! Any audience is fair game for a politician, the larger the crowd, the better. Yet not for this man. We are still in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel here. It is thought to be the first written, that is to say the oldest, of the four gospels. Remember that this gospel begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism, and scholars are unanimous that it concludes with the empty tomb, the further passages being added later. So we are with the gospel that recorded Jesus’ actions fairly shortly after his ascension. So perhaps we have the closest thing to an actual record of Jesus’ thoughts and actions, and here he is today avoiding the opportunity of addressing people who wanted more of him. Why? I suspect it is the same reason why, in last Sunday’s gospel, he silenced the devil in the possessed man screaming that he was “Holy One of God”. Which he was, but did not want that to be proclaimed until after he had shown what, in fact, the Messiah was as God wanted him to be. That is to say not the military figure conquering the Romans, but the Son of God showing us, in real time and as a real human being, how to live perfectly, how to behave perfectly and how to do that as a friend of God and with God’s support. That scenario, if you can call it that, had hardly begun. It’s a little bit like painters not wanting you to look at their unfinished work because likely as not, it will not be like the final product, which is in their mind’s eye but definitely not yet on the canvas.

So here we have the budding Messiah, already noteworthy enough to be attracting crowds, but intent on spreading his message and model in his own way on his own terms. Hence he wanted to move on “to the nearby villages” where he was unknown, and not respond to his disciples’ eagerness for him to bask in the crowd’s adulation. In other words, he wanted to plod, not bask! Which takes us somewhat to today’s first reading from the Book of Job, “months of misery”, “life a drudgery”, “troubled nights” and so on. In shunning the adulation of the crowd, doesn’t it seem that Jesus is choosing a much more humdrum life, moving from place to place, hoping for the best and, I’m sure, many times not finding it? And it culminates in that last night of agony in Gethsemane followed by the ultimate humiliation on the cross, “coming to an end without hope” as Job says today. Paul, writing to the Christians in Corinth, seems to echo all that, “I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible”. Oy vey! as our Jewish friends might say.

“When the Almighty was yet with me….” Blake, “Illustrations of the Book of Job” 1826, Wikipedia.

Yes, life can be tough. Hopes can be crushed. Friends might vanish. Careers may fail, and on and on. The thing is not to be overwhelmed by the world, which is just what the devil wants. For if we allow that to happen, then we deny both faith and hope in a God who loves us. But we see today Jesus deliberately choosing the tougher but safer path, because his mission was more likely to bear fruit that way. In treading that path, whatever it might be for each of us according to our vocation, the Lord is always close to us. Crushed we sometimes may be, but we are never alone. Jesus, in seeking out a solitary spot to pray as today’s gospel says, knew he was not alone; he was not talking to himself. He was with his greatest source of friendship, his source of strength and his ultimate source of hope. So where he went we might safely follow for God is with us everywhere and always.

Job’s Vision of  Christ, Blake 1826 (ibid.)

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